Body Parts In New Orleans

Suicide jumper's note leads to body parts in New Orleans

By BECKY BOHRER
Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS — A note found on the body of a suicide jumper led police to a French Quarter apartment where they found a woman's charred head in a pot, her arms and legs in the oven and her torso in the refrigerator, police said today.

Zackery Bowen, 28, leapt from the seventh floor of a luxury hotel in the Quarter on Tuesday night, police said. His note, found in his pocket, identified the woman as his girlfriend but did not mention her name.

The body was found in the second-floor apartment that Bowen and his girlfriend, Adriane Hall, had shared on the edge of the Quarter above a voodoo shop, according to the landlord. Authorities said they were trying to find Hall, but did not speculate on the identity of the dismembered woman.

A woman who identified herself as Priestess Miriam Chamani in the Voodoo Spiritual Temple and Cultural Center below the apartment said today that the couple recently had moved in.

Hmm...my guess is he was just going to make a big old pot of gumbo and then changed his mind. My granny was 1/2 Cajun and she made great jumbo, but it was never a good idea to ask her what was in it! NOT that she put any human body parts in it, but pert near anything that had fur or scales was fair game..... And I mean 'game' literally!

We used to have a lot of fun going crabbing on the pier in Kemah before you had to buy a license to catch what God provided. My granny would bring a mess of chicken necks and we'd tie them to twine and then tie the string off ever so often on "our" part of the pier. After awhile you'd slowly bring the neck to the surface until you saw the crabs feasting and you'd slide the net under them and haul them in. The blue crabs had huge pinchers and would sometimes stretch completely across the width of the net when they spread their claws wide. The only time I can recall getting pinched was by a tiny one that escaped the boiling water and ran across the kitchen floor and latched onto my toe and wouldn't let go. Ouch! I don't remember now which toe it was, so all ten of them are curled up in sympathy! I loved going to my granny's bay house in Kemah and eating her file gumbo.

I wish I knew how to make it too. Unlike modern recipes, she'd use both the file powder and okra. It wasn't spicy hot like folks make it these days. I like the spicy hot kind too. The best bowl of seafood gumbo can be found at Captain Tom's Seafood And Oyster Bar on F. M. 1960. Too bad they don't have rice to put it over like my granny did. But I digress, as I am wont to do.

The couple was profiled in several news stories after Hurricane Katrina as resilient residents who remained in the city after the devastating hurricane despite evacuation orders and a lack of power and water.

A story published by Newhouse News Service described the couple gathering tree limbs for cooking fires at night and trading beer and alcohol — easy to get because of their jobs as bartenders — for clean water. The couple also figured out a creative way to make sure police continued to patrol their house: Hall would flash her breasts at police vehicles to make sure they kept driving by, according to a profile in the New York Times.

Humph. I'm pretty sure if *I* flashed the cops they'd not only drive by real fast but they'd never come near my house again! Heck, they'd put up crime scene tape to WARN other po-leece about the potential hazard!