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When the families of 38-year-old Cristie Codd & her 45-year-old husband, Joseph “JT” Codd had been unable to reach the couple for two days, they contacted authorities on Sunday, March 15, 2015. What followed was one of the most disturbing investigations in the history of the quiet rural town of Leicester, North Carolina. This case highlights the question, how well do we truly know our friends, colleagues or neighbors & do we ever really know what is going on in someone’s mind?
Cristie Schoen Codd was born on September 3, 1976 in Madrid, Spain as the only child to American military parents, William & Elizabeth “Betty” Schoen. Because her father served in the U.S. Air Force, the family often moved around to new European countries before they eventually returned to the United States. When Cristie was in school, the family moved from Louisiana to Texas & then to Illinois after she spent several years overseas.
Moving between various countries meant that Cristie was multi-lingual from an early age & she was exposed to various cultures & traditions of other countries. However, as she reached her teenage years, adapting to different social groups meant finding deep friendships difficult. As soon as she began to settle in & establish herself, it was time to move once again.
It was these constant changes that allowed Cristie to develop excellent communication skills. She was also easily able to find a common ground in various social situations & those around her found her incredibly kind & charming. From early on, Cristie became active in sports, including gymnastics & swimming & she also took kickboxing classes.
As she finished school, Cristie’s father left the military & the family settled in Biloxi, Mississippi. Since her parents were often busy working, Cristie had to fend for herself much of the time when it came to dinner. This was how she discovered a true love of cooking. After living in so many different countries, she found herself experimenting in the kitchen, making various cultural dishes. She found a knack for preparing Cajun cuisine. Eventually, she decided she wanted to develop her skills so she completed culinary training & everyone just assumed she would become a professional chef.
While her love of food & cooking continued, Cristie also realized that she had a love for acting & she decided to enroll in an acting academy & relocate to Los Angeles. She ended up appearing in commercials, performing on stage & even working in several Hollywood productions as an extra or a stunt woman.
After graduating from her acting academy in 2000, Cristie decided to put her focus back on her culinary skills since she hadn’t received any noteworthy acting roles. She ended up participating in several popular culinary reality shows & ended up being one of the finals on season 8 of The Next Food Network Star. Her dream-show concept for the show, should she win, was Homegrown with Cristie Schoen, where she planned to follow food from the farm to the table with a focus on healthy, kid-friendly dishes.
Although she didn’t walk away with the title of The Next Food Network Star, the show gave her a lot of exposure & those who followed her on social media were able to see that she was passionate about a healthy lifestyle & proper nutrition.
Soon, Cristie started her own catering company which provided banquet services for various events & she also engaged in retail sales of ready-made dishes. She also worked as a celebrity chef with menus that often included her own original recipes that emphasized healthy nutrition. She was an ambitious entrepreneur who also held online courses on proper nutrition & developed several other projects.
Cristie first met JT Codd, who worked as a casting director, when they spent four seasons working together on the television show, Without a Trace. They also worked together on Melrose Place, often working grueling 14-hour days. Despite the fact that he was eight years older than her & in the process of a divorce, they immediately hit it off.
Cristie had always dreamed of owning her own farm, an idea that JT supported, so the couple decided to leave Los Angeles & relocate to North Carolina. They sold Cristie’s well-established catering business, Cristie’s, while JT sold his Hollywood home. They pooled their funds together & invested in the purchase of a large plot of land in the town of Leicester.
Their cozy, spacious home sat on a nearly one-acre plot of land & while Cristie worked on a blog about proper nutrition & a healthy lifestyle, JT continued to remotely collaborate with TV networks. They were incredibly happy together & their relationship was respectful & loving.
In August 2014, Cristie & JT were married in a lavish event with several hundred guests. Only months after their wedding, they realized that they were expecting their first child. Shortly after the new year of 2015, they were told they were having a girl & only days later, Cristie spoke with her mom on the phone & told them they chose a name for their baby girl, Skylar.
Despite the fact that both Cristie & JT’s parents lived in other states, Cristie maintained contact with her parents on a near-daily basis. When she was five months pregnant & her mom wasn’t able to reach her on Friday, March 13, 2015, she was initially unconcerned. The next day, she was still unable to reach both Cristie & JT & when she noticed that both of their phones had been turned off on Sunday, March 15, she became extremely alarmed.
Cristie’s mom reached out to a local friend of her daughter’s, Cecily, who told her she would swing by & check on the couple. When she arrived at the Codd’s home, Cecily saw that both of their cars were parked by the house. She found the front door locked & no one answered her knocking, but she did see that the couple’s beloved dogs had been locked inside one of the rooms. As she walked around to the back of the house, she noticed that the lock at the back door had been broken. Cecily immediately let Cristie’s mom know what she found before she contacted the police.
As officers arrived, they confirmed that the back door had been forced open & the inside of the house appeared to be ransacked as if someone was looking for something. The family ended up confirming that some of Cristie & JT’s items had been stolen, including a jewelry box. Their bedroom safe had also been broken into. Other than the disheveled state of the home, there were no other obvious signs of foul play, such as blood.
Authorities found no suspicious fingerprints or DNA in the house while Cristie & JT’s family held out hope that they were still alive. However, experienced officers were not optimistic that the couple would be located unharmed.
In the first days of the investigation, there was no significant evidence or leads. No one who knew Cristie or JT could ever imagine someone wanting to harm them. Both of their cell phones were found at home & hadn’t been used since Thursday, March 12, three days before they were reported missing. The following day, only incoming calls came through before the devices were turned off.
When investigators began speaking with Cristie & JT’s neighbors, one neighbor who lived across the street said that they witnessed another neighbor throwing a large bundle into a trash can near the Codd’s house on Sunday morning, March 15. At the time, he thought little of it, but when he heard that the couple was missing, he realized it could be important information. Since the garbage had been taken to a landfill one day earlier, any useful evidence would have to be searched for there.
The neighbor in question who was seen throwing the bundle of trash away was 36-year-old Robert Jason Owens, who went by Jason. He lived on the same street as Cristie & JT & was considered a close friend to them. He worked as a handyman & had been helping the couple with various projects since they moved in. He had even been a guest at their wedding.
As authorities spoke with neighbors about Jason, they described him as a strange, unpredictable person. He was brought in for questioning on Monday, March 16 & denied having any knowledge about the couple’s disappearance. He also denied handling a large item near their garbage cans.
It wasn’t until investigators found the large bundle in question at the landfill where they also found items from Cristie & JT’s home as well as fingerprints & DNA belonging to Jason. There was also burned clothing that belonged to the couple as well as blankets & a bedspread from their home that was stained with blood. This evidence confirmed investigator’s suspicions that Cristie & JT were no longer alive.
When the police searched Jason’s home, they found charred remains of a human skeleton in his wood-burning stove. Despite his initial claims that he wasn’t responsible for their deaths, faced with this evidence, he admitted to their murders, but claimed that it had been an accident.
According to Jason, on Thursday, March 12, 2015, while he was on his way to his friend’s house, he had to swerve off the road to avoid hitting a dog. After his car got stuck in the mud, he walked over to Cristie & JT’s house & asked if they could help him push his car out & they agreed. Jason claimed that while he was behind the wheel & JT & Cristie were standing behind the car, he accidentally stepped on the gas rather than the brake, crashing into the couple & running them over.
Since he feared he would go to prison for killing the couple, Jason said he chose not to contact the police or emergency services & instead, chose to conceal what he’d done. Jason claimed that he went back to the Codd’s house & broke in through the back door. He took blankets from their bedroom & although he said that he was unsure if they were dead, he wrapped their bodies & placed them in the bed of his pickup truck. He brought them back to his house & dismembered their remains in his bathroom using a saw & a small axe.
He then placed their remains in his wood-burning stove, hoping that their bodies would completely burn. Rather than burning the blankets & bedding they’d been wrapped in, he placed them, as well as Cristie & JT’s shoes, into a garbage bag & threw them away. He assumed that once the trash was moved to a landfill, the evidence would be gone forever. He then went back to the Codd’s house & claimed that he staged it to look like a burglary, while in reality, he stole money & other valuables, selling them at a pawn shop the very next day.
He detailed the horrors of what he had done to people he once considered friends, a husband & wife who were expecting their first child in four short months, in an eerily calm voice. In his home, officers located a saw & an axe that were covered in blood & human tissue, proving that he believed that he would get away with his crime. Because he left no trace inside the Codd’s home, he felt confident that the investigation wouldn’t lead back to him.
Forensic examination confirmed that the remains found inside Jason’s stove belonged to JT & Cristie.
As authorities began to look into Jason Owens, they learned that he wasn’t married, had no children & maintained little to no contact with his relatives. Prior to moving to Leicester in 2000, where he purchased land & built a home, he lived in Asheville, North Carolina.
Investigators realized that Jason’s name had been tied to an unsolved case from fifteen years earlier that involved his friend, Zebb Quinn. In 2000, 18-year-old Zebb mysteriously disappeared after he was last seen with a then 22-year-old Jason. Zebb was enrolled in ROTC with the goal of joining the armed forces as a commissioned officer, but in the meantime, he was working part-time at Walmart to save money to buy a new car.
On January 2, 2000, after he finished his shift in the electronics department, Zebb met up with his co-worker. Jason, in the Walmart parking lot at 9 pm to look at a car in Leicester that Jason told him about. They each drove off in their own cars & were seen on security footage at a convenience store, buying sodas at 9:15 pm, but then Zebb vanished without a trace. His mother reported him missing the next day.
Four days later, when Zebb’s Mazda Protege was found in the parking lot of Little Pigs Barbeque on January 6, things got exceptionally strange. The car’s headlights were on & a large pair of lips as well as two exclamation marks were drawn on the back window with red lipstick. Even stranger, there was a live puppy inside, a tiny black Labrador.
In addition to the Labrador, which one of the officers in the case adopted, police found several bottles, a jacket that didn’t belong to Zebb’s as well as a keycard from an unknown hotel inside the car. A significant amount of money that Zebb had with him to buy a car, as well as his pager, were missing from his car. Witnesses reported seeing a mysterious woman driving the car around.
Although Zebb has never been found, his car had scratches & damages with traces of paint from another car & Jason, who was the last known person to see Zebb, also had damage to his car. Not only that, the scratches contained paint chips from Zebb’s car.
Jason told investigators that while they were headed to Leicester, Zebb signaled him to pull over. When they stopped, Zeb said that he’d gotten a message on his pager & he needed to get to a payphone. Jason said that Zebb asked him to wait while he went to a nearby gas station & when he came back ten minutes later, Zebb was visibly frantic & told him that he was sorry, but their plans had changed. He said that when Zebb drove off in an unknown direction, he crashed into his car.
Only hours later, Jason strangely admitted himself to a hospital in the early morning hours of January 3 for a head injury & several fractured ribs that he said he sustained in an entirely unrelated car crash that night. He said the accident happened near the Waffle House on Long Shoals Road, but police were never able to find a collision report or evidence of this second accident.
When investigators traced the page that came through on the night Zebb vanished, they discovered that it came from his Aunt Ina’s house. Ina denied making the call & said she was having dinner with a woman named Tamra Taylor.
Tamra’s daughter, 19-year-old Misty Taylor, met Zebb weeks earlier at his family’s restaurant & the two struck up a friendship. After she told Zebb that she was in an abusive relationship with Wesley Smith, Zebb wanted to help her.
When Wesley Smith heard that Zebb was talking to his girlfriend, he allegedly began making threats. Both Wesley & Misty were at Tamra Taylor’s house on the night of January 2 & it’s unclear how Zebb received a call from his aunt when she was out of the house. Strangely, the woman who witnesses reported seeing driving Zebb’s car around after he vanished, closely resembled Misty Taylor.
After he vanished, an unknown person contacted Walmart claiming to be him, to say that he was sick & wouldn’t be coming to work for the next few days. The co-worker who answered the call thought that the voice sounded strange & unfamiliar, nothing at all like Zebb. When she called the number back, she was connected to a local Volvo plant where Jason happened to work a second job. When confronted with this, Jason claimed that he’d made the call at Zebb’s request.
Misty Taylor, Wesley Smith & Jason Owens were all questioned, but because there was no solid evidence to connect them, the investigation came to a dead end.
Now 15 years later, Jason Owens was yet again questioned in relation to Zebb’s case since he was suspected to be involved. In June 2015, Zebb Quinn’s case was reopened, but Jason stuck to his original story. They learned that Jason had started a fish pond project on his property that he never finished soon after Zebb went missing.
Under the concrete of this abandoned pond, investigators found fabric, leather materials & unknown hard fragments as well as several plastic bags filled with possibly pulverized lime or powdered mortar mix.
When investigators spoke with an elderly man who lived near Jason’s new home in Leicester in January 2000, he recalled an evening when Jason burned a fire that emitted a sickly-sweet, nauseating odor. Because the wind was blowing in the direction of his house, he complained to Jason that the stench was making him ill.
Soon after this incident, Jason filled the firepit with concrete, claiming that he planned to build a fish pond. The neighbor had completely forgotten about the incident until fifteen years later when Zebb’s case was reopened. Faced with this information, Jason finally confessed to being involved in the crime.
Jason told investigators that Zebb was murdered by Jason’s uncle, Gene Owens, who Wesley Smith hired to kill him for dating Misty. Jason claimed that he knew nothing of the plan, but he’d been asked by his Uncle Gene to lure Zebb out to an isolated location. Once at a wooded area on the way to Leicester, Gene ordered them to stop the car & when they stepped out, he shot Zebb in the back of the head. Gene instructed his nephew to help him dismember & pack the body, which was burned on Jason’s property that night & then covered in concrete. Since Gene Owens died in 2017, investigators only had Jason’s word to go on.
Sources indicate that prior to his death, Gene Owens denied any involvement in Zebb’s murder & provided information to investigators that implicated Jason for the murder. Four different district attorneys in Buncombe County didn’t charge Jason despite the fact that he was the last person seen with Zebb in the convenience store in South Asheville.
Since Zebb had money on him at the time of his disappearance that he planned to use to potentially buy a new car with, many believe that robbery had been Jason’s motive.
In relation to Cristie & JT’s case, Jason was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, murder of an unborn child, dismemberment & concealment of evidence, breaking & entering & burglary. Meanwhile, his defense argued that he had long suffered from depression & mental disorders for which he was prescribed strong medications, thus, he should be found insane & sent to a psychiatric facility rather than prison.
However, in 2017 Jason agreed to a plea deal, admitting guilt in Cristie & JT’s murders in an exchange for the removal of the death penalty. With this, he was found guilty of three counts of second-degree murder, dismemberment & burning of the bodies as well as breaking & entering & burglary & in total, he was sentenced to 59 years in prison.
Five years later in 2022, he confessed to being an accomplice in the murder of Zebb Quinn & to helping to conceal evidence, receiving an additional twelve years, totaling 71 years in prison, meaning he would be spending the rest of his life behind bars.
After his sentencing, Jason Owens addressed the court & asked the family members of the victims for forgiveness. His apology was hollow & filled with excuses as he spoke of his supposed innocence, claiming their deaths had been an accident. He mentioned his mental health struggles & the influence of the strong medications he was taking that impaired his judgement.
Cristie & JT Codd were said to be amazing people by themselves, but an even better couple. They were happy & loving together & looked forward to meeting their baby girl, Skylar. The couple was all about community, kindness & looking out for others. The true nature of what led to their deaths will likely never be known.
18-year-old Zebb Quinn loved his family & trusted his friends. Sadly, when he drove off that night in January 2000, he didn’t realize that the person he trusted as a friend was a murderous monster. He was a young man who was taken from his loved ones far too soon.
Four lives were lost, all at the hands of someone each victim viewed as someone they could trust.
References:
- Medium: Why would a “friend” kill an entire family? The case of Cristie Schoen
- Ati: The disturbing disappearance of 18-year-old Zebb Quinn & the series of bizarre clues left behind
- Food Network: Star-a-day: Cristie Schoen
- Citizen Times: Codds recalled: ‘My heart just ripped in half’
- ABC 15 News: Former friend shares about ‘pathological liar’ Owens ahead of plea deal in Zebb Quinn case
- ABC 13 News: Owens pleads guilty to lesser charge in 2000 disappearance of Zebb Quinn
