DISCLAIMER : If you're under the age of 13 or if you're sensitive to murder, violence, and scary stuff in general, I recommend you don't read this for your own safety.

Hey everyone. I'm Detective Noel. I hope you're all having a happy new year and relaxing holiday. January 2nd is a very important day that I think deserves more attention. I will be showing and telling you all the Story of Robert Owens. He's probably one of the more less popular murderers, but I think his Story deserves more attention. I was lucky enough to discover this Story from Mr. Nightmare! One of the best YouTubers of all time! I BEG you to go Subscribe to him! He makes the BEST videos on YouTube! Credit for the information goes to him and Wikipedia. With that out of the way, let's have a look into the Story of Robert Owens.

Robert Jason Owens is an American murderer who is less popular than most murderers, but he still has a very eyebrow raising Story to him. This is the Story of Robert Owens.

Robert Owens was born on March 18th 1980 to a single mother in Asheville, North Carolina. After he graduated high school, he worked in the electronics department at his local Walmart store and at his local Volvo Plant. Growing up, most people knew him as "unremarkable and a bit rough around the edges". However, his life started going downhill very early as he was heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol and committed several offences such as impaired driving, public intoxication, resisting arrest, and driving at dangerously high speeds during police pursuits. During one high speed police chase in 2002 when Owens was 22, he was driving at 120 miles per hour when he crashed into a mailbox and his truck flipped over. Already, Owens' life was in terrible shape, but unfortunately, everything was about to get so much worse...

On this day, 24 years ago, on January 2nd 2000, Owens was working at his local Walmart store when his shift ended at 9 PM. He made plans with one of his friends and co-workers to drive to Leicester to purchase a new car after they finished their shift. Owens' friend and co-worker was 18 year old Zebb Wayne Quinn who was enrolled in the Reserve Officer Training Corps program. Quinn met Owens in the Walmart parking lot before they drove in their own separate cars to Leicester.

On the way there, they stopped at a nearby gas station to purchase sodas for themselves. The two men were also captured on the gas station's surveillance cameras.

However, Zebb Quinn was never seen or heard from again after he left the gas station with Owens...

Owens claimed that after they left the gas station, Quinn flashed his headlights at him, signalling for them to pull over saying that he received an important phone call and he needed to return the call at a nearby payphone. After Quinn made the phone call, Owens said that Quinn was in a frantic state and told him he needed to cancel their plans to buy the new car and tried to speed off in his frantic state. However, Owens claimed that when Quinn sped off, he rear ended Owens' truck in the process. Owens was taken to a hospital a few hours later for fractured ribs and a head injury. Strangely though, he claimed he was involved in two car accidents the same night.

But what's even stranger was that the police never received an accident report involving Owens and Quinn that night.

The following morning on January 3rd, Quinn's mother Denise Vlahakis filed a missing person's report for her son after he didn't return home. The next day on January 4th, a man claiming to be Quinn called one of his co-workers at the Walmart he worked at saying that he could not attend work due to an illness. However, the co-worker was immediately suspicious because he thought the voice sounded nothing like Quinn. It was discovered that the phone call was from a local Volvo plant where Owens worked his second job. As a matter of fact, Owens claimed that he was the man who made the phone call, saying he was doing Quinn a favour by calling him in sick.

However, this was when police started getting suspicious of Owens because even if he was only doing Quinn a favour, there was no reason for him to lie to the coworker about Quinn making the call.

But as the investigation continued, Quinn's disappearance started to get more concerning. Police learned that Quinn had romantic feelings for a woman he started dating a few weeks before his disappearance named Misty Taylor. But Quinn learned that Taylor already had a boyfriend who was very abusive named Wesley Smith. Quinn told his friends and family Smith had threatened him when he learned Taylor was cheating on him with Quinn. Taylor and Smith became persons of interest and they were both interviewed by police. Both of them denied any involvement in Quinn's disappearance.

As police investigated the phone call Quinn received on the night he disappeared, they discovered that it was made by Quinn's paternal aunt named Ina Ustich who Quinn didn't know very much. Ustich denied making the call. Interestingly though, she told police she was having dinner at the home of her friend Tamra Taylor, who just so happened to be Misty Taylor's mother. Ulstich also claimed that Misty and Smith were also having dinner at her house on the night of Quinn's disappearance. Surprisingly though, Ustich later filed a police report stating that her house was broken into the same night Quinn disappeared, although nothing was stolen and only a few picture frames and other items were moved around during the break in.

4 days after Quinn's disappearance on January 6th, Vlahakis received a phone call from a former classmate of Quinn's, who happened to be a co-worker at the Asheville hospital where both women were nurses. Quinn's sister and grandmother also worked at the hospital with them. The co-worker told her that she saw Quinn's Mazda Protege in the parking lot of a barbecue restaurant right beside the hospital with its headlights still on. The co-worker called the police who arrived to examine the car. They discovered the car had a pair of lips and an exclamation mark graffitied on the back windshield in lipstick. Inside the car, they found a plastic hotel key card, although they could not trace the hotel the key card belonged to. They also found several bottles and a jacket that did not belong to Quinn.

However, the strangest thing they found in the car was a black Labrador puppy. One of the investigators loved the puppy so much, the investigator adopted it.

Vlahakis believed the car was placed in the parking lot on purpose by someone who knew three of Quinn's family members worked at the hospital and knew one of them would find it there.

A couple later reported to the police that they had seen a woman driving Quinn's car being driven in downtown Asheville, and they helped police produce a composite sketch of the woman driving the car. When the sketch was done, the police realised it looked really similar to Misty Taylor.

The police were glad they found a lot of new forensic evidence, but they still had no suspects or any traces of Quinn. All they could do was hope for more evidence that would help them solve this baffling mystery, but their hopes diminished when they couldn't do anything else. Zebb Quinn was missing and there was no trace of him anywhere.

12 years later in 2012, this case was featured on the famous documentary show "Disappeared".

This would remain the final narrative for the next 15 years until 2015, when this case took a crazy and unexpected turn that nobody saw coming.

On this day, 8 years ago, on March 15th 2015, Cristie Codd, a Spanish-American woman who was 5 months pregnant with a girl named Skylar and a contestant on the famous TV show Food Network Star disappeared with her husband Joseph. They were reported missing when their family members were unable to communicate with them.

After the police did some investigating on the couple's disappearance, Robert Owens was arrested and charged with murdering them. Owens, who was now working as a contractor and living in a double-wide trailer, claimed he accidentally hit Cristie and Joseph while he was driving in his car.

Because authorities charged Owens with murder despite him claiming Cristie and Joseph's deaths were accidental, authorities have been holding back a lot of important information on this case. They have never announced why they believe Owens intentionally murdered Cristie and Joseph, nor have they announced what led to Owens' arrest, or the true nature of the crime, or the motive for it. However, investigators found the couple's remains inside Owens' woodstove and they concluded the couple were killed three days before they were reported missing on March 12th. Coincidentally, Owens' trailer burned down from a fire one week later on March 24th.

The deaths of Cristie and Joseph Codd made police take a closer look at Zebb Quinn's disappearance since the new case made Owens a strong suspect. On March 31st, a search warrant was obtained for the remains of Owens' property. But investigators were unable to conduct a search of the property until June. When detectives searched the remains of Owens' property, they found fabric, leather materials, and unknown hard fragments" under a layer of concrete. Investigators also found an unknown white powder substance, as well as pieces of metal and concrete. On another part of the property, authorities found numerous plastic bags containing possibly pulverised lime or powdered mortar mix. However, authorities didn't believe they found any of Quinn's remains on the property.

4 months later on August 4th, the state of North Carolina announced that they would sentence Owens to death if he was convicted of his murder charges.

It took two years for Owens to have his trial, but the trial finally started in the Buncombe County Court in April of 2017. During the trial, Owens pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide, saying he intentionally killed Cristie and Joseph Codd and recanted his original Story where he accidentally killed them. He also pleaded guilty to dismembering human remains. Because he pleaded guilty to his crimes, he was spared the death penalty and was sentenced to 75 years in prison without the possibility of parole.

However, there was another charge Owens was facing, which was the first degree murder of Zebb Quinn. 3 months after he was sentenced for the murders of Cristie and Joseph Codd, the Buncombe County Court demanded Owens to be charged and tried believing that it was highly likely he murdered his friend if he also murdered the Codd couple. Although the trial was delayed for 5 years due to personnel changes and the Coronavirus outbreak in 2020.

On July 25th 2022, 22 years after Quinn disappeared, Owens' trial finally began and Owens told a very suspicious but chilling Story about what happened to Quinn. Robert claimed that Wesley Smith and his uncle Walter Gene Owens murdered Quinn on the night he disappeared. Robert claimed that Smith demanded Gene to keep Quinn away from Taylor and Gene lured both of them into the Pisgah National Forest to have an important meeting with Misty Taylor. But Gene lied to them and Taylor was nowhere near the forest. Gene then murdered Quinn by shooting him with a 22 calibre rifle. Robert said the reason Quinn's body was never found was because he was dismembered and cremated by Gene and Robert admitted he only witnessed the murder and helped his uncle cover it up...

Gene Owens died when Robert was being tried for the murders of the Codd Couple in 2017, so he could not be questioned by the police. Even a whole year later, there hasn't been any evidence supporting Owens' Story about Quinn's murder and as a result, no arrests or charges have been made against Wesley Smith despite Owens' accusations. It's also possible that Owens' Story was a lie and it's possible that he could have murdered Quinn himself, or Quinn might still be alive today.

Despite Owens' suspicious Story and his lack of evidence to support it, the presiding judge accepted his plea and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, which was to be served alongside his 75 years in prison for the murders of Cristie and Joseph Codd.

If Owens serves his full 75 year sentence, he will be released in the year 2092 when he would be 112 years old. He will most likely spend the rest of his life behind bars.

In the end, Robert Owens may be one of the least known murderers, but he still has a strange chilling Story to his name...

The end...