I don't want this to seem like the "all Louisiana, all the time" blog (but, dammit, there are so many oddball and interesting stories there), but try as I might, I keep getting sucked back by stories like this one. It has haunted me all week.In a society, in an age so horribly fallen -- so far from the long-lost earthly paradise of the Garden of Eden -- it is ironically difficult to get the concept of "fallenness" across to a people so unconvinced of things such as "wrong" and "right," "sin" and "holiness."
People. Look. The painful and tragic (somehow, "tragic" just doesn't seem to cover what happened here a-tall) saga of Zackery Bowen and "Addie" Hall is what fallenness looks like, albeit in extremis.
Strangling your on-again, off-again live-in girlfriend, committing necrophilia, butchering her corpse and cooking the body parts, then living it up for a week or so before taking a flying leap into eternity is undoubtedly extreme. And it is extremely fallen . . . extremely far from any sane definition of paradise. Or even imperfect normality.
But what is fascinating , in its own grim way, is how they got to the abyss. There lies the story. There lie the little stories that illustrate the big story of what The Fall has meant for humanity -- the tragedy of free will, when freedom means the ability to freely choose evil. To be the victim of others' willing embrace of darkness. To wander rudderless through an out-of-whack world that sometimes drives us to spectacular descents into madness.
From the New Orleans Times-Picayune's website, NOLA.com:
From the suicide note found on Bowen’s body....
“This is not accidental. I had to take my own life to pay for the one I took. If you send a patrol to 826 N. Rampart, you will find the dismembered corpse of my girlfriend Addie in the oven, on the stove, and in the fridge along with full documentation on the both of us and a full signed confession from myself.... Zack Bowen.”
From a five-page letter left by Bowen in the couple’s residence on Rampart Street...
“I scared myself not by the action of calmly strangling the woman I’ve loved for one and a half years, and then (decimating) her body but by my entire lack of remorse. I’ve known for ever how horrible of a person I am — ask anyone — and decided to quit my jobs and spend the 1,500 dollars cash I had being happy until I killed myself. So, that’s what I did: good food, good drugs, good strippers, good friends and any loose ends I may have had. I didn’t contact any of my family. So that’ll explain the shock. And had a fantastic time living out my days...It’s just about time now.”
May God have mercy on their souls . . . the bruised and battered souls of Zack Bowen and Addie Hall. Requiescent in pace.
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