Posted on 05/09/2009 1:22:22 PM PDT by freespirited
Fugitive murder suspect George Martin Zinkhan III dug his own grave and covered himself with debris before firing a single bullet into his head, investigators said Saturday.
“A person not accustomed to the woods would not have found it,” Athens-Clarke County Police Chief Jack Lumpkin said. “The body was beneath the earth… The body was purposely concealed in a manner not to be discovered.”
Searchers found two handguns in the grave.
Zinkhan’s well-hidden body was discovered Saturday by cadaver dogs — an Australian shepherd and a German shepherd — at 9:50 a.m. Saturday. The civilian Alpha Search and Rescue Team was working woods beyond the initial search area. Zinkhan’s temporary grave was in thick woods about 1,000 yards from an elementary school and about a mile from where his red Jeep Liberty was recovered more than a week ago. Zinkhan’s home in Bogart in Clarke County is not far away.
The police chief said this was the second time in his 35 years in law enforcement that he had encountered a suicide victim who buried himself first.
Jim Fullington, special agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations’ Athens office, said the body was clothed much like the way Zinkhan was described as wearing the last time he was seen.
The body has tentatively been identified as Zinkhan’s. The medical examiner at the State Crime Lab, a unit of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, will use dental records to make the final identification later Saturday.
The playground at Cleveland Road Elementary School was cordoned off since the grave was only about 1,000 yards away. On Saturday afternoon, a short distance away, toddlers and their parents were attending a birthday party in the school’s gym.
Aaron Clanton, a teacher at the school, arrived around 10:40 a.m. for his son’s party that was supposed to take place at the school playground. Clanton said police were already on the scene.
Zinkhan, 57, was the subject of a nationwide manhunt since April 25 when three people were shot dead at Athens Community Theatre near the university campus — Zinkhan’s estranged wife, Marie Bruce, and Ben Teague and Tom Tanner.
All three were members of the Town & Gown Players. They were attending a luncheon with a few dozen current and former members that afternoon.
Witnesses said an argument ensued between Bruce and Zinkhan, who left the party. He returned with two handguns and started shooting, hitting Bruce, Tanner and Teague multiple times.
Zinkhan, a respected professor of marketing at UGA’s Terry School of Business, then went back to his car, and drove his waiting children in — daughter, 10, and son, 8 — to a neighbor’s house. Zinkhan asked the neighbor to watch the kids because there was an emergency.
Police believed they caught a break April 30 when they found the Jeep Liberty. But a search by dozens of heavily armed law enforcement officers over more than 1,100 acres of Clarke and Jackson counties failed to locate Zinkhan. Law enforcement authorities intensified their search for leads in recent days, distributing a GBI sketch of Zinkhan clean shaven and without a beard.
The Athens-Clarke County Police Department offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
Wow.
A profile of the older guy states he was trying to calm the argument. Nothing regarding why in the younger man’s profile.
This whole thing is just tragic for those two kids. Please lift them up in prayer.
And he didn't even murder his own children.
Weird.
Usually they turn the gun on the kids after they off the wife.
My wish list is considerably longer.
Send copies of this article with the request and a shovel.
Now that is a considerate sociopath. Most “estranged husbands” merely go after the wife and sometimes the kids. This guy had the courtesy to spare his children and “put the lid down” after himself.
Did he get stimulus funding? It seems like the perfect “shovel ready” project.
The only place more dangerous is next to a guy who’s divorced from his crazy ex-wife.
Shovel, shoot, & shut up?
Well, isn’t that creative!
Even better.
I give Zinkham points for thinking ahead and for style, but how does one manage to both bury oneself and shoot oneself?
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