Dude kills himself after he mutilated girlfriend

After hurricane Katrina, Zackery Bowen and girlfriend Adriane Hall appeared in news stories as examples of young people who had pressed on in the battered city despite evacuation orders and a lack of power and water.

Their story came to a disturbing end this week: Bowen leaped to his death from a hotel, leaving a note that led police to a French-Quarter apartment where they found a woman's charred head on the stove, limbs in the oven and torso in the refrigerator.

Bowen's note said he had strangled and dismembered his girlfriend, but did not mention her name, police said Wednesday. Authorities said that because of the condition of the dismembered woman's body they could not immediately identify her.

In the note, Bowen wrote: "I scared myself not by the action of calmly strangling the woman I've loved for one and a half years . . . but by my entire lack of remorse," according to the Times-Picayune newspaper, which said it had obtained a copy of the note.

Bowen wrote that he had $1,500 in cash and spent it lavishly before killing himself, the newspaper reported: "So that's what I did: good food, good drugs, good strippers, good friends and any loose ends I may have had." Article here.