Crasstalk Interviews Shake The Devil Off Author Ethan Brown

Those of us living in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005 dealt with a number of challenges in the aftermath: where to live, how to rebuild, and how to cope with the changes in the city. In the midst of rebuilding their lives, New Orleanians were stunned by the suicide of Zack Bowen in October of 2006 and even more shocked by the event preceding it: the horrific murder of his girlfriend, Addie Hall.

The city, once again, was under a microscope after the crime. Nearly every news organization focused on the grisly details of the crime; some poked fun, some tried to extrapolate meaning, but few dug deep into the background of the two people involved and tried to find a real answer for how their lives ended in the ways they did. Ethan Brown, after writing an article about the murder for Penthouse, packed up and moved to the French Quarter to try to answer the questions so many had.

He found that both Bowen and Hall’s lives were incredibly impacted by Katrina. In addition, Bowen’s tours of duty in two major military actions had left him with major problems exacerbated by his lifestyle in the unique atmosphere of the French Quarter. He was able to address some of the larger issues that surrounded the two of them and speak to why there are many, many more men and women in the United States still dealing with the aftermath of their military service or their experiences in the wake of natural disasters and speak to why the two are not very different from each other.

When I first read Shake the Devil Off, I was impressed with Brown’s search for an explanation for the crime. On a personal level, I had known Zack and Addie through mutual friends. I worked in the restaurant and bar industry in New Orleans and South Florida, both known for their tourist-centric economy and nonstop nightlife. It’s easy to get lost in those cities; it’s easy to fall into a constant cycle of work, then drink, then drugs, and back to work again.

Specifically, I saw a lot of myself in Addie, a woman who was trying to exorcise her own demons but never was quite able to. I also had a personal reason for wanting to understand what Zack did: in the spring of 2006, my brother killed his wife in a drug-fueled rage after an argument.

I left Louisiana after Hurricane Gustav in September 2008. When I came back to Chicago I was diagnosed with PTSD resulting from that last incredibly traumatic hurricane, in which I lost my car, my apartment, and many of my possessions. So when I read this book, many of my own experiences made Brown’s writing resonate with me.

Remember, if you haven’t bought Shake the Devil Off yet, our discussion is still slightly less than a week away. You can buy the book on Amazon here; even if you’re unable to participate in the discussion, it’s definitely a worthwhile read.

I was fortunate that Ethan Brown was willing to speak with me and answer questions about the book and his experiences researching it; I encourage you to visit his website.

Crasstalk: After living in New Orleans to research this story, how do you feel the city influenced Zack and Addie’s behavior, before and after Katrina?

Ethan Brown: I’m not sure that the relationship between Zack and Addie and New Orleans can be framed in terms of influence. I think that it’s more helpful to consider the couple’s relationship with the city in terms of how they fit in here. Zack–particularly after he came back from Iraq and lived and worked in the French Quarter–fit in well with the Quarter scene. He worked multiple jobs in the Quarter, everywhere from Matassa’s (a grocery store) to Buffa’s (a bar) and loved the service industry grind and also liked the hard-partying ethos of the service industry folks in the Quarter. Most importantly to Zack, I think, is that in a place like the Quarter you can sort of ‘disappear’ your past and re-invent yourself. This was critical for Zack when he re-emerged in the Quarter in early 2005 because Zack’s life had taken a series of deeply wrong turns that he yearned to forget about (he was discharged from the military and his marriage fell apart). I think the same is true for Addie. She, too, liked the grind of work and play in the Quarter and she definitely wanted to escape her past as well which, as she told it, was characterized by abuse (sexual, emotional, etc). So, again, I think it’s probably more helpful to think about how these two people fit in in New Orleans rather than think about how the city may have influenced them.

CT: The Omni Hotel is now on ghost tours in New Orleans; there was an article in Maxim on the crime that emphasized the grisly nature of the crime; and, as you point out in the book, most news outlets chose to focus on the sensational nature of the crime rather than the motive behind it. Why do you think so few people really probed into the factors behind what occurred?

EB: Sensationalism works because it makes events that are difficult to consider easier to digest. Sensationalism also allows us to see the world as divided into good and bad people, and if we can think of people as simply good or bad then they are much easier to ultimately dismiss. So I don’t think there was much interest in investigating the murder-suicide deeply because it’s far easier to just dismiss both the victim and the perpetrator as outsiders, drug addicts or damaged people who were meant to die this way.

CT: One of the things left ambiguous in the book is what Zack actually did in Iraq that affected him so much and changed him so much. Was there anything you omitted? What do you think were the contributing factors to Zack’s PTSD?

EB: Zack was a veteran of two wars (Kosovo and Iraq) and was deployed in Iraq during one of the most violent and stressful periods of this long war (the march to Baghdad, the training of the Iraqi police in the midst of the beginnings of the insurgency). He lost a close friend (Rachel Bosveld, the first female MP to die in Iraq) and had another close friend (Specialist Todd Rauch) badly injured and sent home to Walter Reed, where he received the Purple Heart for injuries he sustained in combat. I tried to convey the sometimes peculiar stresses of the Iraq war and how the stress can come from what is not typically considered ‘combat’–for instance, I wrote about what it was like to take a cigarette break at an Iraqi police station and have a mortar round fly over your head. So, the stress of Iraq comes, I think, (and this is not just for Zack) from the sort of 24/7 nature of the war and how that constant alertness required to survive in a 24/7 war translates to a lot of mental health problems back at home. One thing I heard constantly from vets is just how difficult it was to ‘turn off’ after coming back from Iraq. This was captured well in The Hurt Locker–a movie I generally didn’t like–in its final scene when Sgt. William James stands in the supermarket and has a profound moment of emotional disconnect from his surroundings. And as I noted above regarding the massive problems with the VA, there’s not a lot of help out there for vets in making the transition from military to civilian life and what little help there is out there does not seem to be adequate.

CT: As a military wife, I’m often very concerned by the stress our soldiers are under. What could the military brass have done to ensure Zack left the military with the right tools to deal with what he did in Iraq? Was Zack even well-suited mentally to deal with the stress of combat before going to Iraq?

Zackery Bowen

EB: I think that there’s a simple answer here: Zack should never have received a ‘general’ discharge. The ‘general’ discharge had catastrophic consequences for Zack and for his transition from military to civilian life because as I wrote in the book, under a ‘general’ discharge soldiers may lose benefits such as disability and education benefits and ‘may be ineligible for many or all of the benefits as a veteran under both Federal and State laws.’ And I’m not a mental health expert, but I didn’t see anything in Zack’s records–and I reviewed criminal and civil records and had military records experts review his entire un-redacted military record (including his mental health history)–that would indicate that he was mentally unsuited to combat. Indeed, his military record (excluding the PT failures at the end of his military career) was pretty stellar: he received numerous medals and commendations and quickly rose in the Army from private to Sgt. and all of the soldiers I spoke with told me that he was a capable soldier. Now, it’s worth noting here that those who do receive an honorable discharge and are willing and able to seek out help from the VA have also fared very poorly. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, a federal judge in California ordered the VA to overhaul its mental health care system and accused the VA of ‘unchecked incompetence.’ (MSNBC)

CT: Zack says multiple times, even as a young man, that he’s made a lot of mistakes. How do you think that mindset and his life as a child influenced his ability to process what he dealt with in marriage and relationships, as well as in the military?

EB: This is an interesting question. A common thread in Zack’s life is poor decision making–from impregnating Lana when he was a teenager to his decision to purposefully fail his PTs at the end of his military career. But while Zack did make poor decisions he was also skilled at overcoming significant challenges–from working as a bartender in New Orleans when he’d been hauled to New Orleans by his dad at a young age to excelling in the Army even though the military was in many respects simply a means for him to turn his life around. I think that Zack was always keenly aware of his mistakes (hence the mistakes mindset you’re referring to) and often tried to correct them and that his greatest moments of frustration came when he was unable to correct those mistakes.

CT: Do you feel that Lana and her behavior had an influence on how Zack behaved in general after they returned to New Orleans from Giessen, and towards Addie specifically?

EB: I don’t think so. I think that Lana’s behavior was pretty consistent when she was with Zack. She took care of the kids at Giessen and by all accounts did a good job raising the kids and she was patient with Zack when he returned to New Orleans from Iraq (I don’t blame her for separating from Zack soon after he was discharged–she felt betrayed by how he’d handled the discharge and separation was the right decision for her at the time). I also think that Lana sought to make Zack more accountable to her and the kids when he was back in New Orleans after Iraq and while that may have been frustrating sometimes for Zack I think it grounded him in reality.

CT: Living through a hurricane and its aftermath, even one less catastrophic than Katrina, is incredibly stressful. Living without even a basic infrastructure for weeks is almost unfathomable to most people. How do you feel that influenced Zack and Addie’s relationship, and would it still have turned sour so horrifically without the events of Katrina?

EB: I think that Zack and Addie’s experience with the federal flood is somewhat different from most other New Orleans residents because they stayed in the city and never left (hence the term ‘holdouts’ that was used to described them). The holdouts ran on adrenaline during the storm and never had a moment’s rest from the catastrophe–and in Zack and Addie’s case, because they lived among a small group of people who were helping each other survive, they had a highly idealized notion of what New Orleans would be like during the recovery and were brutally disappointed when the recovery was not only not the glorious utopia that they imagined it would be but a slow, halting mess. The recovery was actually a dystopia in many respects, from the racial politics played by former Mayor Nagin to some in the white community who openly hoped that New Orleans would be cleansed of its African American residents to the return of violent crime to the lack of mental health services for New Orleans residents. So the federal flood and its aftermath–specifically Zack and Addie’s hopes for the recovery, a recovery that really never happened–played a big role in this tragedy.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

CT: It feels like Addie’s life and background is less fleshed out than Zack’s. Was that an intentional choice? Either way, why?

EB: Yes and no. Shake the Devil Off is a book about a killer–Zack Bowen–and what led him to commit a crime that got a lot of press focusing on the details of the crime itself but comparably little about the history of both the killer and victim. Perhaps I should have been more upfront about this but I felt like ‘why-did-he-do it?’ questions I posed at the beginning of the book made that clear. I don’t know. At the same time, I didn’t seek to marginalize Addie or her story with this approach. Indeed, I sought to humanize Addie–particularly after the cruel treatment she received in the media and by bloggers which I noted at the beginning of the book– and made a huge effort to get her friends and relatives to talk with me as I wrote and researched the book. I was glad that I was able to get most of Addie’s close friends in New Orleans to talk with me but dissatisfied with what I was able to do in terms of re-constructing her life in North Carolina. Overall, however, I do think that I captured the essential facts of Addie’s biography and had a strong grasp on her personality as well. And I was able to speak with a woman who grew up with Addie in North Carolina for the paperback edition of Shake the Devil Off which was published in the fall of 2010.

CT: Addie, when she was in a ‘mood,’ used homophobic slurs towards many of her homosexual friends. You mention that Zack was starting to become involved with a man, and Addie used that information to abuse him. What role did Zack’s sexuality play in the ultimate deterioration of their relationship? Why do you think Addie often used the sexual proclivities of the people close to her to hurt them?

EB: Good question. It’s hard to say what effect Zack’s relationship with another guy had on their relationship. In the book, I just tried to clearly lay out the dynamics of the relationships that Zack was involved in without any judgments: Zack was open about being bi-sexual and felt that his relationship didn’t constitute cheating because he and Addie’s relationship was so on and off during the early fall of 2006. As far as Addie’s use of slurs, I think it was less about homophobia (she had a lot of gay friends) and more about Addie’s willingness to cut deep when arguing with people she loved.

CT: A crime like this has a lasting impact on the people it touches. Have you kept in touch with Zack’s family or friends? And how are they coping more than five years after his death?

EB: I’ve kept in touch with just about everybody I interviewed for the book. These folks are Iraq war veterans, New Orleanians who experienced the federal flood, or simply friends and family of Zack or Addie (who didn’t experience Iraq or the federal flood) who are mourning their loss. So there’s a lot of post-traumatic stress here, a lot of struggling with depression, memory and trauma. There will be a moment where I feel like a big corner is turned for someone in the book and then I’ll get a distraught phone call or e-mail and that progress appears to have vanished. After Shake the Devil Off was published in 2009, I felt that the folks I interviewed were doing better than they had been in 2006 or 2007 when this was all at its most immediate in terms of impact and that perhaps the book may have helped them cope in some way (and maybe it did, I don’t know and I wouldn’t want to speak for anybody). But five years out from the murder-suicide I’m really getting a sense that the impact from the crime is permanent and that in some ways things never get better. The quote at the beginning of Shake the Devil Off–‘Just when I think I’m winning/When I’ve broken every door/The ghosts of my life/Blow wilder than before’–continues to resonate strongly for me when I think about everyone involved in this story.

CT: Some readers feel that you are ‘blaming the victim’ (Addie) in this situation. How do you respond to that?

EB: I’ve heard this a lot and it’s a straw man argument because I’ve never blamed Addie for what Zack did to her. I will say this, however: in the book, I think that I was honest in reporting on the complexities of both Zack and Addie (As an aside, I’d like to note that I’m still surprised that so few readers point out some of the damning sections of the book about Zack, such as Lana having to tell her kids that their dad was rebuilding the levees when he was off with Addie). This complexity makes readers comfortable and I understand that. I also think that the approach of the book–which is me trying to get in the head of a killer–can be unsettling or even distasteful to some readers, too. But regarding Addie, for me, the better, more useful questions are: Did I get her story right? Did I capture what Addie was like?

NNS Photo / Bill Barrow

CT: You lived in New Orleans at a time when all of us were stunned by the sheer amount of crime (and the staggering lack of accountability). You drew parallels between Iraq and post-Katrina New Orleans. What lessons can we learn as a nation after Katrina?

EB: The lesson we need to learn from Katrina is that it was not a natural disaster. The destruction during the storm was not wrought by the storm itself but by the failure of the federally built levees. As I wrote in the book, a prominent engineer compared Katrina to the Chernobyl disaster. Katrina was a failure of infrastructure and the infrastructure in this country is in horrible shape. So, we need to make major investments in infrastructure but I’m worried that this will not happen because of debates about the deficit/spending that cast any government spending as inherently bad.

Bonfire photo via New York Times

Zack Bowen photos via Ethan-Brown.com

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