He writes a best-selling murder mystery, then a chill case from Delia Owens' past resurfaces
The video of the man’s death is shaky, chaotic, and brutal.
A US television crew has been sent to Zambia to film the story of a young American couple on a mission to protect African wildlife from poachers.
Instead, they ended up filming – and then broadcasting on prime-time television in 1996 – a murder.
Details of what happened are unclear and ABC America agreed to obscure the identities of those involved.
However, it appears that a suspected hunter was found, chased through the wildlife park and then shot four times, execution style.
“Bodies of hunters are often left where they fall for animals to eat,” the reporter said in voiceover as the scene unfolded.
As the camera zoomed in on the man, the reporter reflected on what the audience had just seen: “Conservation. Morality. Africa.”
The killings in Zambia’s Northern Luangwa National Park may forever remain a mystery.
And the identity of the man who was killed was never revealed or his body found.
However, 26 years after the shocking video went live, the events of that day faced new scrutiny.
Delia Owens – then an American wildlife conservation expert working in the park – has since become a bestselling author.
Her 2018 debut novel, Where the Crawdads Sing, has sold 15 million copies and was adapted for the big screen by Reese Witherspoon.
And, with the film now in theaters, Zambian officials say it’s time for Owens and his family to come back and answer their questions.
While Owens vehemently denied any involvement, Zambian officials reportedly believed he had the potential to be an important witness who could help solve the mystery.
‘Maybe if we survive this, we can start over’
Long before she wrote one of the best-selling novels of recent years, Delia Owens was a biologist who moved to Africa with her husband, Mark, to study lions, hyenas, and elephants.
They wrote in their memoirs that they arrived in Botswana with “two backpacks, two sleeping bags, one dog tent, small cooking utensils, camera, one change of clothes and $6,000 each”.
“That’s all we have to prepare our research.”
However, the couple said they soon witnessed wildebeest poaching and began lobbying the government to intervene.
In 1986, they were asked to leave the country because, according to them, their activities were seen as a threat to the local livestock industry.
They moved to Zambia, where they became “honorary forest guards” in North Luangwa National Park.
The title gives them authority over scouts who work in the park to protect local wildlife from poachers.
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In their memoirs, they say it became clear that hunters using AK-47s were hunting elephants so they could sell their tusks on the booming black market for ivory.
“Now we understand why we didn’t see a single live elephant, or any signs of it,” they wrote in their 1992 book, The Eye of the Elephant.
“We are standing in the middle of a killing field.”
With the support of foreign donations, the couple turned the scouts into a small squad with Mark at the helm.
Occasionally, Mark’s son Christopher spends the summer with his father and stepmother in the park.
A martial arts master, Christopher teaches scouts hand-to-hand combat.
Delia said the anti-poaching squad had become an “obsession” for Mark, and her husband was taking increasing risks to protect the elephants.
Their memoirs detail nighttime raids they call “village sweeps,” in which scouts confront suspected poachers in their beds.
Mark Owens also claims that he changed the rifle so that it could fire harmless fireworks rather than live ammunition.
If they suspected poachers were in the area, Mark and the scouts would fly in with the Cessna and she would hang from the plane door, shooting cherry-bombed firecrackers.
Delia wrote in her memoirs that she became frightened that Mark would be killed, or that the hunter could potentially take revenge on the two.
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He packed his things and set up a tent by the nearby river.
“I love you,” she wrote in a note she left for Mark.
“Maybe if we survive this, we can start over.”
But their separation did not last long.
By the time they had reconciled and Delia had moved back home, a call came from a TV news producer in New York.
‘We were not involved in this incident’
The hour-long documentary about the couple was commissioned by ABC America in the heyday of big and expensive news magazine programming.
For Turning Point—a gold-rated program with wide coverage of the OJ Simpson murder trial—the two attractive young Americans who face off against an African hunter are particularly interesting.
It took two years to shoot and finally aired in 1996.
“They go to other parts of the world to chase dreams,” Diane Sawyer said in her introduction.
“An idealistic American couple — young, in love. But a strange place and time will test that love.”
Some of the remains of the documentary still exist online.
However, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, was sent a copy by a conservationist a few years after it was broadcast.
In it, he says that Mark was recorded to tell scouts not to hesitate to shoot a hunter.
“If you see poachers in a national park with a gun, you don’t have to wait for them to shoot you. You shoot them first, okay?” he says.
“If you let him attack you with an AK-47, he’ll cut you in half. So go out there and catch them. Take them, okay?”
In the middle of the documentary, a reconnaissance team – who was never identified – stumbled upon an abandoned campsite that was thought to have been set up by poachers.
The reporter later claimed what happened next was “the highest price paid by a suspected hunter”.
The episode aired in March 1996, but without social media to make such moments go viral, the mid-air murders didn’t cause much of a stir.
However, a month later, Delia and Mark Owens wrote to their donors to address concerns that had arisen about “some footage from the program”.
They say the ‘policy of shootout’ is only used by the Zambian government’s game scouts in self-defense.
“This is not our project policy,” they wrote.
“We were not involved in this incident, or in any other incident like this.”
Zambian authorities confiscated the park and police launched a criminal investigation.
ABC America refused to hand over the tape, likening the request to “asking for another reporter’s notebook”.
With bodies nowhere to be found, Americans returning to U.S. soil and ABC video footage of New York, the case immediately came to a halt.
Where the Crawdads Sing
In 2018, Delia – by then divorced from Mark and starting her life again – published a novel called Where the Crawdads Sing.
The publisher wasn’t sure how a book written by a budding novelist in the early ’70s would sell well and have an order of 28,000 copies.
However, when Reese Witherspoon selected him for his book club and took the film rights to his production company, the novel became a sensation.
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The book tells the story of Kya, a young woman abandoned by her parents and forced to fend for herself in the wild swamps of North Carolina.
“Where the Crawdads Sing is an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking future story, and a shocking tale of a possible murder,” Owens’ publisher Penguin Random House said of the novel.
The murder plot that dominates the second half of the book sees Kya accused of murdering her former lover in a swamp.
However, when asked during his book tour about parallels between Kya’s predicament and his alleged connection to crime, Owens is outspoken.
“I was not involved. There was never a case. Nothing,” he said.
When the film was released this month, Zambia confirmed the murder case was still open.
No charges have been brought against anyone, and Zambian officials told Jeffrey Goldberg they did not suspect Delia Owens of wrongdoing.
“Zambian authorities do not believe Delia was directly involved in the murder or disposal of the body,” Goldberg told NBC’s Today Show.
“What they believe is that he is the most important witness.”
Several critics have panned the film, partly because they said the actual murders made watching the fictional film unfold on screen an uncomfortable experience.
However, Where the Crawdads Sing has once again found a loyal audience. It has grossed $44 million worldwide.
And, for Delia Owens, who continues to maintain her innocence, the controversy surrounding her past is something she will have to endure.
“It hurts when it comes up, but that’s what Kya has to deal with: name-calling,” she told the New York Times.
“You have to go ahead and be strong. I’ve been attacked by elephants before.”
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