Cristie Schoen's house

This is Cristie Schoen's former house.

It is located at 87 Hookers Gap Road in Leicester, North Carolina.

The Food Network Star contestant and her husband, Joseph "JT" Codd, purchased the property in February 2013 for $161,000.

Police believed the couple was murdered on March 12, 2015. Schoen was five months pregnant at the time. Friends and relatives said that the newlyweds were looking forward to raising children in rural North Carolina. They also planned to start an aquaponics farm and a farm-to-table restaurant.

They were reported missing on March 15, 2015, after Schoen failed to show up at a family gathering in Mississippi. By that point, Codd's relatives had noticed that he wasn't responding to any of their phone calls or text messages.

When the police arrived at the residence to carry out a welfare check, they saw the couple's vehicles parked in the driveway. Their dogs were still inside the house and had defecated on the floor.

Shortly after the disappearances became public, a caller contacted officers and reported seeing a local home contractor named Robert Jason Owens throwing large bags into a dumpster.

The couple had hired Owens to clear trees on their property.

An inspection of the dumpster's contents uncovered personal items belonging to Schoen.

Owens was charged with two counts of first-degree murder after a search of his property uncovered their dismembered remains in a wood stove inside his mobile home.

During questioning, Owens said he unintentionally hit and killed them with his vehicle. They had been trying to help him after his pickup truck became stuck in a ditch. He claimed the incident occurred when he pressed the accelerator by mistake.

He told police he attempted to cover up the incident by destroying the couple's bodies and admitted to stealing personal belongings from the house to make it look like a robbery.

In April 2017, Owens agreed to plead guilty to three counts of second-degree murder and two counts of dismembering human remains.

Shortly afterward, he was sentenced to a minimum of 60 years in prison.

Owens was also implicated in the murder of 18-year-old Zebb Quinn, who disappeared from Asheville, North Carolina, on January 2, 2000. In July 2022, he pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the homicide. He claimed his deceased uncle, Walter "Gene" Owens, had killed Quinn, and that he had assisted his uncle in covering it up.