Dogs dig up killer prof's remains

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(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-11 08:52

ATHENS, Georgia: Cadaver dogs found the body of a wanted professor "beneath the earth" in the north Georgia woods, two weeks after police say he shot his wife and two other people to death outside a theater, then vanished.

Searchers on Saturday found two guns near the body of marketing professor George Zinkhan, 57, but police would not say how he died. They did say it appears he buried himself in brush and dirt.

"A person who is not accustomed to the woods would never have found the body," said Athens-Clarke County Police Chief Joseph Lumpkin.

Zinkhan disappeared after the April 25 shootings near the University of Georgia, where he'd had a spotless record since arriving to teach in the Terry College of Business in the 1990s.

Athens-Clarke County Police check out the home of University of Georgia professor George Zinkhan who is suspected of killing three people in a shooting at a community theater Saturday, April 25, 2009, in Athens, Ga. [Agencies]

Bulletins were issued nationwide and authorities kept watch on airports in case he tried to flee to Amsterdam, where he had taught part-time at a university since 2007.

Federal authorities later revealed Zinkhan had a flight to Amsterdam booked before the shootings, but the professor never showed up at the airport on the May 2 departure date.

Instead, cadaver dogs found his body about 16 km west of Athens in thick woods in Bogart, where he lived.

Searchers - as many as 200 at one point - had been scouring the woods since his Jeep was found wrecked and abandoned in a ravine about 1.6 km away a week ago. The guns found with him matched the description provided by people who witnessed the shootings.