Sherlock Holmes Killer Found Dead

George Zinkhan killed "Dr. Watson." Now Circe and Madison have found Zinkhan's body, ending the mystery of where the killer is. His body is at GBI Headquarters in Decatur, Georgia, and the rest of the story will be told next week.

On Saturday, April 25, 2009, George Zinkhan, a 57-year-old marketing professor at the University of Georgia, shoot to death Marie Bruce, 47, Zinkhan's ex-wife, Tom Tanner, 40, and Ben Teague, 63, all members of Town & Gown Players at the Athens Community Theater, Athens, Georgia. The killings took place outside the theater building. The local theater group was staging a performance of "Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure," the weekend of the shooting.

Actress Marie Bruce was collecting money for the theater lunch that was occurring, and which had begun at 11 a.m.. It was meant to give past and present Town & Gown Players a chance to catch up and meet each others' families.

Ben Teague and Tom Tanner, both set designers, mingled with guests, inside the theater and on the patio. Tanner was to play the role of Dr. John H. Watson in that night's production of "Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure."

A week after Zinkhan's Jeep was found, two cadaver dogs — Madison, a 7-year-old Australian shepherd, and Circe, a 5-year-old German shepherd — picked up a scent around 9:50 a.m. Saturday, May 9th, and found Zinkhan mostly buried "beneath the earth" 10 minutes later, said Athens Clarke County Police Chief Joseph Lumpkin.

The search had been scaled back from the initial 200 officers from local, state and federal agencies the day the Jeep was found to teams of eight to ten searchers a day for the next week. And while search and tracking dogs had been used in the initial search, cadaver dogs from the volunteer civilian organization Alpha Team K9 Search and Rescue weren't brought in until Friday.

Along with Zinkhan's body were two guns that match those described by people who witnessed the shootings. Officials said there was no indication that anyone else helped Zinkhan bury himself and that the body had started to decompose.

But they remained tightlipped about any other details, saying they'd reveal a cause of death, how long he'd been dead and other information at a news conference next Tuesday. For now, the discovery is "another sad chapter to the story," said Bob Covington, Zinkhan's neighbor. The professor dropped off his children at Covington's home after the shootings.

"It's been two weeks of people being on pins and needles, every time you see a police car," Covington said. "I think this will ease a lot of tension. People can get back to their lives and move on from this horrible tragedy."