Neighbor recalls encounter with Zinkhan

BOGART — Bob Covington had just fired up his grill in anticipation of some Saturday afternoon bratwurst when the doorbell rang. He answered the door to find George Zinkhan standing there with his two children.

“It was just a normal interaction from the point of view of a neighbor,” said Covington, who has lived next door to the Zinkhans on Chesterfield Road in Bogart the last eight or nine years. “A neighbor rings your doorbell, you answer the door, he’s got his two small kids with him and he asks me to watch them for about an hour or so because of an emergency. And, you know, two kids 10 and 8, I’m not gonna ask a lot of questions.”

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Covington, who often tended Zinkhan’s children, said the entire interaction probably lasted fewer than 30 seconds.

“Honestly my thought was, ‘oh my gosh, something has happened to Marie,’” Covington said. “I wasn’t about to ask what in front of those two kids. At that point it was just making sure they had a safe haven while he took care of his emergency.”

Nobody has seen Zinkhan in the four days since. The UGA marketing professor — accused of shooting to death his wife, Marie Bruce, and two men, Ben Teague, 63, and Tom Tanner, 40, just minutes before showing up on Covington’s doorstep — is the focus of an international manhunt now being led by the FBI.

Police believe Zinkhan, who has a home in Amsterdam, has his passport with him. He also is an avid hiker with experience on the Appalachian Trail and the U.S. Park Service is now on the lookout for him.

“He apparently knows the area well,” said U.S. Park Ranger Eric Barron, who posted a wanted notice for Zinkhan on the Appalachian Trail’s official Website.

Zinkhan drove away from Covington’s house in his red 2005 Jeep Liberty, license plate AIX1376. But the car has not been spotted since it left Covington’s driveway sometime before 1 p.m. Saturday. Covington said he and his wife are still caring for Zinkhan’s cat, Claire.

Authorities thought they might have a lead Tuesday afternoon when a tip from a caller led them to a large metal building in rural Oconee County. But they found no sign of Zinkhan or his Jeep.

Covington and his family, which includes a 13-year-old daughter who often babysat the Zinkhan children, are still trying to come to grips with it all.

“You’re living next door to a couple of professionals,” Covington said. “You would never expect anything like that. There was never any sign to expect anything like that. I never even heard him raise his voice. We’re clearly shocked by the event and saddened. Everybody I’ve talked to is mostly concerned about those two kids. In one fell swoop they lost both parents.”

Covington said the Zinkhan children had been with him for 35 to 40 minutes before he had any indication of foul play.

“My wife and daughter came home from a volleyball clinic downtown and she came upstairs and asked me if I’d seen these two policemen down the street who have guns?” Covington recounted. “I looked out the window and, sure enough, they were across the way, caddy-cornered to the house. One of them had a shotgun and I’m not sure what the other one had. I walked outside and they kind of waved me off to the side.”

Covington said the policemen approached and told him Zinkhan was a suspect in a downtown shooting.

“I was just shocked,” he said. “They asked me if I’d seen him and I said, yes, about a half-hour or so ago, he’d dropped his kids off with me and told me there was an emergency.”

Covington said one policeman wanted to ask the children some questions. And that, Covington said, is when he heard something that still shakes him to the core.

“I had the 10-year-old on one side and the 8-year-old on the other and [the policeman] asked them what was the nature of their dad’s emergency,” Covington said. “The only thing I remember was the kids saying something about a firecracker. After the story became more apparent I thought to myself, ‘oh my gosh, they were proximate to the shooting and heard it.’ He must have used that as some sort of cover.

“As I reflect back I was just glad to be here for those two kids.”

In other developments, the Athens Banner-Herald reported that Zinkhan didn’t set the schedule for a planned trip to Amsterdam or even buy the airline ticket for the flight out of Atlanta.

Harmen Verbruggen, dean of Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in Amsterdam — where Zinkhan has taught part-time for two years — invited Zinkhan to help the university start up a marketing master’s program, Verbruggen told the newspaper Tuesday. The dean’s secretary made travel arrangements with Delta Air Lines three or four days before the triple homicide, he said.

Zinkhan’s travel plans had been widely reported as an indication he had planned to flee to Europe after the shootings.