‘Crawdads’ author Delia Owens is wanted for questioning in a murder. Here’s why.
“Where the Crawdads Sing” has been an inescapable best seller since it hit shelves in 2018. After four years and more than 12 million copies sold worldwide, it’s now also a film produced by Reese Witherspoon, whose Hello Sunshine book club helped fuel the success of the novel. The book has spent more than 200 weeks on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list, including 17 weeks at No. 1. The film, released last week and starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and David Strathairn, brought in $17 million on its opening weekend in theaters.
It’s a success story that seems plucked from a fairy tale, a first-time novelist, now 73, becoming a worldwide sensation with her page-turning story of a plucky girl from the marshes of North Carolina suspected of murder.
But that’s not the only reason people are talking about Owens: The author is herself wanted for questioning in a decades-old murder.
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Who was Delia Owens before she was a best selling novelist?
For two decades, Delia Owens worked as a wildlife conservationist in Africa.
Owens grew up in Georgia and studied zoology at the University of Georgia, where she met Mark Owens, now her ex-husband, and became stepmother to his son Christopher Owens. In the 1970s, Delia and Mark Owens relocated to the remote Kalahari Desert of Botswana to establish a research station and study wild animals.
In the spirit of famed primatologists Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, the Owenses carefully studied and formed intimate bonds with their subjects, including lions and hyenas. Their experiences are detailed in three co-authored nonfiction books: 1984’s “Cry of the Kalahari,” 1992’s “The Eye of the Elephant: An Epic Adventure in the African Wilderness” and 2006’s “Secrets of the Savanna: Twenty-Three Years in the African Wilderness Unraveling the Mysteries of Elephants and People.”
A murder caught on camera remains unsolved
Delia, Mark and Christopher Owens are all wanted for questioning in the 1995 murder of an alleged poacher in Zambia.
The incident first came to light in 1996, when the ABC News program “Turning Point” aired a report titled “Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story.” In the report, cameras capture the shooting of a suspected poacher; the murder aired on TVs across the country on ABC.
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Why are Delia and Mark Owens wanted for questioning?
At the time of the murder, the Owenses were deeply involved in anti-poaching efforts. At North Luangwa National Park in Zambia, the Owenses got caught up in the region’s poaching wars due to the widespread slaughter of elephants for their valuable ivory tusks. Mark Owens ran anti-poaching patrols, bringing teams of scouts into the bush to confront and stop poachers.
A 2010 New Yorker article by Jeffrey Goldberg titled “The Hunted: Did American conservationists in Africa go too far?” was the first to extensively detail the incident. Goldberg reports that the Owenses left Zambia for the U.S. shortly after the program aired, never to return.
Goldberg spoke to cameraman Chris Everson, who filmed the incident. Everson alleges that it wasn’t an African scout who killed the suspected poacher, but Mark’s son Christopher Owens, who was standing off camera.
The unsolved case remains open. The Owenses have not been charged with any crimes, but are wanted for questioning by Zambian authorities.