'Where The Crawdads Sing' Author Is Wanted & Zambia Has Questions About A Man's Murder
Controversy is swirling around the new movie.
Reese Witherspoon with Delia Owens. Right: Delia Owens with 'Where The Crawdads Sing' stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Taylor John Smith.
They say all publicity is good publicity, but that might not be the case for Where The Crawdads Sing, the new movie based on the book by author Delia Owens.
Authorities in Zambia say Owens is wanted for questioning in the murder of a man in 1995, according to The Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who has been on this story for over a decade.
Officials also want to speak to her ex-husband Mark and their son Christopher in connection with the case, which revolves around ABC News footage of an alleged poacher being shot dead in the wilderness in the mid-90s.
The slain man's body was never recovered and his identity remains unknown, but Zambian police say they still want to charge someone for the on-camera killing — and they suspect the Owens family knows something about it, although they are not currently accused of murder.
“There is no statute of limitations on murder in Zambia,” Lillian Shawa-Siyuni, Zambia's director of prosecutions, recently told Goldberg. “They are all wanted for questioning in this case, including Delia Owens.”
Owens published Where The Crawdads Sing in 2018 and the Reese Witherspoon-backed movie adaptation just came out, launching Owens to even greater stardom.
But before she landed on Witherspoon's book list she was a conservationist living in Africa, where ABC once did a TV episode about her family's aggressive efforts to protect wild elephants.
That episode includes footage of a suspected poacher being shot and killed in the wilderness while the camera rolls from a helicopter overhead.
The ABC cameraman later told Goldberg that it was Christopher Owens who fired the shot and Mark who disposed of the body.
The Owneses left Zambia shortly after that incident and have denied any involvement in the killing, but the new movie — and Goldberg's latest story — seem to have brought the cold case back into the public eye once again.
TikTok users have also been all over this, with many of them declaring that they won't watch or read Crawdads because of the allegations around Owens.
@bookendpicks also won’t be seeing the movie #booktok #bookstomovies #deliaowens #wherethecrawdadssing #movierelease
Where The Crawdads Sing tells the story of Kya, a reclusive woman and author who (SPOILER ALERT) is accused of murdering a man who raped her.
She is put on trial and found not guilty, but the book ends by strongly hinting that she did kill him for justifiable reasons.
The movie opened in theatres on Wednesday.