Update:

It's been running almost 24 hours with no zombie but the hashrate is lower now...

http://i.imgur.com/FFzUGOz.jpg

I suspect that the thermal compound is the culprit of the zombie.  It was spread all over the board on top of the surface mounted devices under the heat sink which probably caused the instability issues as it would heat up and create a medium for a short to take place...

Can someone else take theirs apart, clean off like I did, and see if that fixes the zombie issue?