Can a zombie despawn with a item held or an Armour piece on their body within the Spawn Chunks

Can a zombie despawn if it is holding an item or has an Armour piece on their body within the spawn chunks?

As long as a zombie is holding an item or wearing armor that it picked up, it will not despawn.

This behavior is the same, regardless of whether the zombie is in an unloaded chunk, loaded chunk, or spawn chunk.

As others posted, an armor piece the zombie picked up (didn't spawn with it naturally) will prevent the zombie from despawning.

Important caveat though: if said armor piece is a helmet, and the zombie is exposed to sunlight, the helmet takes continuous damage and will break after a short time, and the zombie will despawn or burn to death right after that happens. That's why if you want to keep the zombie sun-proof and non-despawning, the optimal item is a carved pumpkin; you can also use player and mob heads, say, the dragon heads from end ships - these items have no durability and as such they don't get damaged by sunlight when worn by undead mobs.