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Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. A beautiful young nursing student is abducted from her parents' house in Tennessee, sparking a nationwide manhunt. But even after six people are arrested, is there enough forensic evidence to explain exactly what happened to Holly? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 265, The Murder of Holly Bobo.
Thank you.
April 2011, Holly Bobo is a 20-year-old student at the University of Tennessee. She's got her whole life ahead of her. She's taking college courses to start a career in nursing. She has a good family, her mom, Karen, dad, Dana, and brother, Clint. She's got a nice boyfriend. She's friendly, hardworking. Everything in Holly Bobo's life seems to be headed in the right direction, until it wasn't. One minute, she's here pursuing her dreams.
The next, she's simply gone. It started on the morning of April 13th, 2011 at Holly's parents' house.
At around 5.30, Holly's dad, Dana, left the house to head to work. That's usually the time he left in the morning. Holly's mom, Karen, also left. She worked as a teacher in a neighboring county, so she usually headed out around 7. But by the time both of her parents left for work, Holly was already up and going for the day. She had gotten up really early that morning, around 4.30, so she could get some last-minute studying in for her upcoming nursing exam.
So she wanted to get up early, study, and just make sure she had everything she needed for the day. That's just the kind of student that she was. Sometime after Holly's mom Karen left for work, Holly talked on the phone with her friend Hannah. She was in the same nursing program and also had that same exam.
So the two talked for a few minutes, then Holly went back to studying at her kitchen table and got everything ready for the day. Hannah and Holly knew each other from before, but they became even closer friends after enrolling in the same program. So at the time, they were very, very close. This all happened sometime around 7. Holly and Hannah talked on the phone, and Holly said she was eating breakfast and getting ready to go.
She was supposed to head out the door soon to get to school on time. Around this same time, Holly got another phone call. This time, it was from her boyfriend, a guy named Drew Scott.
He called Holly while out turkey hunting on her grandmother's property. She apparently had a large property that was good for this sort of thing. So Drew had gotten her permission and was out there hunting with his dad before he had to go to work later that morning. But on this phone call, he said this. He supposedly told Holly that someone had come up to him while on her grandmother's property, sort of questioning what he was doing out there.
He said he told the guy he had permission to be there and he was just turkey hunting. But something about the interaction didn't sit well with him. So he called Holly to tell her about it because he was on her grandmother's land and didn't want any type of trouble. The whole thing made him feel like this person didn't trust him or thought he was doing something that he wasn't supposed to, like maybe trespassing. So he wanted to call Holly and tell her about it.
After that, the two hung up the phone. By 7.30, Holly needed to finish up studying and get ready to head to school by 8. But now, this is where things go wrong. Sometime between 7.30 and 8 o'clock, one of the neighbors called Holly's mom, Karen, while she was at work.
But since Karen didn't have her cell phone on her, the neighbor didn't get in touch with her on her cell phone. So the neighbor called the school where Karen worked and got the message to her that way. She said her son had heard a scream coming from the direction of the Bobo property.
It sounded like a girl's scream, so we thought it might be Holly. Now, at pretty much the same exact moment, Holly's brother Clint woke up because Holly's dog Champ was barking uncontrollably.
Clint didn't have to be up early, so he was the only one still asleep in the house. His mom and dad were both at work, and Holly had gotten up early to study. But as soon as he hears Champ the dog barking, he wakes up. He also got a call from his mom saying what the neighbor had told her about the screaming. So she wanted him to get up and go check on his sister Holly just to make sure that everything was okay.
So Clint rolled out of bed and headed toward his bedroom window. And that's when he saw Holly's car still parked where it usually was in the carport.
But right there next to it, he saw his sister and a strange guy kneeling down next to the car. He recognized that it was his sister Holly, but he didn't recognize the guy. He was someone with long, dark hair wearing a hat and camouflage pants. Now, Clint couldn't exactly hear everything this guy and Holly were saying because they were out in front of the house and he was simply watching them from his bedroom window.
But later on, he said it sounded like the two of them were arguing about something. He just had no idea what. Clint would also say later that the guy was doing most of the talking and Holly seemed very upset and was crying. The only words he could make out from this heated conversation were at some point he thought he heard his sister say, "'No, why?'
But beyond that, he didn't hear a word. Now, as far as who Holly was talking to out in front of her parents' house, that's going to be the most important question at the center of this story. There's going to be at least six possible people that it could be. At the end of the episode, you can be the judge about who you think it was. Initially, Clint thought the guy was Holly's boyfriend, Drew Scott.
He thought maybe they were breaking up and that's why they were arguing. Clint knew that Holly had gotten up really early that morning, sometime around 4.30 to study for that exam. And he also knew that Drew was out hunting turkey early that morning on their grandmother's property. So it would make sense if he stopped by the house afterward to come visit her.
However, at this particular moment, Clint didn't realize that just a few minutes before he woke up to the sound of the dog barking, one of his neighbors had heard screaming and called Karen Bobo while she was at work. So as Clint stood at his window watching Holly and this guy arguing, he got a frantic call from his mom. But Clint told her to relax. It was probably just Drew.
But Karen said no, it wasn't him and he needed to quote, go get a gun and shoot this guy. It's definitely not the boyfriend. But Clint was like, no, mom, why would I go get a gun and shoot Drew? Why would I shoot my sister's boyfriend just because they're standing in front of the house having an argument or maybe breaking up?
So he wasn't convinced at first that this person that Holly was arguing with wasn't Drew Scott. Now, maybe it's because he was tired and he just woke up, or maybe it just took him a while. But eventually, Clint realized this person wasn't Holly's boyfriend.
He doesn't look like him, and from the little bit of the conversation he can hear, it didn't sound like him either. So this sent him in a panic, just like his mom. He jumped out of bed, grabbed his loaded gun, and took off out of the house after his sister and this mystery camouflage-wearing person. But when he got outside, he couldn't see them anymore.
The two had already walked away toward the tree line on the property, toward the wooded area behind the house. There was also blood on the pavement right next to her car, suggesting that this heated argument had turned violent. This episode is brought to you by Companion. Iris and Josh seem like the perfect match, but when a weekend getaway turns into a nightmare...
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At the very sight of blood, Clint knew something was really, really wrong. So he ran back into the house and called 911. He saw his sister arguing with someone he said he didn't recognize. He went outside to go look for her. They're both gone, and now there's blood on the ground near her car. Something has to be wrong with this picture.
Karen Bobo, Clint and Holly's mom, also called the police. But because she was at work, the call was routed to the wrong county. So the call took some time to get to the right people. Back at the house, Clint tried calling his sister's cell phone, but she didn't pick up. Then about 10 minutes later, the police finally showed up at the house at around 8.10. They started by talking to Clint.
He was the only person who saw this guy talking to Holly. So essentially, he was the only witness. But he's not able to give a very good suspect description. He said the guy was anywhere from 5'8 to 6 feet tall and weighed about 180 to 200 pounds. He was wearing a camouflage pair of pants and a hat and said the guy's voice was very deep and low. But that was pretty much it.
One of the things the police failed to do in the beginning was secure the scene. They didn't set up any roadblocks to stop cars going in and out of the neighborhood. In fact, they didn't really consider this a crime until about two hours later. So during the first two hours after Holly Bobo disappeared, there might have been a lot of missed opportunities from a criminal investigation standpoint.
The police didn't block off the roads. They didn't secure the crime scene. Anyone was allowed in or out. They even walked all around the Bobo property, possibly destroying evidence like tire or foot tracks. So a lot of people who know about this case have really criticized how law enforcement handled the investigation right from the beginning.
Could valuable forensic evidence have already been destroyed? One can only wonder. But regardless, about two hours in, Holly Bobo was officially considered missing and most likely in danger.
When Karen and Dana Bobo returned home from work, they were both devastated. So was the entire community. And everyone knew that time wasn't on their side. The longer Holly was gone, the higher the chances were that something bad was going to happen to her. So pretty early on, Karen got a hold of Holly's cell phone records, the records that showed where her cell phone traveled.
And through these cell phone records, the police were able to track her movements after her disappearance. They showed that she stayed in the area around her house for close to two hours before eventually heading north toward the interstate. But after that, the cell phone went cold. There was no other movements. So again, this might be another missed opportunity for law enforcement.
They didn't get their hands on Holly's cell phone records until hours after she went missing. If they had gotten them sooner, they would have known that she was still in the area, and maybe they could have found her, but they didn't.
The first person the police considered as a possible suspect was the boyfriend, Drew Scott. He had to be suspect number one. He's the boyfriend. But he was pretty quickly ruled out. He was all the way across the county turkey hunting with his dad when Holly disappeared.
and he had a good relationship with her, so he really didn't have any motive to want to do something bad to her. Even Drew's grandmother told the police that they talked about getting married someday. Even though she was 20 and he was 19, they were really close and had a great relationship. So as far as suspects go, Drew didn't make much sense. He had an alibi, he was nowhere near the Bobo property, and he lacked a convincing motive.
I guess it's not always the boyfriend. Over the first 48 hours, the police conducted extensive searches of the area surrounding the family house. Reward money was offered up. They even brought in scent dogs, but that didn't have any luck either. The only pieces of forensic evidence they had early on were number one, a pool of blood on the ground near Holly's car, a 2006 black Ford Mustang.
And when the blood was tested, it came back as a positive match to Holly. It was definitely her blood. Number two, a footprint. A croc shoe print was found near the house. Now, a croc print is interesting for a couple of reasons. If Holly's abductor was wearing all camouflage like Clint had said, why was he also wearing a pair of croc shoes? That seems a little strange to me.
So no one knew at this point whether the Croc shoe print had anything to do with the case or not. The shoe print was just photographed and everyone moved on.
Two days after Holly disappeared, the police found her lunchbox on Bible Hill Road on April 15th. This is a spot not far from the family's home. Then after that, more items of hers turned up. A receipt, a notebook, then a few days after that, they found her cell phone. The actual phone was found on one side of the highway, and the SIM card was found on the other side. So whoever took Holly probably took her cell phone, removed the SIM card, and then took her cell phone.
and put her phone on one side of the highway and the SIM card on the other. It was all very deliberate. But before he did that, he made some pretty big mistakes. Like, why didn't he get rid of her cell phone sooner? He must have known the cell phone would be able to tell the police exactly where she was, or at least tell them the direction that the cell phone traveled in.
So if she has her phone, that's basically like leaving the police little breadcrumbs for them to come find him. He should have gotten rid of it from the moment that he kidnapped her. Do something that's going to throw the police off his scent.
He also made mistakes about not getting rid of her other stuff, like the purse and the notebook. It's like he kidnapped her, but let her take everything with her. Now, there's something else interesting about the cell phone that I think you should know about. One, it looked like the phone was just gently placed on the ground where it was found. It didn't look like anyone had through it, so that's a little odd.
Number two, all of Holly's contacts were still in the phone, but the phone numbers were all deleted. Weird. Why would someone take the time to do that? Pretty early into the investigation, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, or TBI, got involved.
And from the jump, the TBI focused almost all of its attention on a registered sex offender named Terry Britt. Here's why. Terry Britt lived nearby. He was known to have a preference for young, blonde women. Holly was blonde, 5'3", 110 pounds. And Terry Britt matched Clint's description of the kidnapper.
So right away, that's four boxes checked. He lived in the area. He's a registered sex offender. He prefers girls who look like Holly. And he matches the description her brother provided.
He's got long, dark hair. So that all looked pretty good to the TBI. It was also discovered that not long after Holly disappeared, Britt tried to alter his appearance by cutting his long hair. Suspicious, right?
So for several weeks, the TBI put a lot of effort into trying to prove his involvement in the case. At one point, they even wiretaped his house to record all of his conversations. But when they sat down and questioned him, Terry Britt and his wife had an alibi. They both claimed that they were at home installing a bathtub at the time of the kidnapping.
So there was no way that he could have been involved, at least according to them. But the TBI was very suspicious about his alibi. For starters, Britt's wife was known to have gone with him when he stalked his previous victims. So they knew or they had a feeling she would cover for him if she had to.
And second, when the police asked them for proof regarding this so-called bathtub installation, they were cooperative and turned over a receipt, but when the cops spoke to the shop, they said they had no record of the sale. So was this some type of forged receipt to try and establish an alibi? We don't know.
Now, if all of that doesn't sound bad, this next one probably will. A handprint was found on top of Holly's car, a handprint that probably belongs to her kidnapper. Well, forensic experts studied the handprint, and while it wasn't a perfect match to Britt's handprints, they also couldn't rule him out either. So now it seems like even the forensic evidence might point toward this Terry Britt creep.
Well, not so fast. The TBI searched his home but found no evidence directly connecting him to the crime. So beyond the weird alibi, the criminal history, the alleged forged receipt, the possible handprint on Holly's car, Terry Britt was never arrested. Yes, he was a creepy sex offender, but that's all the police had.
The search for Holly continued over the next three years, and as each year passed, I think the family's hopes of finding her safe and alive started to fade. But during this time, the police and TBI had several possible suspects, two of them being brothers, Dylan and Zach Adams. Let's talk about them.
By 2014, the Adams brothers were no strangers to law enforcement. They both did drugs. They both had criminal records for various charges. They're just not great people. But sometime after Holly's disappearance in early 2014, the police received a tip that Dylan Adams might have been involved. He had been arrested for unrelated weapons charges and
and while he was in custody, the police became suspicious of him. His brother, Zach, had apparently tried to slip him a note saying something along the lines of, tell my brother he's the one that started this shit, and if he don't shut his mouth, he'll be in the hole beside her. So when the TBI found out about this, they thought her might refer to Holly Bobo.
Zach Adams was also a former student of Karen Bobo back when she was an elementary school teacher. So the police knew that these two families, the Adams family and the Bobo family, at least they knew each other. So the police brought Dylan Adams in for questioning. They apparently put a lot of pressure on him to tell them anything he knew about Holly Bobo or what happened to her.
Now, Dylan supposedly seemed confused at first and said that he knew nothing about it. But eventually, he changed his story and essentially confessed. He said that on April 13th, the day of Holly's disappearance, he had gone to his brother's Zach's house to go get his truck. And when he got inside of his brother's living room, that's when he said he saw Holly sitting in a green chair.
his brother, and another man named Jason Autry.
He said Holly was wearing a pink t-shirt and his brother Zach was wearing camouflage pants, a black t-shirt, and a pair of green Crocs. The same thing Clint said that her kidnapper was wearing. And let's not forget the Croc print that was found back at the crime scene. His description also matched what Holly was last seen wearing, a pink t-shirt and a pair of light blue jeans.
On top of that, Dylan also told the police that while he was there, Zach told him about a video he had filmed of himself sexually assaulting Holly, although that video would never be found. Now, after this confession, the police went out and arrested the brother, Zach Adams.
They also executed a search warrant for his entire house, looking for any evidence connecting either him or his brother to Holly's disappearance. But they didn't seem to find anything. They also had other problems to deal with.
First, Dylan told a lot of different stories about what supposedly happened. At first, he said that he and his brother meant to rob her, just take her money, but they ended up raping and murdering her. He also said they got rid of her body somewhere out there in the woods.
But then he seemed to tell other people a different story. He told other family members and friends that he saw a girl with blonde hair at his brother Zach's house the morning that Holly disappeared. So which story is it? Dylan seemed to have a lot of inconsistencies in his story, and none of it really matched or added up with what Clint had said or what the actual evidence looked like.
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The mention of the rape video prompted the police to go out and arrest four additional people besides the Adams brothers. So in case you've lost track, that's now a total of six people. They were Jason Autry, Jeffrey and Mark Percy, and Shane Austin. Let's start with Jason Autry. Jason was a friend of both Zach and Dylan Adams.
He was arrested for aggravated kidnapping, first-degree murder, and rape. He was the guy who Dylan said was at his brother's house when he saw Holly there, so that should explain why he was arrested. Next, Jeffrey and Mark Percy were arrested on charges of accessory after the fact and tampering with evidence.
Like Zach and Dylan, they're also brothers. So this story has two sets of brothers, and all four of them eventually found themselves arrested here. They were implicated in this after a woman named Sandra King, who used to be Jeffrey's roommate, said that he had shown her a video of Holly being assaulted and that Mark was the one who filmed it.
She said Holly was being raped. She was tied up and crying in the video. So after finding out about this, the police arranged a phone call between Sandra King and Jeffrey where she said something like, that video of Holly, if it had been you, I would have watched it. Then Jeff supposedly replied with, I know. So from the police's perspective, that was an admission of guilt.
So that's why these two brothers were arrested. Now later on, Jeffrey claimed that he couldn't hear what Sandra had said during this phone call. And when the police searched over 20 cell phones for this alleged rape video, they never found it. So without their proof, without the video, the charges against the Percy brothers were eventually dropped.
That brings us to Shane Kyle Austin. He was arrested after the police found out that he was in contact with the Adams brothers on the day of Holly's disappearance. So the theory became maybe Shane had helped the brothers get rid of the body. So the police approached him and offered him a deal. Tell us where Holly's body is and we'll go easy on you. We'll give you full immunity.
But Shane wasn't cooperative. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. Instead, he went down to the police station, took a polygraph test, which he supposedly passed, and then April 2014, Shane's attorney filed a complaint against the state asking for an immediate order preventing them from being able to charge him with anything.
But before Shane had a chance at potentially being fully exonerated, he committed suicide. In February 2015, Shane Austin was found dead inside a Florida hotel room. Later on, his attorney blamed the suicide on continual threats by the police and prosecutors about Holly's case, and the entire thing had become a witch hunt, so Shane felt like there was no way out but to kill himself.
Even those close to him said that he was very stressed about possibly going to jail for a crime he says he didn't commit. So was he involved in Holly's disappearance? We don't know.
At virtually the same time all of these men were being arrested, Holly's family got the news they were hoping never to receive. Her remains had finally been found. In September 2014, three years after her disappearance, a few people were out searching for illegal plants on private property in northern Tennessee. And while they were searching, one of them stumbled upon an old bucket.
And when he turned the bucket over, a skull, some rib bones, and a shoulder blade popped out.
This all happened just off Interstate 40, about 20 miles from Darden. When the police showed up, they immediately went to question the property's owner, a man by the name of Gary Tubbs. But he told the authorities that he had no idea why these people were out there and they didn't have permission to be on his property. Although he did admit that it wasn't uncommon for people to be out there looking for these illegal plants.
He also said that he knew nothing about the human remains. Now, through a forensic examination, the bones were eventually identified as missing 20-year-old Holly Bobo. After three long years of searching for her, it was confirmed that she'd been murdered.
The police eventually recovered her skull, teeth, several rib bones, and a shoulder blade. And after an autopsy was performed, it was discovered that Holly's skull had a bullet hole in the back of it. The bullet had entered the right side of her head, traveled to the front left side, then fractured her left cheekbone when it exited. So after she was kidnapped from her own front yard, she was raped and then shot in the head.
As soon as Holly's remains were found, the police went back to the Adams brothers and their friend Jason Autry to apply even more pressure. And that's when Jason Autry flipped the script. He decided to confess to everything.
He admitted that yes, he had been an accessory to the murder, but he says he didn't do anything to hurt her directly. According to Jason Autry, he had gone to his friend Shane Austin's house to buy drugs. Shane Austin was the one who committed suicide.
Once he got there, he said he saw Shane Austin and both Dylan and Zach Adams there destroying evidence. So he wasn't at Zach Adams' house like Dylan had already told the police. We'll talk more about that in just a second. So Jason Autry said he saw Holly lying underneath a multicolored blanket in the back of Zach's truck.
and Austin was burning evidence in a burn barrel. The three men had supposedly said they drugged and raped Hawley, and now they needed his help to get rid of the body, to which he agreed.
This is why he says he was an accessory but didn't do anything to actually harm her. He said they all drove Zach's truck near a bridge over the Tennessee River. The initial plan was to gut Holly's body so it wouldn't rise to the top of the water after they dumped it in the river. But he said before they could do that, they heard Holly moan and move her foot. She was still alive.
So that's when Jason said he looked around for any potential witnesses while Zach got out his gun and shot her in the head. After that, Jason said all four men heard a boat coming, so they started to panic and put the body back into the back of the truck and decided to dump it somewhere else. Then once all was said and done, Jason went back home.
As to how this all started, why Zach Adams allegedly showed up at Holly Bobo's house wearing camouflage pants and green Crocs, Jason said it was because Zach Adams was there to show Holly's brother Clint how to cook his own meth. But when he got there, Holly got pissed and wouldn't let him inside.
They got into an argument. The argument turned violent. Zach kidnapped her, raped her, and all four of these men played a part in dumping her body. Now, Clint Bobo has adamantly denied this. He has said that Zach Adams was never supposed to be there to show him how to cook meth and
and that all of that was a total and complete lie. So we don't know exactly where the truth lies here. That's just what Jason Autry said happened, and why Zach Adams was at the Bobo house in the first place.
But again, Clint Bobo completely denies this. But just like with Dylan Adams' story, there's a lot of issues with his confession as well. Like, why would he help them cover up a crime that he says he didn't commit?
He says he went there to buy drugs, but somehow ends up getting rid of a body and witnessing a murder. And how it was eventually discovered that Jason Autry was also at Holly Bobo's house that morning with Dylan and Zach Adams. He didn't just show up at Shane Austin's house and see Holly's body there. It's now believed that he might have been the one that Holly walked into the woods with that morning.
There were also a lot of inconsistencies with Dylan Adams' confession. He said Holly was at his brother's house, but now Jason Autry says it was at Shane's house. So which one is it? That's a lot of different stories from a lot of different people. I think that's the part of reason or part of the reason why people are so critical of this case.
There are six possible suspects. All of them have very different stories. A lot of them confess, but they confess to entirely different things. And that's all very, very confusing. And it's hard to know what the truth actually is and who's guilty of what.
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Jason Autry eventually agreed to take a plea deal from prosecutors in exchange for his confession and his agreement to testify against the Adams brothers. So for his cooperation, he was sentenced to only eight years in prison, a significantly reduced sentence. Had he not agreed to testify against the brothers, he would have probably gotten decades in prison. It's September 2017, and Zach's trial is up first.
Almost the prosecution's entire case is circumstantial. There is no DNA evidence linking Zach to the crime. There's zero forensic evidence here. The handprint on Holly's car doesn't match. The blood found at the scene belonged to Holly. And since they only found remains, there's no forensic evidence of the alleged rape.
It was pretty much all Jason Autry, the state's key witness, saying Zach was guilty, even though, like we've already talked about, Jason Autry's confession was much different than his brother Dylan's. The other big piece of evidence for the prosecution was that Zach Adams drove a white truck at the time of Holly's abduction.
And according to one of the family's neighbors, they saw a white truck driving what they described as very fast on the morning of the kidnapping. Several witnesses also testified, saying that Zach made statements to them implicating himself in the crime, his then-girlfriend Rebecca being one of them.
She testified, quote, Then, of course, prosecutors mentioned the letter that he apparently sent his brother while in jail, saying that he would put him in the hole next to her if he didn't shut his mouth.
As far as physical or forensic evidence, this is what the state had. A gun, specifically a Smith & Wesson long revolver, had been sold to a man named Victor Dinsmore. And according to him, Austin and Zach were the ones who sold it to him in exchange for drug money. The gun was reportedly found in a lake, but forensic tests weren't able to find any DNA or fingerprints on it. So
So prosecutors couldn't link that particular gun to Holly's murder or any other gun for that matter.
If you remember from earlier, Holly's brother Clint described the guy seen talking to his sister as being between 5'10 and 6' tall, 180 to 200 pounds. Having dark hair sticking out from under his hat, it was even long enough to cover his neck and touch his collar. Well, of the six people we've talked about, only Zach Adams comes close to matching that description.
So for the prosecution, this was their way of saying, hey, this guy could be the person that Clint described who was talking to his sister that morning. So he has to be the primary suspect here. But when considering the physical and forensic evidence as a whole, the state came up short. There
There was no smoking gun. There was no DNA, fingerprints. Nothing here for the state to rely on. But that didn't seem to bother the jury. Forensic evidence isn't always needed to secure a conviction. On September 22, 2017, a jury found Zach Adams guilty of everything.
first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated rape. Then the following day, September 23rd, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole and two consecutive terms of 25 years for both the kidnapping and rape charges. But even to this day, Zach Adams maintains his innocence and says that he had nothing to do with what happened to Holly. And like we've talked about so much already, he
He says there is absolutely no forensic evidence proving that he's a murderer. Now, it's his brother, John Dylan Adams' turn. Before anything happened in his case, Dylan allegedly recanted his entire confession. He said he only implicated himself and his brother in Holly's murder because that's what the police wanted to hear.
He now said he was completely innocent. Either way, January 18th, 2018, Dylan pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping. And in return for his plea, he was sentenced to 15 years on the murder charge and 35 years for the aggravated kidnapping charge. These sentences would be served concurrently, meaning he would serve 35 years without parole.
When it came to his plea, Dylan agreed to an Alford plea, which is essentially a guilty plea without admitting criminal liability. He got to plead guilty while still maintaining his innocence. So I'll let you be the judge on that one. But just like with his brother, there is zero forensic evidence linking him to Holly's murder. There's also something else about Dylan Adams.
According to his family, he suffers from a mental disability, and when he confessed to law enforcement, he was kept awake all night long and not allowed anything to drink or eat until he confessed or told the police what they wanted to hear. He would say something like, what do you want me to say? And his family says that's when the police would tell him certain details about the crime.
and Dylan would just repeat it back to them. His family says that he can read, but he can't perform simple tasks like being able to tell the time. So they believe, this is his family, that he was manipulated by the police into confessing. There was also a lot of public criticism about what prosecutors claimed they had as far as forensic evidence was concerned.
For instance, in 2014, District Attorney Matt Stowe made a statement that because Holly was on her period at the time of her murder, there was a lot of DNA evidence found inside of Zach Adams' house. But none of that DNA evidence was ever turned over to the defense or produced at Zach's trial. So did the DNA evidence ever exist?
Or was this just something made up by the prosecution? Zach's lawyers would also say that the medical examiner never gave them her autopsy reports. Let's go back to Terry Britt, the registered sex offender once considered a credible suspect by the TBI. Well, some people think he might actually be the guy.
and the primary reason they think that is because of the handprint that was found on Holly's car. Although he couldn't be included as the contributor of the print, he also couldn't be excluded. His print shared a lot of similarities, enough similarities for forensic experts to question whether he could have actually left it on her car. So talking about the forensic evidence,
Terry Britt seems to be the only person who might have left something behind. Nothing. No other forensic evidence was discovered that definitively links the other six men. It's just Terry Britt leaving some people to wonder if the right people are in prison. So again, you can be the judge of that as well.
On the morning of April 13, 2011, Holly Bobo's entire life was taken away from her. She was only 20 years old. And although six people would eventually be arrested, only three of them have been prosecuted. Throughout the years, the case confronted several setbacks, from the deaths of suspects to the
changes in the prosecutor team to issues involving the TBI. There were even motions made behalf on the defense to demand that prosecutors release whatever forensic testing was ever done on the case. But none of that will ever bring Holly back.
No one knows the motive or exactly why this happened. If you believe Jason Autry's story, then all of this happened because Zach Adams showed up at the Bobo's house to show her brother Clint how to cook up his own meth. But when he got there, Holly came out of the house and started shouting at him. So they took her, raped her, then shot and killed her. But if you have doubts about Jason Autry's story, then we might never know the motive.
In the summer of 2024, Zach Adams appealed his conviction after Jason Autry came forward saying that he was recanting his confession and said that he made everything up.
The appeal said Autry met with a forensic neuropsychologist in December of 2023, and during that meeting, he admitted that he made the story up after his lawyer told him before the 2017 trial that he was, quote, 95% certain of a conviction.
So in other words, he said he made up the lie. He made everything up to try to protect himself because he was probably going to be found guilty. But in September, a judge rejected Zach Adams' appeal and upheld his conviction. With so many lies, so many confessions, recanting of confessions, it's hard to know exactly where the truth lies. Those who knew her said she was shy and sweet.
Her cousin is a country singer, Whitney Duncan, and in 2007, she released a song called Better Place in memory of Holly Bobo.
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