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Hi, I'm Debra Roberts, here with another weekly episode of What Happened to Holly Bobo? Remember, you can get new episodes early if you follow What Happened to Holly Bobo on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Now, here's the episode.
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Early on, just days into the search for Holly, police had looked into four men with a history of drug use who were all friends. Zach Adams, his brother Dylan Adams, Shane Austin, and Jason Autry. Karen Bobo had heard about those men too and ended up talking to all four of them. In 2017, she told ABC News why she did her own interviews as the search for Holly continued.
Until your child is found or you know what happened to them, I don't think anyone could ever do enough in a parent's eyes. I often said, I guess I would have fought Goliath. You know, I just had no fear. I was trying to find my daughter. All that fear leaves you when you're looking for your child. Karen Bobo had actually been Zach Adams' fourth grade teacher, and she told ABC News that her visit to him stood out to her.
I mean, he was just rambling on different things. He was, I don't know, I kind of describe it as a lion in a cage. But the other thing he said was he could call someone and make it look like it was coming from my number. To her, that was a bizarre thing to say. So Zach Adams and those three other men would stay on her mind.
At that point in time, everybody was still a suspect, but their names just kept on coming up over and over. As police searches and interviews continued for years, the public's attention on the case did not fade.
Decatur County kept holding vigils and events for Holly. Developments in the case were covered by news outlets across Tennessee. People even posted comments in response to articles like, "This has all dragged out too long." The case would even become a major campaign issue in the local sheriff and district attorney races.
Amidst all that attention, law enforcement began to put those four men they had looked into early on at the center of their investigation. So the full power of a multi-agency investigation, an investigation watched closely by a grieving family and a community starving for answers, started to focus intensely on those four men and one of them in particular.
I'm ABC News Senior National Correspondent Eva Pilgrim. From ABC Audio in 2020, this is What Happened to Holly Bobo? Episode 3, Lion in a Cage. Since April 2011, Terry Dykus had been the lead TBI agent working on Holly's case. He spoke with ABC News in 2017. It was a case where you have a nightmare every single night.
And every day when you get up, you run as fast as you can and run into a brick wall. For the first couple of years of the investigation, Dykus continued to believe the strongest lead in Holly's disappearance was Terry Britt. Retired FBI agent Art Viveros worked on the case as well. In 2024, he told ABC News that the FBI created a profile of Holly's kidnapper. A white male.
anywhere from early teens up to about mid-50s. A loner, somebody had been involved with sex crimes before, knew the area well because they traveled out here themselves and they saw everything and they knew they could see how it was. And of course they listened to us, how we described things, and said, yes, you can get lost very easily. Had to be somebody who's local and knew all the back roads. That pretty much generally described Terry Britt.
Dykus interviewed Britt a few times. Britt continued to deny any involvement in Holly's disappearance and had an alibi. But some of the things Britt said concerned Dykus. During an interview with Dykus while in jail for an unrelated charge, Britt seemed to speculate about how someone might have committed this crime. Okay. He's got her. What do you want to do with her?
to her, with her, whatever. But when he gets done, that's when reality sets in. See, right now it's just fantasy world. Right. But here comes reality. Now I've got a body. What am I going to do with it? But searching Terry Britt's home and car and even bugging his home hadn't led to any evidence connecting him to Holly's kidnapping. And I think a lot of people looked at that as exoneration.
But Terry Dykus, who was still the lead agent on the case at the time, insisted on looking further into Britt. He says other TBI agents told him he didn't have evidence against Britt and shouldn't keep pursuing him. You don't have enough proof for it. You can't prove that he did it.
Terry Dykus' supervisor said Agent Dykus had tunnel vision and was not objective about all of the facts coming into the case. In June 2013, Dykus was removed from the Holly Bobo case. Soon after, he left TBI entirely. Terry Britt was eventually cleared by investigators in the Holly Bobo case.
At the time Dykus was taken off the case, there were no named suspects and everything about the case, where Holly was taken, who kidnapped her, how and why, remained unanswered.
Investigators had determined that the blood in the carport found on the day of her disappearance was Holly's, but they were never able to find a match for the handprint or shoe print they found. They didn't have any other physical evidence from the scene to analyze for clues.
But investigators kept hearing from Decatur County residents about those same four young men from the area. The two brothers, Zach and Dylan Adams, and their redheaded friend, Shane Austin, were all in their 20s when Holly was kidnapped. Their older friend, Jason Autry, was in his mid-30s.
During the investigation into Holly's kidnapping, they came to be known as the A-Train because they all had last names starting with A. All four of them struggled with substance use and had criminal records, and they had been viewed with suspicion by authorities since the very beginning of the investigation.
Just weeks into the investigation, Agent Dykus and other investigators had looked into them. Dykus says they were seen in the community, basically, as bad guys. They were always into trouble, always getting arrested for, I believe, Zach stole a deer stand or
always into meth. They were brought up by people that know that they're into drugs. Dykus says he interviewed all of them. They appeared believable to me with the information they gave. They were always freely, you know, willing to talk anytime I wanted to talk to them. Dykus says he ruled them out as leads for two reasons. First, he believed their alibis. They were supposedly friends.
At the time, Dykus says this was corroborated by Zach Adams, then girlfriend. And second, Dykus says none of them fit the description Clint had given of Holly's kidnapper.
Clint said he was a man around 5'11", 200 pounds, long dark hair, gravelly voice. Jason Autry is 6'5", 220 pounds. Zachary Adams at the time was 6'2", 170 pounds, maybe. Shane Austin was reddish blonde hair, about 5'10", 200 pounds. Dylan Adams, 6'1", 180 pounds, 170 pounds.
Terry Dykus asked FBI agent Art Viveros to talk with Zach's brother, Dylan Adams, to see if he heard anything that raised alarm bells. Viveros says he went to Dylan Adams' home and interviewed him in the front seat of his car. I talked to him for about an hour. He seemed very forthcoming. I didn't see him get nervous. He just seemed like kind of a quiet kind of young man. He just says that, you know, they went riding around looking for drugs that morning.
And they heard that she was abducted. But he said that he was with his brother, Zach, and with Shane Austin. And they were riding around together in his vehicle. And they went to get gas in town, in Parsons. And the grocery store bought a few things, got some cash, and they're going to buy some drugs. But Dykus says Dylan's brother, Zach, kept saying things around town that made it sound like he had been involved in Holly's abduction. Zach would tell people, you're going to end up in a hole just like Holly.
Someone reported to authorities that they were in a bar with Zach, and when he got in an argument with the bartender, he said, you'll end up like Holly Bobo. Investigators followed up by interviewing those witnesses to see whether they had any information tying Zach Adams to Holly Bobo's kidnapping. They also did several additional interviews with Zach Adams himself.
Investigators also heard another story. This one about Shane Austin. He was the one with the red hair. Investigators were told that Shane had crossed paths with Holly Bobo at the raccoon hunt held days before Holly disappeared. They were told that Shane had been staring at Holly and her friend. There was also a rumor that he was trying to take a photo of them.
Agent Dykus followed up with Shane about the raccoon hunt. Shane said he was there, but did not remember seeing Holly. He said he was out of his mind on drugs at the time and that he didn't have anything to do with Holly's disappearance. Dykus also obtained a search warrant for Shane Austin's phone and investigators searched his trailer.
But despite those interviews and the searches of Shane's phone and trailer, investigators did not find any evidence linking Zach Adams or Shane Austin to Holly's kidnapping.
About two years into the case, as people were hungry for answers about what happened to Holly, a Nashville TV station aired a series of stories about a group of private investigators who were looking into Holly's kidnapping. The investigators identified someone they described as a suspect, and they alleged that the TBI had tried to stop them from pursuing the case further.
The stories created so much controversy that the TBI had to put out a statement. The statement said the private investigator's information seemed to mostly come from social media and posts on websites and alleged that many of the private investigator's claims were inaccurate and misleading.
The TBI went on to emphasize just how big of an effort the agency was making to find Holly and her abductor, and that their efforts were built on solid investigative work, not gossip and rumors. The statement said the Holly Bobo case file is currently 27 volumes and contains more than 1,500 investigative reports.
The TV station that aired the stories responded to the TBI's criticism. They said they simply reported on the findings of the private investigators and claimed that until their statement, TBI had been unwilling to comment on the record about the private investigators' findings.
Through subpoenas, TBI obtained the information collected by those investigators as well as footage from the station and claimed they didn't have any new evidence in the case. Around this time, Agent Dicus was taken off the case because of what his supervisor called his tunnel vision. Now, a new lead agent was in charge.
As the tension between TBI, the local TV station, and the private investigators looking into Holly's disappearance indicates, there was pressure for the TBI to come up with answers. And investigators were about to get another chance to see if one of the four men they dubbed the A-Train had something to do with what happened to Holly Bobo. She's made up her mind, if pretty smart.
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By February 2014, Holly had been missing for almost three years. Agent Dykus had been taken off the case. FBI agent Art Viveros had retired. And Zach Adams was on law enforcement's radar for something new. He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault for allegedly holding a gun to the head of his girlfriend's sister and threatening to kill her. TBI agents saw Zach's arrest as a chance to question him again about Holly Bobo.
While being questioned, Zach said he knew nothing about Holly and was innocent. I don't know nothing about it. I don't know nothing about nothing, Penny. If I did, hook me up to a lot of detector tests. Let's do this. What are we waiting on? Ask me these questions under a lot of detector tests. I mean, in this world right now, we've got to prove that we're innocent, not prove that you're guilty.
Zach went through what he did the day Holly was kidnapped, which matched what his brother Dylan had told the FBI agent years before. He said that when Holly was abducted, he and his brother were sleeping. Then they spent the morning trying to buy drugs with their friend Shane Austin. He said they heard about what happened to Holly when they stopped at a gas station and then spent the next few hours just driving around.
But TBI agents pushed him. They said if he was hiding anything, they would know very soon. They were going to search his home and send what they found to a crime lab. If Holly Bobo was ever within 10 feet of your house or in your house, we are going to know it.
Over the course of more than two hours, all the suspicions about Zach that had built up for years were laid out. Investigators pointed to Zach's history of drug use and suggested that maybe, while he was high, he did something he didn't mean to do. What he intended to happen one way may end up going crazy and happen another way. Just totally out of control. People that use drugs, there's a problem when you get high.
It lowers your inhibition. It does. It makes you not as in control of yourself. You can't control your actions with your own morphine. I'm in control at all times, whether I'm on a drug or not. I'm in control.
Investigators also told Zach that people were telling them about things he'd said around town about Holly's disappearance. And you have time and time and time again, you bragged about exactly what you know over and over and over. And what you have done by doing that is you have set this entire thing to where it makes perfect sense to me. But I do know from what I've been told, coincidentally,
cooperated by all kinds of people that don't even know each other. You do, too, know where she's at. And I know you know. You know right now where she's at. Yes, you do. No, I do not. The investigators also told him they were going to question people in his life again, including his brother Dylan and his friend Jason Autry. If you've done nothing wrong, you get nothing to worry about. I can tell you that right now. But listen, you've got a rare chance to change lives.
the course of your life. It's very few times any of us can tell somebody like that, but I'm telling you, buddy, you're sitting in a chair right now in this room and you have that chance to change the course of your life. Zach had a consistent response. He knew nothing about Holly's disappearance and was innocent. By the end of the interview, he asked for a lawyer. That's the person I'm talking to. That's my lawyer. I'm serious. Who is it? Who is it? I don't have one, so I'll put one on. You can f*** when you got it.
Zach was transferred to a jail in a nearby county on that pending unrelated charge of assault, which was eventually dismissed. But about a week after that long interview, the same TBI agents showed up
again to tell him that a grand jury had indicted him on aggravated kidnapping and first-degree murder in the Holly Bobo case. That second charge was significant. It meant that investigators believed Holly had been killed during the kidnapping, even though her body had not been found.
In the TBI press conference about Zach's arrest, law enforcement agents said they would not give details on what led to Zach's indictment. They added that the investigation was still active and ongoing and more suspects could be indicted.
But Zach's indictment was a breakthrough in and of itself. At last, nearly three years after Holly's disappearance, the case had momentum. Cindy Adams, Zach's mom, watched her son become the center of a national story. She spoke to Elizabeth Vargas in 2017 about what Zach was like as a kid.
Zach was a very strong-willed child. How old was Zach when he started to get into some trouble? Zach was probably around 16 years old. What happened? His father and I divorced, and I think that was just a catalyst that kind of set it off.
He was playing basketball at the time. And he just came home one day and said, "Mom, you know, I'm just not going to play anymore. I just feel like everybody's talking about me and just, you know, it's just not what I want to do." And I just found that to be quite odd because he just loved basketball and baseball. And then, you know, I just started noticing erratic behavior and him hanging with a different group of kids.
And from there, it just escalated to something that was just beyond me. He was very deeply into drugs.
She says Zach ended up dropping out of high school just a few months before his graduation. We did the senior picture thing. We did, you know, the class ring, had already ordered his tux. Cindy says he went through drug treatment programs several times, but kept using. Each time he'd get out, he'd promise, you know, he was going to do better, whatever.
And it just didn't happen that way. It just, it was just the drug that just had him just wrapped. His drug use seemed to lead him to erratic and even criminal behavior. Cindy says one time he demanded money from her, and when she refused, he pulled a gun on her. The next thing I see is just fire coming out of the gun.
The minute it fired, you know, he obviously dropped the gun and ran to me and was like, "Oh, my God, you know, I've just shot you. I've just shot you. Mom, I don't know what have I done." He was charged, but I didn't press charges against him. You did, though, later take out a protection, an order of protection against him. I did. I did.
Cindy points out that most of the crimes Zach committed were related to his drug use, like drug possession and theft, so that he could have money to buy drugs. Everything he's ever done, he's been caught. And he's never once stood up in court and said not guilty. He's always told me, Mom, I'll take my punishment and then, you know, I'll be free.
This time, with the kidnapping and murder charges Zach faced, it looked like he might never be free again. Prosecutors were talking about pursuing the death penalty against him if he was found guilty. When his mom visited him in jail, she says Zach insisted he was innocent. Mom, I'm going to tell you right up front, if you think that I did this, you need to get up and turn around and walk out because I didn't do this.
I can sit here and tell you that Zach is a drug addict, a thief, but I can also say he's not a murderer. That would take too much thought and too much time. He was worried about where he's going to get his next high.
But the case against Zach was about to get stronger. TBI agents had been talking with his younger brother, Dylan. And this time, the story Dylan shared was very different from what he told an FBI agent years earlier. It was a shocking shift in his account of the day Holly was kidnapped. And it marked another major moment in this investigation.
I'm not mad at you. I'm not going to raise my voice or anything like that. I'm not mad at you. I'm very glad that you're doing the right thing and coming forward. That's next time on What Happened to Holly Bobo. What Happened to Holly Bobo is a production of ABC Audio and 2020. Hosted by me, Eva Pilgrim, the series was produced by Camille Peterson, Julia Nutter, Kiara Powell, Nora Hanna, and Meg Fierro, with help from Audrey Mostek and Amira Williams.
Our supervising producer is Susie Liu. Music and mixing by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Liz Alessi, Janice Johnston, Michelle Margulies, Sean Dooley, Christina Corbin, Kieran McGurl, Andrew Paparella, and Emma Pescia. Josh Cohan is our director of podcast programming. Laura Mayer is our executive producer.
Hi, I'm Brad Milkey. I'm the host of the Crime Scene Weekly, a new show from ABC Audio about the latest headlines in true crime. This week, I'm talking about a major development in the Murdoch murder trial, the allegations that a court clerk lied on the stand. Could this mean a retrial for Alec Murdoch? Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪
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