Art Viveros (FBI Agent)
Appearances
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Lion in a Cage
A white male. anywhere from early teens up to about mid-50s. A loner, somebody who 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.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Lion in a Cage
It had to be somebody who was local and knew all the back roads. That pretty much generally described Terry Britt.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Lion in a Cage
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.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Lion in a Cage
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.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
Terry Britt, right away, He fit the description that Clint gave.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
It was about 5, 10, 11. He had the gravelly voice. And he looked like to be in his early 50s. It looked like he had had a build at one time. He had a little belly there.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
He had a long, long history of sexual crimes. In fact, he spent most of his life in prison. And I think he had gotten out maybe just a couple years before the event.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
Britt's house was a single wide trailer, old, kind of run down, and it looked like he had done a lot of work himself. He'd made a carport, and he had maybe four vehicles out there, two Dodge Caravans, a pickup truck, a white panel van, you know. So we knocked on the door, identified ourselves. and inside the single white was Terry Britt.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
And I remember he was wearing white, they call them white beaters, I think shorts and tennis shoes.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
We started talking and we identified ourselves and why we were there to talk about the disappearance of Holly Bubble, where he was that morning. He said, Janet would explain everything. What happened that morning? Let me call Janet.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
You've got a receipt? Yes, let's look at it if you don't mind. He said, well, that's in the safe. She had kept that receipt in the safe.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
And they said that the hairs were microscopically similar to Holly's.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
The FBI is well known for doing wiretaps, and TBI had never done that before. So this is going to be the first wiretap case
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
I overheard Terry Britt receive a call from his sister, but he gets off the phone.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
And he says, those whores... meaning law enforcement. Those horrors are going to try to pin this case on me, the Holly Grobel case on me. He says, I didn't even know the, you know, and he used profanity to describe Holly. And he says, you know, I wouldn't do something like that. I didn't know exactly who he was talking to, but I assumed it was Janet.
20/20
What Happened to Holly Bobo?: Under the Microscope
He said, you know, I wouldn't do something like that.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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 Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
Investigators also told Zach that people were telling them about things he'd said around town about Holly's disappearance.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
The investigators also told him they were going to question people in his life again, including his brother Dylan and his friend Jason Autry.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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. Zach was transferred to a jail in a nearby county on that pending unrelated charge of assault, which was eventually dismissed.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
She says Zach ended up dropping out of high school just a few months before his graduation.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
Cindy says he went through drug treatment programs several times, but kept using.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
A white male. anywhere from early teens up to about mid-50s. A loner, somebody who 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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
It had to be somebody who was local and knew all the back roads. That pretty much generally described Terry Britt.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
Dykus says he ruled them out as leads for two reasons. First, he believed their alibis.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
Karen Bobo had actually been Zach Adams' fourth grade teacher, and she told ABC News that her visit to him stood out to her.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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 investigator's 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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
Around this time, Agent Dykus 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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
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.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Lion in a Cage
To her, that was a bizarre thing to say. So Zach Adams and those three other men would stay on her mind.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
Terry Britt, right away, He fit the description that Clint gave.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
He was about 5, 10, 11. He had the gravelly voice. And he looked like to be in his early 50s. It looked like he had had a build at one time. He had a little belly there.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
He had a long, long history of sexual crimes. In fact, he spent most of his life in prison. And I think he had gotten out maybe just a couple years before the event.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
Britt's house was a single wide trailer. Old, kind of run down, and it looked like he had done a lot of work himself. He'd made a carport, and he had maybe four vehicles out there, two Dodge Caravans, a pickup truck, a white panel van, you know. So we knocked on the door, identified ourselves, and inside the single white was Terry Britt.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
And I remember he was wearing white, they call them white beaters, I think shorts and tennis shoes.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
We started talking and we identified ourselves and why we were there to talk about the disappearance of Holly Bubble, where he was that morning. He said, Janet would explain everything. What happened that morning? Let me call Janet.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
You've got a receipt? Yes, let's look at it if you don't mind. He said, well, that's in the safe. She had kept that receipt in the safe.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
And they said that the hairs were microscopically similar to Holly's.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
The FBI is well known for doing wiretaps, and TBI had never done that before. So this is going to be the first wiretap investigation
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
I overheard Terry Britt receive a call from his sister, but he gets off the phone.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
And he says, those whores... meaning law enforcement. Those horrors are going to try to pin this case on me, the Holly Grobel case on me. He says, I didn't even know the, you know, and he used profanity to describe Holly. And he says, you know, I wouldn't do something like that. I didn't know exactly who he was talking to, but I assumed it was Janet.
What Happened to Holly Bobo?
Under the Microscope
He said, you know, I wouldn't do something like that.