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Chapter 1: What major development occurred in the Holly Bobo case?
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.
In January 2017, defense attorney Jennifer Thompson was preparing for the trial of her client, Zach Adams. She was poring over the hundreds of pages of material in the Holly Bobo case file and grappling with the confession of Zach's brother, Dylan. Dylan's confession had been a big breakthrough for prosecutors.
Here was Zach's own brother saying that the four men who made up what law enforcement called the A-Train each played a role in Holly Bobo's kidnapping, rape, and murder. Zach and Dylan Adams and Jason Autry had been indicted in the case. Shane Austin died by suicide in 2015 and was never charged. Each of the three men who were charged would be tried separately.
Zach Adams had pleaded not guilty and was going to be the first to stand trial. If Zach was convicted, he could face the death penalty. While Jennifer Thompson was deep in her preparation for the highly publicized case, she got a call from Jason Autry's attorney. ABC News spoke to her about it in 2024.
And he informs us that Jason has been talking to prosecutors and that he is going to be testifying against Zach at trial.
After nearly six years of denying he had anything to do with Holly's kidnapping and murder, Jason Autry had completely changed his story. It was a shocking reversal. And now, Jennifer Thompson had to figure out how to handle Jason Autry's testimony.
She had about eight months to do that, to go back through those hundreds and hundreds of pages in the case file and review them again, thinking about Jason Autry's new version of events.
I needed more time to prepare in this case. I never felt that I was ready, especially after Jason Autry had changed his whole story.
On September 9th, 2017, Zach Adams' trial began. In this episode, I'm going to take you into the courtroom where almost six years after Holly's abduction, the Holly Bobo case was about to enter its next chapter. I'm ABC News Senior National Correspondent Eva Pilgrim. From ABC Audio and 2020, this is what happened to Holly Bobo. Episode 5, 14 Days.
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Chapter 2: Who were the key players in the Holly Bobo trial?
When Jason got there, there's Shane, Zach, and Dylan.
and then tried to explain why there was no physical evidence that Zach Adams had murdered Holly.
He had a year and a half, two year head start. You can understand why he was so confident that he'd never get caught. No DNA. Didn't leave fingerprints behind. Crime scenes long, long, long, long gone. The scattered evidence, the destroyed evidence, but we're here now.
After Hagerman's opening statement, he sat down. Zach's lawyer, Jennifer Thompson, got up and walked across the courtroom to the jury box. If Hagerman leaned into the dramatic, emotional details of the case, Thompson tried to give the jury more context. So members of the jury... She described how sprawling the investigation into Holly's death was and how much information there was to sort through.
It's almost just like trying to drink from a fire hydrant, all the information they got.
Thompson talked about how many people were interviewed by investigators in the case and ticked through some of the people they focused on as potential suspects. She said this was the most expensive and exhaustive investigation in the history of the state of Tennessee, but that heading into 2013, investigators didn't have anybody they could point to as the culprit.
They had nothing. They had a great big goose egg. They paid all this money and they had absolutely nothing to show for it. And the citizens of Decatur County, the family of Holly Bobo, and the public at large all wanted answers to how such a crime could happen, how the police could be involved right away.
And still, after all the resources and all the information they had, they could have absolutely nobody charged by that point.
Thompson also said prosecutors had a terrible problem. They did not have physical evidence tying Zach Adams to Holly Bobo. Investigators had searched Zach's house and the nearby house of his grandpa, Dick Adams.
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Chapter 3: What was Jason Autry's shocking testimony?
When you thought that she had heard your name, you knew Zach Adams, according to your story, was getting ready to shoot her. You never said, stop, don't do it, did you?
That's correct.
You said, wait a minute, let me make sure nobody's coming.
That's correct.
So you did something to help him kill her, according to your story, didn't you?
I did, and I have lots of remorse over that.
Jason's time on the stand went into the evening hours, and when the cross-examination was over, the judge dismissed everyone for the day. The prosecution's star witness had spoken, but there were still many days of testimony left. Key pieces of the investigation came up, and key names testified.
To try to answer a big question in the case, prosecutors showed the jury the alleged murder weapon, a .32 caliber revolver that witnesses claimed was owned by Zach Adams' friend, Shane Austin. It was recovered in a drainage ditch just months before the trial. The prosecution and defense each called a cell phone expert to explain what the troves of phone data did and did not show.
Both experts agreed that Adams and the other suspects' phones did not hit cell towers near the Bobo home at the time Holly was taken. The prosecution expert said it was possible Holly and Zach Adams' phones were in the same general locations later that morning. But the defense expert disagreed.
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