Holly Bobo disappeared into the woods behind her family's home in Tennessee on April 13, 2011, leaving investigators with few clues and leaving her family with little hope.
On the morning of April 13, 2011, a Tennessee woman named Karen Bobo received a terrifying phone call at work. Her family’s neighbors had heard someone screaming from inside the Bobo home.
Frantic, Karen immediately called the house. When she’d left about 40 minutes earlier, everything had seemed normal. But when she got in touch with her son, she realized that something terrible had happened. Clint Bobo had seen his sister, 20-year-old Holly Bobo, disappear into the woods with a strange man.
“Get your gun!” Karen told him. Clint armed himself and ran outside, spotting a small puddle of blood by his sister’s car. But it was too late — Holly Bobo had vanished. And she would never be seen alive again.
Holly’s disappearance rattled her small community of Darden, Tennessee. A group of volunteers set out the next morning to search for Holly. One of them found the young woman’s lunchbox floating in a creek. Another saw a pair of pink women’s underwear abandoned on the side of the road. But in the coming days, the trail went ice cold.
Investigators suspected that Holly had been kidnapped as she approached her car to leave for school that April morning. But despite having an eyewitness who’d actually seen her being abducted, authorities struggled to develop any leads. For years, the Bobo family was left with nothing but a handful of disturbing clues and desperate questions about the fate of their daughter.
Then, in 2014, police began investigating two brothers named Zach and Dylan Adams. When questioned by police, Dylan claimed that he’d seen Holly at his brother’s house with his friend Jason Autry the day she disappeared. He said Zach had raped Holly and filmed it.
TwitterZach Adams was sentenced to life in prison for Holly Bobo’s murder.
The alleged videotape was never found — and neither was any other hard evidence against Zach Adams, even as his trial quickly approached. However, Zach reportedly made damning statements like, “I’m not worried because they got no body and they got no gun.”
That would soon change. In September 2014, two ginseng hunters came across an alarming discovery in the woods — a skull with a bullet hole in its cheek. Nearby were a number of Holly Bobo’s possessions, including lipstick and pens, as well as other parts of her skeleton.
Ultimately, Zach Adams was sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years for murder, kidnapping, and rape. However, some believe that he is innocent and that Holly’s true killer is a local sexual predator named Terry Britt — or even Clint, Holly’s own brother.
Technically, the Holly Bobo case is now closed. The trial is over, the suspects are in prison, and Holly’s bones have been returned to her family. But the questions surrounding her shocking disappearance have endured.
Delve into the tragic murder of Holly Bobo and the twisting investigation that followed.
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