Holly Bobo

Holly Lynn Bobo (October 12, 1990 – c. April 13, 2011) was an American woman who disappeared on April 13, 2011, from her family home in Darden, Tennessee.

She was last seen alive by her brother, Clint, shortly before 8 a.m., walking into the woods outside her home with a man wearing camouflage.

On the morning of April 13, 2011, Bobo awoke at 4:30 a.m. to study for an exam.

At 7:30 a.m., she answered a call from her boyfriend, Drew Scott, who was turkey hunting nearby on her grandmother's property.

Bobo's parents had left for work by this point and her brother Clint was still asleep.

Twelve minutes later, Bobo made her last cell phone call.

After this point, all phone calls and texts were incoming and unanswered.

Shortly after Bobo's final phone call ended, a neighbor heard a scream from the Bobo residence.

The neighbor called his mother to tell her about what he heard, and the mother in turn called Bobo's mother Karen at work.

Meanwhile, Clint was awakened by the family dogs barking and saw Holly outside with a man dressed in camouflage: "It appeared to be Holly kneeling down and Drew [Scott]. They looked like they were kneeled down, facing each other in the garage, and they were talking back and forth. Holly sounded very upset and heated. He was doing much of the talking, and she would answer back and things like that. I couldn't make out hardly any of the words. The only words I could make out from here were Holly saying, 'No, why? Clint said that he believed the couple were breaking up. At some point, Karen called home and spoke to Clint. "I said, 'Clint, that's not Drew.

Get a gun and shoot him.

Clint reportedly replied, "You want me to shoot Drew?", still believing the man was Holly's boyfriend.

Karen called 9-1-1, but because she was calling from work she reached the dispatcher for the wrong county.

At home, Clint looked outside again and saw the man walking with Holly into nearby woods.

At this point, he noted that the man was larger than Scott.

Clint tried to call his sister's cell phone as well as Scott's cell phone, but neither call was answered.

When Karen called her house again, Clint told her what he witnessed and was instructed to call 9-1-1.

Clint fetched a loaded pistol and went outside, where he found bloodstains belonging to Holly in the garage.

In September 2014, Bobo's partial remains were found in northern Decatur County, and her death was ruled a homicide via a gunshot to the back of the head.

Six men have been arrested for varying degrees of involvement in the murder.

However, only three of the six have been prosecuted.

Most of the arrests were made on the basis of a confession by a man with an intellectual disability named John Dylan Adams, who told police he saw his brother, Zach, and another friend, Jason Autry, with Bobo at his brother's home after her kidnapping.

It is unknown what led police to question Dylan about Bobo's disappearance.

Dylan, Zach, and Autry were charged with especially aggravated kidnapping, first-degree murder and rape.

Of the other three men arrested, charges against two were dropped, and one committed suicide without any charges being filed against him.

The case has been met with several setbacks such as the death of a suspect, multiple changes to the prosecutorial team, and disputes with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI).

The prosecution has been heavily criticized for its refusal to produce evidence against the defendants, missing multiple discovery deadlines, and for making frequent changes to the charges against the defendants with little explanation.

The TBI even briefly withdrew its services to the entire district after the prosecutor accused the agency of compromising the case by proceeding "so slowly that the culprits were always one step ahead and that TBI... was leaking information and possibly covering up evidence."

Defense attorneys reported they still had yet to receive a bill of particulars detailing the case against their clients and the results of forensic testing done on evidence from the case over a year after the arrests were made, and filed motions to dismiss charges on the grounds of "silence or stonewalling".

The arrests took place in early 2014, but it was not until July 2015 that it was announced that the defendants finally received access to all the evidence against them.

On September 22, 2017, a jury found Zach guilty on all charges, including first-degree murder.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 50 years on September 23.

He maintains his innocence.

In 2017, Duncan released a song called "Better Place" in memory of Holly.

In January 2018, Zach's brother, Dylan, accepted an Alford plea and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Autry chose to make a plea bargain with prosecutors wherein he would testify against Zach in exchange for a significantly reduced sentence.

On September 16, 2020, after accepting a deal that reduced his sentence to eight years of time served, Autry was released from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

At the time of her disappearance, Holly Bobo was a 20-year-old nursing student at the University of Tennessee at Martin Parsons Center in Parsons, living with her parents and brother in Darden.

Friends described her as shy and sweet.

Holly was the cousin of country singer Whitney Duncan.