The search for Holly Bobo continues, and investigators start pruning their list of potential suspects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
On the evening of April 20th, 2011, the arena at the Decatur County Fairgrounds in Parsons, Tennessee was packed. Hundreds had gathered there singing This Little Light of Mine, a scene captured by the local Jackson Sun newspaper. The fairgrounds is a large field surrounded by woods.
Chapter 2: How did the community respond to Holly Bobo's disappearance?
Typically, folks gather here for the county fair or the annual raccoon hunt that happened just a few days before Holly Bobo disappeared. But on this night, they were here for a different reason, to hold a candlelight vigil for Holly, the 20-year-old woman this community had spent the last week searching for day and night.
Outside, a storm was raging, which pushed the vigil indoors to a large event space at the fairgrounds. A lightning strike caused the power to go out, so the space was illuminated by the light of hundreds of candles held by a large crowd of volunteers, family, and friends.
Many wore bright pink shirts or pink ribbons on their jackets since it was Holly's favorite color and the color she was last seen wearing. The Jackson Sun recorded a highway patrol officer addressing the crowd.
This is day eight. Y'all are tired. We're frustrated. We ain't brought Holly home yet. We're gonna bring Holly home.
Her parents, who were clearly distraught and shell-shocked, had gone before news cameras from local stations like WREG, begging for Holly's return. This is her father, Dana Bobo, and her mother, Karen Bobo, the day after she disappeared.
I would tell her I love her. I want her to call us, please, in any way she can get in touch with us whatsoever. That's it. Thank you. I just want her back. Thank you.
As the days dragged on, the thousands of volunteers and law enforcement who had poured into Tiny Parsons weren't just looking for Holly. They were searching for something, anything that could point to where she was.
On storefronts, on street signs, on mailboxes, pink ribbons and pictures of Holly Bobo are posted all over the small, tight-knit community of Parsons. Volunteers say they don't plan on stopping until she is found. It's just unbearable. I can't hardly imagine.
With Holly still missing and no sign of a suspect, that hope was turning to despair. Law enforcement officials began to change their approach. Inundated with leads that went nowhere, they asked the public not to only look in the woods, but to search among their own.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did investigators face in the search for Holly Bobo?
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is an independent agency charged with investigating high-profile crimes in the state. Larger cities like Memphis or Nashville have their own homicide units and don't always need TBI's help. But Decatur County is one of the most sparsely populated regions in the state with just under 12,000 people.
In rural areas with limited resources, limited manpower, pretty much they will always call in the TBI.
Agent Dykus was the lead agent on the case. Luckily, he knew Decatur County pretty well. But he says he's never encountered a crime quite like this. It wasn't just TBI that responded to the scene that first day. The Decatur County Sheriff's Office, the Henderson County Sheriff's Office, and the nearby Lexington PD were all there. So were agents with the FBI and U.S.
Marshals Service, trained in the art of finding people on the run, like Holly's kidnapper. The Tennessee Highway Patrol sent a helicopter to fly overhead. Officials from FEMA helped set up a command post. Many agencies brought dogs along with them to help with the search. Some were given one of Holly's shirts and sent through the woods to pick up her scent.
In the first few hours, hundreds of volunteers showed up at the Bobo residence, on their ATVs, on horseback, on foot, to search for Holly. As the days went on, divers scoped out the creek and the Tennessee River just a few miles away. You'd think with this huge, rather immediate effort, someone would have figured out what happened to Holly pretty quickly. But this was no ordinary crime scene.
The evidence was scant, some small pools of blood in the carport, presumably Holly's, as well as a shoe print and a still unidentified handprint on her car. They didn't have much to go on. And as Agent Dykus points out, we are talking about the middle of nowhere. These are huge stretches of hilly land full of dense trees, unmarked, sometimes dirt-carved roads.
There are no main roads anywhere near here. There isn't even a stoplight or caution light. The terrain made it difficult for searchers to keep up the pace. Even the search dogs kept getting stuck in the muddy wilderness. It was almost a perfect metaphor for the Holly Bobo case. Nothing about it would be easy or straightforward.
AT&T Mobility, this is Dave.
Dave, this is Judy. I work at the 911 Center, Decatur County, Tennessee. We have got a missing 20-year-old female that was pulled away from her home. We need a trace put on her cell phone, please.
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Chapter 4: How was cell phone data used in Holly Bobo's investigation?
Holly's phone heads towards the Interstate 40 highway, arriving at 8.26 a.m. The cell phone appeared to stop moving. It stayed put for about a half hour. Then it turned east onto Interstate 40. A little after 9 a.m., it turned right back into those woods and kept traveling south until it got to a small creek on Gooch Road in Parsons. That's when it stopped responding to pings at around 9.25 a.m.
Volunteers who later searched the route found some of Holly's items, including her cell phone.
Essentially, for an hour and a half, her cell phone traveled all through Decatur County,
Agent Dykus says the map offers another clue that whoever took Holly must have known the area really well.
This is extremely, extremely rural area. You'll go through roads that have one house, then another house three miles down the road, and that's it. We're talking about roads that you can sit out and watch for eight hours, and there's not a car that goes down it.
Whoever did this knows these roads because they knew how to go from this point to this point, this point to this point, avoid this bridge, avoid every way that a police officer may come in.
Agent Dykus started drawing up a list of potential leads. Within the first day, investigators identified two dozen sex offenders in the area and went to check on them. But as police cast a wide net, they began to wonder if their suspect was even closer to home.
There were a lot of people that felt Clint was lying, felt very strongly that Clint was lying, and that Clint telling the truth would be the secret to solving this case.
Holly Bobo's brother, Clint, was the sole witness to her disappearance. Police wanted to know whether he should also be considered a suspect.
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Chapter 5: Was Clint Bobo considered a suspect in his sister's disappearance?
Okay.
And you asked me what if I do it when I sit down.
Okay. Does it offend you in any way?
Well, the main thing is that I just, like I told you, I don't want them, I mean, I'm not offended by it, I just want to make sure that everybody is, you know, is... Really, it was looked at kind of the same way. Absolutely.
Before they strap Clint up for the polygraph test, Agent Trout spends about 90 minutes asking Clint to walk through what happened earlier that morning when his sister Holly went missing. Throughout the interview, Clint repeats what he's said all day, that he and his sister got along, that he didn't have anything to do with her disappearance, and he had no idea who did.
Anytime you need to stop and take a break, you just speak up, okay? Do you smoke?
I am today. Amen.
At the time, Clint was 25 years old. He was about 5'6", average build, brown hair. He'd been working part-time at a local nursing home while studying to get his bachelor's degree in social work at the University of Tennessee, Martin. He had no criminal record, and he'd been cooperative all day, showing authorities his phone, having his body searched, and agreeing to do the polygraph.
But Clint tells the polygraph examiner that he heard some people were talking about him and about how he hadn't intervened as Holly walked into the woods with someone who turned out not to be her boyfriend, Drew.
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Chapter 6: How did the polygraph test impact Clint Bobo's status as a suspect?
Did you physically cause any injury to your sister?
No.
Do you know for certain where your sister is now? No. This completes the test. Please remain still.
Clint passed the polygraph test.
That, coupled with the cell phone data, I realized, well, Holly was moving the whole time Clint's been here.
To Agent Dykus, that meant Clint was no longer a suspect, but TBI and other authorities kept an eye on Clint Bobo regardless. In the weeks that followed, he sat for multiple interviews with agents from TBI, the FBI, and the U.S. Marshals Service. It wasn't just Clint under the microscope.
The entire Bobo family faced years of scrutiny from investigators, but all of them, as well as Holly's boyfriend Drew, were eventually cleared by authorities of having anything to do with Holly's disappearance.
Sometimes people said this to my face, you know, if I had been that brother, I would have went out there, you know, I would have done something well, but they don't understand.
Years later in 2017, Clint Bobo recounted the experience to ABC News.
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Chapter 7: What scrutiny did the Bobo family face from investigators?
The way I felt.
But Agent Dykus, the initial lead investigator on the Holly Bobo case, had someone else he believed could be involved. Someone who was close by, someone who fit the physical description Clint gave to the police, and someone authorities believed had the background, the history, and the M.O. to be Holly's abductor.
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