Holly Bobo Trial: FBI agent describes digging through dirt to find remains, locates wallet, flip flops

On day three of the trial for a man accused of murdering Tennessee nursing student, Holly Bobo, an FBI agent took the stand and explained the measures she and her team took to find the victim’s remains.

The Jackson Sun reports that Special Agent Laura Hodge of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation testified in court on Wednesday. Hodge, part of the investigative team that searched for Bobo, said she first identified the victim’s wallet that had been out in the woods so long that animals had bitten into it and dragged it away from Bobo’s remains. Hodge also testified that she identified what was left of one of Bobo’s flip flops.

The agent’s testimony marked the first time they confirmed they indeed found the victim’s personal identifiers since the discovery in 2014. The agents sifted through dirt to pull up other identifiers. The evidence was then taken to a forensic expert, who identified Bobo’s teeth and her hoop earrings. Dental records helped identify Bobo, along with her skull, which was found by two men out looking for ginseng in the woods.

Witness Larry Stone also took the stand, and began crying as he relived the day he was searching for ginseng in the woods of northern Decatur County, close to suspect Zach Adams’ house.

“I looked at (my cousin) and said, ‘Please tell me that’s one of those things they use in school, and that’s not real,’” Stone recalled.

Stone found Bobo’s skull, later confirmed by forensics. Stone and his cousin also found a bucket in the woods, with Bobo’s car keys, makeup, and inhaler, and a small bag of pens and pencils.

“I said, ‘You know who that could be,’ and he said, ‘Who do you think it is?’” Stone said, referring to a conversation with his cousin. “I said, ‘I think this is Holly.’”

Special Agent Laura Hodge and her team arrived on site the next morning, where they found additional items spread out throughout the wooded area.

Witness John Graves took the stand on Wednesday and testified that on April 14, 2011, a day after Bobo went missing, he saw something out of the place in the woods by his home. When he checked the area out, he noticed a lunch box floating in a nearby creek.

“It was something that just didn’t belong. I saw something polka-dotted, like a lunchbox or something, laying there. It had a sandwich inside it and something else. When I flipped it over it had an embroidered H on it as best I remember.”

Graves pointed out the the same lunchbox he saw was the same one Bobo’s mother held up in court on Monday.

Check back with CrimeOnline as we continue to cover the trial.

What You Need to Know

Holly Lynn Bobo disappeared from her home in Darden, Tennessee, on April 13, 2011. Three years later, authorities found her deceased in Decatur County, Tennessee, with a gunshot wound to her skull. So far, six men have been arrested in connection with her death, but only three of them have been prosecuted. Charges against two of them were dropped, while another suspect committed suicide.

Most of the prosecution’s case was made around what Adams’ brother, Dylan Adams, confessed. After pinning the crime on Adams and another suspect, Jason Autry, Dylan has since recanted and said that the confession was coerced. Autry, however, claimed that Adams did indeed kill Bobo by shooting her in the head after she gasped for air and moved while presumed dead and wrapped in a blanket.
“If it had gone down the way that Dylan described it, they would have blood in that house.

They would have found DNA in that house. They would have found hair in that house. They would have found a fingernail. They would have found something that placed Holly in that house,” Dylan’s mother, Cindy Adams previously said.

“There’s no chemical cleanup in that house,” Cindy Adams continued. “There’s no nothing that ever indicated that Holly has been in that house, but if you listen to Dylan’s story, and I’m not going to go into everything he says, but it’s pretty graphic. There’s no way they would not have found something.”

If convicted, Adams faces the death penalty.

Check back with CrimeOnline for additional coverage.

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