Cell phone records examined during day 6 of Holly Bobo trial; friend of Holly testifies
HARDIN COUNTY, Tenn — Week one of the Holly Bobo murder trial came to an end. Zach Adams one of the suspects on trial is accused of kidnapping, raping, and killing the 20-year-old nursing student.
Saturday experts examined cell phone records of Holly Bobo and Zach Adams the day she went missing. State prosecutors called their 35th witness to the stand, TBI Assistant Special Agent Michael Frizzell.
Frizzell prepared a report containing phone records of Holly Bobo, Zach Adams, and Jason Autry.
State prosecutor, Paul Hagerman said “Would you agree with me we’re going to talk a lot about these 3 numbers as we go through this report?” Frizzell responded “Yes we are,”
Frizzell presented a diagram, showing cell phone pings from Holly and Zach Adam’s phone the morning of April 13, 2011. Pings came from Holly’s phone between 7:30 a.m. to 7:45 a.m., near her home, before she disappeared. After that time all calls were incoming.
“She’s not making any calls at this point people are just trying to call her and text her,” Hagerman said. “People trying to get in contact with that phone yes,” Frizzle responded.
During that time all defendants phones were unaccounted for. “There was nothing reflected in the call detail records for those phone numbers you just mentioned so didn’t see any activity so there’s nothing for us to find there,” Frizzell said.
Experts said there’s a few different reasons why there was no activity coming from Zach Adams and Jason Autry’s phones. Either their phones were off, no incoming or outgoing calls were being made, or the phones were in an area with no service.
“When a phone has activity on the network is in a call, receiving a call, on a text message some sort of activity on the network it’s going to populate in the call records the call detail records which tower was used,” Frizzell said.
Adams had activity on his phone during the early morning hours of April 13th at 4 a.m., but not again until after 8 a.m.
“So we got Zach’s phone between 8:19 a.m. and 9:12 a.m. using the tower that services Holladay and Yellow Springs,” Hagerman explained.
Frizzell said around that time Holly’s phone was showing activity in that same area.
Sketched photo along with mugshot of Shane Austin displayed during the trial.
Next to take the stand, Holly’s friend, Candace Wood. Wood was on a double date with Holly and her boyfriend Drew Scott days before she went missing. They went to a coon hunt event in Decatur county where Wood noticed something strange.
“All of a sudden I saw in the corner of my eye a man to my left,” Wood explained.
Wood described a suspicious man who was staring at her and Holly. “He was in camouflage. I remember but everybody that came through was in camouflage but he was the only one standing still,”
Wood said it wasn’t until she found out Holly went missing that the mysterious man came back to her memory. A few months after Holly’s disappearance Wood was asked to help create a sketch of the man she saw at the coon hunt. Karen Bobo, Holly’s mom, showed Wood a photo of Shane Austin.
“It was the guy I saw at the coon hunt,” Wood said.
Along with Zach Adams, Shane Austin was a key suspect in the murder of Holly Bobo until he committed an apparent suicide in 2015.
The trial will resume Monday morning in Savannah. Stay with us for Gavel-to-Gavel coverage.
