The Holly Bobo case: Friends, strangers, searchers

The first searchers to arrive on Swan Johnson Road on the morning of April 13, 2011, were family and friends.

But law enforcement officials said that by the end of the day Holly Bobo was kidnapped, more than 400 people had helped in the search. Over the past three years, some estimate more than 10,000 people have searched the hills and hollows of Decatur and Henderson counties alone.

Friends and strangers alike dedicated their time and prayers in hopes of bringing Bobo home. Now that her remains have been found, those who supported the Bobo family in the search say they will continue supporting them as the murder case against two local men heads to trial.

Angie Hutton, a mother from Adamsville who has never met the Bobos, talked about her reaction to the kidnapping of a 20-year-old woman so close to home.

"When I saw the desperation of Holly's mother on TV, you know, your heart just tells you to do something, to do something this minute," Hutton said Wednesday. "It doesn't matter if it's searching, if it's sending food, if it's getting down on your knees and praying to God, whether you're a Christian or not. Seeing that demands that anyone with a heart do something."

Seeing another mother in that kind of pain brought Hutton and her husband Lannie from Adamsville to Decatur County with four-wheelers to help in the search.

More than three years later, Holly's remains were found in the woods near County Corner Road on Sept. 7 and identified by investigators on Sept. 8. Now many friends are saddened for the family all over again.

"It's not the news we wanted to hear," Marty Pratt said. "We're glad, you know, but it's not what we wanted. It's not what we prayed for. Now, we are hoping for justice. We pray the TBI has the right people and evidence to get justice."

Two men — Zach Adams and Jason Autry — were indicted earlier this year on charges of kidnapping and murder. Trial dates might be set in December.

Searchers

Pratt works at Tennessee Valley Ford at West Main Street and Highway 69 in downtown Parsons. He attends church with the Bobos at Corinth Baptist.

He was among the first friends of the family to help search the woods the day Holly was kidnapped.

"We headed out as soon as we got word of them asking people to come out and search on horseback," Pratt said on Wednesday. "My family has horses. We knew the Bobos. They were part of our church family. I know they would have done the same thing for us. The area we went out to was next to our house."

After that, Pratt said, "We went out every chance we got."

He said his family searched the northern end of Decatur County, around Interstate 40 and around Natchez Trace State Park.

"We're such a small community around here, so small, this is what we do," he said. "We had people who heard it on the radio, some were volunteer searchers, some were people who brought supplies."

One couple Pratt and his family searched with traveled from North Carolina to help after hearing that Holly was missing.

"They just felt like they had to do something to come over here and help," he said.

"There were four-wheelers and dogs search crews, just about anybody who thought they could help," Pratt said.

South of downtown Parsons, just off Highway 69, two men at work in the B & A Farm and Lawn repair shop stopped last week to share their memories of the search. Like so many others, the shop's owner, Brad Smith, and worker Raymond Elliot, a Florida transplant, were inspired by the community's dedication.

Smith described looking for Holly as the gut reaction of a community that cared.

Elliot said that is part of the reason he lives in Decatur County now.

"Back home, you couldn't find 10 people who would have searched for two days," he said, not nostalgic for his hometown of Okeechobee, Fla.

Smith attends Corinth Baptist Church with the Bobos and has daughters of his own. He talked about what motivated him to search some days from daybreak until the woods were dark.

"A little girl that old," he said. "What if it was one of my girls?"

Smith went searching several times, either walking with others or on a four-wheeler.

He pointed north.

"Most of the organization was over there at the fairgrounds," he said. "They would take us out for five or six hours of walking, bring us back for snacks and then we would catch a bus out again."

"People wouldn't stay (at the fairgrounds)," Smith said Wednesday, still surprised by strangers' dedication to the search. "People who were muddy and who had been searching all day would come in, grab a snack and a Gatorade, catch their breath for five minutes and go back out."

Tennessee Highway Patrol Lt. Brad Wilbanks was among the first law enforcement officers to be associated with the Bobo investigation because he was called in to block off roads, help with searches and offer assistance to the efforts in whatever way possible.

Wilbanks recalls what he saw among the ranks of the searchers as the best of human nature on display during the worst of times.

"State troopers deal with death and bad people every day," he said Wednesday. "But trust me, the good people far outweigh the bad. That's what I saw during all of this. It was overwhelming how people developed a compassion, developed a love and cared for the Bobos. It was an amazing sight to see so many people and so many agencies come together and try to bring Holly home."

Wilbanks said it was obvious everyone wanted to do everything they could to help.

"I've never been involved in any of the major disasters of the world, but what I saw here in these people was a major outpouring of help," he said. "That's the first time in my career I've seen so many people want to help. So many people put their lives on hold whether it was big or small.

"There were days when the sheriff needed more manpower," he said. "Every West Tennessee agency large or small, within a matter of hours, committed men."

Community united

Elliot saw the searches as an outsider with a unique perspective. He'd visited the area a few times before Holly went missing, and had been impressed at just how amicable the community could be.

"People here are willing to wave at the guy down the road," he said. "They don't do that sort of thing back home. Back there, a guy breaks down with a flat tire, and 30 people pass before someone offers to help. Here, you've got an old man getting out trying to change a tire."

Elliot said he was sold.

He moved to Decatur County two months after Holly disappeared. He said hospitality brought him to West Tennessee, "but the way people came together when that girl went missing is what kept me here."

His first job in Decatur County was at the McKenzie Tree Service, where Holly's father, Dana Bobo, worked.

Elliot said that when he first arrived, Dana Bobo grieved deeply over his missing daughter but held himself together to provide for the family he still had at home. Elliot said he never saw Dana fall apart. He said he supposed faith held him together.

"When Holly first went missing, up until the time I arrived and after, he searched every day, my co-workers said," Elliot recalled, "And the shop foreman there gave him off what time he could to search. Heck, most days the foreman was out there searching, too. All the workers were, even the owners of that company."

Elliot said some days Dana would work eight or nine hours, get off work and hang fliers until late at night.

"He was putting up posters and ribbons. He was never-ending," he said. "That man was dedicated. Him and his wife looked for their daughter the way I hope some people would have looked for me."

Most people who were strangers to the Bobos, who came and searched from long distances and for long hours, say it was Karen Bobo's pleas that made the searchers come. It was her painfully apparent mother's love that touched people's hearts and made a large, burly middle-aged man like Elliot say that's the way he hoped someone would search for him.

Pictures of Holly that Karen held up for cameras brought young people who never knew her but who saw a little of themselves in her pictures and who would want people to search for them.

Lauren Rinks, now a 27-year-old senior at the University of Tennessee at Martin, was a freshman biology major when Holly disappeared. Rinks grew up in Lexington, about 30 minutes away, and had never met Holly, but she said in the picture she saw someone young with hopes and dreams like herself.

"You know it's really disheartening to know something like this could happen to someone so young, and so close to home," Rinks said." I searched. I even put up fliers at UT Martin.

"Being from Lexington, you don't really have much to do. We knew Natchez Trace, so we searched there," she said. She said she was told 800 people searched the day she did.

The road to justice

For many, the search is what brought them together. Others found something inside themselves, a tight bond, that made the search continue. Many found that by banding together and searching for Holly as both friends and strangers, it was a way of lighting a torch against the evil that took her, that said "not here, not this town." Many in the community intend to take that torch all the way to the courthouse, where they hope to find justice.

"Now, it's about justice for Holly," Pratt said. "The support's still there. We're still there for the Bobos."

Wilbanks, the Highway Patrol officer, said he can't imagine the pain the family is going through and he wishes this never happened, but he hopes "every day brings them a brighter day than the previous."

Hutton said she believes what the searchers can find in the Bobos' story is hope, "because Holly has been home. Because of her faith, she's been in heaven since she died."

Reach Jordan Buie at (731) 425-9782. Follow him on Twitter @JordanBuie