Co-defendant gives grim details of Bobo slaying
SAVANNAH, Tenn. — Jason Autry on Thursday described the final moments leading up to Holly Bobo’s death in gruesome detail, then the efforts to dispose of her body and cover the trail.
Autry also described the network of connections he said he learned led Zach Adams to the Bobo home on the morning of her disappearance, including alleged relations Adams had with Bobo’s cousin and a planned meeting with Bobo’s brother Clint.
Autry is one of three men charged in the rape, kidnapping and slaying of Bobo, who was abducted from her home in Darden on April 13, 2011. Autry has been offered federal immunity and the possibility of reduced charges if he testifies truthfully about what happened on the day and in the days and weeks afterward.
At 10:30 a.m. Thursday, he began recounting the details.
“He said, ‘I need you to come bury this body,’” Autry said, remembering Adams’ first words to him after Autry arrived at the house of his cousin Shayne Austin that morning.
Autry said he thought the body might have been a man they knew as “Joe Joe,” who owed money to Austin and Adams from a drug deal. Adams corrected him.
“Train, that’s Holly Bobo,” Autry said, referring to Adams by a nickname.
Autry said he didn’t know the 20-year-old nursing student, but said he knew that Adams had a sexual relationship with Bobo’s cousin Natalie, who he said worked at a strip club off Interstate 40.
Autry agreed to help Adams while Austin walked around the yard of his home on Yellow Springs Road, where Bobo’s panties and a piece of paper with her name were found a few days later.
Austin was once thought to be a witness in the Bobo case, but he was found dead in an apparent suicide in Florida.
Autry said Austin was carrying a holstered gun, ordering Autry and the Adams brothers, Zach and Dylan, off his property.
PLAN WAS TO ‘GUT’ HOLLY
Adams said he met Autry at the church down the road, and the two went to the nearby Birdsong Marina. On the way, Autry told Adams they didn’t have a pickax or a shovel.
“I don’t know of nowhere you can get shovels or pickaxes with a dead body in the back of the truck,” Autry said.
The men went to the Tennessee River, near Interstate 40, where they pulled Bobo’s body from the bed of the truck. As Adams went to the front of the truck, Autry said, he saw Bobo move her foot and she made a noise.
Autry told Adams that Bobo was still alive.
The plan at that moment, Autry said, was to “gut” Bobo and throw her body in the river.
“She’s heard my name and heard me talking and all,” Autry said.
He said Adams got a pistol from the truck — the same pistol Austin had been carrying that morning. Autry went to make sure that no one was coming and gave Adams a sign that “the coast is clear.”
“It was just one shot, but it echoed,” Autry said. “It was dead silence for just a second.”
Then they heard a boat. In the seconds afterward, the men loaded Bobo’s body in the back of the truck and left the river.
In a hearing held without the jury, Autry said he asked Adams two days later what happened “to the ol’ girl.”
“We threw her out,” Autry said Adams told him.
COVERING THE TRAIL
Autry said Adams then asked Autry to kill his brother, Dylan, who hadn’t been to bed yet and wouldn’t stop talking about what had happened to Bobo.
Autry testified he accepted Adams’ offer to kill his brother and that he picked Dylan Adams up and took him to the Tennessee River in a bass boat.
Autry said he trolled down a channel looking for a place to put Dylan Adams when another fisherman came up in a boat and recognized Dylan Adams and knew Dylan Adams’ grandfather.
“At that point, that stopped everything,” he said. “We had been positively identified.”
Autry said that ended the plan to kill Dylan Adams.
Then, in August 2012, while stealing a deer stand, Autry said, Adams admitted to him that he raped Bobo.