Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - 'Monster' killers - The murders of Laura Wallen & Holly Bobo

Episode Date: September 18, 2017

The boyfriend who allegedly murdered Laura Wallen told the pregnant Maryland teacher's father he had no contact with another woman for 2 years, but that was before police revealed Tyler Tessier was living with the second woman. "He is a monster and he is a liar," Mark Wallen said of the man accused of killing his daughter. Wallen's father and mother pretended at the request of police to not suspect Tessier as part of a strategy to get him to incriminate himself, police said. Nancy Grace discusses the case crime scene expert Sheryl McCollum, psychoanalyst Dr. Bethany Marshall, and reporter Leigh Egan. They also look at the first week of testimony in the trial of the Tennessee man accused of kidnapping, raping and killing Holly Bobo. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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just great resources to help you protect what you care about, your family. For special savings, be sure to enter code NANCY, N-A-N-C-Y at checkout. LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom.com. Ms. Wallen then showed up to teach her social studies class on Tuesday, the first day of school at Wild Lake High. The missing teacher's father and sister say she was four months pregnant. She was a woman of faith and right now she is in the arms of God. Her body has now been recovered. Tyler Tessier, Mrs. Wallen's boyfriend, was arrested for her murder. In addition to having Ms. Wallen as a girlfriend, he was engaged to another woman. He lied to my face when I asked him about the other girl and said,

I haven't seen her in two years. I haven't talked to her in two years. I believed him. He's a very believable guy. Teacher of the year. Teacher of the year. Four months pregnant. Found dead in a shallow grave in a remote field. Why? Why? Odds are she thought she was about to be proposed to. She had just sent her sister a text saying, Tyler has taken me on an adventure. We're out in a field. What could it be? It was a burial ground. That's what it was. No ring involved. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories and I want justice. I am talking about a 31-year-old woman, four months pregnant with the baby of Tyler Tessier. She is dead now.

Her autopsy is ongoing. Why? I believe because they are trying to determine the age of the baby. Catch-22. the age of the baby. Catch 22. In many countries around the world, viability for a baby starts at just 14 weeks. 14 weeks. In the United States, typically it's 20 weeks. 20 weeks for viability. Why is this important? Because if that baby was viable at the time the teacher of the year is shot in the back of the head, then that's a double murder.

Okay? That's what's taking so long on the autopsy. Was the baby viable? Joining me right now, an all-star cast with me, crime online reporter Lee Egan, who's been doing a lot of digging on this case. The director of the Cold Case Institute, Cheryl McCollum. Psychoanalyst, Dr. Bethany Marshall, joining me from L.A. Ladies, thank you for being with us. You know, when I hear what has gone down, I'm literally sick at my stomach.

Cheryl McCollum, sick. Tyler's taking me on an adventure. That's some adventure, huh? Oh my God, Nancy, it is horrifying. For her to sit there and text, I'm waiting in this field, waiting. And then he comes from behind her, calculated,

and shoots her in the back of the head. It is a death penalty case as far as I'm concerned. Well, here's the deal. It's Maryland. In Maryland, the governor, in all of his wisdom, got rid of the death penalty and commuted everybody on death row to life behind bars. You can kill as many people as you want to in Maryland and just get life

behind bars. In fact, what brought that to my attention was when three little girls were stabbed dead in Maryland, all under the age of 10. Uh-huh. And there's no death penalty. Three little girls stabbed dead. I want to go back to something we were just saying, Cheryl. When I first learned through our sources that there was no visible trauma to the body, they didn't know the cause of death. I'm like, wow. Okay. I did not expect him to asphyxiate her in an open field. He did it. We now have information. She was shot once in the back of the head. And I'm going to go to Bethany on this in just a moment because Cheryl, no way could he look her in the face and strangle her. No way. No way. He shot her in the back of the head like the coward he is.

He's an absolute punk. And that's exactly right, Nancy. He could not face her. He couldn't do it. So let me go to Lee Egan. I want to, we're starting with a dead body of the teacher of the year, and I'm sick about it, and her family is sick about it. Her family,

her mom and dad that sat there giving a presser holding the boyfriend, Tyler Tessier's hand, patting him on the shoulder. They knew at the time they did that presser that he was a suspect, Lee Egan. They did know and they did not like it. He had a bond hearing yesterday morning and Mark Wallen, Laura's father, spoke at the bond hearing and said he's a monster, a liar, and it took everything he had just to play that role. And he knew that he had to do it to get Tyler to talk, which is what the police wanted him to do, to see what he had to say, to see if he slipped up, watch his body language, the words he said. And it was just extremely difficult for the

family to do. The mother, she was shaking so much while holding his hand that she couldn't move. She just sat on that bench. She couldn't talk. It was just extremely difficult for the family. Following up on what Lee Egan has just reported, listen to what Laura Wallen's dad said about that presser. The press conference that we did the other day was a press conference to get out a picture and a name of the baby daddy and it was all we could do to be seen as a unified family with him. He is a monster and he is a liar and it is it was absolutely the hardest thing that my wife could do would be to sit next to him and hold his hand and she had to hold his hand with two hands because she was shaking so badly. But we did it because as any father would do,

if your child is missing and someone has that child, we were pretty sure it was Tyler, but we didn't know where she was. And you can't put somebody away on a missing person. Someone doesn't go to prison for life on a missing person. And he... It defies description, the awfulness and the horror that we have been put through on this. We've all been deceived through this, your family most acutely. Did you feel as though you were being deceived early on? Have you been deceptive towards you all,

previous to this, or abusive in any way? He has been deceiving and lying their entire existence and their relationship was the only thing that Laura and her family ever thought about. Laura is a wonderful girl, so bright, such a bright future, and he lied to my face when I asked him about the other girl and said, I haven't seen her in two years. I haven't talked to her in two years.

And I believed her. I believed him. He's a very believable guy. To Dr. Bethany Marshall. Dr. Bethany, I want to talk to you about the psychopathy behind this. What do you make of the fact that she, Laura Wallen, was saying, oh, Tyler's brought me on an adventure. That's some adventure, Bethany. Some adventure. What I kept thinking about was the hopeful anticipation she had. You know,

they had been together for 10 years. They didn't live together as far as I know. She was four months pregnant. And I imagine that she thought that finally, finally, they would be engaged. Finally, he would move in with her. Finally, they would have a life together. And four months pregnant, I mean, she's beginning to show it's about the time you start shopping for the crib and thinking about the life of the unborn child, the future together. And so this is the moment in her mind where she thinks he's going to propose. But in terms of the psychopathy, what we know about sociopaths is that they cannot attach.

They have low levels of empathy and remorse. They have reckless disregard and lack of concern for the rights and safety of others, that they are homicidal. They play by their own rules rather than the rules of society. And on brain imaging scans, if you look at the brain scans of sociopaths, the part of the brain that lights up when looking at other people and having empathy and engaging with other people, that part of the brain is dead. They just do not have empathy and they do not attach.

However, they don't want to let other people down. They are very concerned about their own self-image. So I think it's significant that he shot her in the back of the head. Wait a minute. Wait a minute wait a minute Dr. Bethany um now I'm certainly no psychoanalyst like you are I'm just a trial lawyer and a crime victim but Cheryl McCollum when Dr. Bethany says they don't want to let people down I don't think he gave a flying fig about letting anybody else down or their feelings I

think he just wanted to keep all the balls in the air for his own amusement. He had two women, one he was engaged to and living with. The other one is four months pregnant and reports that he had gone to Laura Wallen's father and asked for her hand in marriage. She's the one that's four months pregnant. He wanted to keep playing, keep both of these women on the line. That's why he hadn't settled down after 10 years. Now, listen, I certainly don't have a leg to stand on because it was many, many years after Keith's murder before I finally, finally could bring myself to try to marry again. But I don't think it was any sentimentality on his part that kept him from wanting to get married. I mean,

the woman is four months pregnant now. If that ain't the time to poop, then I don't know. You better just get off the pot. But what I'm saying here is, think about it. Is it true, Cheryl McCollum, he said he didn't have a cell phone? My convenient that way Laura Wallen couldn't FaceTime him and see that he wasn't at work and see that he was at somebody else's place that's convenient right no cell phone are you kidding me it's convenient and he also didn't need the phone ping and where he went to bury her body and he used her cell phone to send the text messages as though it were her and look at his own words, Nancy. They go to the store together on September 2nd.

He killed her on September 3rd. September 4th, he sends a text message as though he were the victim to her sister that says, oh, you know, I'm like 95% sure that Tyler's not the baby's dad. I think it's my ex-boyfriend. I mean, what a piece of crap this guy is that he's still trying to get himself out of trouble with the other fiance. He doesn't want anybody to think that baby is his.

And incidentally, she hadn't seen the ex-boyfriend in two years. So that'd be quite a trick, Tyler, you piece of crap. You know, I want to go through what we know about Tyler Tessier. Cheryl McCollum, at this point, let me hear what you and Lee know. Then we'll get Bethany Marshall to shrink it.

Go ahead, Cheryl. We know he has two women. We know he doesn't have a job. We know he's got three places that he stays occasionally to sleep. So it's like he doesn't have any responsibilities like a real adult. He's not going to take care of this baby. He ain't worried about a 401k or retirement. He doesn't have a mortgage and a house he's taking care of. He damn sure ain't going to try to take care of a child for the next 18 years. So Lee Egan, how does that play

into the facts as we know them regarding the murder? For one thing, without a steady home, you know, nobody could drive by and see what he was doing. I understand, Lee, that he was living in three different places. I don't know where that third place is. Yeah, I'm not sure either. That has been reported, though, that he was living with the fiancée. We're not sure who she is yet. And then he was living on and off with Laura. And then there was a third place.

I don't know if that was a third woman, a friend, or what. But reports are saying that he was kind of hopping around from three different places. And I guess since I don't know how Laura didn't know where his other home was, but she didn't know about that. He was engaged to this other woman. She had no idea until, until I believe August or so. And that's when she sent this other woman a text message wanting to meet with her. So I don't know how she didn't know where he was living when he wasn't with her. But obviously it was with, you know, the other woman. You know, also, Dr. Bethany, a lot of times you believe, you think what you want to think.

If he said, I'm going home to mom and dad's, you know, don't call too late. I'll wake him up. I'll see you tomorrow. And he doesn't have a cell phone, doesn't have a cell phone. So, you know, what's she supposed to do? Track him down to his parents' house and drive by like she's 16 years old and look in the window? You know, Nancy, what a deadbeat. He didn't even have a cell phone. And my understanding is that he didn't even have a job at this point when the crime was committed. So this guy had a lot of time on his

hands to do whatever he wanted to do. And you know, when I think of sociopathy, I think of it as a more intense form of narcissism. It's all the same features of a narcissist, but a more intense version. Like a narcissist will lack empathy. A sociopath will be callous. A narcissist will take advantage of other people. A sociopath will have a parasitic lifestyle and live off of other people. So I think that what was happening is that the multiple women and bouncing around from house to house was not just for the sexual gratification and the excitement of having two women. And who knows, he may have had even more than two. But I think of it as a part of a parasitic lifestyle, living off of other people. So he didn't have a job. So I wouldn't be surprised to learn that both women were supporting him financially. Oh, dear Lord in heaven.

I mean, this guy is, okay, he's certainly not a catch. Let's just put it that way. All right. He's not going to be nominated for The Bachelor show. But beyond that, I mean, I don't know what either of them saw in him. But what it has ended up in is the murder of this beautiful girl. And I know I said it yesterday. I just keep thinking about the one student. And y'all are going to kill me, but i'm going to tell a story again so the twins

had to read a story a book another book this one is realistic fiction lucy always picks these incredibly sad books like one the mother dies in the end uh this one the teacher dies in the end i don't know how she does it i call her wednesday adams right to her face. But she picked this book called Mrs. Bixby's Last Day. And it's about this awesome, incredible teacher with one strand of pink hair that is just really affects these these middle schoolers lives. And she gets cancer. And the big finale is the three boys try to cut school and get across town on a bus to give her the perfect day. That one day, sometimes in school, she described. And it was sitting on the side of a hill, looking at the sky, having a glass of wine,

and eating her favorite raspberry cheesecake from Michel's, this French bakery. So they cut school. They catch all this series of buses. They try to buy wine underage, and the guy that agrees to do it steals their money and buys Jack Daniels and runs away from them. They catch him later, attack him, get the Jack Daniels. They end up getting her out of intensive care,

taking her outside, and sitting there having, she has a sip of Jack Daniels, you know, and the cake got smushed in the knapsack. But they have that moment that they try to recreate for her. And then I read about this woman, I think I might actually tear up. Laura Wallen. And one student said that he was down and out. He was talking about skateboarding. She showed up that weekend. This is not Miss Bixby.

This is the real Laura Wallen, who's dead now. She showed up at his door with her skateboard. And they go skateboarding in front of his house. I read another student said that she paid as much attention to people that obviously needed help as to those who are really quiet like my little girl Lucy. Super quiet. John David very gregarious. He's the mayor of the school. She would pay attention to those quiet students too. And one student insisted on being called OG, original gangster. And so she called the little girl OG the whole year just to make her happy. And she would go up to students and say, give me a jellyfish hug.

I don't know what that is, but that was her thing. And she would open her arms up and wiggle her arms. That's who Laura Wallen is. February 2004, Maura Murray empties her bank account, drives four hours from school, crashes her car, gets out, and vanishes. Everybody has a theory. Was she murdered? Was it a suicide?

Did she run away? Join the search as an investigative reporter and former U.S. Marshal uncovering new evidence, interrogate new witnesses, trace down new leads in this riveting new investigative series, The Disappearance of Maura Murray. It starts Saturday, September 23, 8.15 p.m., 7.15 central on Oxygen, the new network for crime. And now, as promised, straight into that press conference from the state attorney. Listen. State Attorney, listen. Ty Lewis Tessier, age 32, of Damascus, has been charged in three charges, including the first-degree murder of Laura Wallen, age 31,

a magnificent teacher from Wild Lake High School in Howard County. In addition to the murder charge, which carries a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole, the defendant is charged with altering evidence. If you read the charging document that was distributed to you in court, you will see there were various actions or activities, changing the evidence, moving her car, taking a tag off of her car, throwing keys or a license away, he did tamper with the others. I think Ms. Fenton characterized his statements as containing hundreds of lies that the police could prove based on their inconsistency with his other statements or other investigative efforts that were made by the police that showed that what he was telling them was not in fact the truth. The defendant today appeared before Zubari Williams, a judge of the district court for Montgomery County. Judge Williams, at the request of the state, agreed with our request that he be held without bond,

and the defendant is held without bond. He will remain incarcerated pending a preliminary hearing date, which is set for October the 13th of this year. I will tell you, for many of you who are experienced covering these cases that preliminary hearing date will probably never come to pass because the reality is we will take action bringing this matter to the grand jury of Montgomery County prior to that date and the only thing that will happen on October the 13th will be the announcement we hope of an indictment of the defendant for what we believe are the appropriate charges at that time.

As we know from in court today, the defendant in this matter was characterized in court and did characterize himself to some as the boyfriend of the deceased. As was mentioned also in court, there was somewhat of a triangle atmosphere surrounding this because the defendant, in addition to having Ms. Wallen as a girlfriend, he was engaged to another woman. I think that he was clear, I think, from what was said in court. He was not honest with either of the women regarding the true nature of the relationship with the other. The family was present in court. We have had constant communication.

Members of my office, Ms. Herdman and Ms. Fenton, have been working around the clock on this matter. I will tell you the autopsy on this matter is still pending. It's not done. We do not have the results of that as of yet. As you know, the body of Ms. Wallen was recovered in a field up in Damascus, Maryland. Again, I want to salute the Montgomery County Police Department, the Homicide Division. I think they did a marvelous job following this case, repeatedly interviewing the defendant,

challenging him on his inconsistencies, and then using the forensics, they used cell phone records, to show that he was repeatedly, night after night after night, going back to the same field. That is the field where Ms. Wallen's body was, in fact, recovered. Now, that was the state's attorney talking about the so-called other woman. But frankly, you know, and I do not like another woman. But, oh, that reminds me. Okay, is everybody sitting down? You better lay down for this one.

Okay, so at my little Methodist church that I go to, there is a guy that's got to be, he's got to be 87 years old. And he got a young wife. She's about 81. And I love her because she's always dressed to the nines every time I see her. Like with a hat, the whole shebang. So I was in this Bible study. And this old gentleman was in it with me.

And I used to fight with him all the time because he would actually suggest that Christ didn't happen. So we get into, why is he in Bible study for a piece? I'm trying to be a better person, everybody. You know I need it. I need it, okay? I need the help, all the help I can get. And so I'd spend the whole hour fighting with him during disciple study. Anyway, long story short, because I fought with him so much,

I felt that I had to be really friendly to him to show, you know, that no hard feelings. When I would see him, I'd go up and say, hello, good morning and hug him, you know, when I would see him. Well, anyway, he actually wrote my assistant and asked me because his wife was jealous for me not to be so exuberant and saying hello to him. I'm like, oh, dear Lord in heaven, I'm the other woman in this scenario. I'm like. So anyway, I have now been, you know, branded as the big hussy. All right. Needless to say, when I see those two come in, I run the other way. So that's my big story.

But what I'm trying to say is I really don't think either one of these ladies were the other woman. I don't think that existed in this scenario. One of them he's living with, he's engaged to. The other one he's about to have a baby with. I mean, you know what else broke my heart? Cheryl McCollum, the neighbor, her neighbor, said that he's known her for years. She must have lived on top of his apartment because she liked to bead and make jewelry. And she'd sit outside on her patio and beads would fall through, I guess, the patio.

And she would always be scurrying down there to get the beads that have fallen down on his patio. And he said that all these boxes had started arriving from Bed Bath & Beyond and other places. You know it was for the baby, Cheryl. Of course. The whole thing is so heartbreaking. You know, and again, I know we've talked about it ad nauseum, but he said gaping hole.

And then he texts his another friend and says, hey, I'm going to need a ride to Baltimore. I've got to clean up a mess. He's telling you again, this was messy. This was awful. And he's asking for help. And on top of all of it, you're going to be

too lazy to dig the hole yourself. It's pathetic. The whole thing is pathetic. Well, you did say that at the very beginning, before he was even a suspect when we the three of us were talking you said it disturbed you cheryl mccollum the director of the cold case institute that when he said it's left a gaping hole in our lives right immediately you said okay right there and this is when later it came out that there was no obvious trauma or in the back of the head if she was lying face up that maybe they didn't see it um but almost

immediately Cheryl you said his phraseology of gaping hole disturbed you and you were right she was shot in the back of the head now guys you all know what a big turn of events it was when I got pregnant and had the twins. I mean, nobody, least of all me, ever expected that was going to happen in my life. And Cheryl, do you remember that shower? It was like, it was just very simply the event of the season. Okay, just kidding. I mean, we had so many cops and investigators and lawyers, prosecutors. I don't think there were any defense attorneys. Oh, there was one, Renee Rockwell.

There was one. But I'm just thinking about that time in life when you're suddenly doing something unexpected and different and wonderful. And as it's turned out, Cheryl, I mean, it's been the project of my life. Sure. It's the best time ever. It's the greatest love you're ever going to have.

And he robbed her of that too, Nancy. And I was just thinking about it with those best, I mean, those Bed Bath & Beyond boxes showing up. You know there were things for the baby, right? Of course. Of course. That's the greatest shopping ever because you're picking out stuff for your baby. The crib, the theme, everything is going to be soft and precious and wonderful. And you're not doing anything for yourself ever again. And it is the the most remarkable selfless path you're ever going to be on and he had her standing in a field thinking they were fixing to do all these wonderful

things together when the reality is he went back and got a weapon walked back toward her with her back to him because he's such a coward and shot her in the back of the head you know i wouldn't be surprised if he didn't say okay okay, turn around, turn around to get her to turn around like he was about to give her a ring. Absolutely. You know, another thing that may have brought this to a head, and again, it's certainly not psychoanalytical verbiage, Dr. Bethany, I'm sure you're cringing but the fact that uh the victim laura wallen had recently texted the so-called other woman and said hey i want to meet with you i'm sure if

you're in my position you'd want answers to this is not a confrontation i just want to talk to you woman to woman i can't believe they were going to actually fight over this guy i like you know here he's yours i'll send him to you cod keep him for pete's sake but you know obviously the other woman may have told him about this text and he like i gotta do something and this is what he did in the language of laura's text was so kind that's what i was struck by when i read the text you know she said this is what he did. And the language of Laura's text was so kind. That's what I was struck by when I read the text. You know, she said, this is not, when she texted the other woman, she said something to the effect of, I think that you would want answers,

and this is not a confrontation. This is what a kind person Laura was, you know, and I wouldn't be surprised if the fact that it came to a head is not because he was afraid of the discovery or that the women would get jealous or that he would lose the fiance's love or affection. I wouldn't be surprised if it's just because he wasn't, he was going to lose his paycheck. In other words, maybe the fiance had more money or the fiance was supporting him in some way, or that's where he was residing. And so that's where the greatest loss would be. Do you see what I mean? That it's probably had nothing to do with love or affection. It had to

do with where the greatest gratification was. You know, the other thing that I cannot get out of my mind, Nancy, is what the parents must have been thinking over the past 10 years. Their daughter has this boyfriend who's a deadbeat. He works maintenance for a landscaping company. He can't even afford his own phone. He's bouncing around from house to house. Their daughter gets pregnant the father of the baby is not even living with her or providing anything for her what a heartbreak for those parents i mean they've really been suffering for 10 years as they've seen their daughter go through this

with this guy and then to have such a horrible outcome. They have really lived through it. They have really, and I remember, Cheryl, you lived through a lot of this with me because you met me when I was a brand new prosecutor. After Keith was murdered, my parents stood by for all those years saying, please marry David, please, please rush now. Run to the altar. Don't look back. And, you know, I just couldn't. I was too messed up to do anything.

And now after this family has been through all this, Cheryl, now, oh, can you imagine what it's like for them to wake up in the morning, Cheryl? I cannot imagine, Nancy. They have lost a daughter, a grandchild, and again, they knew this man for 10 years. So on some level, I'm certain they cared about him too because she did. So to me, it's more than devastating.

It's more than gut-wrenching, heartbreaking. There's no word for it. There is absolutely no word for just the devil has walked through their house. Well, you know, Lee Egan, right at the get-go, when I found out it was Laura's father called the school and said, Have you heard from Laura Wallen? And they went, No. He thought to ask, did she ask for a sub this is the first day of school for Pete's sake you don't not show up on the first day of school

and when it's your dad when it's your father calling to check up on you and he thought to ask did she arrange for a sub he knew her that well why wasn't it Tessier? Why wasn't her boyfriend looking for her? That right then I knew, okay, this is way wrong. To Lee Egan, reportercrimeonline.com. Lee, what about these text messages? Oh, yeah, one more thing I wanted to point out to Dr. Bethany to think about is her text didn't just say, Tyler has brought me on an adventure with him.

She also said he had her, quote, waiting in a field. I mean, okay, Lee, what about the other texts he sent from her phone, according to police? He sent a text message, I think it was Monday. It was either Sunday or Monday, to her sister saying, I'm 95% sure that Tyler is not the father of my baby. And then he pinned it on a guy that she had not dated in around two years. And one of the biggest red flags was he misspelled this guy's name. And this is somebody that Laura knew well. I saw that immediately.

First of all, first of all, as if Laura Wallen is going to be putting it, why don't you just send an omni to everybody she knows? Oh, guess what? I had the wrong daddy. I'm not totally sure, but maybe my baby is Antoine's and then misspell it. He spelled it A-N-T-W-A- is Antoine's and then misspell it he spelled it a n t w a n Antoine instead of a n t o i n okay e but I'm like okay when I first thought I thought well maybe it's one of those people they give a weird spelling to their name but probably not this is misspelled that was my first thought and then later I saw where Antoine was actually spelled a different way.

She had not seen the Antoine person for several years. And I'm sure the sister knew that. And then she's like, if you talk to Tyler, you know, tell him what a great guy he is. I don't want to hurt his feelings. I mean,

Bethanyany help me but he has just shot the woman in the head she's in a shallow grave out in a field and he's writing about himself from her cell phone help me oh you know the saying criminals are stupid i mean tyler really exemplifies this because not only does he use the deceased girlfriend's cell phone to send text messages to the sister, he doesn't even try to adopt her style of writing. I mean, when the sister received these text messages, it was very clear to her that this was not Laura's writing style. So it was Tyler's writing style. There were misspellings. It was like an odd quality to the text.

I mean, Tyler could not have been more obvious. And when you talk about her, you know, standing in the field, he says, you know, wait here. You're talking about this really low-functioning, potentially low-IQ man who cannot even hold down a job, doesn't support himself, has to ask for a ride to clean up the mess he's made, doesn't have his own cell phone. And yet Laura is completely compliant with him when he asks her to stand in the field. And you pointed out that she probably thought that there was going to be a big surprise that he was going to propose to her. Laura texts to the sister, you know,

Tyler's taking me on an adventure. But my other thought about this is that she's completely under his spell. He is so manipulative that he has really gotten Laura to bend to his will. And, you know, I keep pointing out she was probably supporting him, probably doing everything for him. So he was able to just take her to this field and ask her to stand there in the field while he either retrieved the pistol from his pocket or went back to his vehicle and got it.

And I think that's really the sad part of all of this, is that she had really little to no suspicion about him. We are standing by as we wait for justice. We're trying to find out the results of the autopsy report. We think we know the COD, cause of death, and MOD, manner of death. What we're waiting to find out is, was the baby viable? Because if the baby was viable, that is a double homicide. We now head from Maryland to Tennessee and the shocking and disturbing trial ongoing in the murder of a beautiful young nursing student,

Holly Bobo. I remember when she went missing because she's related to a country music star. And I didn't even know about her disappearance until the country music star contacted us and asked us to cover her missing. And we did. And we started covering it at the beginning. It is now a murder trial. Joining me right now, Shane Dieter, W-A-T-N in Tennessee. Dr. Bethany Marshall still with me.

And Lee Egan, investigative reporter with CrimeOnline.com. Shane, I didn't think the facts could get any worse than the people out looking for ginseng okay i don't even know what they're ginseng okay they're out in the forest looking for ginseng and they find her skull they also found other items that they said were very disturbing the trial in my mind the facts not the trial have just descended into pure hell. And I hope the family is not hearing all these facts. Shane Dietert, WATN, give me the latest.

You know, Nancy, in my 20-something years in TV, I've never heard testimony like what has come out of this trial. Justin Autry was on the stand testifying. I've never seen a witness, a defendant, he'll be tried later, just talk the way he talked in his testimony. I mean, we had to bleed so much out of it. And just the cavalier way he talked about how Zach Adams shot Holly when they realized she was alive he and Zach did drugs together and

he was talking about how they'd been up doing drugs when Zach came by with Holly Bobo in the back of his pickup truck and they went out by the Tennessee River to dispose of the body. And he testified when Zach Adams asked him if he would help. It was just like, he's like, sure, you know, just like you're going to go get dinner with

somebody or something. I just, I was shocked listening to it when Autry was on the stand. It's never heard anything like it. So explain to me his connection to the case. For people just hearing the Holly Bobo story for the first time, Shane, give me, in a nutshell, what happened. Nancy, from what I've seen and heard about this case, Autry and Zach Adams and then Zach's brother Dillon,

they were friends. And from what I've seen from this case is it was a drug-related friendship. Meth. Yes, ma'am, meth. And they talked about morphine. They would make some type of cocktail. I want to go through the timeline. What do we know happened that day, Shane Dieter, the day that Holly was kidnapped?

It appears, Nancy, it was just a normal day. A daughter got up, had breakfast with her mother and was going to go to her nursing school classes. And it looked like it was her routine that she had done, you know, for a while as she was in nursing school. And when she walked out to her car, that's where she encountered Zach Adams. Lee Egan joining me, reporter with Crime Online. What do we know about the day she went missing? I understand that the brother, who was still home, the mother was at work, and the parents were gone. Holly usually leaves that morning, in the morning around 7.45 to go to nursing school. She packs her lunch, takes a little lunch pail, goes out to the carport to get in the car.

The brother hears a ruckus and goes out. He sees, to my understanding, someone dressed in camouflage and they're walking into the woods. Now, see, that would have sparked my interest right there, why are you walking in the woods when you're supposed to be going to school? But he thought it was holly bobo's boyfriend and it was only later when a neighbor heard a scream called holly's mother at work that the mother called the home and said find holly he goes outside he finds blood in the garage and the mother says call 9 911. He calls 911. Lee Egan, what happens then?

That's when it becomes kind of a mystery because, of course, everybody's denying they had any involvement except for the Autry guy who's trying to get a plea deal, trying to get out of life. But from what I understand, it was that same day or it might have been the day after there was a man who was, he noticed something wrong on his property, like something was off. And he walked out to a stream and he found a lunch pill. And in court, it was the same exact lunch pill that Holly's mother was holding up.

It matched. So I guess they tossed, I believe that they tossed all her stuff right there or after they killed her maybe it went downstream but yeah she was in she was in trouble immediately you know uh what we have heard is that these meth freaks kidnap holly they rape her repeatedly and video the rape shane deeter at w-a-t-n as i don't believe that that video has ever been recovered or has it? Nancy, to my knowledge, it has not. Two other men were indicted. The indictment ended up being dropped, and their charges were tampering with evidence, and it was the tape. But to my knowledge, it has never surfaced other than outside this circle of meth freaks.

Dr. Bethany Marshall, please weigh in. I mean, just the fact that we know not, they kidnapped the woman, 21, I think, year old nursing student, her whole life before her. They're doing this at 745 in the morning. You know, I haven't even had a second cup of tea by then. And they're out planning a kidnap at 745 in the morning. And the psychopathy behind videoing while you rape somebody, you know, Nancy, in preparation for this show, I started looking up meth crimes, I just started looking at the research and trying to figure out the mindset of the meth addict. And I read a shocking statistic that 50 to 70 percent of property crimes are committed by people on methamphetamine. That was one piece of research.

The other was some of the crimes I heard, I read about a father of a seven-month-old put the seven-month-old in the freezer so he could take him out later for a snack. A mother of a four-year-old injecting her four-year-old repeatedly with methamphetamine. A 20-something-year-old going into the bathroom of a dollar store, masturbating, eating food that he'd stolen from the store when the employees tried to get him out. He ran into the store, grabbed silly string, started spraying it all over the store. And so these crimes, these acts that these meth freaks commit are so strange. They're in a bizarre, dark world. And one of the first crimes that we covered on when you had the show on HLN was a man who I'm forgetting the term overkill, that when meth addicts commit crimes where there's a homicide involved, there's always an overkill effect because they're so high and they're in such an altered state that they literally kind of lose perspective on where

they are. And I think that's really the only explanatory principle behind this crime, but behind the fact that it was 7.45 in the morning, that they raped and killed her so quickly. And even the fact that the mother, when Clint Bobo called the mother, she said, get a pistol and go get them. It's as if the mother had some growing cognizance of the danger around the house and what these meth addicts are capable of. We are on the case as the Holly Bobo

trial goes on. Nancy Grace, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.