True Crime with Kimbyr - 23, Pregnant, and Murdered: The Chilling Case of Hannah Zehner Brim: Part 2

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

In Part 2 of this heartbreaking case on True Crime with Kimbyr, Kimbyrleigha continues the search for justice for Hannah Zehner Brim. As investigators uncover shocking clues including a suspiciously burned car and conflicting statements suspicion begins to mount. Who was the last person to see Hannah alive? And what do the disturbing pieces of evidence really reveal? Kimbyrleigha unpacks the inconsistencies hidden relationships and rising tension in a case that’s far from straightforward. The deeper the dig the darker it gets in this emotional second chapter of True Crime with Kimbyr. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Even though Chad said he loved Hannah, he had a motive to remove her from his life. The very next day, Tom Wolland's emergency order went through, and he got access to Hannah's texts, her phone calls, and her social media accounts. The very last call she made were on January 19th. Remember, the 19th was the day that she allegedly saw both Nelson and Chad. These last two interactions were short messages to someone named Rebecca Threadgild and they were sent at 2.10 p.m. and 2.36 p.m. Hannah had also texted a friend named Abrianna that day, who had called and texted multiple times at evening to see how Hannah was doing, with no response from Hannah herself.

In Hannah's photos, Mullins found selfies taken on the 19th, and she was wearing a plaid shirt and spending time in her silver Toyota with a woman who Mullins identified as Abriana. Her name was Abriana Sutherland. Abriana and Hannah met at Santa Fe Community College, where Hannah was currently completing her degree, and they were close friends. Abrianna willingly sat down with the detectives and told them everything she knew.

Abriana and Hannah hung out on the 19th around noon, and Hannah confided in her that she was feeling very upset about her romantic life, but she was pretty set on still divorcing Chad. Abrianna listened as Hannah drove her across town and dropped her off at work. Then around 1 p.m., Hannah sent another text to Abriana, and she texted back, saying she was busy at the moment. She promised she would call Hannah after she got off her shift. Later that evening, Abriela kept her promise, but that follow-up call went straight to voicemail. Now, she figured Hannah was probably just busy, and she let it go. Abrana didn't know that Hannah was visiting Rebecca. She didn't even know who Rebecca was.

So was Rebecca a false persona? Had Hannah been lord somewhere? Who was this Rebecca person? Well, it turns out, Rebecca Threadgilt was someone Hannah knew from high school. Now, they had been friends, but they had lost touch for a long time, probably the past, probably the past five years. Hannah had just reached out and recently reconnected. So Sheriff's Deputy James Parker looked up Rebecca's information and gave her a call. Now, since Nelson mentioned Hannah meeting up with a dealer,

it seemed like this Rebecca person was probably that person. She was only 23 at the time, and maybe Hannah went to go make a visit to her that day. Rebecca lived in northwest Alachua County, basically in the middle of nowhere surrounded by dirt roads. Not a very easy place to navigate, a place that you could get lost, or you could be hidden if something went wrong. When questioned over the phone, Rebecca had a lot to say.

And after hearing her story, investigators wanted to bring her into the station for further questioning. And I have footage from Rebecca's interview where she's sitting in a flannel shirt and a beanie. Rebecca said, the plan was for Hannah to drive over to her house around 3 p.m. Shortly before that, Rebecca happened to just glance out her window and she saw Hannah arriving early or so she thought. She saw a car that was parked on a dirt road. But what was weird was that all four doors of that car were open. And there was no one in the front or back seats.

It just looked empty. So from Rebecca's house in her vantage point, she couldn't see anyone in the area around the car, so she assumed it was just abandoned, but that didn't make sense because it wasn't there earlier. So here she was walking over to this car to check it out, and as she got closer, Rebecca got the shock of her life.

A man just popped up from the outside of her life. opposite side of the car that she couldn't see and he shouted stop we're having sex she told investigators that she was certain the guy came up from the ground like he was on the ground behind the car not in the back seat he was a white male in maybe his 20s maybe early 30s average build very dark hair and a beard that's a pretty vague description and it actually matched the description of multiple people in Hannah's life including Chad and Nelson yep they both look similar But it's not every day that you stumble across a couple getting intimate in broad daylight behind a car, and Rebecca felt awkward.

She was embarrassed, and she was the non-confrontational type. So she just turned around, she walked back to her house, and she let them have their privacy. It wasn't any of her business. But a minute later, she received a text from Hannah that said, forget it. Apparently, they weren't meeting up anymore. Now, at this time, Rebecca had no idea what car Hannah drove since they hadn't seen each other in years. and people flake out all the time. So she figured Hannah just wasn't coming anymore

and she went about her day. She wasn't connecting the car she saw and the intimate encounter with the man to Hannah at all. And later Rebecca checked outside to see if the people in the silver car were still there, but the car was now gone. Rebecca didn't think anything of it

until she was sitting there being questioned at the Gainesville Sheriff Station. Now when shown a picture of Hannah's 2003 Toyota Camry, Rebecca confirmed that car looked very similar looked very similar to the one that was parked outside of her house. And as they started having her described this guy in more detail, now they're doing a composite sketch. The reality of the situation kind of dawned on her.

She had witnessed an event that possibly led to her friend Hannah's disappearance. Imagine knowing that you're witnessing that. It was heartbreaking thinking that maybe if she was aware of what was going on, she could have done something. Now, at the same time Rebecca was at the station, detectives got a lead. they got a tip from Nelson Armis, the VIN guide that they talked to earlier. He wanted to help them out by giving them more details about what he and Hannah did on January 19th.

He said that Hannah had him really worried, and he would love to give them a tour of where him and Hannah drove early that afternoon after she dropped off Abriana. At 1.30 on the 19th, Nelson said that Hannah picked him up, and they went to Florida Motel. And that is when they started to argue about her substance use, except this time, Nelson, Nelson kind of backpedaled on his claim that Hannah was using pills.

Remember when he said that she was going to a dealer to do pills? Well, now he was like, no, it was only powder, not pills. So they wondered if Nelson was ever telling the truth about Hannah's alleged use. After all, Susan and Art felt that Hannah was trying to turn her life around, that she wasn't using anymore, especially because she was pregnant. So could he have made this up? Could the things related to that be someone else's? Could it be his?

was Hannah maybe the one mad at Nelson for using? That seemed a lot more plausible. But Nelson said that he and Hannah argued and in the heat of the moment, he left the hotel room. And according to him, he walked away down Southwest 13th Street. But Hannah got in her car. She drove up next to him. She rolled down the window and she said, get in

so we can have a proper conversation. And he said he agreed. And they drove to Highway 441 outside of Gainesville. And when asked why they were even hanging out to begin with, Nelson admitted he was seeing Hannah. Remember, he's a married man. Essentially, he was having an affair, and he said that he deeply regretted it. He said he had a falling out with his wife, Bridget, and this was him quoting.

Okay, I'm going to quote this for you. He said that Hannah was, quote, a Band-Aid. You know, I was hurting. My wife didn't want nothing to do with me, so I just wanted someone to be there. I never really intended to actually have a relationship with her, end quote. Yikes. It's pretty heartless. Being used. But according to Nelson, Hannah's feelings for him were different. They were intense. And lately, she had lost all interest in Chad, according to Nelson, and wanted to devote herself to him. But Nelson said he was just dealing with his own issues and using her in the moment.

First of all, that's really messed up. And secondly, Hannah hadn't told many people about Nelson. So there was no way to corroborate what Nelson said about their relationship. It could be true, but it could also have been the other way around. Hannah was a gorgeous girl. She had a great personality. She was a lot of fun and could have easily been the subject of Nelson's desire to be with her behind his wife's back. Thirdly, Nelson might have been exaggerating what Hannah felt for him to make himself look good in front of the detectives. But in the car on 13th Street, Nelson said he told Hannah he wanted to end things and that he was going back with his wife.

And according to him, Hannah wouldn't accept that. She got upset and she was so mad that he had strung her along and she slapped him across the face and threatened to tell his wife about their affair. Here's what Nelson said he did. He said at that point, he put his hands in his lap and he tried to just stay as calm as possible before asking Hannah to let him out of her car. He said that she was in tears, that she pulled over and he got out. And then Hannah just drove away.

At that point, Nelson said he had to hitchhike with a truck driver before walking the rest of the distance, which was over 13 miles back to his house. Now, Rebecca was being interviewed at the same time that Nelson was telling detectives this. And his story seemed to check out because they hadn't heard everything that Rebecca was going to say.

If Hannah was obsessed with Nelson or wanted to get back at him for dumping her, that could explain why the VIN was written in her purse. to get in contact with Bridget. But at the same time, the way that Nelson was describing what happened with Hannah made it look like he was blaming her for her own disappearance. Like she just drove off and was never seen again.

Nelson was asked to come into the station for further questioning, and at that point, they made some calculations about Nelson's hitchhiking story. He said he walked by the Waffle House and the convenience store on US 441 at 53rd Avenue and then 13 more miles. That was four hours of. four hours of walking.

They were thinking, what are the odds of people actually hitchhiking in 2016? It could happen, but they were also thinking what Floridian driver is going to pick up a man on the side of the road after all the horror stories we know about over the years? What are the odds of someone walking 13 miles instead of calling an Uber, calling a ride from a friend? Nelson wouldn't have been back until dark. They needed to corroborate this with an actual time of arrival. So Nelson handed over his cell phone willingly, and detectives requested records from his carrier, which would take some time to process.

But a casual look right at Nelson's phone revealed something. He had deleted every single text message between him and Hannah. Kind of odd. But Nelson had a reason. He said, after that argument, he deleted her existence from his phone, obviously not wanting his wife to find them. But there was another thing. It wasn't just Hannah's messages. all of his text messages that he sent to anyone

between January 1st and January 19th have been deleted. And there's just no way in this day and age that someone wouldn't contact anyone for 19 days unless they lost their phone. So they were calling BS, and while I was reading this, I was too. So detectives prodded him even further, explaining that since Nelson was the last person to see Hannah, and she was angry at him that made him a suspect.

And Nelson said that he understood that. But he continued to defend himself. Now, I want you to imagine a police station with all the different interrogation rooms down one hallway. And once Rebecca was done explaining her version of the story to the police, she was leaving. And while she's walking past another room, she spotted the guy who she caught

having intercourse outside of the car. They were practically identical in her mind, and she told Detective Mullins, that's him, that's the guy that was behind the silver car. Mullins looks over at a sergeant, and they can't believe it, believe it, but now they had an eyewitness. However, Nelson and Chad looked similar. Remember that? And they were both innocent until proven guilty. So Mullins cannot depend solely on Rebecca just seeing this guy to find Hannah. So he sat down with Nelson and explained. Rebecca just said, she saw you outside

her house with Hannah's car. Nelson said, I would never touch Hannah, meaning he wouldn't harm her, or cause her to go missing. And he asked at that point to be excused from the interview, since they were now accusing him of something that he did not do something very serious. Circumstantial evidence was not enough to hold him at the station, so they had to let him go. Over the next week, investigators accessed cellular location records for both Hannah's phone and Nelson's phone, and Nelson's phone matched perfectly with his story. His GPS matched up. He had been at the Florida hotel at 1.30 before his phone showed him driving up 13th Street, arriving at a location close to Rebecca's house, riding back to the Waffle House and traveling to his house in Orange Heights.

However, Nelson made a phone call at 3.47 p.m. that pinged off an Orange Heights cell tower. I'm putting this on a map for you if you're visual like I am. And when you line that up with a 13-mile walk, it didn't fit. If he walked 13 miles, he would have gotten in reach of his home cell phone tower at 647 p.m., not 347. So he must have been driving. And that's that's the time. And that's important. Why? Because Hannah's phone GPS followed the same route.

Hannah and Nelson's phones were in the same location at the Florida Hotel, at the Court Services Building in downtown Gainesville, and it showed that Hannah and Nelson traveled in the same direction of Rebecca's house when she was calling Rebecca. Her phone was with Nelson's up to three minutes before her phone was permanently turned off. At 5 p.m., she received a voicemail from Abriana, which

came through the same cell tower as Nelson's phone. I know that's confusing, but to me, just know how crazy it is that cell phones can tell you all of these things. And this was back in 2016, but it seems very clear. Nelson was somehow involved in Hannah going missing. Also, Brianna could corroborate that Nelson and Hannah had been hanging out because Hannah told her. Abriana also said that she crossed past when Nelson actually

saw him that day when Hannah was driving her to work. But at this point, investigators were still trying to figure out what had happened and why. There were just so many holes, it was so frustrating to have to put all the pieces together. But to further poke holes in Nelson's story, Detective Randy Roberts accessed surveillance footage from Waffle House and the convenience store that Nelson said he walked past. And at no point on January 19th did that man walk past those locations. They also downloaded the footage from the court services building

to find Nelson driving Hannah's Silver Toyota. with Hannah in the passenger seat, not the other way around. So how does he explain that inconsistency? A lie? And then there was the missing persons report that the Gainesville Police Department put out on January 29th.

The way that they decided to describe Hannah wasn't exactly who her family and her friends knew. But here goes. It said, quote, she was a known drug user and believed to be involved in prosecution, their words. She was staying at Florida Motel.

Some of her belongings were left behind, but her vehicle and phone are also missing. She hasn't posted anything online. She hasn't gone to see her meth-saccoming dealer, and she missed an appointment to pick up her W-2 form." End quote. They are facts. But presented this way, in correlation to Hannah's disappearance,

it resulted in so many comments and a lot of judgment online. Some people that had known Hannah when she was younger said that it was such a shame. She used to be such a sweet girl. And her father, Art, was adamant that, Hannah was still his sweet Hannah. The Hannah who tagged him in post and took her son horseback riding, that was her.

The reason this information was released was because he thought it might have something to do with her disappearance, but he just wanted her to come home. I can't imagine my loved one being described that way, and I understand those were facts of this case, but why not talk about the way that she looked, what she was wearing last, a beautiful photo of her?

It was just harsh. Nothing about the vibrant person she really was. But Art, Susan, and Hillary were holding on to hope that Hannah was still going to be found alive. And they commented on how much they appreciated the police and their tireless investigation because they truly were working nonstop to find her. In the rush of everything, I sometimes think officers,

they're just trying to do their job, they're not thinking about things, they're not putting in the big picture, and they were just putting out those facts because that was going to help them. They didn't think about the ramifications because they did care about Hannah, and that will become even more. evident. Aside from posting that missing person's information, the Gainesville police were also

using Facebook to uncover things about Nelson's activity when Hannah disappeared. They found out that he posted regularly under the profile Armani Solo, a play on his last name. And on January 20th, Nelson's timeline showed pictures of him with a new haircut and a new beard style. And you know what that could mean? He was changing maybe his appearance to cover up a crime. And then also on January 20th, he publicly thanked a woman named Stacey Hanna for letting him sleep on her couch the night before. Even though Nelson had said that he was at his house. Interesting. When will people learn their online presence matters and it can be easily traced and this was just out in the open? Well, Stacey was interviewed and she said at 9 p.m. on January 19th, she was shopping with a friend at Walmart,

there's always a Walmart and she got a text from Nelson about spending the night. Stacey told Nelson to meet her at Walmart off Waldo Road. And then they walked around together in the store, they hung out at her house, but he wasn't much fun, according to Stacy. He seemed nervous, awkward, and evasive. He said he was having a difficult time, and he spent the majority of their hangout on his phone.

That's kind of strange. He didn't have any outgoing text messages that day, but he did have his phone and he was on it. So was he in the process of literally deleting all those messages in that moment. Detective Mollins and Roberts reached out to Walmart for their CCTV footage. And around 9 p.m., they see Nelson walking through the front doors, wearing a faded gray shirt, black jeans, black converse shoes, and a huge cross necklace.

It was him. And next, they accessed the footage from the parking lot to see how Nelson had got there. And guess what? A silver car turns into the parking lot, parks in the back, and Nelson gets out. And once again, this was circumstantial, evidence, but it sure did look like Hannah's car, and they thought if they could find Hannah's car, then maybe they could find Hannah. Mullins scanned through the next four days of footage, and that car did not move until January 22nd. He had to rewind the footage again and again to find the exact time that car was driven away. He saw another car had pulled into the parking lot. It was distinctive, a flashy Chevy El Camino. It parked about five spots away from the silver car.

Now, it was difficult to see who got in and out, but when Mullins cross-checked this with the interior footage in Walmart, he saw Nelson crossing the threshold again. In Gainesville, there aren't that many El Camino's, so Detective Mullins easily found out who the driver was. One of Nelson's friends. More circumstantial evidence, I know, Nelson apparently asked him to get rid of a silver Toyota. The friend said he didn't know why, but what he does know is what happened to the car. It had been taken to a junkyard where the manager was going to recycle that car for salvage parts before crushing the rest of it into a small piece of metal. Now, I'm not familiar with this process and I'm not a manager of a company like this, but does this happen all the time? Do people just come in and ask for a random car to be crushed?

And do they even check if they own said cars? Now, after getting the name of this tow yard, they rush over there and they find out that luckily the car is. is still intact. The owner willingly handed over the car, which is now missing its headlights, and they scan the van. It belonged to Hannah. They just found her car, which was now deemed a crime scene. Forensics processed the interior, which was surprisingly clean.

It was missing some floor mats, and it was noticeably not full of any trash. And if you know anyone in Hannah's life, they would tell you, she did not keep her car clean. I'm guilty as well. You could always find things like clothing, sunglasses, food bags, and bags of her favorite chips on the floor. She loved sour cream and onion. It was clear. Someone, and not Hannah, someone had gone through that car

and tried to clean up evidence. But they were unable to clean up everything. There were smears and droplets of suspected blood inside that car. On the left side of the trunk, in the well between the cloth material and the metal, there was a dried pool of red, liquid, enough that investigators assumed if this was blood, and it looked like it was, and if it belonged to Hannah, then she had been in that trunk for a long period of time bleeding out.