Episode 5: The Good Old Boys Club

- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.

“- Last fall, Ryan and I walked into the office”

of the Columbia County Chronicle and Chief,

the local newspaper, to meet with the editor, Will Laurie. - Here I'll show you around real quick. - Okay, sure, sure. - But yeah, so I started in November 2022, and initially as part times our kitchen,

here's all of our papers. - The newspaper office was on a busy street corner in St. Helens. That day, the newsroom was a mess. People were clearing out their desks,

taping up boxes. Will took us in back to a room where the archives of the 144-year-old newspaper were housed. And right at the front there was a fresh bundle of the newest edition.

- Yeah, and I'm gonna grab a couple of these for-- - This is the new paper. - This is the last edition, the last edition. - And I gotta grab a few of these to send-- - It's the new thing.

- It was the final day of business for the Chronicle and Chief.

“- I'm Will Laurie, I'm the, the last editor”

of the Chronicle and Chief, a newspaper, at least in the recently current form as, you know, the Chronicle, I mean, it's had a couple different names over the years, but it started in 1881, and I guess I haven't gone into the business records to check,

but it's the longest operated business in Columbia County. - The newspaper had been around in some form or another for almost 150 years, and in just a few hours, it would disappear. Even its website would come down.

As journalists, this was hard to see. All that history and institutional knowledge would vanish. The Chronicle and Chief's last issue was filled with stories written by Will and only Will. He was the editor, but also the sole writer on staff.

He flipped through the final issue. - So Halloween time on the front page, and then we have like this St. Hans Reservoir project, this is an article that I had been meaning to do for a little while, so I did that,

and then the St. Hans Police Department is going away from 24-hour coverage as, yeah. - That seems like a very big deal. - It is, it actually, so we post our stories on Facebook, obviously.

- Yeah, but when that went up online, that got like pretty huge, yeah. - As far as our scale of engagements, obviously,

“but I think that one had like more than 150,”

like little angry emoji responses, it was like 180 comments on the thing, and you have people being like, why are you publishing this? The criminals are now going to know to attack.

And I'm like, not them, okay, that's not where my mind would go right now. - You know what I'm saying? - As the newspaper operation was literally being put in boxes, we'll worried that Columbia County had forgotten what a newspaper actually does.

Report facts, put out vetted information, stay neutral, so people can form their own opinions. - Trying to do, I'm trying to help you guys understand that this is the state, the current state of affairs, but you know, without some changes,

there's going to be things that impact your lives.

And people don't always want to like engage with facts, you know.

- Like, like the idea of just like don't talk about it. - Yeah, exactly. - Will was pretty much it when it came to institutional media in Columbia County. There's one news site left,

but it doesn't have an office and employs a single reporter who doesn't live in the county. The day the Chronicle and Chief closed, didn't mean people's appetite for information went away. They just looked for it in new places.

As we've reported on the Zuber case, one thing that's been abundantly clear is that it's very hard for residents of Columbia County to sort out what's real. At your crime 101, we learned that the media

is one of the three parties who typically tell a true crime story. But Columbia County is essentially missing this piece. What they do have is social media. From Oregon Public Broadcasting, this is Hush.

I'm Leah Sittilly. This is episode five, the Good Old Boys Club.

The Chronicle and Chief was Will Laurie's first journalism job

He became a full-time reporter in 2023

“and commuted to Columbia County each day from Portland.”

- I wasn't necessarily told like it's gonna be easy, but I was kind of told more that you're just gonna be kind of like reporting on these just things that happened in small towns. And so I got plenty of experience, lots of bylines,

lots of bylines, all the things that you want as a young journalist, I'd say, but there's a lot more kind of going on as far as people's suspicions or the concerns that they have go far beyond

just like puff pieces that you can just crank out. - Was there a specific story where you like, you wrote something and then that kind of open your mind to like, yes, is a problem or? - Yes, so that's why the Zuber story

was a really interesting one for me. - When we'll start working at the paper, it was clear that Sarah's Zuber's death was still on people's minds, even four years later. In early 2023, a big vigil was planned

for the anniversary of Sarah's death.

“And we'll decide to do a story about the case.”

- And so I reached out to the family and the mom, Rebecca had said, "Hey, we have our spokesperson. "If you can reach out to her, she'll be willing to talk to you." Like, don't worry, she's super friendly. And I was like, "Okay, so I sent her a Facebook message,

saying like, "Hey, I'm a reporter, Jen, Jennifer, yeah." And I reached out to her, I didn't get a response. - The spokesperson was Jennifer Massey, the admin for the Justice for Sarah's Zuber Facebook group. He didn't hear anything back from her,

but kept a reporting anyway. One day, he pulled up the Justice for Sarah's Zuber page on Facebook. - And then I was scrolling through the Justice for Sarah's Zuber page to kind of try and get a little more

background, a little more information about it. And I was scrolling through and I saw a post that was directed to me from Jennifer. - He pulled up Facebook on a nearby computer

“and turned the screen so Ryan and I could read it.”

- Yeah, I did show it to you, but basically like,

so February 19th, 2023 and so. - Will Laurie, thanks for reaching out to me in the Justice Sarah team. I understand that you represent country media, Chronicle and Chief, and then basically she just calls me

in the paper out over this huge post. - She had me even talked to you. - No, no, not at all. And well, this post keeps going and going and then it goes to bold and then all caps.

- Oh yeah, oh yeah. - It's a long, scolding post. So let me just sum it up. Jennifer called Will out for getting in touch with her. She said, if you wanted information on the case,

he should come through all of her Facebook posts and use, quote, "deductive reasoning "to figure out what went wrong "with the police investigation." She said, "People in the community

"thought the newspaper cow-towed "to the district attorney and the sheriff, "particularly in its reporting on Sarah Zuber." And because of that, Jennifer said, there were better things for Will to write about,

like the corruption she perceived at the sheriff's office. That would earn him some trust. Lastly, she asked him to publicly answer a question. Will read that part aloud for us. - And there's something in here.

Okay, yeah. I wonder why Rebecca Zuber's letter was initially posted to the chief and promptly removed. Did the DA or the sheriff ask for that? Citizens would like to know.

If you could please respond, we would appreciate it. Jennifer wanted to know why Rebecca Zuber's letter. The one we talked about in episode three, where she endorsed Jennifer's husband, Terry Massey, for Sheriff, had been taken off the newspapers website.

- Yeah, I'd been full time for less than a month and I'd been at the paper for like two months and not even really reporting full time in the area. So I was like, just taking a back, I guess. I thought about commenting back and being like,

okay, I'm just trying to do my job. I didn't know that anything was wrong.

- I wanna just dwell on this point for a second

because this is important. In her letter to the editor, Rebecca wrote that the sheriff's office had been incompetent in investigating Sarah's death. And so people should vote for a change

and elect Terry Massey. That letter was published, but later, it disappeared from the newspaper's website,

Letters are meant to voice opinions of readers.

They're often political.

“They say stuff like this politician is great”

and this other one is an idiot. So to Ryan and I, it didn't make any sense why that would have come down. And we'll didn't really know why either. It happened before he worked there.

- So I kind of didn't know any of that background. The reason that I guess we took that letter down from what I'm told is that, it had an endorsement of Terry Massey, who's Jennifer's husband for the sheriff election in 2022.

And so the thinking I guess from our editors or publishers at the time was, this is political and we're not gonna publish it. But it was up and then they took it down.

- Publishing and then unpublishing a letter

isn't standard journalism practice. And if Jennifer was saying the newspaper kowtowed to elected officials, we wanted to see the proof. In emails we requested on the Zuber case from the sheriff's office,

“we could see that the editor of the Chronicle in Chief,”

a guy named Jeremy Rork traded emails with Sheriff Brian Pixley. Pixley sent Rork a response to Rebecca's letter to be published. He said, Rebecca's letter didn't quote,

"reflect all of the facts of the case." Rork replied that the newspaper did take the online version of Rebecca's letter down after district attorney Jeff Oxyer stopped by the office. So it sounded like Jennifer was right about the kowtoweding.

Here was the editor of the newspaper saying the DA had a hand in his decision to unpublish the letter. And in journalism terms, it's a five alarm fire when newspaper editors cave to the whims of elected officials.

We reached out to Rork and the publisher, country media, but they declined our request for an interview. In former DA, Jeff Oxyer also declined our request for comment. By the time Will Laurie arrived at the paper, he unknowingly stepped into a community

or some people were pissed off at the media. And Jennifer's post calling them out proved that. - I didn't have an editor here. - Yeah. - Jeremy was my editor and I could send him articles

to review before they get published or things like that. But I didn't have someone just writing the next room who I could go over and be like, "Hey, whoa, I just got destroyed on Facebook. What do I do?"

- I don't know why. - Yeah, so I called him and I was like, "Should I respond?" He's like, "No, don't respond." - Well, it was actually pretty cool about all this. In a way, it seemed like he was expecting pushback

from people in the community. People told him being an outsider was going to be an obstacle to earning trust. Jennifer had roasted him on Facebook. But when the visual world around Will,

like any good reporter, showed up anyway. - I thought, like, all right, if you're not gonna talk to me,

I'm gonna go and do my job, basically,

and I'll report on this vigil, and she's like, "Wow!" I didn't think, like, I didn't think you'd show up basically or I didn't expect to see you. And I was like, "Well, you know, here I am. I just wanted to get the story.

Like, I'm not, I don't have an agenda." - The fact that he showed up in person really meant something to Jennifer. We asked her about that in her office. So Will, I blew him up on Facebook.

Like, why are you keeping matching me? I'm not even gonna entertain this. You are a garbage, news outlet. I mean, it was aggressive. Like, stop messaging us.

At the visual, Will showed he was only there to report facts. - Chronicle, I'm like, I didn't invite you here. And he goes, "That's precisely why I'm here." And we started talking, he said something must, I just got here.

I'm brand new here. Something really bad must have happened here for you to have that type of visceral reaction online to me. And I said absolutely. And I just went into this die-tripe about the fact

that like this is unacceptable. Her mom posted, you know, they publish a letter. Obviously, they took it down. That's non-biased, you know, journalists. Like, we need independent journalists here.

This is garbage, what we have out here. And so he's like, "I want to earn your trust." And so I'm like, "All right."

“I said, "Then I think you need to get DAOX here”

to commit whether this case is open or closed." Because we'll told her he'd look into the status of the case. At that time, no one really knew whether it was open or closed. He stayed for the visual and went up to Jennifer to say goodbye at the end.

that I was kind of telling you that really kind of crystallized

“in my mind, like there's definitely a skepticism”

and distrust of media at a pretty baseline level. She said something along the lines of, it's good that you're here because for the longest time, everyone's thought of these papers in the pocket of the sheriff, or something along those lines.

And so I said something along the lines of, like, "Well, we're in the pocket of the sheriff." Like, "I haven't gotten my check yet." Her eyes like got pretty wide and she kind of gave me this, like, "Look, and I was like, "Oh, I'm joking."

Like, "I'm kidding. "I'm not in the pocket of the sheriff." That was a bad joke, like I'm sorry that I said that. - And it seems like very clearly a joke, though.

So, it's just that people really believe that's true.

- Yeah, well, and her reaction, like, as soon as I said it, just the way that she kind of took a step back and looked at me, I, not the right audience to make that joke.

“- Jennifer Massey was the leading voice in the community”

around how Sarah's death investigation was handled. And she had just as many criticisms of the media as she did the police. Will smoothed over his bad joke with Jennifer and went on to do a series of stories about Sarah's death

and the reaction to it. One story reported that Jennifer and her group of citizen slues had presented their theories about the case to the sheriff's office. At the end of that article, Rebecca Zuber provided a statement.

Thank you, Jennifer Massey, and the justice for Sarah Zuber team. It was all proof of God's words and action, she said, to love your neighbor. Will did his best, but he didn't really have enough time to change people's perceptions about the media

before the paper closed. He listened to people, hand-delivered copies of the paper, to people's homes.

“Again, and again, he told us he heard versions”

of what Jennifer said to him that day at the vigil, about a perception that there was corruption throughout the county, about a good old boy's club. But in his year of working there,

he could never quite get his arms around

how to report on that. - To go back to that good old boy's club, thing that you referenced earlier, that is something that I have definitely been told by a lot of people, and it's something

that I'd never feel like I was able to like untangle in a way that would have made any sense. - When the chronicle and chief announced it was closing for good, some people reached out to see how they could help, but the decision was made.

The paper just wasn't profitable, and the publisher shut it down. Columbia County is like so many small communities across the West. Traditional newspapers are dying because of disappearing revenue. News media shrinks when, I don't know,

a newspaper appeases power brokers, because it's afraid of losing more revenue. And that pisses off, it's already dwindling list of readers. Then, reporters stop showing up in person to document what's happening.

The community forgets what journalism is. - A safe, stable home changes what's possible. For kids, for families, for entire communities, habitat for humanity, Portland region builds affordable homes in our community,

so people can focus on learning, working, and building a brighter future. Join habitat for humanity at the free hope builder lunch on April 22nd, and learn what's possible when we show up together.

Learn more at habitatportlandrigin.org. - I talked to someone who said something along the lines of, it's sad to see you close, like I thought you did a good job, but unfortunately, this is a community

that just relies on Facebook for their information now. - Okay, so let's talk about Facebook groups. - So talk to us about what they are, maybe give you the answer. - Yeah, this community, I'd say almost primarily shares news through Facebook.

- It's been like this for decades, social media, and particularly Facebook has moved into those communities as traditional media shrinks. Will show to us the Facebook groups or the information flows now in Columbia County?

- Mark's Justice for Sarah Zuber, Concerns Citizen, Women Own Business, Rainier Community Bulletin Board. - We were pretty blown away by the sheer number of Facebook groups in this area.

Just as an example, he showed us how many groups focused on the 6,000 person city of Clatskin Eye,

There's like, Clatskin Eye Bulletin Board uncensored

with a seat belt.

“But so that means is that it's uncensored,”

but there's still some like guardrails on, and there's always-- - What is uncensored? - That's the most thing that needs to be censored. - So here's like the group rules from the admins.

So you can see like threats to others, not allowed, no name calling. - So we're censoring threats. - Okay, no animal sales. - No animal sales.

But then, let's see if I can find the Clatskin Eye without uncensored without a seat belt. - Oh, so there's a with a seat belt without a seat belt. - Clatskin Eye uncensored Bulletin Board no control for this.

- Oh, okay, okay. - Or, and it's private, so I don't-- - So I'm guessing these are like offshoots from each other. - Yeah, like someone's like fuck this group.

I'm making my own-- - Right, or yes.

“Someone probably like posted on Clatskin Eye uncensored”

said something that was like censored. And then they're like, what? Like, well, I'm gonna make one where you could just say whatever you want. Like--

- Far in a way, concerned citizens of Columbia County is the most popular group in this area. It has over 40,000 members. If they all lived there, that would be equivalent to 75% of people in Columbia County.

I've never seen a newspaper that could reach that percentage

of its audience. The New York Times is the most popular newspaper in the nation. It bregged when it reached 11 million subscribers. That's about 3% of the U.S. population. As the newspaper and Columbia County died,

groups like concerned citizens and justice for Sarah Zuber basically replaced it. But the information they were putting out was invented. They didn't aspire toward neutrality. Like Truman Capote before them, the groups told the story,

they had decided on in advance that something had gone very wrong with the Sarah Zuber case. It was a rainy Saturday morning when we arrived at a house in St. Helen's and rang the doorbell. - Hi. - How are you?

- I'm Leah. - Hi. - Okay, so questions.

- You guys have any sort of like something

that you can show me where you're really from? - Oh, yeah. - Yep. - I sure might be. - I did too. - We were at the home of Theresa Kipers,

the admin of the concerned citizens of Columbia County Facebook group. And she was asking us for ID. Honestly, good honor. I'm surprised more people don't do that.

Inside her living room, there were toy cars, kids books, and Barbie DVDs lying around. On one wall, there was a sign that read, "My house isn't messy, it's Graham Kids approved." Her husband sat in a chair reading on his phone.

Kipers takes care of her Graham Kids all day, but she says running concerns citizens of Columbia County is her other full-time jog.

“Remember, it was in 2012 or 13, when it first started.”

And somebody posted on a bicell trade page, and they said, "Does anybody know where that siren is going?" And somebody said, "That's not what this page is for and they went off on them." And so my friend and I were sitting in church

were like, "Wouldn't it be funny if we started a page that said, you know, you can post here for the sirens?" And I was like, "Oh, I'll do it. I don't have any time on my hands." So I started it and I invited just five family members.

And then within the week, it was like a hundred. And then, as soon as we hit a thousand, I was laughing. And I was like, "Oh, this is funny, ha ha ha." And now here we are, like, 35,000. And we've had--

- Some days, there are more than 100 posts to her page. Missing dogs, found dogs. Job postings, local events, new businesses. And the house in the road. She has a pretty serious set of governing rules for the page.

No politics, no name calling, no bullying. When she enforces those rules, sometimes people have wild reactions. She's had stalkers. Once a guy showed up at her house with a gun.

But she remains undeterred. - Take your trash talk somewhere else. That's what I cannot have on the page. And I'm constantly like, OK, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. - How much of your time is it in my gosh?

It's literally full time for no pay. It's literally full time. There's times when I'm up, sometimes if there's something going on.

I will stay up sometimes 24 hours so that I can watch and make sure that it's being taken care of that comments or being taken care of.

She said she never meant to get into the business of moderating Columbia County's

Greek chorus.

“What have you learned about Columbia County since running this page?”

I've learned that Columbia County knows your business before you know your business. That's for sure. - Kipers does a lot more than delete posts and moderate comments. She tracks down missing items for people. She can exchangeers who wouldn't otherwise have met.

There've been a number of times she's removed posts. Like if she believes something is a baseless rumor or someone violates one of her rules. In a sense, she's a lot like a one person hyper local community newspaper. Around town, people of Aster for autographs told her husband, "Hey, you know you're married to a celebrity, right?"

That'll make Skipers scorn. She said she's not doing this for any kind of cloud. I can't think of any engagement with a news organization like that that the public has. It seems like a huge responsibility to be having this.

“Do you feel like you are the media here?”

- I don't really like filling that way because to me this page is the community's page. I started it, yes, great, but it's not my page.

And I will always say that it is the community's page.

I don't know, I just failed different about it, I guess. When everybody's like, "No, it's your page, it's not my page, it's our page." I feel like it's a collaboration, I want everybody. She gave us an example of what collaboration looks like. She said a few years after Sarah died, she got some text messages from Randy Zuber.

They didn't know each other, and she'd only heard bits and pieces about the case. - Sarah's dad actually reached out in text messages and asked me if I would put it on the page because they didn't have Facebook at the time. And so I have all these messages from clear back when it started. And I said, "Okay, write me up everything that you want, I need it in your words."

Like, "I don't want to be, I don't want to miss something, I don't want to word it wrong." You know, exactly how you want it.

“And so they were in the process of working that.”

I have all the text messages from just the information that he wanted me to know kind of in a quick way. And what was missing and what he thought they did wrong, what they missed. And I said, "Okay, write it up." Randy and Rebecca Zuber don't have social media, so Kipers posted what Randy sent her. She didn't write an article, like a journalist would, she didn't file records requests

to get more information about the case or ask questions of the sheriff, but she did want to make sure this grieving father's words got to the community accurately. Our interview with Kipers turned it to an unexpected conversation about what modern media looks like. An ideal world journalism is supposed to be a check on power.

Kipers are supposed to advocate for those without a voice. On her page, Kipers doesn't allow people to make fun of homeless people or people struggling with addiction. She has no patience for it. She's driven by some of the same goals as Will Laurie.

Get the information, put it out there so people can make decisions. "I mean, do you consider yourself a journalist or a part of media?" "Oh, heck no, I..."

I mean, it's just something, I've never thought of it.

I'm just, I don't know, I just consider myself just somebody who literally created just a Facebook page. It's just not a big deal to me. It's just, it's just like a Facebook page that you create just for your personal self, and you just have friends on it.

"I mean, it's just a couple of friends on it." "Just a couple of friends on it. I have said, you know, if I got a dollar for everybody that asked to be on it, I would have a couple dollars." "All right, yeah."

"You would have $35,000." "Well, I mean, it's a couple." "I mean, I appreciate that." Here was Kipers saying, "I'm no journalist. But the more she talked, Ryan and I were saying, kind of seems like you're at least journalism

adjacent." "Oh, my great. If somebody asked me not to say something, I'm not going to say something. If the one thing that I will hold is whatever, that's my, that's my morals." "I mean, you're operating the way you're describing, you know, we call it a code of ethics.

It's basically the same thing. Oh, like, we have standards, and there are things we don't do. And if somebody says, look, I'm going to give you some information, but you got to keep my name out of it. We protect our sources, and we take it to our grave.

And I constantly have people come to me and just say, "Hey, we post this anonymously."

And I just think, how do all these people that don't know me, and never met me, how do

“you trust that I'm going to post this anonymously and not say your name?”

"Well, you've built trust over time." Will Lori told us, "He wasn't sure he ever got the trust of people in Columbia County through his reporting at the newspaper." But tens of thousands of people trust Theresa Kipers as a source of information. She's accomplished that by being consistent with her rules around decency, and making space

for all people in the community. At the same time, running concerned citizens of Columbia County has opened her eyes to issues

the community has, the way gossip spreads, the ways certain people are treated by police.

As we talked, she shared with us that her sister struggled with substance abuse. She died in another Oregon County under strange circumstances. Kipers felt like the police disregarded her sister because she was an addict. So when she heard about Sarah Zuber's death, her mind went right back to her sister. "Would it surprise you if investigators didn't do a thorough job?"

"Absolutely not."

“"Yeah." That's what we're trying to figure out. You know, I'm sure you know, but in”

case you don't, they've sort of concluded like she died of hypothermia and alcohol. "Yes, and that's what I'm sick and tired of hearing. I'm sick and tired of hearing. She was a young girl who was drinking. It was probably her fault. She just fell. She was drunk. She was a stop for complaining the victim." As we've reported on Sarah Zuber, the prevailing theory that we've been told is that

she died from drinking and hypothermia. The police told us no, they don't think. She just laid down drunk on the side of the road and died. But then again, they don't have another theory. And that chafed Kipers. She felt like they were saying Sarah was responsible for her own death. She didn't buy that. At the end of the day, Kipers is sort of a mirror image of Kipodi, where he was an outsider, parachuting in on a new community.

She lives with the people she covers. She knows this place. She sees thousands of posts every week. She knows way too much about Columbia County to believe Sarah laid down on the side of the road and died. "There's some dark secrets and issues in Columbia County that really we need to get to the root of. We need to get to the bottom of and there's some things that need to

happen in Columbia County. We need to fresh dark."

“Soon, a dark secret would come to light in Columbia County, we saw exactly what Kipers”

meant. It was a cover-up so explosive, it would affect everything we thought about what could have happened to Sarah Zuber. When Ryan and I sat down with Will Laurie, the last editor of the Chronicle and Chief news paper, we talked for almost three hours about being a journalist in Columbia County. And he brought up a scandal that played out at St. Helen's High School in 2019. The same

year Sarah died. "This guy, Kyle Roblozky, was a track coach there and he just did some absolutely horrific abuse, just an awful, awful story." In early 2024, Will wrote a story about how that coach was sentenced to prison for grooming and sexually abusing a 17-year-old student. In a lawsuit, she's referred to as Jessica Doe. Doe alleged that the school district knew about her coaches' abuse of other female students

long before her time. The district settled the case and paid Doe, $3.5 million dollars.

"I talked to the lawyer that represented, but he had said that the case was one of the most shocking examples of like state allowed danger to children just based on the timeline of events and how the staff, district staff knew that this guy posed a danger to students and just didn't

because of some TikTok videos. "My former history teacher Kyle Roblozky was arrested and convicted

“of assay." In these videos, a guy with a beard talks straight to the camera, pointing to Will's”

article in the Chronicle and Chief about the case. "They reached a settlement of $3.5 million dollars

the largest settlement of this kind ever in the state of Oregon and good for her for getting that money. But that's not going to have the impact on the school that you would expect because all of that money is being paid by the district's insurer. Those consequences aren't being passed on to the district." This TikTok influencer is named Doug Weaver. He lives in Missouri, but he grew up in Columbia County. And in the videos, he put up photos of the St. Helen's school district

superintendent. "And Scott Stockwell is still the superintendent. He's still there and that's

wild to me and it wasn't just Stockwell. Everybody knew. I knew that Roblozky was a risk to students

“in 2006 everyone in that school knew. There are a lot of secrets that didn't get made public”

because of that settlement. Just because one predator was caught does not mean that the environment that protected him has been changed." Doug Weaver's TikTok videos blew up. They went beyond viral, with hundreds of comments where people alleged more examples of abuse at the high school. At one point, the principal of St. Helen's High said people shouldn't share the TikTok videos, because what happened was in the past. But that only further inflamed people. Weaver kept making

videos, a flood of new allegations came in. And by November 2024, police arrested two more teachers

on charges of sexual abuse, and the students staged a huge walkout and protest. As the months rolled by, even more allegations came. The superintendent was fired, and the principal faced criminal charges for helping hide the abuse. When Will Murdoch is article, people didn't really react to the news. But when Weaver's TikTok videos came out, the damn broke on the story. The community couldn't stop talking about it. We decided to get

on the phone with Weaver. So yeah, I'm not a journalist. I'm not a journalist. I'm not a reporter. I just made some videos talking about some experiences that I had in high school. And it started getting shared around the high school. And I think Sarah's Uber didn't go to St. Helen's high school. She was home schooled. But we knew by the time we spoke to Weaver that Columbia County as a whole, kind of operates like one big town. We thought Weaver could help us understand the larger culture

of the place. And if young people in this community were in danger, because of that culture. Some of the younger people don't understand this concept of just being silent about something

“because that's what you do. And so as they started sharing things around, they started contacting”

me a lot about things that they were experiencing. And I did make some of those reports. And I was very serious about making those reports. But when I did them, I removed everyone's names. I did them in a way that no one could actually get the information and Leslie talked to me to make sure that the people who were investigating had to talk to me and couldn't go to those students and couldn't ruin their lives. Weaver told us he inserted himself in the middle of all this simply because he knew

the students making allegations needed some level of protection. They were sources who needed someone to speak on their behalf to hold power to accounts. I just had a feeling that these students they're going to come talk to me. They're going to tell me this information. They're going to tell me they're being abused. I'm going to make the report. The report is going to go to someone at the school district. And they're just going to go to these students and they're going to get

in trouble for their social media use. They're going to get in trouble for making these reports. They're going to be having rumors spread about them throughout the school. They're going to have teachers treating them poorly. The administration's going to treat them poorly. They're going to have repercussions against their parents. It's kind of uncanny that you said, if we don't do it this way, these reports will get buried and people will get retaliated against that you really like

knew the difference here is that you knew that about Columbia accounting that that was possible.

here in this in this situation is that you are of that place. Weaver isn't a journalist, but he's

someone who understands the way this county runs. He grew up here. He saw a problem and he thought he could fix it by broadcasting it. It was the same impulse Jennifer Massey said she had when she put the

“Zuber records on Facebook last 10 years. So I got out of Columbia County and I think getting out of”

Columbia County gave me a different perspective that there were a lot of things growing up the seemed super normal that I learned quickly or not that normal. He was overwhelmed with comments on his videos. He could see this problem was both deeply present and incredibly old. Jennifer Massey

made the good old boys network here, some like people who run things behind the scenes and do

each other favors. That was on display when the DA could show up at the newspaper and Rebecca Zuber's letter could get taken down. Weaver pointed out another version of it at the high school. So the good old boys networking Columbia County is not even a secret. It's not even something that

“they try all that hard to hide. I remember when I was younger in the high school hearing about”

certain teachers a group of teachers calling themselves the good old boys. Also with it being such a small community with people being connected the way that they are that you might have this high school teachers connected to the principal who's connected to the superintendent who's connected to the school board member who is the county commissioner who's connected to the sheriff who's connected to the who knows. It's so interconnected that everybody has a story with

everybody and you just don't know what those stories are. Columbia County has a lot of secrets but pretty much everybody knows them. They're all open secrets. They're kind of open secrets. Everybody knows that there's there's corruption going on like but it's like you can't say it out. You can't just like really say it. Saying the quiet part out loud in Columbia County could mean facing consequences. Your kids facing consequences. Weaver said there's another element to all of this. Something

to reset Kipers hinted at too. That even if you get the guts to speak up and say something, there's a good chance nothing will change. There's corruption everywhere. People do this everywhere. This is just how people are. This is just how institutions are. This is this is just reality. When Jennifer Massey took up Sarah's case for the Zubers, she was acting as the community and saying you can't trust the institutions to solve this. They're corrupt. And now the social

media power brokers in this county were telling the same story. Corruption is everywhere. It's in the schools. It's in the police. It's in the people who own the local newspaper. It sounds conspiratorial but there's also some truth to it. Weaver was pretty up front with us that he's not the media and doesn't want to be. He felt he had to do what he did because no one else was doing it. But there's an irony to his videos. He points at Will Laurie's story about abuse at the high school

in the background. When the traditional media outlet wrote about what happened, people moved on. No one bought the paper and it shut down. But when weaver put the story out on TikTok from the zerry, things went crazy. So in this true crime story, the media isn't a newspaper with an office. It's the justice for Sarah's Uber Facebook group. It's concerned citizens of Columbia County. It's a guy on TikTok and Missouri. It's the community itself.

Do you consider yourself a journalist now? Do you think you'll do more

“types of no projects like this? This isn't fun. No. I think that I cross the line into journalism”

for this. I don't want to stay there. Weaver said he has a video of him splitting wood that got

13 million views. Content like that is a lot easier than breaking open a child sexual abuse scandal.

So he'd rather go back to that. Sarah's Uber died in this environment. A place where the media is Facebook moderators and TikTok influencers who are simply doing what they think will help.

would say anything. She died in a place where the district attorney comes to the newspaper and says,

“"Take the litter of that grieving mother down and they don't show them the door."”

She died in a place where facts are disseminated by a woman while she babysits her grandkids and a journalist loses his job. It was starting to make a little more sense

why this case was so stagnant. Everyone was so busy repeating rumors, protecting people, or playing

politics, the good information got lost or overlooked. Still, it felt like we were getting close to figuring out this place's secrets. But uncovering them was going to take every journalistic skill we had. I mean, if you get a lead, you follow that lead, but it can be harder sometimes when you're dealing

“and say with informants. That can be harder. I think I know what we're talking about. We got a record”

from the St. Helens Police that they, I want to say, like in the late December of August and

a couple of people met with two informants. Is this what we're talking about? These are the kind of things that hurt an investigation. That's next time. Hushes reported written and produced by me, Leah Sittilly, and Ryan Hass, music by Joe Preston.

“Our editors were Sage Van Wings and Anna Griffin. Steven Craig mixed this episode, and the”

lead Silva was our audio engineer. Our show art is by Dana Ryerson, photography by Christina Wens Graff. Additional art and marketing guidance from Van Kooley and Jennifer McCormick. Tony Shick fact checked this episode. Legal review was by Rebecca Morris. We had public records assistance from John Bial. Website production for this series by Suk Jot Saw. Thanks to Johnny Audinland, Peter Frick Wright, Jen Chavez, and Tony Shick for helping shape

this series. Thanks to all the members who make podcasts at OPB possible. Visit the hush homepage on OPB's website at OPB.org/hush. You can also email us with tips for future reporting at [email protected]. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Or just tell a friend. It helps the show grow and is a great way to support our work.