Episode 6: Persons Unknown

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Thank you. The morning of March 13, 2019 was Misty and Cold in Rainier, Oregon. From midnight until sunrise, the temperature hovered around 40 degrees. Sometime between 330 and 4am, a construction worker drove his pickup down the winding rural road where the zubers live.

He later told police he saw nothing on the side of the road. Around 5.30am, Sarah Zubers' father, Randy, pulled out of the driveway, he took a right out on the road, passing the spot where his daughter's body would be found and hours later. He saw nothing.

Cars kept coming.

At 6.30am, a woman drove down the road to work.

She saw nothing. At 7am, a man walked his dog by the zubers house. He paused and watched a big herd of elk pass by. But again, like all the others, he did not see Sarah Zuber lying on the side of the road. Presumably, people drove and walked by that spot where Sarah lay all morning.

I've seen the photos of where she was found. She wasn't down in a ditch or tucked into underbrush. She was face up, just off the road shoulder. It seems like someone should know something about what happened to Sarah. She should have seen something.

But each theory pursued by the police and the community and to some extent the media has failed to produce a solid answer for how she died. The police can't explain how Sarah ended up on the side of the road. The community, helped by Jennifer Massey, has other theories. She thinks Sarah was hit by a car.

The media, which is in such a state of disarray in Columbia County, has struggled to bring forward new information at all.

“And honestly, as journalists, we were having a hard time finding any substantial facts to.”

One day, Ryan and I stared at a whiteboard in the OPP office where we went around and around about where to take our reporting next. Like, I think we have to talk to the super, it's not that. It's like a lot of people have found this huge answer. And I think--

And we may be-- we're trying to be like, great, explicit, is like, I don't know if I can have a chance. I got, like, I think that that could be when we say, like, for a year, we gave this a pretty good shake, and like, we are at the same spot as everybody else, so maybe there's no answer. We're not saying we're the best, like, there could be other people that can find it.

Like, perhaps there is no answer. I don't know. There's an answer. I mean, there's something happened here, but there's no fucking answer, like, there is an answer. We figured if we were going to stand in for the media in this county, we had to run

down all of the police and community theories to their furthest possible point.

When we did, we uncovered things that have never been revealed about this case.

In our understanding of what happened to Sarah would change completely. From Oregon Public Broadcasting, "This is Hush," I'm Leah Sittilly. This is episode six, "Person's Unknown."

“Before we go any further, I think it's a good time to review the few known facts of Sarah's”

last day. On the night of March 12, 2019, Sarah clocked out of work at 9.31 pm. Katie Zuber texted her older sister and asked her to bring her a diet cream soda. They used to sell them in the bottle at Chevron, but she brought me home a fountain drink, with ice in it, like, a paper coat cups, and that's one thing I'm like, "Where did she go

to get that?" Because there's nowhere in town that has a soda machine that has diet cream soda. Sarah went somewhere to buy that soda, and she got home about an hour later, around 10.30 p.m. then Sarah and Katie got into an argument. We had a little disagreement, and then she went to her room to get her earbuds or whatever,

and I was like, "Okay, I'm going to take a shower, and could you have seen it in her

like go outside, or do you think there was even time for that to happen?" Yeah, I don't think that she would have done that.

“I think that she would have gone on her room and put on her, put her earbuds in and”

listen to music, and then gone out. Like, I really don't think that she would have gone on her room and chucked a bunch of

vodka, and they gone outside, and I never knew her to deal with anger that way.

Katie insisted, Sarah wasn't drunk when she left for a walk around 10.50 p.m. About seven minutes later, Sarah sent two garbled messages to her boyfriend, Fashal, and to a Facebook group chat. Both of those messages were misspelled, so we can't say for sure what they meant. Half hour later, at 11.32 p.m., Sarah's phone died.

Investigators found it wet, and in her pocket the next day. The cops don't know, Sarah's exact time of death, but the time of her phone dying is one theory, and it's one of the last data points they have. 10.12.5 hours later, had known on March 13, Katie found her sister dead. Okay, so that's what we know.

Six months into our reporting, we had spent hundreds of hours reading documents and making phone calls, and one person kept coming up in police reports.

A person who came up when we first talked to Jennifer Massey.

It's probably pretty clear at this point, but there's not a lot that the Columbia County Sheriff's Office and Jennifer agree on. She believes the Sheriff's Office did a lackluster job investigating Sarah's death. But they've both entertained the idea that one guy could be responsible for a hidden run. One day, she brought it up when we were talking to her in downtown St. Helens.

“When you guys went back and saw the audio and the video, I think something's coming.”

I'm going to come up with that for sure. For the car. There's a car in the car. Do you know where you're going? I'm going to make this a fabulous video of the car.

She was referring to the video taken by a security camera on a property down the road from the Zubers that showed headlights going past. Yeah, the one point four miles away. I see. Okay.

Okay. Absolutely. I think that he's, I think he's the person. I think that not yet. My.

Yeah. Okay. Don't say that out loud. But yeah. Okay.

I want you. Okay. I mean, you'll tell us when something or if something happens, okay. Something's happening. I feel like.

Okay. All right. Keep us going. This is going to be an insane like series. This is a wild one.

Back when we first sat down with Jennifer in her office, she shared her hidden run theory,

which she thought was supported by the security camera footage from down the road. We took a closer look at that tape in episode three and realized what Jennifer and her group of citizens lose thought was a video of a car speeding down the road was actually just the footage on fast forward. And there's actually more to Jennifer's theory.

She left like 1050, she used to walk about half miles. So our hypothesis is, which is really good circumstantial evidence is that she left her house, you know, around 1050. She, the way that she was facing probably was on her way back. And we think she got hit 1127.

We think the car was caught on camera, which met, like mathematically works at 1129 because 1.4 miles away, and it's windy.

“And her phone had, it was a Samsung-like track phone that I think she got at Walmart, that”

when we called them, it had no watery pellet, we also found audio footage. The justice for Sarah Zuber group found a tip in the police files. About a guy in Rainier, we'll call Nick. Rainier comfortable using his real name because he hasn't been charged with a crime. Nick has a violent record, and he also has a track record of drunk driving and hit runs.

In the police files, there was a phone called to the police tip line, and the days after Sarah died, the caught Jennifer's attention. My grandson does work crew, and he says grandma, he says I have to tell you something. He says, and he told me what happened at work crew, and I said, well, I said, you know, it really should be reported.

He didn't want to get in any trouble, and I said, you know what, I will report it myself.

This woman's tip was about her grandson overhearing a phone call about another phone call,

“where a woman supposedly said she was in the car with Nick, the night Sarah died.”

Nick was drunk driving down her road. The woman thought Nick hit something, but they didn't go back to look. It's a game of telephone, a call about a call about a call, fourth hand information, but Jennifer thinks there might be a grain of truth there. Yeah, nobody ever interviewed any of these people.

A forensic report from the Oregon Crime Lab came back, that Sarah had green flakes all over her body, right, you know, like our honor body, and they said it wasn't standard paint, but if it was suspect vehicle was found, then she should, you know, be issued be considered. Jennifer admitted this could all be circumstantial. But the more we looked into Nick, the more it seemed like he was a really dangerous driver.

Ryan reached a guy named Don Garten, who Nick crashed into about 10 months before Sarah died. It happened. I'm one of the other windy, wooded roads around Rainier. Could you just tell me what you remember about that? Because I saw it was kind of like a hidden run or something, right? Yeah. Well, what I'll tell you about it. I was coming, I was on my way home

“from work, and I'm not sure. I think it was for 35 o'clock somewhere around here, D.L.”

And I just turned on the last creek road. Well, on the second corner, I just happened to look

up, and I see this guy coming down the road, shitting and getting on the wrong side of the road. I pulled those onto the side of the road as far as I could, and anyway, it wasn't far enough, and he hit me head on. So his grip my front tire off, tore the mirrors off, broke the window on the driver's side, and split around in the road. I imagine four or five times I was walked. Don said he was in shock, but before he knew it, the guy who hit him, Nick was running away.

Looked off, I see this guy get all of the car, it opened up the trunk, grab a bag, backpack thing, and took off running up towards me. Well, when he went, I just looked out the broken window, and, hey, where are you going? Don's okay, by the way. Nick's name also came up when we got another tip. Ryan had called the male carrier, who worked out by the Zubers house, to see if she'd seen anything that day. She said no, but that we should talk to her son.

“This is Ryan from OPV. Hi Ryan, how are you doing? Good, how are you doing, Melon?”

Oh, I got my hands full with two little ones right now. Her son said he was worried about his safety, so he wanted us to call him Jay. Jay grew up in the same rural part of Columbia County as Sarah. Sarah was a friend of mine, from the church, from the Bible camp, and all that when we were younger, so they kind of shook me when I heard that she was coming home. So I wanted to get down to the bottom of it

about Jay, ran in very different circles from Sarah. When he talked to Ryan, he was fresh out of jail for domestic violence and gun charges, but was trying to turn his life around. He said he wanted to share information he heard from a friend about Nick being involved in Sarah's death. The way Jay told the story, this friend told him one night he was hanging out with Nick. And so they ran around, but it was a little fire pit, back yard, and they said something about hitting

somebody while they were drunk, driving, and they were not really talking to him too much, and so he got kind of like scared, I guess. I mean, he didn't talk about it for a while, but if he was afraid to confess that they had hit her or they had done something of the nature of like, you know, oh, actually they could have like hit kill somebody so.

So second hand information, which is better than fourth hand information, Jay said he'd been afraid

to give this information because he has a past with Nick and thinks he's dangerous. It seemed like possibly good information. We couldn't talk to Jay's friend because he died. So we decided that we had to go find Nick ourselves. One day, when we were out in rainier, we started poking around the trailer park where we thought he lived. This is no number.

The eighth must be we don't in the end of it. Oh, okay, how are they doing? 13, 14. It looks like the one that we can't find is eight. 19, we're going to our direction.

Well, how does this make any sense?

We finally figured out which one was Nick's, but when we knocked, no one answered.

We tried next door. Hi, hello. Sorry to bother you. We're, is this number eight? No, it's number nine. I want to say number eight is that one? That's what I thought.

Yeah, she didn't know Nick, but she did know the woman who, according to the police tip, talked about being in the car with Nick that night. Small towns, man, she gave us her info. Turns out the woman in the car with Nick is the mother of some of his kids. They broke up a while ago.

She told Ryan that they were still together in March of 2019.

Sometimes they stayed half hour away in Washington state and they didn't have a car. We poked around a little more, but this hidden run theory was starting to fray. Nick's in prison.

“That's why we couldn't find him that day at the trailer park.”

He was convicted for beating up his kid. We mailed him a letter as a last-ditch effort to get in touch. There's no doubt that he's a terrible driver and a violent person. But a fourth-hand phone call, a second-hand conversation, a home surveillance camera showing, headlights, I don't know.

None of it was really getting us there. I have to just say, Ryan and I have done a lot of investigative work together over the years. We've revealed far-right influences on a Nevada bombing. Uncovered the underlying racism that put a man on death row.

But we've never filed the sheer volume of public records requests on any project,

like we did on this one. We filed requests across Columbia County asking for every record we could find a Nick and on people who hung out with Nick. One day, unexpectedly, all that requesting paid off with some new information. A request we made to St. Helen's Police turned up a police report that connected Nick

to Sarah's death. It was dated December 27th, 2024. The detailed and meeting between two St. Helen's police officers and a paid confidential police informant. The informant told the St. Helen's officers that he had information about Sarah's uber's death.

He said one night, he'd been hanging out at a shady motel with two other people when the Sarah's uber case came up. And those two people said Nick had directly told them that he "fucked up and knew he hit something that night." Later, he said he realized he hit Sarah. It was similar to the story Jay told us, but it was also weird. This was a new report in a case that had otherwise gone stale.

“It seemed like a mistake that we got it. The only way to know was to ask the investigators.”

We called Columbia County Sheriff's Detective Dave Peabody and asked if we could have a chat. When you sit down to interview Detective Peabody, sometimes you got a little warm up a little. You're not recording us, I can't. He doesn't have a lot of experience with the press. I am recording now. I was getting my levels here. We're going to go. Don't record yet. Can we start the interview?

Just a second. I think you liked giving us a bit of a hard time. I think to be honest, you're not recording it. Can I record? Now yeah. Can we record the parts about you? But when we sat down this time, he seemed like he was ready to open up.

Finally. So, kick it off, man. Let's get down to business. We wasted no time once we started talking. We wanted to know about Nick, but we were being careful how we backed into this question. He didn't know we had this report. Last time we spoke to you, you had said you had just gotten new information.

I think we talked in like maybe a year ago, I think we talked in like January, February, maybe?

“I do remember that comment. Did that turn into anything?”

Not yet. We've put for some effort on that. I actually put money out on that.

He was talking about Nick here and paying an informant.

And it was at this point, we decided to stop hiding what we knew. But when you're working with members of the community, whether they be on the good side of the law or the bad, but you know, we don't care where we get our facts as long as they're good facts. I mean, if you get a lead, you follow that lead. But it can be harder sometimes when you're dealing, say, with informants. That can be harder.

“So, 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, Detective, or I don't know if he's a detective officer, Gaston, and a couple people met with two informants about, was that, is that what we're talking about? I didn't actually bring that report, but we can sort it up on. These are the kind of things that hurt an investigation. This report with Nick's name in it was the best lead the police had, as far as we could tell.

Are are we good reporters? Yeah, you're good reporters. You're digging stuff up, but the problem would be that once the case goes from inactive to active, we shouldn't be releasing any facts. We shouldn't be releasing any reports. So that report should not be released. And if it was released, it should come here and be released. It shouldn't be. But the more we thought about this report, the weirder it seemed. The lead detective Dave Peabody is with the Columbia County

Sheriff's Office. It's his case. But this report came from the St. Helens Police Department. And one of the two St. Helens officers in the report is named Dylan Gaston. He is married to one of the leaders of the Justice for Sarah's Uber Group. The very same group pushing this theory that Nick is at fault for Sarah's death. Do you find it? I'll go that he didn't record that interview. And also that his wife is a part of the Justice for Sarah's Uber Group who is very much

pushing. The guy is the guy. I try to keep that completely separate not in my mind. Yes, I know that

“I don't know Gaston's wife. I know Dylan. I've worked with him on cases. He's, I think Dylan is”

very good. Okay. I don't know his wife. I couldn't tell you where he lives. He never done anything

off the job. But as an officer, he's done well. And I've had good outcomes with him. And I enjoy working with him. We asked Peabody why an officer unafiliated with the case. But with a lot of personal investment in solving it, didn't record the interview with this informant. Peabody didn't know why. And was mostly concerned with the information about the informant getting out. I am beyond disappointed. I can't even convey how disappointed I am that that was released to you guys.

Glad you guys know how to do your job. But again, what does that do for the outcome of this? Well, maybe it allows us to talk a little bit more candidly about how viable of a suspect he's seen. At this point, I'm not going to go either way on that. I mean, and then not because I'm holding back on you, it's just I can't tell you he's a focus of anything at this point in time. Is he on the radar? Is he a person of interest? I suppose you could say that. But do I have enough

“to push me over the edge to say he did it? No. You know, has the informant followed through?”

Have we reached out? Yes. Have we had contact? Absolutely. Have we actually put money out? Yes.

This report is still second-hand information, but it shows there really is an active investigation happening.

And yet, it doesn't make a ton of sense at this point. Six years after Sarah died. Because when you look at Sarah's autopsy, there's nothing that screams hidden run. We went back to the autopsy to take another look. Maybe we were missing something. Peabody was only going to tell us so much about their reasons for looking at Nick. We decided to dig further into the medical examiner's findings and understand if a hidden run

was even possible.

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The day after Sarah Zuber died, Dr. Rebecca Millius conducted an autopsy. As a recap, Millius found a couple of hairline fractures in Sarah's neck, high blood alcohol content, and some scrapes and bruises on her body. Initially, she would conclude that Sarah's cause of death was undetermined. Just before 8 p.m. that night of the autopsy, she wrote an email to Detective Peabody.

This is a voice actor reading these emails by the way. Dave, I've looked at her photos and neck

films again, and I just can't fathom how if she were struck by a car and ended up in the ditch, she can have no other blunt force trauma. Those faint purple contusions on her hip and the

“minor abrasions just don't get me there. And she doesn't have enough soft tissue hemorrhage for the”

neck fracture to have proceeded death long enough for her to have brain edema. Millius told Peabody, she'd had other doctors look at her findings, and we all keep coming back to a possible overdose and subsequently body dumped into the ditch. It's weird and concerning. Lab tests would come back negative for drugs. Peabody shared photos of Sarah on the side of the road, and Millius wrote back the next day, doubling down on this idea of a body dump.

That looks less to me like a landing after being struck by a car than a dump, but I suppose stranger

things have happened. On that first full day of the investigation, the medical examiner thought

Sarah's body could have been dumped, which could be one way to explain why none of those people who drove by saw her on the side of the road. Maybe she wasn't there all night. When Dr. Millius wrote that Sarah's cause of death was undetermined, she noted that she would change the cause of death if the police gave her any clarifying information. And she did, 10 months later, she said Sarah died from alcohol and hypothermia.

We wanted to understand what clarifying information she received to change her mind, but the problem was, Dr. Millius wouldn't sit down for an interview. Through a spokesperson, she said she might consider a written interview. Frustrating, but we'd take what we could get. We sent over 16 questions and hoped we'd hear it back. In the meantime, we got another medical examiner to review the reports on Sarah.

Dr. Terry Haddix is a board-certified forensic and neuropathologist who's been performing autopsy's and testifying and cord about her work since the 1990s. She reviewed Sarah's autopsy photos from that autopsy police reports and photos from the scene. In many ways, Dr. Haddix found herself in agreement with Dr. Millius's findings. She also agreed that there was nothing about the autopsy to support that Sarah was hit by a car.

“There was a reference to these small, I believe, like teal colored flakes that were tested”

and trying to figure out what that was and stuff. And I understand what you're saying that it does sound like the cause of death is the alcohol and hypothermia, but what are the circumstances leading up to that? I just wonder if maybe it's possible that her body was down? I mean, it's possible, but it's approval. I mean, you know, the stuff that they're identifying on the clothing, you know, that other things you would want to know is other environments in which

she'd been in. But pretty quickly into our conversation with Dr. Haddix, she said, "There are some things within the autopsy report that I have a little bit of a concern about how Dix wasn't sure about the hairline fracture in Sarah's neck." You know, I have to tell you, I don't clearly see anything on the x-rays that are provided there. And if the call is being made based upon if it's the overall x-rays, you know, that's the one

where it just shows, you know, the head and shows the course of things like that, you know, I certainly don't see anything there. These x-rays didn't really show a clear fracture in Sarah's neck.

Actually, let's stay on head and neck injury. So you talked briefly about this contusion on Sarah's head.

“One question, I do have one question. And because this is on the right side, and she's”

down on the left side, that's exactly what I was going to ask. Yeah, the her sister moved her by any chance. No, so she rolled her, it's just fine to act out. In police reports, we could see that both Katie and the neighbor told the police, they couldn't move Sarah. Her body was too stiff. Dr. Hadix was asking about this because Sarah had a small contusion on the right side of her head,

but Sarah was found lying on her left side, not her right. So, it was another injury that was kind of a question mark. Obviously, we're out from being moved in some fashion by someone. Well, and that potentially raised in the possibility did someone go up and try to move

“her body after she collapsed or something like that.”

So, just to recap, Dr. Hadix didn't think her neck was fractured, based on the x-rays we provided to her, and she had questions around why Sarah had an injury on the right side of her head, but was found lying on her left side. We talked to Dr. Hadix for a long time. She said, "Whatever happened to Sarah,

just isn't very clear." And that's evidenced by the first autopsy, which listed Sarah's

cause of death as undetermined. Would a pathologist ever leave the cause of death, cause or manner as undetermined? If you're just like, "Hey, I don't know if there's enough evidence here to say one way or the other. I would like to hear it. Harry's figure." The child answer is absolutely yes. There are circumstances where, you know, despite death efforts,

“they may be able to identify somebody who, you know, what happens to an individual, or at least”

where that individual might have been known, hours prior to their death, but they can't really narrow down anything that actually happens in the immediate proximity of the death. The thing about saying something's undetermined means that at the later point in time, if more information is brought forward, you can then factor that in and say, "Okay, there are a number of people who will use," they'll say, "The cause of death is undetermined, but the manner of death is

undetermined." And you say something like that, you think, "Oh, wait a minute, y'all know how they're dying, how do you know the homicides?" Well, you then have to take into consideration the circumstances. And so that's more frequently what needs greater investigation are the circumstances, or the scene, or examination of physical evidence, to be able to say with certainty, look, despite this effort, we can't identify anything else that appears to have had a role

in the death and nothing that raises flags like, "Ah ha!" So yes, undetermined undetermined is a very reasonable, is a very reasonable thing. Now, some people think that that's a, you shouldn't have a lot of those, let me put that way. You know, if you're falling back on undetermined undetermined and that means you're not really working hard enough to try to flesh out all possibilities.

Dr. Millius wrote in Sarah's first autopsy that if clarifying information was given to her,

she could amend the autopsy to reflect a different cause of death. It was one of our biggest questions, and it turns out it was for Hattix, too. I'm not clear what happened between October and January. It took about a month, but we finally heard back from Dr. Millius. She provided long, written responses to our questions. We asked Dr. Millius about her communications with Rebecca Zuber in the early days of the investigation. And again, this is a voice actor

reading these answers. I did speak with Rebecca Zuber. She was expectantly distraught and looking for an explanation. I answered questions about findings at autopsy and provided what little information I had at that time. I had been told that Sarah was the victim of a hit and run accident and was listening for any more information regarding that or other scenarios to explain how a healthy young lady without significant injury who reportedly did not

drink or do drugs had died. Millius explained that there was early confusion between what she was being told and what the autopsy findings told her about what happened to Sarah. In the Zuber case,

much of what was initially reported turned out to be incorrect. First, as mentioned above,

Given that context, I expected to find injury consistent with having been hit by a motor vehicle and of significant degree to have caused her death. I found no trauma at autopsy sufficient to have caused death. Nothing even close. Millius underlined those last three words. Nothing even close. She is certain that Sarah was not hit by a car. And from here on out,

what Dr. Millius told us were bomb shells. So hang on. We asked her about why her first autopsy

read that the minor blunt force injuries found on postmortem examination are of degrees sufficient to have caused death. Later, we noticed when she changed Sarah's autopsy. That was changed to say

“her injuries were not of a degree sufficient to have caused death. So, which was it? Were they?”

Or weren't they? Millius explained. That was a typographical error. A typo. Millius said she corrected the typo in the amended autopsy report. But that didn't happen until 10 months later. For nearly a year, plenty of people drew conclusions from that typo, which made it seem like Sarah had injuries that could have killed her. But that's not the worst of it. Then we asked about the neck fractures. Dr. Hadix had said she wasn't clear they were there. And to our question,

Dr. Millius said, "I am 100% certain that the fractures do not exist."

The neck fracture? She says it's not real. Never was real. So while Millius corrected her typo to

say Sarah's injuries were not a contributing factor to her death, she did not remove the mention of this neck fracture. Sarah's Uber's official autopsy still says she had a fractured neck. Millius explained that her office used an old x-ray machine at the time. And she did other x-rays to confirm Sarah's neck wasn't broken. I am apparent, and my heart breaks every time a child comes under my care here. I'm sure I can't come close to imagining the level of grief and anguish

that Sarah's death has brought to her family. I have and still do hold them close in my heart and in my prayers. And again, I am truly sorry for any additional pain caused by the errors in my report. Sarah's Uber did not have a fractured neck, and her injuries were not severe enough to kill her.

Six years later, the medical examiner is telling us she never believed

Sarah's neck was fractured, despite two reports saying it likely was. These reports influence how people think about this case, Jennifer Massey, the police, but especially the Zubers. No one had ever told them any of these details. So one day we met them at their home. We told them how Dr. Millius apologized for the many errors in her report. So Dr. Millius did offer an apology to you for a typo that she made in her original report.

That Sarah's injuries were sufficient to have caused her to die. That was changed in the second

“autopsy. Our question is, what are you going to get your stuff thrown out of the court right there?”

What do you make of her offering that apology now, but not communicating with you? Communicating it to you then? I think it's a lie. She knows it's not a typo. So I, you know, I mean, I forgive people, and I don't, you know, I've moved forward, but I think that's a lie, and she knows it was not a typo. Rebecca Zuber also said she didn't think Dr. Millius was being honest about how she speculated on the cause of Sarah's death in those early days. Millius would call Rebecca

and ask questions. But now, Millius said that it was Rebecca who's doing all the speculating, not her. Was there impression of these conversations that you were putting ideas

“out or that she was also putting ideas out, I guess, because I think now she's trying to say, like,”

oh no, Rebecca was telling me all this stuff, and I was just listening. No, she was asking questions and putting ideas out, like, for instance, the head injury. And, um, and I mean, we were both

Yeah, I had no idea. Yeah, it wasn't the only part of Millius's report that Rebecca

“disputed. I read her answer aloud to the zubers. Dr. Millius said, and regarded the first”

part of your question, yes, I did speak with Rebecca Zuber. She was expected to just draw and looking for an explanation. I recall she shared a theory that Sarah was choked out by a friend. She said Sarah and her friends would play a game where they'd place a forearm around another person's neck and apply pressure to induce loss of consciousness. This was new information, and I could not definitively rule that out as a potential cause of death. That type of hold can

cause death without evidence of injury. I did relay that theory to the detective in Columbia County.

No, that's true. That's not true. And then we explained how Millius said she never believed

there was a neck fracture. She said she is now a hundred percent certain that Sarah did not have a neck fracture, and that she never had a neck fracture. What is one of those based on this to a belief or also scientific studies? I mean, my question is was this ever communicated to you that she did not have a neck fracture? There is no neck fracture. No, it's like the very first day when when we were in the sheriff's office, the very next right away they go,

your daughter died of a broken neck. I heard that cause we were told that there was two neck fractures. And she had said no, it's more like one. I only think that there's one. So I can't

“remember her ever saying there's no neck fracture. But as we read more of Dr. Millius's answers to”

the Zubers, Rebecca took notes on a yellow legal pad. She returned to what Millius said about Sarah

being choked and pointed out another reason she didn't believe the responses. I never said that I

know exactly because I hear that stuff that they do that choking game. Yeah, I've heard about that. I've heard that too. And I had never heard of that before, you know, I don't know a few years ago, I heard about it. And that makes no sense because they did that autopsy right away. Like if anybody had a discussion of the choking game, would not have been later on. That's a great point. They did the autopsy the next day. Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't have even spoken to her at that point? No. I mean, so obviously

there's like huge lies in here, you know, or I guess I shouldn't say that. Maybe it's maybe she is, you know, when you have missing pieces of a story, you kind of just fill in the blanks.

“And maybe that's what she's doing. It's hard to understand how a report could say for six years”

that a person's neck was likely fractured and then a doctor can just say, nope, not true. Detective Dave Peabody was in the room for Sarah's autopsy. He was told about the neck fracture when he was in that room with Sarah's body. We, of course, went back to Dr. Millius with more questions. But a spokesperson for the Oregon State Medical Examiner's office took over for her, said, "Dr. Millius was too busy to answer any more follow-up questions about Sarah's Uber."

We had asked if the Zubers were ever told the neck fracture didn't exist. If there was an autopsy report that was updated to say it didn't exist. And what clarifying information Millius received

in the first place to change her report? They didn't answer any of it. We started to wonder,

what was really going on here? The medical examiner was telling a story about the mistakes in her report that tried to fill in the missing pieces as Rebecca Zuber put in. But those stories didn't add up. The same was true when we looked at the story of Nick as a driver in a hidden run. Jennifer Massey pointed to Nick as the culprit. In our first interview, she told us, "She just wanted the facts." I don't want hear say. I want evidence and whatever they were

decked that just tells me that they were attacking something for a reason and we needed a dig harder. But the facts that supported her theory, Nick was involved relied on hearsay. She made a promise that transparency would solve the Zuber case and put a stop to all this speculation. And while our own reporting had brought new transparency to this case, it still didn't bring any concrete answers. We could see the mistakes that happened. But it didn't tell us what happened to Sarah.

than even the police to get those answers to the Zubers. Because soon she'd be mayor.

“I Jennifer Massey. I Jennifer Massey. Do you saw me swear? Do you saw one this far?”

That I will support the Constitution. That I will support the Constitution? 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 Wing and Anna Griffin. Steven Craig mixed this episode,”

and the Lean Silva was our audio engineer. Our show art is by Dana Ryerson,

photography by Christina Wenzgraff, additional art and marketing guidance from Van Kooley

“and Jennifer McCormick. Tony Schick 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. Voicework in this episode was by Robin L. K. Thanks to Joni Audinland, Peter Frick Wright, Jen Chavez, and Tony Schick for helping shape this series. Thanks to all the members who make podcasts at OPPB possible. Visit the hush homepage on OPPB's website at OPPB.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.