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In March 2019, in the wooded hills above the rural river town of Rainier, Oregon, 18-year-old Sarah Zuber was found dead 400 feet from her front door. Six years later, her family still has no clue what happened to their daughter.

OPB Journalists Leah Sottile and Ryan Haas are reluctant to engage in an investigation that slips into true crime pitfalls. The pair attend True Crime 101 at Oregon State University and speak to professor Justin St Germain — whose life has been impacted by violent crime. They learn who typically dictates a true crime story: the police, the community and the media.

If the third group that tells a true crime story is the media, Columbia County is lacking in this department. The local newspaper is on its last legs and closes after more than 140 years of operation. Facebook and TikTok take over as the primary news sources in the county. We discover how this new type of media is working to take on – and reinforce – a culture of secrecy after a new scandal rocks Columbia County.

If the three parties that tell a true crime story – the police, the community and the media – are failing to find answers for what happened to Sarah Zuber, can robust journalism find out what really happened to Sarah Zuber? The Hush team takes a look at the top suspect to find out how much is fact and how much is simple speculation. OPB also uncovers a dizzying array of mistakes from the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office that may have undermined the investigation from nearly the first day.

When Jennifer Massey became mayor of Columbia County’s largest town, she moved from being one of the leading critics of people in power to now being a person in power. But that move was not simple. Now, Massey is the one facing the tough questions. A bombshell report on the local police leads some community members to raise questions about Massey’s intentions when she took up Sarah Zuber’s cause.

The Zuber family continues to tend to a memorial every day for their daughter, just a few hundred feet from their front door. On the other side of their home is the cemetery where Sarah is buried. For the past six years, all they’ve wanted are answers about what happened to their daughter so they live a life that doesn’t feel stuck. The parties of a true crime story - the police, the community, the media - have mostly failed to deliver those answers. We sit down with the Zubers for a final interview to lay out the facts of this case, and seek some accountability from the people who have let this family down. 

Hush is an investigative podcast from OPB, uncovering the buried truth about critical stories in the Pacific Northwest. In season 2, Leah Sottile and Ryan Haas investigate the 2019 death of Sarah Zuber, and the ways declining local media, citizen sleuthing and a police department that can’t find answers have led to serious rifts in rural Columbia County, Oregon — as well as the damage done when true crime tropes take over.

In an absence of information about the Zuber case, and in reaction to issues around law enforcement in Columbia County, Jennifer Massey - a citizen sleuth and wife of a St Helens Police officer – rises up as the loudest voice of the community on the Sarah Zuber case. Alongside several other community members, Massey starts the Justice for Sarah Zuber Facebook page, using it to push for greater transparency in this case. Eventually, Massey decides to run for mayor of St Helens — the seat of Columbia County — and puts the Sarah Zuber case at the center of her campaign.

Typically, true crime stories tell tales of women killed by the men in their lives. And in the early days of the Zuber investigation, close attention was paid to the two men in Sarah Zuber’s life: her father, Randy, and her 17-year-old boyfriend, Vishal Christian. The Hush team looks at the ways police focused on these two men, and the resulting damage to the Sarah Zuber investigation and the community.

On March 20,1998, police in Salem, Oregon, discovered the body of a 28-year-old Harriet Thompson inside her apartment. Within a week, they arrested Jesse Johnson for murder. Johnson drifted west after a troubled childhood in Arkansas and a stint in prison there. In Salem, he was known around town as a homeless drug user. A random encounter with Thompson the week before she was killed changed Johnson’s life forever.

After spending six years awaiting trial, a jury in Salem convicted Jesse Johnson in 2004. Prosecutors relied on an alleged confession to the murder of Harriet Thompson that Johnson made to a fellow drug user named Donald “Shorty” Blocker. But the jury did not hear the full story. If they had, they may have had doubts about the police investigators at the heart of the Johnson case: Detectives Craig Stoelk and Mike Quakenbush.

Salem police in the 1990s began to crack down on drug users. At times, their efforts turned deadly, and regularly targeted people of color in the mostly white city. Fatal police shootings led to the formation of a police oversight board that the head of the police union, Det. Craig Stoelk, opposed. Stoelk’s critics say this time period revealed his personal biases, and raise questions about how he investigated Harriet Thompson’s murder.

Patricia Hubbard lived across the street from Harriet Thompson in 1998, and was the kind of neighbor who doesn’t miss much. She said the white house on Shamrock Drive was known as a “party house.” The night of Thompson’s killing, Hubbard was smoking on her porch after a long shift at the local fruit cannery. When she heard screaming and saw a man come running from the home, she tried to tell the police what she saw. But Hubbard said officers rejected her help twice, including a shocking conversation that changed the course of the Jesse Johnson case.

The late 1990s and early 2000s were a time of rapidly evolving forensic science. Jurors at Jesse Johnson’s trial heard a lot about how forensic scientists at the Salem Police and Oregon State Police developed fingerprints of Johnson’s inside Harriet Thompson’s home. But newly revealed documents and DNA testing show those scientists may have been more interested in convicting Johnson than finding a murderer.

Police and prosecutors have always insisted they thoroughly investigated Harriet Thompson’s murder, but some people who did not appear at Jesse Johnson’s trial have insisted for 25 years that they have information that raises new questions. A former state of Oregon employee who was at Thompson’s house the night she died said police only ever wanted to charge Johnson for the murder. And an eye witness who no one – police, prosecutors or defense attorneys – have ever seriously questioned is revealed.