‘Hush’ Episode 4: Boogeyman

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.

Listen to all episodes of the “Hush” podcast here.

Leah Sottile: Sarah Zuber and Vishal Christian met at a church youth group in St Helens. Both were homeschooled, and at least for Sarah, youth group was how she met other kids in Columbia County.

When the two met, Vishal was 14 and Sarah was 15. They had the same birthday, February 1st. The two started dating a year or so later.

There’s a video Vishal made of Sarah one gloomy Oregon day. They were walking around an old dock at a sandy spot on the river.

Sarah was wearing a dark hoodie, boots, her hair tied back in a braid. When she saw Vishal filming, she covered her face with her hand.

Sarah Zuber: Stop.

Vishal Christian: Mm mm.

S. Zuber: Stop! There’s a mushroom! There’s a mushroom over there. Look at that, not me.

Sottile: She picked up a rusty nail off the ground, and lobbed it his way.

Vishal Christian: Did you throw a nail at me? I could have died! I could have gotten tetris! You know I haven’t had my tetris shots.

S. Zuber: That offended impression you did just now? You nailed it!

Vishal Christian: Get back here.

Sottile: Vishal chased Sarah down the dock. She jumped off. He did too, but biffed the landing and fell in the sand. They went on giggling and horsing around like this.

All Vishal had to do to make Sarah crumple was point the camera at her.

Vishal Christian: Hey. You stabbed me.

S. Zuber: Stop!

Vishal Christian: Stop what? Is this your weakness? Am I defeating you?

S. Zuber: Yes.

Sottile: I’ve watched this video a dozen times or more, and every time it makes me smile. A snapshot of two awkward kids flirting and wasting time. Sarah’s sisters told us how in love she was with Vishal. The young couple talked about getting married in the future. About having kids.

But when she died, they were just kids. She had just turned 18, and he was 17.

Their lives were like a lot of teenagers’ lives. They did schoolwork, drove around, did dumb stuff. In another video, Sarah and some friends walked around a neighborhood on Halloween wearing oversized yellow foam minion heads, the characters from that animated movie Despicable Me. One of them was strumming a guitar. Someone else was playing an accordion. Sarah was shooting the video, and Vishal ran up to her with a little skeleton in his arms.

Vishal Christian: He’s a beautiful baby!

S. Zuber: I see that.

Vishal Christian: Yes. Look at him.

S. Zuber: He’s eating so much candy.

Vishal Christian: He’s beautiful.

S. Zuber: Spoiled little boy.

Sottile: The night Sarah Zuber died, the last text she sent went to Vishal. And she sent another to a Facebook group they were both in. And so, of course, the police quickly went to interview him. In fact, in those first hours and days after her death, the police turned a keen eye toward the two men in her life who were closest to her: Her boyfriend, Vishal Christian, and her father, Randy Zuber.

It’s a classic true crime trope — that if a young woman dies, it’s the husband, or the boyfriend, or the father who is at fault. That idea is all over pop culture, too — that a monster could be hiding inside a man, and that man can be living among us.

In this episode, that’s what we’re looking at — the two men in Sarah Zuber’s life, and the ways police bought into that familiar narrative.

From Oregon Public Broadcasting, this is Hush. I’m Leah Sottile. This is Episode 4: Boogeyman.

The details of the day Sarah Zuber’s body was found are still fresh to her family, all these years later. They remember the police guiding Rebecca, Sarah’s mother, into a neighbor’s house. Randy remembers getting a call at work telling him to rush home. Something terrible had happened. Rebecca, Randy and their daughters, Kati and Abbi, waited for hours before they could go home.

Rebecca Zuber: They finally released us, and they said, “Okay, you can go back home now.” And they said, “They’re getting ready to take her body away.” And so they brought us out. They said do you want to say goodbye or something like that, but they had her covered up, so I didn’t see her or anything on that gurney.

Randy Zuber: Put her hands on Sarah. I don’t even know. It’s just like a crazy thing. You don’t want to believe it. You’re standing there, you’re all, when can I wake up? And this can’t be real. And it is. You’re just, this is what you got.

Sottile: When the Zubers finally got back in their house, they saw the police had sifted through their belongings, opened drawers, rifled through their children’s rooms. That’s when the family began to realize the police were looking for clues that weren’t on the side of the road. The officers said they needed to interview the Zubers.

Rebecca Zuber: He was asking, is there anybody who would harm your daughter, or do you have any idea what could have happened? And I couldn’t think of anything.

Sottile: The police asked a lot of questions you might expect. Who were Sarah’s friends? What was her routine? But some questions put Rebecca and Randy on edge.

Rebecca Zuber: On Thursday, we went to the sheriff’s office and we were interviewed in separate rooms.

Randy Zuber: Yeah, they said, “Now we’re going to divide and conquer. You come with us and you come with me.”

Sottile: The detectives asked Randy about his work schedule and what his typical day was like.

Randy Zuber: My typical day? I get up right about five o’clock or 5:05. I get up, I make some coffee, I put some water on, I make some oatmeal.

Sottile: Life followed a normal rhythm in the days leading up to Sarah’s death. Randy would get up early, listen to the radio and make his lunch. On days when the twins had college classes to attend, Randy said he’d wake them up too. But he’d let Sarah sleep. She was a night owl who stayed up late studying most nights and often worked late at the grocery store.

Randy Zuber: I admonished her constantly, please try to get enough sleep. Sleep is so important, try to get enough sleep.

Sottile: Randy told police in this interview that he was constantly worried about his children. He said sometimes they’d go jogging or walking on their windy back road.

Randy Zuber: I constantly tell them, you’re going to get hit by a car. You read about this stuff all the time. It can happen to you. So yeah, she constantly goes for long walks, and my wife told me that she goes at night, which I was not aware of, because I would have told her, I would’ve pleaded with her, not to go for walks at night.

Sottile: Even though Randy was telling police officers about all the ways he doted on his children, there’s also the sense in these recordings that he didn’t know everything that was happening.

Randy Zuber: They stay downstairs and I stay upstairs. They mostly just come up to get some food, or they come up once in a while and watch a little TV with me or whatever and talk a little bit. But mostly they just are downstairs.

Sottile: Police asked Rebecca about this.

Det. Dustin King: Closer to you than Randy?

Rebecca Zuber: Uhm, Yes. Sarah’s closer to me than she is to Randy. Yes.

King: Twins the same way?

Rebecca Zuber: The twins are closer to me than Randy. Yes, they are.

Sottile: It’s at this point in the interviews that the detectives started to ask more probing questions about discipline in the Zuber house.

Det. Alex Monarch: How are conflicts resolved in your household?

Randy Zuber: Well, I said that earlier, that verbally and by, first of all, trying to be reasonable and objective and see how that goes and then.

Det. Monarch: OK. How often are conflicts resolved or deteriorate to screaming matches or yelling or that sort of thing?

Randy Zuber: Not very often.

Det. Monarch: OK. And who is usually doing the yelling? Parents, or…

Sottile: They also had questions about Rebecca and Randy’s relationship. Rebecca was often away from the house, staying overnight in another town where she worked as a caregiver for an elderly man. She was gone the night Sarah died.

Det. King: All right. Can you just run us through the household dynamic and how it is today? It sounds like you talk about it being stressful between you living in one place and Randy being in the other place and things like that. Can you just kind of run us through that?

Rebecca Zuber: Well, the girls pretty much take care of themselves.They’re like adults. They do everything. They have a place to live. They have food, but they get up in the morning. We did put a lot of pressure on them because they’re working, they’re going to school, not only just regular school, but we’re talking college and high school. But anyway, they’re very mature and pretty much acting as adults right now. And that’s probably not a good thing. That’s probably not good parenting on my part, but that’s the truth right now.

Sottile: In many ways, it made sense to ask about trouble at home. Police were trying to learn any reason Sarah might have died so close to her house.

Det. King: Do you think you did any physical abuse between Randy and the girls, or anything like that?

Rebecca Zuber: No. So this is, lemme see here. No, I do not believe there’s any physical abuse, OK.

Sottile: Rebecca said Randy had never hurt the girls, but in the past he had been physical with her son, Ben. Ben was older and had moved out by this time.

Rebecca Zuber: He’s never hit me. He is not physically abusive. Yes, he was physically abusive to Ben. Ben is my son. And he never, the whole, he never…

Det. King: Prior marriage kind of thing? OK.

Rebecca Zuber: Yeah, prior marriage. And so just for some reason, he didn’t like Ben. He doesn’t like boys, or whatever it is.

Sottile: But in the next room over, Randy downplayed anything physical had ever happened.

Det. Monarch: Have there ever been any fights in the family?

Randy Zuber: No.

Det. Monarch: OK. Any pushing, anyone shoving anyone? Is anyone hitting anyone? Anything like that? Anything physical?

Randy Zuber: No, we were pretty aware of that, because we know how it is these days if you… that your kids can call the police on you, so you can only discipline so far.

Det. Monarch: What is punishment like for the girls?

Randy Zuber: They get their phone taken away. They have to bring their phone upstairs at nine o’clock. They get their cars taken away.

Det. Monarch: OK. But that is the primary punishment, is cars and stuff taken away. Ever in their lives has punishment looked like spankings or anything like that?

Randy Zuber: Maybe once or twice when they were younger, but like one swat.

Det. Monarch: OK. And what age is that?

Randy Zuber: Uhm, under 7.

Sottile: Randy became quieter. The police were investigating him now, too.

Det. Monarch: Have there ever been any allegations, whether reported to police, not reported to police, of physical violence, from either…?

Randy Zuber: No.

Sottile: The police come across in these interviews as being in a bit of an awkward position. After all, they were asking questions that implied the Zubers might have had something to do with it.

Rebecca Zuber: He yells and he’s very verbal that way. But physically, like, I am trying to think of an example of the worst thing that he’s done. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Det. King: So if anything, he’s a yeller?

Rebecca Zuber: Yeah.

Det. King: He doesn’t hit them.

Rebecca Zuber: He definitely yells a lot. He does not hit them.

Sottile: Eventually, Rebecca saw where the detectives might be taking all these questions.

Rebecca Zuber: If that’s where you’re thinking, “Oh, maybe Randy had something to do with Sarah,” that’s totally not, I’m positive 100%. I really don’t think, if you think that, if you’re trying to get at, you think that maybe Randy got mad at Sarah or something, no. That’s totally, totally wrong.

Sottile: The Zubers told us in our interviews that they understood why the police asked those questions. And yet it also was traumatizing to feel accused.

Randy Zuber: He goes, “Yeah, what does discipline look like?” I go, “Well, I’m kind of the good cop, my wife’s the bad cop.” He goes, “Oh, well, do you spank your kids?” And I go, “No.” I go, “I might’ve swatted ‘em on the bottom when they were little, maybe once or twice, but no.” And he goes…

Sottile: Police asked the Zubers to bring Kati and Abbi to the Amani Center, a place in St. Helens that does forensic interviews with kids. Later, Rebecca saw that the Amani Center also works with abused children.

This all started to make the Zubers feel like the police were implying Randy had something to do with Sarah’s death. Like maybe they weren’t on their side. And the police questioning of Randy didn’t really go anywhere. They didn’t turn up evidence he was involved and he wasn’t interviewed again.

But in so much true crime, there is a man involved. If it’s not the father, it can be a romantic partner, and Randy thought that was worth looking into.

Randy Zuber: Sarah had this boyfriend named Vishal, and he’s a whole ‘nother story.

Sottile: Years after Sarah died, the Zubers brought up her boyfriend to us – Vishal Christian. Randy had also brought him up to the police.

And unlike with Randy, Vishal would face more than one interview with the police.

Sarah’s sisters, Kati and Abbi, remember when Sarah started calling Vishal — a boy she met at church — her boyfriend.

Kati Zuber: They both had, like, an offbeat, dark sense of humor sometimes that… Like I remember when I first met Vishal, he would say stuff and I thought he was serious, and then getting to know him more, I’m like, “Oh, that was a joke.” So my sister, Sarah, she had that same weird sarcasm that some people might not get.

Abbi Zuber: Yeah, I really liked Vishal. I think that they were perfect for each other, because they were both kind of edgy, but not in a way that other people are. They were just made for each other.

Sottile: Randy wasn’t charmed by Vishal. He didn’t see him as the same kind of weird as Sarah. He just saw weird.

Randy Zuber: Doing different weird stuff. And my friend, he said to me, he goes, “Randy, I know this Vishal kid.” He said, “Do not let your daughter go out with this guy.”

Sottile: Some of the ways the Zubers think about Vishal come back to a YouTube channel he used to publish. For a long time, Vishal and his sister made YouTube videos that were very much in the style of an edgy, online teenager, like a kid who might go to art school one day.

Vishal Christian: What do you want to add to any meal to make it a lot better? Shaving cream.

Sottile: In one video, his sister knocks on a porta-potty door.

Vishal Christian: Who is it?

Veena Christian: Veena!

Vishal Christian: Oh yeah, come in. Hey, what’s up? Why are you even here?

Veena Christian: It’s Saturday.

Sottile: Inside, Vishal sat fully clothed, sprawled out like he’s sitting on a couch.

And that’s kind of the nature of these videos. They teem with ideas only teenagers would think are funny. He smashes up food with his hands. He breaks a guitar. He walks down the street putting sticks in mailboxes.

Vishal Christian: Special delivery!

Sottile: Vishal made these videos long enough you watch him grow up. At first he’s a chubby-faced kid, and toward the end, he has long curly hair and a deeper voice.

In some of those later videos, it wasn’t his sister filming, but Sarah Zuber.

S. Zuber: Action.

Vishal Christian: Yeah, so me and Sarah recently we started cooking together. And it was nice at first…

Sottile: In this one, Vishal is driving. Classical music blares from the radio. Sarah is filming and feeding him lines from the passenger seat.

Vishal Christian: ‘Cuz she was way better at cooking than I was.

S. Zuber: Biologically!

Vishal Christian: Uh yeah. But it makes sense because biologically, men should never have to enter a kitchen facility! And so when I’m in this kitchen with her and she’s cooking and she has the upper hand on me, my fragile masculinity cannot handle that! And I’m not insecure, but it really hurts me! And I don’t know, what am I supposed to do?

S. Zuber: Make her feel good?

Vishal Christian: Am I supposed to make her feel good about herself? That she’s higher than me in the kitchen?

Sottile: They drive around, riffing off each other, creating this character together, laughing at their own ideas.

S. Zuber: I’m effed up. (laughing)

Vishal Christian: I’m a psycho. OK, I’m gonna be honest, I’m kind of a violent person. I’m a guy, who, when I get angry I punch. When my mom tells me I can’t play video games for the day, I punch a wall. And you go in my room once, there’s walls. There’s walls lined with holes.

S. Zuber: I put up walls!

Vishal Christian: I put up drywall just to punch through it!

S. Zuber: And I put up walls on my inside!

Sottile: When we watched these videos, they seemed dumb and funny. Sarah is laughing along with Vishal, two dorky kids joking around. But after Sarah was gone, Randy and Rebecca saw these videos and thought maybe Vishal really was a psycho. What if there was some truth in the jokes?

They wondered if somehow Sarah set Vishal off. She’d been pressuring him to get a job. That day she died, she sent him a voice text.

S. Zuber: Also, you’d better put in that application today otherwise I’ll freaking shoot you in the foot. Put in your application for the city job. Like now. Right now. Today. Right now!

Sottile: Later, the Zubers heard that message and wondered if maybe Sarah had pushed Vishal too hard to get a job, and he’d snapped.

Randy Zuber: He wouldn’t work, he wouldn’t do anything. He sleeps in all day. He stays up all night . Plays video games, whatever. He would never work. AndBut Sarah always worked. And so she went and got him an application and it was in her car. And I don’t know if she confronted him about that, because I know he was getting tired of her telling him, “Hey, you should try to get a job.”

Sottile: They told us they wished the police had looked at Vishal more. But from records, it’s clear the police looked at Vishal more than anyone else. A little over four hours after Sarah’s body was found, Oregon state police detective Alex Monarch was at his house, sitting the 17-year-old down for an interview.

Det. Monarch: So Vishal, I am recording the interview, like I said, and that is, more than anything else, so I’m not here all day.

Vishal Christian: Yes sir.

Det. Monarch: I know you just got some pretty devastating news, and I apologize to be the one to bring it to you. So, when was the last time you talked to her?

Vishal Christian: Yesterday. I think yesterday night.

Det. Monarch: About what time?

Vishal Christian: I can check my phone real quick.

Sottile: Vishal grabbed his phone and showed his text messages to the detective.

Vishal Christian: Tuesday at 10:57, so yesterday.

Det. Monarch: 10:57 pm? And what was that conversation like?

Vishal Christian: She sent me a message I didn’t understand, and I said “What?” And then this morning I said, “Hey.” And then later today I said, “What are we doing tomorrow,” because we had plans tomorrow.

Det. Monarch: So tell me about this message you didn’t understand.

Vishal Christian: You can just read it. It’s right there.

Sottile: The detective and Vishal read the garbled text — the one that seemed to say “I’m fucking drunk.”

Det. Monarch: Is this the one that says, “I’m ferkshing - fe8nk,” is that the one you didn’t understand?

Vishal Christian: I didn’t understand it and she didn’t respond afterwards so I don’t know what’s up.

Sottile: Vishal said he just assumed Sarah went to sleep when she didn’t respond.

This interview went on for about an hour, and there wasn’t a single question Vishal didn’t answer. He even gave the detective his phone to take with him back to the station.

The Zubers have listened to these interviews. But they were left feeling like the police could have been more aggressive with Vishal.

Randy Zuber: The cops really didn’t interview him for a long time, and I guess he went over to his house that day and said, “Hey, your girlfriend died,” and I guess he went, “Huh. Wow. OK.”

Sottile: Vishal also sat down with Columbia County Sheriff’s Det. Dave Peabody for another hour-long interview. Again, he was cooperative.

In May 2019, just a couple months after Sarah died, the Zubers heard about a nearby chapter of a group called “Parents of Murdered Children.” It’s a support group for parents who’ve lost their kids in tragic circumstances. That group suggested the Zubers connect with a private investigator who does pro bono work for some of its members. Randy and Rebecca felt like things had just stopped in Sarah’s case, and they wondered if a PI could help turn up new information.

They eventually connected with Vanessa Ferraro. She’s licensed as a private security guard in California and a PI.

One day, Ferraro called Vishal’s father.

Vanessa Ferraro: Hello Sam. My name is Vanessa Ferraro. How are you today?

Sam Christian: I’m good.

Vanessa Ferraro: Good. I’m the investigator working on Sarah Zuber’s case…

S. Christian: Oh. OK.

Ferraro: And I actually tried to get in touch with your son, but it appears, I don’t know if he has my number blocked, but I can’t even leave a message with him.

S. Christian: OK.

Ferraro: Is he available for me to talk to him?

S. Christian: Yeah.

Sottile: Ferraro didn’t make it clear she was a private investigator working for the Zubers, but even so, Vishal got on the phone. For over an hour, he answered all of her questions, just like he had for the police.

Except Ferraro took a different tone than the police detectives. She pressed Vishal more aggressively, asking him to tell her everything about the Facebook group chat both he and Sarah had been in where she sent one of her last messages.

Ferraro: OK, but you were a participant of that group chat, is that correct?

Vishal Christian: I was in the group chat. I wasn’t actively reading it.

Sottile: The phone quality isn’t great, but Vishal basically said, “Yeah, I was in the group chat, but, no I didn’t see her message until later.” It was just a chat for jokes, and most of the people in it weren’t even people he knew offline.

Ferraro grilled Vishal over his screen name in that chat. He couldn’t remember what his handle had been. Their nicknames and the group name changed all the time.

Ferraro: You don’t remember what your nickname was?

Vishal Christian: I don’t. I don’t. In the group chat…

Ferraro: Come on, Vishal. You’re smart. You’re smarter than that. You have to remember what your name was in that group chat. I mean, the police know. So why don’t you tell me what your name was?

Sottile: Listening to this interview was extremely frustrating. You have Vishal, an 18-year-old kid, saying, “Look, Facebook group chats aren’t that deep.” And then you have a much older person saying, “Oh no, they are that deep.” They just talk right past each other.

It was the same story when they discussed video games. Vishal told the police he had been playing video games in his room with the door closed the night Sarah died. A year later, Ferraro wanted to know exactly what game he was playing.

Ferraro: Did they ever ask you what games you were playing, and were you doing Xbox?

Vishal Christian: Probably on computer. I don’t see how it matters what game I’m playing. It’s a video game.

Ferraro: Well, it’s called having an alibi. So if no one saw you…

Vishal Christian: You’re asking me what game I’m playing.

Ferraro: I’m asking you what game you played that night, OK?

Vishal Christian: I don’t know, it could have been anything.

Ferraro: Well, usually, Vishal, when someone dies that you care deeply for, you usually have a really good recall because it’s so traumatic, you remember these details, because it’s a day you’ll never forget.

Sottile: What’s frustrating about her interview with Vishal is that it seems driven by the same kind of speculation that would later appear on Facebook pages. A kid failing to remember a video game or a screen name isn’t evidence.

Ferraro never came to Oregon for her investigation, as far as anyone knows. And maybe for good reason. She isn’t actually licensed to do PI work in Oregon. But when she finished, she took all of her interviews to the police and told them to look into Vishal more.

We asked Columbia County Sheriff’s Detective Dave Peabody about it.

Sottile: We could see in records that at one point a private investigator named Vanessa Ferraro sort of came into the equation and started doing an investigation, essentially of your investigation. Are you aware of that?

Det. Dave Peabody: Yes.

Sottile: And what did you think of her investigation of your investigation?

Peabody: I didn’t really think much of it.

Sottile: Ferraro declined our requests for an interview. The Zubers gave us her files and we’ve looked through her work and… honestly, she didn’t seem to turn up anything of substance.

When we asked the Zubers about how they felt about Ferraro’s investigation, they said that, up to that point, she was basically the only person who offered them the kind of attention and help they wanted.

Randy Zuber: Number one, Vanessa is a big help, but just think how hard it was for her. She’s in California, she’s not up here. She’s never even seen us. She’s doing her best to work with what she has. And as far as an investigator, we don’t know how good she is or how bad she is, but we appreciate any help we could get from anybody. I mean, I’d be calling, I’d go to fricking Anaheim and find Mickey Mouse, pull on his ear, if I thought he could help me.

Sottile: And much like the police questions to Randy Zuber, all of these pointed questions at Vishal completely ignored the autopsy. The medical examiner was clear that Sarah Zuber didn’t have physical injuries that suggested she’d been attacked. And no evidence would ever connect Randy or Vishal to what happened.

In some ways, it was hard to see how Ferraro’s work on this case was any different than what an online sleuth might do.

A true crime story could stop right here. Plant seeds of doubt, build suspicion about people, and never resolve any of it. I wonder how her report would have been different if she had ever actually talked to Vishal in person.

Sottile: By the time I reached out to Vishal, nearly six years had passed since Sarah died. And I thought he might say he wanted to put it all behind him. But instead, he was more than willing to talk.

Vishal Christian: At the time, it was all very unreal to me.

Sottile: Vishal lives in his childhood home with his parents.

Annette Christian: Hello, I’m Annette Christian, and I’m Vishal’s mother.

S. Christian: My name is Samuel Christian and I’m the dad.

Sottile: Vishal is 23 now, and his life is very different from 2019 when this all happened.

Madeline Christian: Hi, my name is Madeline Christian. I am Vishal Christian’s wife.

Sottile: Madeline and Vishal met at church, and they got married about two years ago. As we sat down, she laid out a spread of cookies from the bakery where she worked. And as we started talking, it was obvious that Sarah’s death changed all of their lives.

S. Christian: Let’s just say this. I just want the truth, no matter what. Let’s just finally… Especially when it comes to my son, just finish it, just…

A. Christian: Clear his name and stop harassing him. It was like every year after that, there would be a call from another police. There would be another investigation. It was just like pulling off the scab of the sore.

Sottile: That idea of pulling off the scab — there’s no way around that. Every time the family tells the story, whether to police, or a private investigator, or to a true crime podcaster, it’s adding scar tissue. So as a journalist there’s an imperative to make sure that you’re contributing something of value. Not using someone’s pain to sell mattress ads around.

Sottile: Well, I just want to say that I’m sorry that we were the latest people to call you and reopen this wound again. But I give you a lot of credit for talking to us about it because we’re really trying to capture this entire situation, and it’s wild to us that there’s just so much speculation and so little resolution still to what happened.

Sottile: We had spent months looking at records and doing interviews before we asked the Christians to talk, but it still felt like an intrusion. And they were gracious and open to talking about all of it. Especially about how much they missed Sarah.

Vishal Christian: We were best friends, we like, kind of both had an epiphany simultaneously, in separate places, where we realized that we had actually had a genuine love for each other. And that’s kind of the moment that everything changed.

Sottile: Vishal told us Sarah really was the sweet girl everyone has talked about, but she was also complicated.

Vishal Christian: She was a very nice person. She was very sweet, but she always gave more of herself than she had to give. She had a very, very hard time with self-respect and like, self, or like, I dunno, she didn’t think highly of herself. She really didn’t like herself.

Ryan Haas: What makes you say that?

Vishal Christian: I remember whenever I’d go to her house, in her bedroom, she had a mirror and her mirror would always be covered up by, she had a sweater that she’d just throw on it. She never liked seeing herself or perceiving herself. And every time I would go over there, I’d just take it off and be like, “It’s OK. This is what you are and it’s OK. I think you’re beautiful.”

Sottile: In the initial aftermath of her death, Vishal said he spiraled between sadness and confusion and grief and trying not to feel at all.

Vishal Christian: I shouldn’t have, but I became cynical. I definitely kind of rejected it in my mind, because I felt like, I just felt bitter in general. After she passed, I had accepted it and I’d taken it for what it was, but I think part of my acceptance was just me trying to move on as fast as possible.

Sottile: He said he and Sarah shared a hard cider once on New Year’s Eve. We asked him about Sarah’s social media. She often used the handle “vodka coffee,” but Vishal said the best he could understand it, she just thought that handle was provocative and funny. He never saw her drunk, didn’t think she’d ever been drunk. So her death by drinking never made sense to him.

He has obsessed over their last messages, wondering if something he said upset her the night she died.

He told us that Sarah and her younger sister Kati had been fighting a lot, and Sarah had been texting Vishal for advice. Vishal encouraged her to stay calm, and be patient. But Kati had also confided in Vishal about personal issues she was having. And Vishal didn’t want to betray her trust, even to Sarah. So he felt caught between the two sisters, trying to calm Sarah down, while also being a good listener to Kati.

Sarah wanted to know what Kati had told him, but he wouldn’t say.

Vishal Christian: If you read the text messages, which I did this morning, it was like I mentioned that, we were talking about that. And then I kind of changed the topic and then she pushed to ask me again, and then I changed the topic again, and then she pushed to ask the question again and I changed the topic again. And that’s when we stopped talking that night. And then she said… like, I said, “I love you.” And she said, “I love you.” And then she said, “Too much.”

Which was kind of a weird, it’s not weird per se, but it’s in the context, it’s like, I love you too much. And it’s like that might, it might come from a place of pain. So I think maybe she was protecting my feelings by not outright saying, “I’m upset about this,” and saying, “This is fine. I love you.” I think she didn’t want to hurt me, and so she was probably hurting herself, like emotionally.

Sottile: Vishal has read and re-read these texts with Sarah, trying to parse meaning out of one message she sent him: “I love you. Too much.” When we met, he was blaming himself, thinking if he hadn’t ever mentioned he’d talked to Kati, they wouldn’t have had their argument that night. Sarah wouldn’t have gone out for a walk and died.

But when Vishal’s parents, Samuel and Annette, think about blame, they’re thinking about the police and Vanessa Ferraro. They remember coming home from work to a detective interrogating their 17-year-old son in their living room.

Samuel Christian: We carpool. We walk in, and there’s, Vishal is sitting there with this blank look on his face. And I don’t mean emotionless exactly, just sort of shocked in a sense. Deer in the headlights. And there’s a guy there, maybe 30 years old or whatever, with a polo shirt on. And then he says something to the effect of, something like, “I’m sorry to inform you that Sarah Zuber died.”

Sottile: Between the police and Vanessa Ferraro, a cloud of suspicion seemed to follow Vishal. In his 2021 memo closing the Zuber investigation, District Attorney Jeff Auxier wrote, “It is the unanimous decision of law enforcement that Mr. Christian had nothing to do with Sarah’s death.” But that information never seemed to reach the Christians and police we talked to for this series also wouldn’t say he was innocent.

In 2022, three years later, Jennifer Massey reached out to Vishal with questions as she was getting ready to start the “Justice for Sarah Zuber” Facebook page.

Vishal Christian: Basically what happened is, from what I understand, a woman named Jennifer Macy, or Massey… I’ll just say Macy. Jennifer Macy, her husband was running for sheriff, and part of their campaign essentially was they wanted to find a case and hone in on it and kind of make the case right, so they could, obviously for the community, they’re trying to help the community, but it was also somewhat political. I’m not trying to dis anybody, but the nature of it, I believe was somewhat political.

So it was kind of, it was to reopen the case, and it was for Justice for Sarah, but it was also a dig at the police department.

Haas: So your understanding was they were looking for cases?

Vishal Christian: Yeah, that’s what they told me is that they, because I did an interview with Jennifer.

Sottile: Oh, you did?

Sottile: Vishal was very clear with us that he didn’t want to criticize Jennifer. She seemed to genuinely want to help the Zubers, and get the case reopened. And Vishal wanted that, too. So he answered her questions.

But his wife, Madeline, wasn’t as reserved as Vishal about all this suspicion on him. She and Vishal didn’t start seeing each other until long after this happened, but even so, Sarah’s death looms large in their lives.

Madeline Christian: And I get righteously angry for him when I hear about all the stuff that went down and the perceptions and the jumping to conclusions and the isolation that he experienced during that time.

Sottile: Vishal and Madeline lived in Portland for a little while, but moved back in with his parents. Now, she’s living in a community where her husband has to worry about people talking behind his back saying, “Hey, see that guy? That’s who dated Sarah Zuber.”

Sottile: When you decided to move back here, did this factor into the conversation at all that this had happened?

Vishal Christian: I don’t think so. I mean, in terms of… Did we?

M. Christian: Well, it didn’t factor in for you, but it did for me. But that’s, again, because you’re understanding of people and you’re generally unbothered, which I love about you. But I was worried for you, and your mom and I still talk about this from time to time, and it’s beautiful to walk in every other local business to see the “Justice for Sarah” posters. But every time I do see those, I think, “My god, are they going to start pointing fingers at him someday again?”

Vishal Christian: I thought the same thing.

M. Christian: And when we have kids, if we stay in this community, is that ever going to become teasing material for middle school or elementary school punks.

Sottile: Right by where we sat in the Christians’ dining room, there was an altar with a bunch of photos. One was of Sarah. They explained that, as Orthodox Christians, they pray for the dead.

M. Christian: She’s a part of our lives. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we pray for her. Our whole family does. Honestly, sometimes I even feel guilty for being in this spot in his life, because it was meant for her originally. Which is a weird thing to say, but everybody knew when they were together back then that they were endgame for each other. And so I try to do right by him, so that when she’s looking down on us, she’s not seeing him abandoned.

Sottile: There are these two families in Columbia County who are in so much pain over what happened. The Zubers, who lost Sarah. And the Christians, who also mourn Sarah, and whose son has been repeatedly pointed at as a perpetrator, even when there’s no evidence.

But the lack of evidence of his involvement, or any person’s involvement, hasn’t made the police or the Greek chorus less suspicious. If anything, it’s only added to it. Vishal told us he thinks any suspicion directed towards him goes back to the way the police and the community talked about Sarah’s death as a murder in those early days.

Vishal Christian: I guess that’s kind of the thing is, when you kind of make a boogeyman and then say, the boogeyman doesn’t exist and now we’re going to forget about that, and now it’s this thing, then it’s like, everyone’s like, “Where’d the boogeyman go? Well, I was just scared of the boogeyman.”

Sottile: Columbia County District Attorney Jeff Auxier closed the Sarah Zuber investigation and said she died from alcohol and hypothermia. But through our reporting, we found plenty of people who had no idea that was Sarah’s official cause of death.

Vishal Christian: There’s somebody responsible. And that was echoed throughout the entire town. Somebody’s responsible. And then it finally comes out, and they close it and they say, “Oh, no one’s responsible.” And so I think that, well, the natural reaction for a community who’s just raising pitchforks is like, “Wait, I’m confused. Is somebody responsible or not? Are we going to set fire to anything or not?

Sottile: The longer this affair has gone on, the more conspiracy and conjecture have filled in the hole where Sarah Zuber used to be. More and more people have been pulled into the hole over time, and that’s continued in part because the police and the community haven’t been able to find any real answers.

In the past, local newspapers were staffed by journalists trained in differentiating between fact and fiction. Their job was to fill in that empty space between what’s known for sure, and what’s a guess. But just as we were getting started on the Sarah Zuber story, the last newspaper in Columbia County closed its doors. We were about to see what happens when professional reporters are replaced by the rumor mill.

Will Lohre: I talked to someone who said something along the lines of, “It’s sad to see you close. I thought you did a good job, but unfortunately this is a community that just relies on Facebook for their information now.”

Sottile: That’s next time.