October 8, 2025 — The hit investigative podcast “Hush,” produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), returns today to all podcast platforms with a new season that examines a young woman’s unexplained death just steps from her front door in rural Oregon, as well as the impact on communities when citizen sleuthing fills the void created by the decline of local journalism.

The first season of “Hush,” released in September 2024, was downloaded more than 300,000 times and broke new ground in the case of Jesse Lee Johnson, who spent 25 years behind bars for a murder he always denied committing. Johnson, who is Black, recently sued Oregon and the detectives who locked him up, citing the alleged wrongdoing and racism that “Hush: The State of Oregon v. Jesse Lee Johnson” exposed.

“Hush: Love Thy Neighbor” promises another compelling story, as it probes the death of 18-year-old Sarah Zuber in the hills above Rainier, Ore., an hour’s drive north of Portland near the Washington border.

Mystery consumes a community

Law enforcement, true crime sleuths, a 2,000-member “Justice for Sarah Zuber” movement on Facebook, and a local woman with political ambitions – all have tried and failed to explain what happened to the teenager in the hours before she was found dead 400 feet from her family’s home in March 2019.

In the new season, “Hush” reporters Leah Sottile and Ryan Haas spend a year in rural Columbia County, including the day the local newspaper shuts down. Without a strong local media presence, speculation and misinformation spread. From more than 100 hours of interviews and scores of public records, they find errors in official investigations, puncture false claims against accused community members, and discredit armchair theories swirling around Zuber’s death.

“When we first heard about this tragedy, we had a simple question: How does no one understand what happened here?” Sottile said. “Pretty quickly, we could see there were a variety of reasons for the confusion around Sarah’s case, and not having any answers had just prolonged the Zuber family’s grief. As investigative reporters, we were driven to find those answers.”

Ultimately, they find a family and a community eager for someone – apart from local power brokers and online speculators – with the time, skills and independence to pursue the facts wherever they lead.

“What I’ve been surprised by is that people are hungry for actual journalists to be in their community, asking questions,” Haas said. “People aren’t dumb. They can sort of discern where the truth is, even with all of the bad information that’s out there. And they want people who are fair, who are gathering the facts and trying to provide that truth.”

The “Hush” team:

  • Reporter and host: Leah Sottile, freelance journalist, author and podcast host. In partnership with OPB and Longreads, Sottile previously co-produced two seasons of the National Magazine Award-nominated podcast “Bundyville” in 2018 and 2019.
  • Reporter: Ryan Haas (OPB), co-producer of “Bundyville,” producer “The Fault Line: Dying for a Fight” podcast
  • Editors: Sage Van Wing (OPB), Anna Griffin
  • Sound: Sound supervisor Steven Kray and audio engineer Nalin Silva (OPB)
  • Theme music: Joe Preston

How to listen“Hush: Love Thy Neighbor” contains eight episodes. A new episode will be released each Wednesday through Nov. 26.Listen to “Hush” episodes here as well as on all podcast platforms.