Aug 23, 2026 · 33 min · 18 segments
Springfield, Tennessee, 2012: 15-year-old Zachary Davis walks into his mother’s bedroom in the middle of the night and attacks her with a sledgehammer. He then sets fire to the family home, leaving…
Eleanor NealeHost
So today's case takes place in Hendersonville, Tennessee in 2012, and that was home to the Davis family.
Josh and Zachery were only, like, a year and a bit apart in age, so they were super close growing up.
And then as he got a little bit older, he started showing some clear symptoms of mental illness, and that made it apparent that he'd probably been suffering from mental illness all his life, like from birth.
It was quite a struggle for the family and of course for Zachery, but they were getting by.
But then in 2009, the father of the family, Chris Davis, actually passed away from ALS, motor neuron disease, or Lou Gehrig's disease it's also called.
If you don't know what ALS is or if you need, like, refreshing on it, it's basically a degenerative disease that attacks the muscles, and it, it's quite a long process often.
A lot of the time they will have to get a wheelchair 'cause they can't walk anymore.
In a lot of cases it's just, like, slurred speech that's kind of hard to understand.
I really can't imagine what it would be like to watch a loved one go through that.
So today's case takes place in Hendersonville, Tennessee in 2012, and that was home to the Davis family.
Josh and Zachery were only, like, a year and a bit apart in age, so they were super close growing up.
And then as he got a little bit older, he started showing some clear symptoms of mental illness, and that made it apparent that he'd probably been suffering from mental illness all his life, like from birth.
It was quite a struggle for the family and of course for Zachery, but they were getting by.
But then in 2009, the father of the family, Chris Davis, actually passed away from ALS, motor neuron disease, or Lou Gehrig's disease it's also called.
If you don't know what ALS is or if you need, like, refreshing on it, it's basically a degenerative disease that attacks the muscles, and it, it's quite a long process often.
A lot of the time they will have to get a wheelchair 'cause they can't walk anymore.
In a lot of cases it's just, like, slurred speech that's kind of hard to understand.
I really can't imagine what it would be like to watch a loved one go through that.
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