Sight Unseen & Drenched in Chlorine: Zachary Bernhardt

Cold Case Murder Mysteries

True Crime

3.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the early morning hours of September 11, 2000, 8-year-old Zachary Bernhardt disappeared from a Clearwater, FL apartment when his mother went for a short walk and a swim. To this day, there has been no evidence recovered to suggest what his fate might have been, leaving many to wonder if there was ever an intruder in the home.

Join host Ryan Kraus for a fascinating psychological breakdown of the events surrounding this mysterious, unsolved case.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody welcome back to Cold Case Murder Mysteries. I'm your host Ryan Kraus
0:11.6	returning to take you on another journey into madness,
0:15.0	this time exploring the unsolved disappearance of 8-year-old Zachary Bernhardt
0:21.0	from Clearwater, Florida on September 11, 2000. Okay, so the two main players in this case are 29-year-old Leah Hackett, a single mother, and her 8-year-old son, Zach year old son
0:34.2	son Zachary Bernhardt who went by the name Zach.
0:37.3	Zach was born in December of 1991 and never had a relationship with his biological father as it seems Leah endured a series of
0:47.0	either unsuccessful and or insignificant courtships.
0:51.6	She'd have been around 20 or 21 years old when Zach was born, and like many
0:56.4	young single mothers found herself something she never intended to be, which was tied down at an early age. This can be difficult for some, especially
1:07.0	those who were on the wild side and like to party in their youth. The obvious implication, however, is that if you choose to live a party lifestyle like many
1:16.6	people in their 20s who don't have kids, then the result is going to be that somewhere along
1:22.1	the line, your parenting suffers. So one of the usual practices some
1:27.5	young people enjoy is obviously avoiding parenthood before they party themselves out, which means you never have to sit around
1:36.0	changing diapers wishing you were still at the club.
1:39.2	Sure, that's ideal.
1:41.4	Circumstance, however, makes that choice for many people
1:45.2	before they're ready to make it on their own,
1:47.8	and they're left to juggle the desires of being young
1:51.5	while raising their children.
1:53.0	At its core, this is simply a maturity issue,
1:57.0	and there are plenty of people who put up a fight on their way out of a care-free lifestyle
2:02.0	in favor of one being homebound with children.
	...

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