Florida : Zachary Bernhardt

Written By Navigating Advocacy Podcast

I am excited to be talking about a Florida case today and this one is actually pretty close to where I live. The city of Clearwater is pretty well known to even those that do not live in this sunshine state because of its amazing beaches. It is usually on the top 10 beaches in all of the United States, which says a lot because we do have amazing beaches. There are about 117,000 people that actually live in the town but let me tell you way more visit on a daily basis. Trying to get to the beach on a holiday weekend will literally take you forever and then we will not even talk about parking. It has a huge public art and design program If you have seen the movie dolphin tale it was about the first dolphin to be fitted with a prosthetic tail, this took place at the clearwater marine aquarium. This is not a huge place at all but because of this movie, this non-profit grew like crazy. Winter is the name of the dolphin who was a resident of this facility before her passing in 2021. Clearwater is amazing and I would highly recommend everyone visit. As far as the crime here is concerned it's a relatively safe place. It is pretty even with the violent crime in Florida and the national median. Clearwater at 3.94 Florida at 3.87 and the national average of 4.0. 


Zachary Michael Cole Bernhardt was born on December 18th of 1991, to mother Leah Hackett who was 21 years old. In the year 2000 when Zachary was only 8 years old he vanished pretty much without a trace.  He was your typical 3rd grader. He was goofy, fun, very smart, he had zero issues in school. He loved the beach, building sand castles, and playing with his cousins. Zachary only lived with his mother there in Clearwater but he had a large extended family that was always around. 

The day before he went missing was a typical day for him this was September 10th a Sunday. Zach played outside with their neighbors and then had a movie night on the couch with his mom. The next day was a school day but Zach was able to stay up until around 11 pm with his mom just hanging out. His mom Leah said they made an agreement and Zach was allowed to sleep in her room after the movie instead of going to his bed so around 11 pm Zach gets into his mom's bed and goes to sleep. 

Now Leah worked nights but didn’t work on this particular night however she was so used to staying up all night and sleeping during the day this is what her body was used to so even on nights she didn’t work she would typically stay up. She did some chores around the house, watched tv, and then went on the internet chat rooms for a bit and then around 1 am took the trash out. Now she drove the trash to the dumpster. Many people think this is weird but as someone that has lived in an apartment complex and can be lazy at times instead of carrying the trash bag or bags, just throw it in your car and drive over there. She may have had a few bags or could have been heavy. I don’t think it's weird that she drove now if she lived in a house and her trash can was at the end of her driveway. Yes, that would be weird. Leah states she came back home after throwing away the trash and did random things at home and then went for a walk and left the front door to the apartment unlocked while Zachary slept. 


Remember she usually stays up all night and sleeps when Zach is at school she could have been restless and wanted to get some energy out before laying down to sleep. This next part is weird and even Leah herself can't explain why she did it because it was not typical for her. She went for a swim in the apartment community pool in the middle of the night fully dressed. There are reports that she didn't even like to swim but just decided to jump in and do a few laps in her clothes and without a towel. She then stated when she went back to her apartment the air conditioner was on which made her cold being soaking wet she decided to jump in the hot shower to warm up. After getting out of the shower Leah finally looks in her bedroom and does not see Zach. 


She starts looking around the small apartment at this point and even under the bed because maybe he fell off the bed and rolled under and Zach is nowhere to be found. At 4:47 am on September 11th, 2000 Leah calls 911 to report Zach missing. Authorities are there quickly and start searching immediately. Leah is taken to the station for questioning while Zach’s grandmother stays at the apartment in case they get any news about his whereabouts. Of course, Leah is scrutinized by the police. Her story isn't adding up to them however, Leah has always maintained her innocence and for a while, after Zach disappeared she was pleading with the public for help, to keep searching, to do anything to keep her little boy at the forefront of their minds. 


Of course, the police asked about Zach’s father. Leah gave them the name of the man but once authorities reached out to him he had no idea he even had a son and didn't want to be involved. So that was a dead-end lead. Police would say that they felt Leah wasn't telling them the whole story about that night.  Dogs were sent out to track Zach’s scent and they didn't get past the front door. There was zero scent outside. Like they couldn't even get a direction, which is very weird but also in my mind points to his being picked up in a vehicle right there. This was a serious search, like I said they had dogs but also helicopters, wave runners checking the waterways. They literally searched every body of water nearby. Even an amber alert was put out and this is now the longest-running amber alert in the entire state's history.

In an article, I read the week after Zach went missing it stated there is no reason for parents to fear their children being taken. It stated they didn't even know if a crime had been committed at that point and all they knew was that Zach was missing. Uhhh what type of 8-year-old can leave on their own without any witnesses and stay gone while a huge search covering thousands of acres is happening? It has to be a crime when an 8-year-old disappears without a trace. 

Some crime scene details, no forced entry was found however remember Leah did not lock the door so I guess someone could have randomly tried the front door that wanted to steal a child, and bam they got freakishly lucky nevermind the fact that Leah at first said she was only gone for 15 minutes. The likelihood that a child kidnapper tried this particular door during the 15 minutes Zach was left alone is so unlikely that it is insane. Now, this is not me saying it was his mother I am saying I think whoever did this had to have been watching or known that Zach would be alone or Leah was gone for more than just 15 minutes. 

I want to give a bit of backstory when it comes to Leah, like I said before Leah was a single mother to Zach but when he was born she was living with her boyfriend when a paternity test was given and baby Zach was not the boyfriend’s child, they broke up. Leah ended up giving Zach her mother’s married last name. When I first started researching I wondered where his last name came from. Leah gave birth to a little girl in 1994, she moved to Michigan where her then-boyfriend was attending the University of Michigan. They eventually broke up and Leah moved back to Florida with her daughter. I read a few reports that no one has really said where Zach was during this time, now he could have been with Leah but it was a bit unusual that in various articles the family has never stated where Zach was during her time in Michigan so he may have been staying with another family but not sure. But once she is back in Florida she does have him because her daughter who I am not going to name because her name is unusual and she was just a little girl when all this happened. But anyways her dad came to visit from Michigan shortly after Leah and the kids moved back. Leah met him to give him the daughter for a visit but she also asked him if he would take Zach because she wanted to go out for the night. He said yes but then Leah didn’t come back until Monday. She left the kids with him on Saturday and he was just watching them that evening while she had some fun. He went as far as filing a missing person report with local authorities. He filed for full custody and because her going missing and no one could contact her a judge granted him full custody of their daughter. That is how Zach ended up being the only child living with his mother. 


There were many times throughout Zach’s life that he would live with relatives such as his aunt, and Leah’s sister because Leah would be dating someone new and move in with them. One of her exes said he didn't understand how she went out all the time because she had a kid now, this comes after he ended up with a misdemeanor domestic violence charge after shoving Leah out of his house after he found her at another man's home. So much drama. There was even another instance of Leah’s family filing a missing person’s report for her in 1997, just like the last time she was reported missing she turned up days later. Eventually, Leah seemed to get things in order. She became an apartment manager for a rundown complex in Saint Petersburg Florida. The owners of the apartments paid her rent and utilities but did not give her a salary. However, she only kept that job for a few months before having to move in with a friend. 


Regardless of Leah’s unstable lifestyle teachers and family members would say she was a caring and loving mom and Zach loved her so much. Leah would even volunteer at his school. But at the end of the day, Leah and Zach were kicked out or evicted from almost all of the places they ever stayed. Eventually in 1999 is when the duo moved into the apartments Zach would go missing from. A few people in the complex knew the mother and son and one lady by the name of Deanna became sort of friends with Leah and they would occasionally swap watching each other's kids, they had a falling out and wouldn’t hang out anymore but the reason I am bringing Deanna up is the fact that she told police that around 3:45 am the morning Zach went missing Deanna’s boyfriend was leaving her apartment and Deanna states Leah’s car was not in the parking lot. Another neighbor went out to smoke around 3 am and she said she saw Leah's vehicle driving out of the complex. If you remember from before Leah said she drove the trash to the dumpster around 1 but never left it in her vehicle after that. 


Leah remained active for a while after her son’s disappearance but it didn't last forever. Possibly because of the public scrutiny or something more sinister Leah moved from Florida and eventually found her way to Hawaii where she goes by a different name as well. Her mother and sister state they have the same phone numbers and addresses as the day Zach went missing and they are the ones that have been spearheading the continuous search for Zach. 

I do want to talk about other people or possible theories in this case. I do not have a doubt in my mind that someone took him. Of course, I don't know if this person was known to Zach or not but another possible person of interest in this child abduction is a man by the name of Kevin Jalbert he’s a piece of dirt so I do not feel bad about saying his name. Kevin was bragging about kidnapping children in the area so police had an undercover agent befriend him, Kevin then tells this undercover cop that he kidnapped a boy from the apartment complex Zach lived at. He didn't say the right apartment number or location but it turns out that Kevin lived in these apartments too at one point. They couldn’t find anything that connected him to Zach’s disappearance but he was arrested, charged, and convicted of a whole bunch of counts of child sexual assault images with the intent to distribute. Jalbert claims he has abducted and raped 1,000 children and killed five. His sister said he is a chronic liar and exaggerates to receive attention

On the one-year anniversary of Zach’s disappearance our country experienced something like no other and because of this Zach being missing was pushed to the back of the pile. 

New years eve 2001. The Family had a candlelight vigil planned for the day but after the planes hit the twin towers everything changed. It would take some tip or something happening in the case before it was really focused on again and on New year’s eve of 2001 it happened. At the very same apartment complex that Zach went missing from over a year ago, a 5-year-old little boy was playing with his friends outside when some man snatched him in broad daylight in front of other kids. 


I know what you are all thinking. What in the flipping hell is going on at these apartments? How can two boys be taken? Before I get into more about this five-year-old I want to put your mind at ease that he is found and survives whatever he went through. Because he was with this psychopath for 10 hours. The kidnapper drove about 80 miles north of Tampa and put the kiddo in a dumpster. He had only minor physical injuries and his name has never been released or anything else about the status of his health. Police believed he could have been sexually assaulted. The boy described the vehicle he was taken in as a white pickup truck with decals of ice cream and decals of Stone Cold Steve Austin the wrestler guy and very dirty inside. The man was described as a white male that had shoulder-length black hair, he was somewhere around 5’7” to 5’11”. 

Billboards were put up periodically throughout the years around the clearwater area to jog people's memories and keep his name out there but not much came from it. 

Could Zachary go out of the house to look for his mom since she wasn't in the apartment and then he was taken? Wouldn't the scent dogs be able to track him if this happened? It rained a tiny bit that afternoon but not anything of substance. If he went missing around the 2 am-3 am time frame it was a warm 78 degrees out and the light rain didn't come until 12 hours later. How could Zachary Bernhardt disappear? 



If you have any information on Zach’s disappearance please contact Clearwater police detectives at 727-562-4242




Navigating Advocacy Podcast

Whitney and Melissa, hosts of Navigating Advocacy, blend their true crime interests with a mission to spark justice through storytelling, inspiring action, and building a community of advocates.

https://www.navigatingadvocacy.com
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