Crime Junkie - MISSING: Brandy Hall

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

In 2006 Brandy Hall vanished after leaving her post at the volunteer fire station early. It would take many years, 3 clues found in three different bodies of water and a lost tip, before anyone would have an idea of what might have happened to her that night. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-brandy-hall/    

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt, and you guys I am so proud of all of us We got a final tally. Oh, I haven't even heard this. I'm so excited Yeah, despite the fact that I clearly never took French in high school and apparently I don't know how to pronounce jock Which a lot of you told me you can stop emailing me. Thank you. I'm awful and from the Midwest Either way, we all band together and we were able to raise drumroll, please David 17,500 dollars for the DNA project. Yes, I'm so excited when I talk to the team over there I mean they were thrilled. They cannot thank you guys enough I asked them to keep us updated on what cases they're able to solve

They said, you know This is so good to have because there are so many cases that a lot of people have given up on and don't want to necessarily donate to So I think we're gonna be able to solve a lot of cases that maybe have gotten forgotten So you guys can follow those cases if you want to go to their website DNAdoeproject.org While we're letting the smart experts solve the cases, Britt and I are back to telling you another story though and this time It's a story of a woman named Brandy Hall who went missing at one of the most tumultuous times in her life At first people thought perhaps she'd left on her own

But as time passed and the secrets of her life were revealed it became clear to her family and Investigators that she had met with foul play In August of 2006 Brandy Hall was 32 years old She was a married mother of two living in her home state of Florida whose passion in life was helping people She'd actually suffered a like horrible ATV accident in her childhood that left her in the hospital for months like clinging to life And she ended up making it out alive But from that time on she had this passion for helping other people and when she was grown She studied to be a firefighter EMT and paramedic Wow

She met her husband Jeff while working as a firefighter He was one too and he was just taken with her right away saying that he'd never met anyone like her She was tough and kind and caring and in 1992 they married life was really good for them for a while They had two kids Jeff was promoted to chief of his station Brandy got a full-time job at her station and Despite their crazy 24-hour shifts. They were still blessed with those two kids and Brandy's mother would actually help take care of them and Like they both like got their schedules so they would work on the same days They'd have to work like 24 hours and then they'd get two days off, but they made it work Everything seemed peachy

But what have I said a thousand times you never know what happens behind closed doors and you never really know anyone ever and Everything people thought they knew about Brandy and her life with Jeff was challenged in August of 2006 on the 17th Brandy was working her shift at a volunteer station and her husband was home with the kids and She calls the house around like 9 30 to talk to him then say prayers with the kids before they go to bed And she tells her husband that she's gonna see him in the morning So he puts the kids to bed They each go about their business and then he tries to reach her one more time later in the evening around like 11 30 ish This time she doesn't answer and you know not super big deal

He knows what life is like at the station you get busy, you know, you're saving lives not worried What he doesn't know though is that he should be worried So the next morning Brandy's husband tries to reach her again, but with no luck They had a very important appointment that morning that he expected her to be at no matter What happened the night before she wouldn't have missed this and it's not just her husband who's concerned All of Brandy's family is wondering where she is too. So her mother actually starts to drive around like friends are looking for her and She goes she like looks at the fire station. She doesn't see her car there She doesn't see her car at home and her mom drives for hours looking for any sign of her

And just as dusk is settling in and it's starting to get dark Debbie Who's her mom pulls up to this stop sign and she's approached by another vehicle and this vehicle stops and one of Brandy's friends comes running out towards Debbie's car and she gets to the window and tells Debbie They just pulled Brandy's truck out of a pond. What? Yeah, and this felt like the worst case scenario to Debbie Like what does this mean was she still in the car was she somewhere in the pond? Was this an accident? Yeah, that's so many more questions, right? So she rushed to the pond where the truck is found and it was a very Secluded pond like not many people even knew it was back there

Just maybe a few locals like a couple people who would fish and then a lot of firefighters knew about it since it was near They're like training building and I guess sometimes they'd even pull water from it So it turns out the truck was found because that morning Someone had been out fishing on the pond and they spotted a bag floating in the water And when they reeled it in the bag had a bunch of items belonging to Brandy Now I don't think this person knew Brandy was even missing it No one really did but it looked weird enough that they turned it over to police and when police came to check out the scene They saw a large area on the west side of the pond where brush had been like flattened and they could see tire treads

It was this that indicated to them a vehicle could be in the water And that's when a dive team went in and found the truck that all happened like really quick I have to assume it's like a pretty small pond like it's not a huge area to track down Oh, yeah I mean the entire pond was just like an acre and only 20 feet deep Okay, so they pulled this truck out and the windows were open water is pouring out of it And thankfully Brandy wasn't inside but this kind of just led to more confusion like everyone is Asking where is Brandy then they have a dive team continue to search the pond

They're not seeing a body so they end up like fully draining the pond now while they're draining it Detectives make their best effort to track down Brandy's last movements Where did she go after she left work? How did her car end up here like anything? They could find now the night before Jeff had expected Brandy to be working the full overnight shift And that's what she was scheduled to work But something about that night was different police learn that around 10 30 Brandy told the other men on duty that she wasn't feeling well with something with her stomach And she thought she should head home

Now footage shows her leaving the station getting into her big pickup truck and pulling away at about 10 50 Now remember her husband tries calling her sometime around like 11 11 30 ish, but he got no answer Right So something had to have happened to her like as soon as she left the station then right Well, not exactly because when police pull her phone records They see that right after she left the station She calls her own voicemail presumably to listen to a message that she had Then at 11 o'clock 6 she makes a call to someone and she has a conversation that lasts 10 minutes and 46 seconds

Okay, but you can't just leave me hanging. Who was she talking to? So We all know it takes a couple of days to get the records But when they finally do it shows that she had made a call to a man named Randall Now Randall was her old boss and a very close family friends like he and his wife used to do things with jeff and brandy all the time Their kids played together. They'd all known each other for years So it wasn't super weird that she would have talked to him that night What's weird Is that Randall was someone they had talked to the day they found her truck, which was friday

Yeah, I mean you said a close family friend. I'm sure he and his family were out looking for her the same time, right? Yeah, it's possible that he was looking for her. I actually don't know that for sure All I know is that like they find her truck on friday They end up talking to him sometime on friday and when they talked to him on friday He had told police that they hadn't spoken in weeks Now clearly they know this is a lie So Randall is brought in for a second interview on sunday and now he has a new story He says okay, I did talk to brandy that night

But the reason I didn't tell you Is because she didn't want me to tell anyone because she was running away Randall says that when they spoke Brandy told him that she just couldn't take it all anymore She said she was waiting at a sunoco gas station for someone to bring her money and then she was going to disappear And so he thought that by not saying anything that he was somehow protecting her and listen, it's it's weird He lied, but the more we learn about brandy. It turns out she might have had a reason to want to leave her life behind In the months before brandy's disappearance the veneer of her perfect life was crumbling

A year before her disappearance in the summer of 2005 Her fire chief husband jeff had been arrested for running a marijuana grow operation with another buddy Now brandy and jeff owned 13 acres of land and police seized an estimated one million dollars worth of stuff Now whether or not brandy knew about this before the arrest is completely up for debate Many people say no, she was totally in the dark. She thought jeff was running out that land But a number of other people point out that brandy was a big spender like she they say she bought two of everything She was buying lots of jewelry. She had this big fancy truck like anything they wanted They got which on the salary of two civil servants would be

financially irresponsible I mean, I think to say the least and yeah because of this some people insist that she must have known more money was coming in But I don't know what to believe. I don't think that's evidence of guilt or culpability Some people are just really bad with money However, I do believe that police thought she knew about it though because shortly after jeff's arrest police waited a couple of days They waited till brandy was at work And then they went and arrested her in front of all of her co-workers at the fire station Now jeff swears again, she didn't know he says that they just arrested her because

Her name was like on the deed of the land which by the way a little terrifying like new crime Junkie life rule never take your hand out of the finances because if she really had no idea And thought that they had extra money coming in because he was just running out the land Her life got blown up for trusting her husband, which shouldn't be a crime Both jeff and brandy are let out of jail while their cases go to court, which takes some time I think they really only ended up going after jeff because they wanted to make an example out of him He after all was the chief But despite the fact that brandy wasn't in a ton of trouble

The whole show of the arrest at the fire station and because of jeff's involvement Brandy ended up being fired from her job, which is one of the worst possible things that could have happened to her She lived for that job her whole life revolved around that job Jeff of course lost his job too. So now all of a sudden money was really tight. They are both out of work There's no money coming in from the grow operation So brandy is like trying to pick up extra work here or there She got a job at like a friend's construction company doing odd things like anything she could do to pay the bills But on top of this she also had to volunteer to be a firefighter, which paid her nothing

Oh, why would she volunteer if she was trying to do everything to get cash? Well, because where she lived and I don't know this might be the case everywhere If you don't work as a firefighter for more than two years then you lose all your certifications Which must be really hard to get so she wanted to make sure that she could keep those up to date while she tried to get a new job as a firefighter But again, she's doing this while also trying to make money to pay the bills and it was a lot of pressure And she told one friend that she felt like she was just running and running but could never get ahead Like she could never get on top of her monthly payments. She was working herself to death. I mean, that's a horrible feeling

I've been there living, you know paycheck to paycheck and feeling like you're never going to be able to catch your breath So this was her life for the last year building up to the day that she went missing And the morning she went missing that appointment that she was supposed to meet her husband at Was his sentencing hearing and she was supposed to testify on his behalf. So Maybe it all was just too much But Here's the problem. I see with that It might have been overwhelming and no lie if I were in brandy shoes

I'm sure the idea of just walking away from it all definitely would have crossed my mind But here's why I don't believe she did they were confident that jeff was going to get some jail time Like the courts wanted to make an example of him which meant that the morning of the 18th He'd be going to jail So if brandy just walked away She'd be leaving her kids without any caretaker and she made absolutely no provisions for them beforehand Like jeff just dropped them off at school and no one would have known to even pick them up I don't think brandy could have done that. She loved her kids

And if anyone questioned whether or not she was capable of walking away I think that was all finally put to bed when police had her truck test it Because what they found changed the entire investigation After the truck was pulled from the water police found blood on the driver's side There was some in that little pocket thing on the driver's side door And some on the floor mat under the steering wheel Now what's concerning about this to me is that the blood would have had to have been there for a while Because the cab of the truck remember was filled with water if the blood was fresh like say

By chance she got an accident and like her truck went in all of that would have been washed away So you have to imagine that some of it did wash away How much blood was there in the first place? Was it enough to kill her? And how long had it been sitting there for some of it to dry and stay It's despite the truck being completely submerged right they of course tested samples and found that they were a match to brandy But if brandy wasn't in the pond, we know this wasn't a suicide and we know this wasn't an accident Our only option now is foul play When trying to determine who would have wanted to hurt brandy

The first and most obvious angle was her connection to this drug world She was after all supposed to testify for her husband that day Yeah, I mean I guess someone could think that maybe she was gonna flip on him or something Right, but the more police dug into this theory the less it seemed likely at most their operation I think like at their height brought in like 30 000 over two months, which don't get me wrong That's a lot of money, but in the world of drug lords like chump change I don't think it's something that you kill a person over right so police then are thinking what I think all of us crime junkies think The husband now Jeff wasn't in jail for too long

He was appealing his charges and out of jail when a lot of this investigation was going on So police want to go talk to him But he refuses to speak with them and he says that it's his lawyers that are like forbidding it because they don't want him Doing anything to mess up his other case and his appeals Now without his cooperation their hands are completely tied and eventually the case starts to stall out Weeks turn into months and as summer 2007 rolls in like the one-year anniversary starts to approach An interesting clue just appears out of nowhere In a canal 30 miles south of the pond where brandy's truck was found a backpack is discovered

And at first the people who found it try to call police, but police don't really care like okay There's a backpack in a pond but their ears perk up when the people call back to say Hey, there's this address book in here and when we googled the name on the address book It comes up with a bunch of news articles about this missing person named brandy hall So when police look at the bag what they find Is interesting to say the least but i'm not sure what it means What you'll see in most reports is that they found the address book and some steel plates now some people say like Oh, she you know or that that side job that she got in construction. She did some welding work

So maybe those were hers, but I don't know many people who walk around with steel plates in their backpack So to me it's more likely that the plates were put in there by somebody hoping that the bag would sink But it's the other stuff in there that's so off to me. Florida today did a long form investigation of this whole case And they reported that in the bag were also some pornographic DVDs and erection cream Even more interesting Was what wasn't found Brandy had always carried a gun with her when it wasn't found in her truck or in the drained pond Everyone assumed that it was in her backpack, which wasn't recovered

But now we have the backpack and the gun wasn't there either Now she also had pain medication that she was on for almost her whole life because of that atv accident She had chronic pain and that wasn't found either No, are you ready for the real mind-scratcher with this new clue? There's more. Are you kidding? Well, when they examined the address book the ink was still somewhat intact Police say that if this address book had been in the water for a year, it would have disintegrated Yeah, there's no way that this would be possible Someone had to have thrown it in there

Recently and the canal is in no way connected to the pond So it's not like it was thrown in the same place that her truck was or Or whatever. I just don't know but like why why throw it in there? Why now we know brandy didn't throw it in there if someone else did like Clearly they aren't on anyone's radar right now There wasn't anything really incriminating in that bag that could lead back to the perpetrator Like were they just afraid of having it like maybe would point to them? And if so, does that mean that the person knew the family and ran the risk of someone recognizing the bag?

I mean, it's the only thing that I can think of police look again at Jeff After 14 months of putting a wall up for police His appeal stuff was finally put behind him and his lawyers allowed him to finally talk He takes multiple polygraphs and there are parts that stand out one in particular police asked him Do you know what happened to your wife? And Jeff said that he doesn't know how to answer polygraphs are really based off of yes and no answers And Jeff said it's more complicated than that. He tells the examiner I didn't do anything to her but the examiner says I need a guess or a no

Right, so do you know what happened to your wife? He answers no which shows deception, but he tells police it's because You know, I think I do know I think she's dead because of all of the evidence pointing to that conclusion Now looking at his two polygraphs in total police do say that he ends up passing both And eventually investigators are convinced that he didn't have anything to do with his wife's disappearance But who else is there to look at? I mean who else would have held on to that bag for a year before ditching it? Well, there is something I haven't told you yet about brandy's life Something that could be the key to cracking this case wide open

Brandy had been having an affair for years with who her old boss Family friend and the last person to talk to her the night before she went missing randall randall According to people in the community Everyone apparently knew about this affair Everyone that is except jeff and randall's wife and marie or so they say There were rumors of course jeff had even heard them, but he thought people were just being gossipy like he knew randall He trusted him. He didn't know for sure that an affair was going on until he got out of jail After brandy had been missing for some time and he found one of her cell phones that had text messages from randall

Now and marie might have known there's this very infamous public interaction Like if you look into this case online that supposedly went down between and marie and brandy Now depending on who you hear about it from it was either like a mild discussion where and marie seemed annoyed Or a full-blown Screaming match where and marie told brandy to stay away from her husband and brandy said i can have him anytime i want And i don't know who to believe and there really is no way to know for sure now But let's not discuss rumors. Let's talk about the facts and here are the facts When police looked at brandy's phone records, she and randall on average

communicated 52 times a day a day on the day she went missing They had multiple phone calls that day, but after that 10 minute and 46 second phone call on august 17th randall never tried reaching her again When they asked him about this he says well, you know, it's because she told me she was leaving Okay, but like everyone is freaking out looking for her her truck is found submerged in a pond There's blood in it and that's part of her plan like That yeah, i'm we're gonna go with that. She knows what she's doing. I'm not gonna call her that seems ridiculous Yeah, and randall goes into a little more detail about their last phone call that night

Apparently he had actually spoken to jeff earlier in the day And he told jeff that he was going to be a character witness for him as well But then he said like during one of his many talks with brandy's or during this 10 minute call He told brandy like i can't do it. It doesn't feel right. I don't want to risk getting involved like listen I'm a captain. I can't put my reputation and job on the line And he said brandy was upset by this and that's when she told him she was leaving And waiting for money from someone and she needed to get away Now police i think like all of us just had this feeling that there is more

That maybe he met up with her that night, but he swears he didn't he says like listen I was on duty that night and there were five other guys that he was working with that night and when They're all asked if he left they all say no So it's a little hard to argue with like sure he could have left late and slipped out like they didn't have eyes on him all night Like part of working a 25 hour shift is you do sleep but The problem with this is you would have think they would have heard him left because they have these like large bay doors And the sub that he would have used is like a diesel engine

Everyone kept saying like firefighters sleep light like they get up super easy someone would have heard this right police Ask randall to take a polygraph, but he refuses They do run a voice analysis test on him during one of their interviews which he failed And the three questions he failed on were do you know who killed brandy? Did you kill brandy? Do you suspect anyone of killing brandy? Now as suspicious as randall looks police don't have enough to make an arrest And so everyone just keeps going about their lives all while a big hole is left where brandy should be

then One year after the backpack was found two years after her truck was found All of a sudden in another body of water Brandy's old fire helmet was found floating in a marina now no one can agree on what this means because This was an old helmet like it's not something she kept with her not something she would have had in her truck that night In fact, this was something that her kids used to play with so how on earth Did it wind up there again so close to the anniversary?

And I don't have an answer for this police write it off as just this weird coincidence But it's a little hard for me to do that This clue while perplexing obviously doesn't lead us any closer to answers in what happened to brandy Time marches on original investigators are moved off the case new people take a look But without brandy her remains or some kind of confession Everyone was just stuck but in this small community her case remained an ever-present topic of conversation And it was just that two locals police officers who were just talking about the case offhandedly That shook it loose after five long years

There was an officer named jasmine who was like writing around or talking to somebody who was affiliated with the case and she asked Hey, what did you ever do with my tip? And he's like what tip and she goes yeah the one I submitted the one about seeing her truck that night So here's jasmine's story on the night of the 17th when brandy was last seen This cop was out on patrol and she sees a fire captain's vehicle at a hess gas station And she thinks that's kind of weird and like wonders if something is going on It's like an unusual sight so she gets out looks around she doesn't see like the fire captain anywhere Nothing really seems out of the ordinary so she gets back in her car and decides to like drive around the gas station

And from what I understand like behind the gas station There was a home depot and in the home depot parking lot. She sees a massive pickup truck So she goes to check it out when she throws her lights on she sees a woman with blonde hair And another person in the front seat with her Now she drives to the back of the vehicle because she was going to call in the plates And this is just routine something that cops always do but when she goes to use the radio there's like an emergency situation happening and They like only can use the radio then for emergency so it's like you know anything that's not like non-emergency

Don't call in we're keeping it clear So her shift was about to end and you know, she's not seeing anything super fishy She's not going to wait until this emergency thing's done to just call in some plates when nothing really bad is happening She knows there's a fire captain somewhere around there. So she says, you know, I'm sure whatever's happening is going to be fine So she leaves Well, the next day she learns about brandy the blonde with the big pickup truck who went missing So she went into the police station and put this tip in and the guy who took the tip even years and years later We're talking five years remembers taking it

But no one has any idea what happened to it. It never made it to investigators. It just got lost So for five years No one knew about this sighting that a fire captain's suv was seen in the same vicinity as a truck that looked like brandy's Now to be fair there was another captain on duty that night But that other guy didn't call brandy and wasn't having an affair with brandy. Yeah, but I don't get it You said before that all of randall's crew said that he never left Right, but according to that florida today reporting apparently there was a spare vehicle that was kept out back And that could have been the one that was spotted that night

So all these years later Maybe his airtight alibi wasn't so airtight after all and here's another thing Randall had a radio that he reportedly turned on at 12 30 in the morning. Okay Well, according to another captain, there was a radio in the captain's room at the station Now randall said he turned on the radio just to like see what was happening around town But why would you turn on your portable radio if you're sitting in the captain's room in the station right there? Right. All of this is super weird But again, you can't put someone in jail for being super weird

No one has been named an official suspect in this case Everyone is still presumed innocent and brandy is still nowhere to be found In august 2015 brandy's family had her legally declared dead and her case has been changed to a homicide investigation And now there was what looked like a break in the case just last winter in december of 2018 This kind of well-known research scientist named arpad vas came forward to say that he had this This machine that could locate human remains even if they were buried for years and years and years And that he could like not only locate any remains but like specific Like human remains based on dna that sounds made up

What tbd? I don't know. So this guy Is like legit. He's a research scientist He worked on the body farm for a long time studying how the human body decomposes And he's actually probably most remembered for his testimony during the kasey anthony trial He was actually the one who got the air samples collected and then tested them to testify that there was like unusually high levels of chloroform in the trunk Which he said indicated the presence of decomposition so This guy isn't like a total whack job like he's he's very legitimate

But he ends up getting this patent a while ago for this machine Or contraption thing. I don't know what you want to call it. Apparently it looks like it's like totally homemade, but The way for my understanding that it works Is you put a fingernail Into it and not just like any fingernail like if I weren't missing it'd be like my sisters or my dad Someone who shares the same dna is me. Okay, then this machine scans the air as you walk over the ground and it can detect Decomposing bodies even after years Where does the fingernail come in? So from my understanding

The fingernail is used because it only will pick up the decomposition of someone who matches that dna So like listen, I don't know about all of this some sites say it's snake oil and usually I'd be like yep This feels like a sham. Yeah, but okay. Here's the thing. So in this case in brandy's case Apparently this doctor reached out to the family about using this machine to help find brandy's remains And they let him because really at this point again, it's like 2018. What do they have to lose? So it's december 2018 They're scanning this area And the machine gets a hit

So they brought in some other like ground penetrating radar or metal detectors or whatever And these other detectors say like we're detecting jewelry about six feet down So when they confirm this now all of these people are like unofficial search parties when they confirm this Everything is halted and they call police in and and we don't know how it ends What do you mean? It's just nothing after those reports about the search being done in december There aren't any more news reports. We don't know what the cops did or did not find when they went out there It's been seven months And we're still waiting

Waiting to hear if they found anything Waiting to hear if there are any suspects and waiting to hear if there will ever be justice for brandy If you are at all as into this story as i was i highly recommend checking out florida today The newspaper did like i said this 11 part story on this case. It's amazing And there's even a weird twist at part 11 And if you just want to see pictures you can always do that on our website crime junkie podcast dot com And be sure to follow us on instagram at crime junkie podcast and on twitter at crime junkie pod We will back next week with a brand new episode

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