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| "Florida Today," October 15, 2006, via Newspapers.com |
Usually, the missing-persons cases I’ve covered on this blog feature ordinary people, living ordinary, routine lives, going about their ordinary routine business, until suddenly, for no discernible reason, they’re gone. Their disappearances are particularly surprising because their lives, up till that point, held no surprises.
The following mystery is a bit different. Long before Brandy Hall vanished, her life had become…complicated.
Brandy Rogge was born in Holopaw, Florida in 1973. She grew up to be an adventurous, athletic free spirit, fond of wild pranks, like the time she taped shut the jaws of a two-foot long alligator and set it loose in a Burger King. (Unsurprisingly, this little stunt got her banned for life from the eatery. What happened to the poor alligator is not recorded.)
When she was 20, Brandy began doing volunteer work for the Palm Bay Fire Department, where she met Jeffrey Hall, who was a firefighter at the station. In 1994, the couple married, and eventually had a son and daughter.
At first, Brandy’s life seemed happy and fulfilled. The former “tomboy” became a loving and gentle mother, and, to outward appearances, she and her husband had a good relationship. Friends marveled at how the couple even seemed to have money to burn. Brandy started her own airboat business, their children had all the latest toys and games, and the Halls wore good clothes and drove good cars. It was surprising that they could manage all that on their relatively small salaries.
In 2005, that particular mystery was solved when Jeffrey and his friend Paul Hirsch were arrested. They were charged with using the Halls’ 13-acre property in Holopaw to grow marijuana. They sold about 40 pounds of pot every two months, earning a $30,000 profit. Brandy was arrested a few days later, but the charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence. Both she and Jeffrey swore that Brandy had no idea whatsoever of her husband’s entrepreneurial activities, and although the police didn’t believe them--at the very least, she must have had some curiosity about where all their extra income was coming from--nobody could prove they were lying. Despite her name being officially cleared, the Palm Bay Fire Department fired her. Things were suddenly looking very bleak for this once-carefree couple. They had no income, no jobs, and Jeffrey was likely facing a prison sentence. Brandy eventually found work at the Malabar Volunteer Fire Department, but the job was unpaid.
Brandy spent the evening of August 17, 2005 at her grandmother’s home, scanning the phonebook for places where she might find work. She then went to her night shift at the Malabar Fire Department, where she did inventory. Around 9:30 p.m., she phoned her husband, who was at home with their children. At 10:45 p.m., she left her shift early, commenting that early the following day, she needed to go to Kissimmee for Jeffrey’s sentencing hearing. (Both Jeffrey and Hirsch were given 18 months in prison and 42 months probation.) Surveillance video captured Brandy chatting with her colleagues in a seemingly relaxed manner, before leaving the firehouse and driving away. At 11:06, she phoned the Malabar Fire Department Captain, Randall Richmond. They spoke for about 10 minutes. At 11:30, Jeffrey called Brandy’s number, but received no response. He assumed she was just busy at the fire station.
The following day, a fisherman found her firefighting equipment in a bag floating in a small pond off Treeland Boulevard. When police arrived at the scene, they saw a fuel slick in the water. The cooler Brandy habitually kept in the back of her green Silverado truck was floating a short distance away. The cans inside were still cold. A search of the pond found Brandy’s truck…but no Brandy. However, ominously, a substantial amount of what was later determined to be her blood was in the cab of the truck. For so much of the blood to remain in the cab, it had to have been dried for at least 6-8 hours before the truck hit the water.
The investigation into Brandy’s disappearance became increasingly complex when it was learned that she and Randall Richmond--the last person she was known to have spoken to--were having an affair, possibly for as long as ten years. (Richmond was also married with children.) Richmond initially told police that he hadn’t spoken to Brandy for some time. However, when confronted with her phone records, he was forced to change his story. He now claimed that when he talked to Brandy, she told him she was leaving town, and that she was waiting at a gas station for some unnamed person to bring her money. She advised Richmond to throw away his phone after they spoke, and he did. (A curious side note: Richmond had been scheduled to appear at Jeffrey's sentencing hearing, as a character witness. However, on the morning of the hearing, he phoned the courthouse to say he wouldn't be able to make it. The person who took the call said Richmond was crying as he spoke.)
Naturally, all of this made the police take a great interest in Captain Richmond, particularly after they learned that Brandy and Richmond’s wife Anne-Marie had publicly argued at a recent seafood festival, apparently about Brandy's relationship with Randall. Anne-Marie didn’t have much of an alibi for the night Brandy disappeared--after getting off her shift as a nurse at 11 p.m., she spent the rest of the night at home with her sons--but there was nothing else to implicate her in the case. Richmond was on duty the night of the 17th, but it would not have been impossible for him to briefly sneak away from the station. Shortly after midnight, a police officer named Jasmine Campbell drove by a gas station not far from the fire station. She saw a woman with long blonde hair--like Brandy’s--sitting in the driver’s seat of a green Silverado truck, with another person sitting in the passenger seat. A fire truck was parked near the truck, which Campbell thought odd.
Jeffrey told investigators that he had heard rumors about his wife’s affair, but he didn’t take them seriously until after his release from prison. He found in their home a phone Brandy had secretly been using, and the many messages he found between her and Richmond convinced him the stories were true.
In 2007, a backpack belonging to Brandy was found floating in a canal 30 miles from Malabar. She used it to carry medication, her Fire Department radio, and her gun. Instead of these items, the backpack contained clothes, X-rated videos, and her address book. This canal had been drained soon after Brandy vanished, indicating that someone had dropped it in the water fairly recently. A year after the backpack was found, one of Brandy’s fire helmets was fished out of a marina a few miles from Malabar. What, if anything, this latest discovery had to do with her disappearance is unknown.
To date, Brandy--or her corpse--has not been found. She was declared legally dead in 2015. Despite Randall Richmond’s claims that Brandy planned to run away, nobody who knew her gave the idea any credit. Although she reportedly was extremely angry at Jeffrey for messing up her life with the marijuana bust, Brandy was deeply devoted to her 10-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son. She would never have abandoned them. Besides, the blood in her truck indicates she had been a victim of foul play.
The three people most likely to have personal issues with Brandy--namely, her husband, her lover, and the lover’s wife--all had weak alibis for the time she disappeared, and Officer Campbell’s sighting is, to say the least, intriguing. However, we have no proof that it was Brandy’s Silverado that Campbell saw, or that the fire truck had been driven by Randall Richmond.
In 2006, Palm Bay Detective Jess Suelter commented, “This entire situation is odd. When you step back and look at it, there are so many things that could have happened to her.”
For now, at least, this has been the most anyone can say for certain about the disappearance of Brandy Hall.
