Two years later - false leads and fading hope

By Brian Hicks (Contact)The Post and Courier
Saturday, May 19, 2007


http://www.missingbrandyhanna.com/Home_Page.html



Donna Parent reflects on the disappearance of her daughter Brandy Hanna nearly two years ago.

If you go
What: Candlelight vigil for Brandy Hanna

When: 7:30 tonight

Where: Alex's Restaurant, 3713 Dorchester Road

The call came Tuesday while she was driving her new grandson home and, luckily, she missed it.

Even after two years, nothing upsets Donna Parent more than those messages that begin the same way: They've found a body ...

Sunday marks the second anniversary of her daughter's disappearance. On May 20, 2005, Brandy Hanna worked her shift at Alex's Restaurant on Dorchester Road, went home to her Florida Avenue apartment and vanished into the dark Lowcountry night.

Today, police have no fresh leads, no real suspects, no clue as to where the then-32-year-old North Charleston woman went. Detectives call it one of the most perplexing missing persons cases they've ever faced.

Parent has lived this nightmare for two years — false leads, people trying to cheat her out of reward money, fading hope.

On Tuesday, it was another of those messages. Somebody in Georgia, near the state line, had a flooding problem on their property — beavers damming up a river. When they went to investigate, they found the bones of a woman between the ages of 25 and 38.

"I didn't sleep all night," Parent said. "All I could think about was a dry riverbed and bones."

Although she has learned to remain skeptical until something suggests otherwise, that body found 250 miles away has been in the back of Parent's mind all week, leading up to tonight's candlelight vigil for Brandy at Alex's Restaurant.

But just like all the other times, this likely is a dead-end trail.

North Charleston police Detective Tamara Driggers, who works at least one day a week on Brandy's case, says this Georgia case doesn't hold the answer to this mystery.

For the past several months, Driggers and other North Charleston detectives have reviewed Brandy's case, re-interviewing witnesses and going through her stuff again. They have found little new information.

One of the people closest to the case, Brandy's ex-boyfriend, died last year, taking to the grave any information he might have had.

For now, they just have to hope something turns up. They are scheduled to get DNA matches from Parent and her son, just in case.

"I'm just hoping that, through all of it, some sort of lead comes up," Driggers said. "When it does, we will follow it until we exhaust it."

It's a strange case, police say. If something had happened on the street, Brandy most likely would have been left at the scene or there would be talk. But there is nothing.

Meanwhile, Parent has had to put up with a customer at the restaurant who complained about the missing persons posters and various photos of Brandy that hang in the dining room. The man complained to Alex's owners. Finally, the police asked him to not come back.

Then, Parent received a call from a man who demanded $5,000 to tell her where Brandy was.

"I told him there was $7,500 in the reward fund and it was all his if he took me to her," she recalls.

But the man wanted the money upfront, anonymously, or she would "never see her again." The police traced the call to a pre-paid cell phone.

In the past two years, Parent has discovered a whole world she never knew existed, a network of missing persons organizations, support groups and investigators.

A psychic told her Brandy was beneath a tin hut off Spruill Avenue.

Parent takes all of it in graciously and continues her own search for the truth.

Monica Caison, founder and executive director of the North Carolina-based CUE Center for Missing Persons, says Parent, like many people who have missing family members, has pushed for her daughter every day for the past two years.

"People just don't give up," Caison said. "Until you have a body, you still have hope."

These days, Parent has a grandson to occupy some of her time. Jacob Parent was born on Dec. 27, and Parent keeps him most afternoons.

"If Brandy was here, we'd be fighting over him," she said, laughing.

Parent's son, Michael, said that when Jacob was born it was the first time in a long while he'd seen joy in his mother's eyes.

Parent dotes on her grandson shamelessly and will not even let a lack of sleep keep her from her baby time.

After two years, it is nice to finally have something good in life.


Monica Caison
CUE Center for Missing Persons
PO Box 12714
Wilmington, NC 28405
(910) 343-1131
(910) 232-1687 24 Hour Line
Email: cuecenter@aol.com
Website: http://www.ncmissingpersons.org/