Kelley Brannon vanished from the small north Florida town of live Oak. A place she was unfamiliar with and ended up in by chance.
Kelley Brannon in Live Oak, Florida, shortly before she vanished.
Kelley and her boyfriend Eddie Emerson had been arguing in the hours before she disappeared outside the Sunshine Inn.
Her last-known contact was a voicemail where she declared she was getting into a vehicle. Several eyewitnesses told police they saw her walking along the main road toward town with her guitar slung over her shoulder. Eddie said he was asleep.
In episode 2 covering the case, we take you sleuths down several different roads, exploring different theories. Was Kelley abducted? Did Eddie, who has a documented past history of domestic violence against Kelley, harm her? Did Kelley have a mental break? Did she run away from a toxic situation?
We'll tell you how many people staying at the hotel are now persons of interest. We'll tell about the shocking evidence a group of Kelley's friends believe they have uncovered regarding that alleged last ominous call, and we'll tell you what the lead detective is saying about a woman who looks just like Kelley seen in Baja Mexico.
This episode will include soundbites from interviews Kelley's friends, boyfriend and detectives gave Two Sleuths podcast co-cost Katie Kaplan as she reported on the story for the local CBS News affiliate. We'll also tell you about the sad update on the person who many say Kelley never would have abandoned.
Detectives believe the key to cracking her case could be a left-handed, Fender Stratocaster guitar with a sunburst design and a brand sticker missing on the headstock. (See image below.)
Brannon vanished along with her rare, left-hand Fender Stratocaster guitar that had a sunburst finish and unique headstock. If you find it, call Live Oak PD.
Kelley Brannon (Left) Reports came in from Baja Mexico with sightings of Kelley Brannon. Locals obtained the picture of the women on the left to determine if it was indeed Kelley Brannon. What do you think?
If you know anything about the Kelley Brannon case, or you believe you have seen the rare guitar, call Live Oak PD at 386-362-7463, or make an anonymous tip via Suwannee Valley Crimestoppers at 386-208-TIPS. Your information could be eligible for a $1,000 cash reward and might bring a lot of pain and suffering for Kelley's loved ones to an end.
Sources:
UNSOLVED FLORIDA: Occupy Wall Street activist, Kelley Brannon, vanishes- Pt. 1 (wctv.tv)
UNSOLVED FLORIDA: Kelley Brannon caught on camera the night she vanished- Pt. 2 (wctv.tv)
https://www.whereiskelleybrannon.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Kelley_Brannon_VM.mp4
Suwannee Valley Unsolved: https://fb.watch/nSUIVnvjrj/
Episode Transcript:
Katie KaplanHost00:00 It is summertime in the deep south, at the height of the pandemic and troubled lovebirds, kelly Branon and her on-again, off-again boyfriend of a year and a half, eddie Emerson, have found themselves not only houseless but stuck in an unfamiliar town after his pickup truck breaks down. A heated argument over where to keep their flock of chickens winds on for hours, escalating over text messages, until one final phone call goes unanswered. Kelly, who has stuck outside the motel room she paid for, leaves a voicemail. It ends with a proclamation she is getting into a car. The call ends and Kelly vanishes. She's been radio silent ever since I'm Katie Kaplan, an investigative journalist. EmHost00:44 And I'm M a former special agent and you're listening to Two Sleuths. Thank you. 01:25 Those details were all covered in Part 1, so if you haven't already listened, go do that first. But for now we're going to pick up inside of Room 70 at the Sunshine Inn. That's around 8 am in the morning and Eddie Emerson wakes up alone, according to one public interview he gave. When he woke up the next morning and saw Kelly wasn't in bed next to him, he became worried. Now I'm not sure why Eddie would have expected her to be in the room, since police say the door needed to be open with a physical key and he had the only one. A record of his calls showed that he tried to call Kelly around 8.03 that morning and then again at 8.21. He then calls a credit union and some auto body shops. Main shots of the text messages that we have show he sent Kelly a text at 8.54 am that asked what are you doing? This text message remains unanswered to this day. Katie KaplanHost02:17 According to the lead investigator, captain Jason Roundtree of Live Oak PD Motel's surveillance footage shows Eddie going out to the parking lot around 9 am and Roundtree says it appears Eddie is searching for something. Kelly's car is still there in the parking lot, partially visible to the camera, but she is nowhere to be found by this point in time. Eddie has listened to the final voicemail from Kelly's phone, which came in at around 1 am. He says he called her but her phone was going to voicemail. So he picks up his guitars and other things and begins to load them into Kelly's Toyota Camry. According to Captain Roundtree, this is confirmed in video evidence. It shows Eddie open the trunk and car doors and then leave them that way as he goes back and forth between the car and the room. 03:04 When he's finished, captain Roundtree says Eddie pulls out of the parking space and drives a few yards down to the motel's front office to check out. At this point Captain Roundtree says there is a clear view on surveillance footage into the front seat where Eddie's dog Gordon is sitting. Roundtree says from what he can see, there is no sign of Kelly in the car. Eddie makes his first call to Live Oak PD at 9.24 am. In a 2021 interview I had with him. Eddie says he spent the next while driving around looking for Kelly. Eddie EmersonInterviewee03:37 And I just looked for a round town. I figured someone's seen her. I probably called her and just went right to voicemail. I said, all right, her phone died. I looked in the car and her phone charger's still there. Her wallet's still there. I, you know, my God, you know, damn it. He left all this stuff here. I'm looking around town passing everybody. Nobody's seen her. Nobody has a clue. Katie KaplanHost03:57 Eventually, he heads to the police station where he makes a missing person's report. EmHost04:01 Live Oak PD says at this time Kelly was an adult, free to leave a situation she didn't want to be in. So, given their past history, which includes domestic violence, police weren't sure what kind of situation they were dealing with. But Roundtree decided to go forward with at least releasing a burlow for her, which is short for be on the lookout, and it alerts other officers across the region to make contact with Kelly if she is spotted. Katie KaplanHost04:26 By about 2.50 that afternoon Eddie makes his first call to a nearby hospital. After a few hours with no signs of Kelly in Live Oak, eddie says he decided to go back to the Mykonopy farm just south of Gainesville to check if she had hitched a ride there somehow. Now this is an area where they had been living, but the landlord had kicked them out and was vehemently against Kelly being there. At one point, according to text evidence and police records, the landlord had even allegedly threatened to shoot them to get them to leave. However, kelly had made claims via text messages during their fight that she was going to return to the farm and drop some of Eddie's things off there. Eddie says he found no sign of her there and so he eventually returned back to Live Oak. Later that evening he checked back into the sunshine in once again and was given a different room. 05:14 Now some of Kelly's friends from Gainesville, where Eddie would have had to pass by on his way to the farm, have wondered why Eddie didn't call them immediately when he was on his way back to the area to look for Kelly, especially since some of these friends had previously let Kelly stay with them when things got rough between the couple. They say Eddie didn't call them to tell them Kelly was missing until much later that evening. Nonetheless, eddie ends up back in Live Oak that night and he stays for a couple of days. Police say it's notable that his contact with law enforcement was immediate and constant, but they also say it almost became a nuisance, with Eddie sometimes calling them up to six times an hour. Eddie was almost seemingly obsessive with trying to find Kelly. He spent those few days making a Facebook page dedicated to her being missing, coordinating with people to help look for her and at some point even uses Kelly's credit card to make some missing flyers to put up around town. Eventually he decides he's going to continue to head north, like their original plan, but instead of Detroit he's going to go home to one of his parents' house in Massachusetts. 06:21 Police caught wind of this. So on Friday July 17th, a couple of days after Kelly was last seen, captain Roundtree sent someone to the sunshine in right in early to get Eddie. They came back to the station where they did a three-hour interview. Knowing that Eddie's truck was still in the repair shop and that he was planning on leaving in Kelly's vehicle, live Oak PD asked if they could search both vehicles which Eddie agreed to. Again, this is a North Florida Friday in July, so with heat and humidity, we're told it was equivalent to 99-degree weather. We're told the officers wore body cameras and the search took about 35 to 40 minutes and that each car was full of stuff. Police also obtained a search warrant for both Kelly and Eddie's phones. Eventually, eddie swaps out the stuff from his truck at the shop and Kelly's car, which he has, and heads north. He's still got Kelly's laptop and also her purse along with him, which Roundtree eventually asked him to hand over to Kelly's mother. EmHost07:21 This is about the time you hear about this case, right? Katie KaplanHost07:24 Correct. It was about five days after her disappearance. The Live Oak PD had sent out a missing person's flyer. We get a fair amount of these into a newsroom but after 10 years of crime reporting, the circumstances of this one just jumped off the page at me and really piqued my reporter Spidey's senses. EmHost07:43 I still remember bringing it up in our editorial meeting and saying there is just something odd about this one and I can see why A grown woman last seen arguing with her boyfriend at a motel in an unfamiliar town and then she vanishes, leaving behind personal belongings, specifically her purse and ID. Katie KaplanHost08:02 Right and I remember Kelly's choppy black hair, light skin and brown eyes looking out from underneath the words missing person written in big red letters. I immediately Googled her and found that Facebook page that Eddie had started in an effort to raise awareness about the situation, and I messaged the page and connected with Eddie right away. He seemed eager to get some help with looking for Kelly and I actually interviewed him that night over Zoom, as he had already driven up north by this point. Then I ran a segment about it during our newscast and it was more of a short piece just saying hey, you know, loved ones of this woman missing in our area are worried about where she could be. 08:41 After several weeks when Kelly didn't turn up anywhere, I decided I wanted to dig in the story a little more and I launched this months long investigation. I had reached out to Live Oak PD several times but they didn't respond and I just couldn't figure out why. So finally, one day I drove out there and literally showed up on their doorstep. It ended up that through that Facebook page that was dedicated to finding Kelly, her story has started to gain traction online and it got so much attention that police had started receiving hundreds of emails, some legitimate and others pure speculation. So mine were just getting lost in the shuffle. EmHost09:20 Now Captain Roundtree says that they actually had to create a separate email inbox for Kelly Brannon and her case due to the overwhelming influx of tips. And this gets really tricky because, while I'm sure most people have good intentions, many of the tips that came in were from people who lived across the country, just writing in a suggestion of a place that they saw on a Google map and they told law enforcement hey, you need to search here. Then other tips came in from Psychics. Captain Roundtree and his small police department, with only 20 sworn officers, have an obligation to follow every tip and every lead that comes in, and this can really bog down a case. And then remember there was Eddie, who Captain Roundtree said was calling nonstop wanting an update and he was providing his own leads, and this took even more time away from investigating the case in those early days. Katie KaplanHost10:11 And so the day that I showed up at the Live Oak PD headquarters. Captain Roundtree was super welcoming and he actually ended up taking me out on this police golf cart. Captain Roundtree was pretty open at that point about their investigative efforts and actually took me to some of the places around town where they had already done some of their grid searches. One of those places was called Heritage Park, which is essentially a nature walking trail. It's not far from the police station and was searched because Eddie had gone there with another person from the motel in the days after Kelly went missing. Police used volunteers and drones to search the area, but they didn't find anything. Captain Roundtree also says that they did a search of the farm down in Mckenopy and that was done with volunteers who have cadaver dogs. They did not find anything there either. 10:59 During the course of my investigation I traveled to Live Oak many times. At one point I had like an hour long sit down interview with Detective Roundtree on camera. Afterward he took me over to the Sunshine Inn and we talked to the motel owner. This guy lives on the property with his wife and young children, but they let me take a peek inside one of the rooms just to get a sense of what they look like. So, to help you visualize, the motel is two levels. 11:24 Just off one of the main drags into town there is the road which parallels the parking lot which parallels the building. There's no pool, no real common area. The only place to really hang out or loiter is the parking lot that sits right in front of the rooms. The motel backs up to a small green space with a fenced in drainage ditch and, in case you're wondering, there was no water in it when I was there and I am told that this area was searched in a grid search. Behind that green space is a residential neighborhood. 11:56 If you're looking at the Sunshine Inn, to the right is a small strip of businesses, including Alondromat, pepe's Market and a restaurant. To the left of the Sunshine Inn is another small motel. This one is called the Live Oak Motel and it's separated from the Sunshine Inn by a wooden fence that slices the property line right between them. This motel is really seedy. Captain Roundtree says there is a lot of illicit drug activity that happens there, and during the course of this day with Roundtree he also told me about some of their other investigative efforts, which include more than a dozen ground searches in various places, including, as I mentioned, around the Sunshine Inn, obtaining some of that surveillance footage from the motel. They actually grabbed the entire video deck and took it back to the police station. They also got some footage from a tire shop about a mile down the road, a forensic search of two rooms at the Sunshine Inn and several interviews with Eddie. EmHost12:55 Captain Roundtree also says that the day after Kelly was reported missing he started interviewing people who were staying at the motel, really talking to about two dozen people at the Sunshine Inn. He says he used their stories by weighing them against one another for accuracy, and some of them said Kelly would drive over to that motel next door and then she would look over the fence almost to see as if Eddie was looking for her. Three people said that at one point that night they saw Kelly walking away with her guitar or possibly a bag of clothes slung over her shoulder. Captain Roundtree actually released some of this motel's security footage to Katie for her Unsolved series, and it shows Kelly walking through the parking lot at 8.42, and then again at 8.50 that night. Most importantly, after reviewing all of the footage, captain Roundtree tells us that she is never seen in this footage walking away with her guitar and in fact Kelly is actually never seen leaving this parking lot on foot at all, or in a car for that matter. 13:57 Now it is important to note that only part of the motel parking lot is covered by this motel surveillance camera. Now, this camera is mounted near the front desk overhang and it looks over the west side of the parking lot toward the room that Kelly and Eddie were staying in, although their room is not visible in the shot. There's also a few more rooms on the other side of the motel, including the area where the motel owners live, as well as that fence where you can kind of see into the seedy motel next door, while none of these areas are covered by any cameras. Back when Katie was working on her story surrounding Kelly's disappearance, she found herself down in Gainesville, where an interview lent her some insight into the case that Captain Roundtree hadn't yet shared with her. Katie KaplanHost14:42 Right. So for people that aren't really familiar with the area, gainesville is in Central Florida. It's about a three-hour drive from Tallahassee to its north, where I was stationed at. It's a college town with the University of Florida there. It has a vibrant music and art scene, and I had started to connect with some of Kelly's friends online at this point who told me about this bar called the Hardback. Now, kelly was a frequent flier and also used to perform there. 15:08 It was closed the afternoon that I stopped by, but through the front door I could see Kelly's missing poster hanging on the wall and that was really eerie. And later one of her friends sent me a video from inside the bar when it reopened. A pair of Kelly's boots were hanging there, slung from the rafters above the stage. Apparently she had done it during one of her lively performances and they hung there for at least a year. I mean, maybe they are still there, I don't know. 15:35 Now, just down the street from this bar lived Kelly's friend Marvo. He had met Kelly through the music scene and at one point was managing a new band that she had started. He welcomes me into his home and let me interview him, and we actually sat on the very couch where he would sometimes let Kelly sleep when she was fighting with Eddie. At this point he had been up to Live Oak to disseminate missing fliers around the town. He posted them on light poles and in businesses. Those hung there for months and he even tried to retrace Kelly's steps at one point in Live Oak and he worked with volunteers who offered to help in one way or another. Captain RountreeInterviewee16:14 This case goes pretty deep because there's a lot of strange things that I think went on in Live Oak and there's a lot of unanswered questions. Katie KaplanHost16:25 Marvo also had some concerning details to share. He claims to have some inside knowledge of the tumultuous relationship that Kelly and Eddie had because, again, he would let Kelly sleep on his couch after those fights, and he ended up sharing text messages that backed up these claims. And he had photos of Kelly with a black eye that Eddie had apparently given her when he had punched her in the face during a fight that happened the day after Christmas in 2019. EmHost16:53 So you do a little digging and you end up finding that Eddie had actually been arrested after that physical altercation, which was just six months after the two had started dating. Katie KaplanHost17:03 Right. I actually had to go to the Gainesville Police Department for that because, as we've learned, it's always better when you show up in person. They gave me a file with the incident report and some of the seen photos, which show Kelly with a freshly swollen eye. The report shows that Eddie admitted to striking Kelly in the face. I also got a hold of the 911 calls, which are pretty upsetting to listen to. There's a neighbor who called in who says the arguing is a nightly thing and that Kelly can be heard this time saying ow. We later found out that this whole argument apparently stemmed from Kelly talking to her childhood friend, Cheryl Speak, and allegedly that's what he was angry about. EmHost17:45 So now, you've officially found evidence of violence in this relationship? Yes, Confirmation. Katie KaplanHost17:52 Eddie ends up spending about a week in jail after this, and then he has to wear a court-ordered ankle monitor for about a month. So that puts us into the end of January in 2020. Then I got a hold of the calls for service from the Mykonopy Farm, which had some more allegations of domestic violence, this time on behalf of both Eddie and Kelly. We talked about it in the first episode, but they had about a dozen interactions with police from early April to late May of 2020. Kelly's friends were aware that the relationship was unhealthy. Not only did Marvo let her seek refuge at his place sometimes, but her childhood friend Cheryl says she paid for the flight in late May to move Kelly back home to her mother's house in New Hampshire. Here's a bit of what she told me back in that interview. CherylInterviewee18:38 Many conversations I had with her at that point and there are other people that can attest to this too there was like if she was calling, talking to somebody, you know, he was either playing loud music in the background or they were fighting. It was very toxic and it just became more and more concerning for me and for a lot of her friends. EmHost18:58 So at this point in your investigation obviously you got to go back and interview Eddie, Exactly. Katie KaplanHost19:04 That first interview over Zoom when he had just got back to his parents' place up north. But then, after learning this new information, there had to be a follow-up. This one was over the phone and he would only tell me that he was living on a farm on the East Coast and he didn't want me to record it. By this point there was a lot of drama with people on the Facebook page and so he had given up control of that to someone else to run. He told me that he was not happy with some of the other interviews that had been posted online, so he was trying to avoid all of the drama. Eddie was very open with me. He admits to hitting Kelly and says that, yes, they had a turbulent relationship, but he also says that he and Kelly were trying to start fresh and that's part of the reason that they were moving to Michigan. When asked, point blank, he was adamant that he did not do anything to hurt her that night. EmHost19:54 So, as we mentioned in part one of this case, Captain Roundtree spent more than two hours with us talking through the entire case, and he confirmed that there are six persons of interest, all of whom were staying at the hotel that night, and this included Eddie Emerson, as well as some of the people that he and Kelly had interacted with at the Sunshine Inn. So on July 15th, the day Kelly vanished, Eddie returned to the Sunshine Inn after reportedly searching for her around the town of Live Oak and then also driving down to their previous residence at the McEnnopee Farm. So now that Eddie's back in town that next day, on the 16th, Captain Roundtree says that Eddie sought out a man named John Robert Bonnell, who goes by JR, and JR had been staying right next door to Eddie in room 69. The night Kelly was last heard from he was also that guy who knocked on Eddie's motel room door around 10.30pm telling him that he needed to go get his girl because she was drunk and crying. Katie KaplanHost20:52 According to Captain Roundtree, early on Eddie said he thought JR, who is a convicted felon, was an okay guy. Now, this would eventually change over time. However, right after Kelly went missing, eddie asked JR for help. Since JR is a Live Oak local, eddie says he asked him where he would search for someone who is missing. So JR allegedly said heritage trail and together they hopped in Kelly's car and drove out to the Wooded Nature Trail. Now this is the same place that Captain Roundtree showed me on the police vehicle. According to police, eddie and JR go to the walking path and JR meets up with a guy. Captain Roundtree says that he now believes JR used Eddie for a ride to meet up for a drug deal and heritage trail is no longer considered to be an area of any real interest in the investigation. EmHost21:40 And JR is later interviewed by police where he recalls something odd that Eddie told him during their excursion out to Heritage Park. According to law enforcement, jr claimed that Eddie mentioned he'd had a dream where Kelly got into a car with someone and that person hurt her. So Eddie said he was trying to find Kelly in case she needed some help. It was the part about how convinced Eddie was over this dream that stood out as odd. Katie KaplanHost22:04 Over time the relationship between Eddie and JR starts to sour, and this is partly why At one point, eddie checks out of his Sunshine Inn motel room and he allegedly asks JR if he can store some of his music equipment in JR's room. Well, eddie continues to look for Kelly, jr allegedly obliges, and when Eddie returns, his two guitars and an amp are gone and according to Captain Roundtree, jr gave those items to a guy named Chuck, another person of interest, to pawn for money. Police found them just down the road from the Sunshine Inn at a local pawn shop. However, after they're found, eddie declines to press charges. 22:43 Now in the year, after my in-depth investigative piece aired on the local news, I was contacted by a producer for Paramount Plus for a show focusing on missing people called Never Seen Again, and they told me they were going to use my report as a roadmap for the episodes on Kelly. And then they interviewed me about my investigation. Eddie is also interviewed for these series and in the episodes you can hear him accusing JR of possibly having something to do with Kelly's disappearance. He says that while Kelly was in the parking lot the night she ended up vanishing, she and JR had been talking and JR kept inviting Kelly into his room, which she declined. EmHost23:23 Now, the parking lot of the Sunshine Inn was definitely a high traffic area, especially as it's known around town as a place to score some drugs, and that night some of JR's friends were out and milling about in front of the motel rooms. We're told that while Kelly and Eddie were fighting, kelly came over with a bottle of wine and spent some time chatting with all of these people. So we know at the very least JR's friends were among a group of people who were outside that night, including any other common traffic, all of whom could have bore witness to what happened to Kelly that night. One thing Captain Roundtree has told us is that JR is a person of interest. Now. Katie has pulled his criminal record, which includes a history of violence, and he's currently in jail right now for not only drug charges but also for possession of a weapon by a felon. His alibi for that night. 24:10 Well, it's a bit iffy Now. He told Eddie that he went into his motel room sometime around 10 or 11pm and then he never left. But another woman who was there that night, a woman named Amber, said she had seen JR out and about much later than that, both JR's room and the one Eddie stayed in that first night were forensically searched by agents with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but that was about a month after Kelly went missing. So room 69 and 70 were processed and Captain Roundtree tells us that there's only a few items that were collected. So there wasn't really anything that moved the investigation forward. Of course, we all know that some causes of death won't leave behind the obvious signs of foul play, and those would include suffocating, strangling, poisoning or an intentional or accidental overdose. Katie KaplanHost24:59 So, aside from searching two of the motel rooms, what other investigative work has been done in this case? Well, there have been a ton of theories that police have looked into over the past three years. We just touched on JR as one avenue of investigation that police are keeping open, but there are still several others, starting off with one that has been erroneously reported, a man named Alfredo. If you've listened to other coverage, you might have heard this guy being called Armando. Now, armando's is actually the name of a Mexican restaurant in the heart of downtown Live Oak, and it's named after the cook. Kelly and Eddie did eat at this restaurant and, coincidentally, interacted with the owner, laz, and his buddy, alfredo, but Alfredo did not work at Armando's. 25:42 So now that this is cleared up, we'll remind you that Alfredo was mentioned in the first episode. On Kelly and Eddie's first day in Live Oak, they started asking around to see if anyone would let them house their chickens. As in, alfredo happened to be eating at a nearby sandwich shop. When they overheard the conversation. Alfredo happened to have a chicken coop on his property, which was about 20 miles outside of town, and he offered it up. You might also remember that Kelly and Eddie returned to the property without permission and they spent two nights squatting next to the coop with their chickens inside until police say Alfredo's wife found them and then ran them off. EmHost26:19 Eddie, who has been very vocal about his theories on this case, thought that the night she went missing it was possible. Alfredo drove by the sunshine in parking lot and saw Kelly and since she knew him, she got in the car with him. Since he does have a decent sized property out in rural area, eddie speculated that maybe he could have brought Kelly back there and done something to her. However, captain Roundtree says he followed this lead, even going to the property and speaking with Alfredo. Roundtree believes that Alfredo may have been hoping that Kelly and Eddie, who appeared to be a bit nomadic and not really certain of their future, might just leave these chickens behind. Roundtree has officially ruled this lead out and Alfredo is not being investigated as a person of interest. Katie KaplanHost27:04 In the immediate months after Kelly vanished, live Oak PD did more than 15 ground searches. They partnered with professional agencies and brought in tools like cadaver dogs and drones. In addition to that, kelly's friends raised money online to hire a team of private investigators. Mike Thompson and his team are all retired law enforcement and they spent months following the case. PI Mike ThompsonInterviewee27:25 Somebody in live oak knows what happened to Kelly. That's what I believe. Katie KaplanHost27:30 So once again I found myself making the track down to Gainesville. Mike and his team actually invited me inside their war room in their headquarters where their investigation was laid out in visual form. They had a timeline of Eddie's activities written on a whiteboard. They had retraced Kelly and Eddie's steps in the day before she vanished and they also seemed to be pretty interested in Armondos as a lead in Kelly's disappearance. They said when they went in to ask questions people nearby would just get up and leave. EmHost27:59 And there was definitely some shady stuff going on at the restaurant. There had been reports of drug sales and altercations taking place at the restaurant at night after the kitchen closed down and the place transformed into a bar club type atmosphere. Captain Roundtree thinks that this is the source of that non-cooperation that some might have encountered at Armondos and it looks like, amid the investigation that might have been happening regarding the criminal activities completely unrelated to Kelly's case, the restaurant has since shut down. Katie KaplanHost28:30 Another theory is that Kelly voluntarily left town and no foul play is involved in this case at all. Now, this almost has to be considered because of Kelly's nomadic lifestyle and when you look at the fact that she was in an abusive relationship, but also because of several alleged sightings in the years since she disappeared. Now, some of these sightings initially seemed pretty promising. Roughly a week after she went missing, someone from Lake Park, georgia, that's about 30 miles north of Live Oak, called to report a woman who was matching Kelly's description. As it turned out, her husband, who's a farmer, had come across this woman in one of his fields, and the man described her as severely dehydrated and said he thought she might have been coming off from some heavy drug use. He says he offered her a bottle of water and a ride to a nearby convenience store where he dropped her off. When he got home, his wife showed him a picture of Kelly Brannon, the woman missing from nearby Live Oak, and he was adamant that it was the girl he had just picked up. EmHost29:29 And, as luck would have it, when law enforcement followed up the store security, footage was not working. So they went to meet up with the man who had given her a ride and showed him Kelly's picture. He said that he was sure it was Kelly that he had helped that day. Unfortunately, he no longer had the water bottle in his possession which they were really hoping to collect so that they could test it for DNA. That same woman was then reportedly seen by someone else in another store nearby, but the report was made to police too late and the video evidence had since been erased. 30:01 As it was programmed to re-record over previous footage after a set number of days or hours and when I was working as an agent in New York City, this was something I encountered a lot of in those little bodegas, these inexpensive systems that only hold footage for about 24 hours before rewriting over itself, and it is always extremely disappointing. And then, two days later, about 85 miles northwest of Lake Park in the town of Camilla, georgia, there was another reported sighting. Again, there was no concrete video from this alleged sighting, but there were a few lookalikes that were caught on camera. Roundtree says it can't be ruled out and we must consider that it could possibly be. This was Kelly, who was seen in Georgia a week after she went missing. Katie KaplanHost30:47 Now the team of private eyes also followed this lead and they had the exact opposite opinion. They went to search these areas and they canvassed the locations. They concluded that this woman was definitely not Kelly Brannon. But then there was another sighting, and this one is wild. 31:05 There was a woman with really unique choppy black bangs and dark brown hair spotted in Baja Mexico, and I got messages from all sorts of random people who had seen my reporting that wanted me to look into this woman. The pictures are uncanny. She looks exactly like Kelly Brannon if Kelly had been living on the streets and was maybe food insecure. However, when I called Captain Roundtree, he had already looked into it. He says he reached out to the FBI and the consulate in the area when they weren't able to assist for various reasons. He actually crowdsourced through a Facebook group and was able to get a couple of locals to make contact with the lookalike. One of the people recorded a conversation. The woman speaks perfect English, appears to be American, but the quality of her voice is a bit different than Kelly's, maybe a bit higher. 31:55 In Raspere, another man who said he does homeless outreach in the area agreed to take some photos for Captain Roundtree, so he ended up sending back a picture of the woman's hands, and there does not appear to be the anarchy tattoo that Kelly has on her right hand, just above her thumb. It's an A with a circle around it. However, the right hand is slightly tilted, so it's possible the tattoo is just not showing up at the angle. Nonetheless, captain Roundtree says, after spending months on this lead, he's fairly confident it is not her. Now I saw the side-by-side photos for the first time just a few weeks back at a public presentation hosted by a local nonprofit called Swanee Valley Unsolved, and it is unreal how closely these two women resemble each other. We asked Captain Roundtree to share those images with us, so we have them posted on the blog, on our website and on our social media pages. EmHost32:50 And then there is Eddie. Captain Roundtree tells us that, due to their unstable relationship and the history of violence from Eddie towards Kelly, that Eddie is still under investigation. Captain RountreeInterviewee33:02 Eddie Emerson is a person of interest in the case. He's been told so and has been since the period that the investigation began. For obvious reasons because of the close connection and somewhat tumultuous relationship that we know of, because of the argument because he was the last person to have seen her, but also he has been cooperative in the investigation. EmHost33:23 We've also been told about a few moves that Eddie has made that certainly can raise a few eyebrows, specifically that he appeared to be over inserting himself into this investigation. In those first days of Kelly's disappearance he called constantly wanting to know if they had learned anything new. And it wasn't as if Live Oak PD had just sat on this case. Captain Roundtree said that the day Eddie came in to file that missing persons report he could have just initially looked at the verbally abusive text thread from the night before and thought, yeah, of course she ran off. But he told us that there was something about her disappearance that made him jump into action earlier than he normally would in this situation. I mean, kelly was an adult who had only been missing a few hours. But instead of brushing Eddie off, he actually decided to take the report and a bolo was sent out and within a few days it was escalated nationwide and from there the investigation took off. Katie KaplanHost34:17 Eddie himself called in with all kinds of leads. One was that he learned a silver car was seen around the area picking up girls and he led Live Oak PD to believe it was reputable information. So they chased that lead, only to find out that Eddie had just heard it from a random girl at a Winn-Dixie and that it was completely untrue. And then there was the time that Eddie saw a tip on social media about one of those possible sightings of Kelly and he started his own investigation without telling police. When Captain Roundtree found out, he thought it seemed like maybe Eddie was doing whatever he could to stay one step ahead of the investigation. He also told us that action by Eddie was on par with interfering in an investigation, something he could have been criminally charged with. EmHost35:02 We have also learned about how Eddie has sought out many quote unquote experts, as he could find People and organizations who offer help to locate missing persons, and this leads to some really interesting information that has also been falsely reported or, should we say, really needs a lot more context. Now this information has been reported on by many, but the source of the information has since been ruled as non-credible. Basically, you might have heard another coverage of this case that Kelly's Gmail account synced around 4 AM the morning of July 15th, about three hours after she left that final voicemail, the one that said she was getting into a car, and that when this sync happened it didn't connect to the cell tower that had covered the sunshine in. It had supposedly hit off of a tower in the Live Oak downtown area. Now, this interaction would have meant that Kelly's phone was active and had moved locations after that 1 AM voicemail, which police say is the final activity or interaction that her phone had had with any cell towers. However, we actually know that this information it came from a random person. 36:08 Eddie found online this woman who was actually a self-proclaimed missing persons expert. Now, eddie had granted this woman access to Kelly's Gmail account and, according to this woman. She saw that Kelly's Gmail had synced off of this phone tower we mentioned. But Captain Roundtree has told us that, having all of that same data and actually getting it from the cell phone companies, he has not been able to recreate this. So this information appears to be inaccurate and has actually turned into a red herring that is being continuously reported. And then you have Eddie, who is jumping into Kelly's Gmail accounts and he's also allowing other non-law enforcement personnel into her accounts, and that's something that really impacts the integrity of the investigation and can really muddy the waters. Katie KaplanHost36:53 Again, this is something that could be seen as Eddie trying to get out in front of and misdirecting the investigation. On the other hand, some might say these actions could all be viewed as a very concerned boyfriend doing everything he can to find his missing girlfriend. Keep in mind he has been cooperative with the investigation, undergoing a collective 13 hours of interviews with Live Oak PD. He has taken a voice stress test, which he passed. However, another misnomer that was incorrectly reported is that police have issued Eddie a polygraph test, which they actually have not. EmHost37:29 So, keeping in mind, eddie is a person of interest, so is it possible that he could be involved in Kelly's disappearance? We know Eddie had a criminal history of domestic violence towards Kelly, which is not only well documented in police records, but it is also backed up and elaborated on by several of her friends, and this includes images they've provided us with showing bruises on Kelly Bruises so clear they actually show landmarks. And then, in an email she wrote, she states that she had suffered months of physical abuse in which Eddie allegedly punched her in the head several different times. And this same email she goes on to say that, while she isn't a big fan of law enforcement, she doesn't know what would have happened if they hadn't showed up that night that Eddie was arrested for assaulting her. And then there's the fact that Kelly had just come into a decent sum of money. So all of this really becomes the basis of what law enforcement is looking at for possible motives when considering Eddie as a person of interest. Katie KaplanHost38:26 Let's talk about what we see with the cell phone records. Eddie sent me copies of the text exchange with Kelly from the night she vanished. Kelly sent about 95 texts compared to 14 from Eddie. She was extremely upset and in duress. Eddie was apathetic and cold with short answers. But at one point Eddie obtained his cell phone records from his phone company and he gave those to a group of Kelly's friends. 38:51 We were able to get our hands on those records too. They show a timestamp of all incoming and outgoing calls and texts to Eddie's phone number. When those records are compared to the screenshots of the text exchange, it appears that somewhere between 9 and 15 text messages may be missing. There's also a clear change in Kelly's texts as far as misspellings, grammar and sling words that start to become more pronounced at a certain point throughout the night. This comes after an alleged roughly one hour lapse without communication from Kelly's phone. Perhaps this was after she was socializing and sharing wine with some of those other people in the parking lot of the motel, or the allegation has been made that maybe someone else was texting from Kelly's phone. This is pure speculation at this point, but the change in the typed text was noticed by police and a college linguistics class that analyzed the text thread. EmHost39:44 Eddie's last text to Kelly appears at 12.37 am the morning of the 15th and then the last set of texts from Kelly's phone come through, leading up to that final text at 12.54. And during this entire time Eddie's phone is turned on. We know this because the records show the timestamps that each text came through. But then, five minutes after her last text, kelly's haunting last voicemail is left. But now Eddie's phone is turned off Again. This is cooperated by Eddie's phone records, which don't show this call coming in, and by Eddie himself, who says in interviews that he turned his phone off Up until that point. Kelly hadn't tried calling him since 8pm that evening, almost five hours beforehand. So the timing of him shutting this phone off so close to that last voicemail could be coincidental. But her friends do have a theory about this. 40:36 One of her friends is an audio engineer and he's plugged that last voicemail from Kelly into Isotope RX. 40:43 It's an audio spectrogram software he uses and he applied noise reduction to it, which removes that grainy hiss that we all hear in the background of our phone calls, and what you're left with is a visual representation of the voicemail's audio signal. You can see every word, gasp and noise displayed in detail. He showed us these images during a recent Zoom call. Now, if you've paid close attention to that voicemail, you might have heard a final sound as the call ends. It's a n sound, like someone is starting to say a word and then it's cut off. Well, what you can very clearly see in the images that this friend showed us is two sets of beeps and then a line of demarcation near the end of the voicemail, right before that final n sound that we hear. He explains that there's a vertical line of demarcation we see in the voicemail while it shouldn't be there, and it usually indicates two different audio sources, seen when either a splice or a digital change is made in the audio. Katie KaplanHost41:41 He also claims that what we see is just too clean and too quick to be caused by analog means and that it could be explained by a quote ghost in the machine, an audio gremlin created by the phone or the cell network. But he says the other possibility is that what we are seeing is some sort of manipulation or change of course happening during the recording itself. He thinks it could be possible that the voicemail was tampered with, maybe even edited, and then re-recorded. This friend took it one step further and went out and bought the exact model a phone. Kelly had a specific alcatel and he ran tests in an attempt to recreate the anomalies he had found, and this included plugging in old voicemails Kelly had previously left. He wrote up an entire analysis of his findings and we're going to read you a snippet. EmHost42:29 So he says that upon further inspection, however, the voicemail was discovered to contain audio anomalies, several of which the naked ear could not discern. This created doubt as to the veracity of the voicemail and increased suspicion that the voicemail had been edited or otherwise tampered with. In the case of Kelly's voicemail, after her voice stops we hear two clicks, two sets of tones or beeps and then a mysterious voice like sound at the very end of the recording, and this was peculiar for a voicemail. We initially assumed the sound at the tail end of the file was Kelly's voice being cut off by the end of the call and that the beeps were noises created by the environment. This led to coordination with locals going around recording beeps and tones throughout the town, from checkout lanes to crosswalks, in an attempt to place Kelly where she was at the time of the voicemail. Everything in town matched the beeps. Nothing that could be found online matched the beeps. 43:22 It was then hypothesized that the beeps could be leaking through components on Kelly's phone, but despite many experiments, no replication of the suspect audio was able to be created. So after hearing all of this, my first thought was how hard would it be to do something like this? But it turns out it's not hard at all, and her friends point out to us that Eddie was a musician who knew how to record and edit audio for his songs on a computer. Now the same friend, who is an audio engineer, told us that they found three different ways to take an edited audio file and play it off of a computer and direct it into a cell phone. The best fit he found would be through a Bluetooth connection between the computer and the phone itself. Think of talking through AirPods that connect to your phone. Now the file could be played from the computer and routed to Kelly's phone, as it called, and left a voicemail on Eddie's phone, and at this point we know Eddie had just turned off his phone minutes before this voicemail came through. Katie KaplanHost44:22 I have to admit that, after seeing the audio visuals he showed us and talking to him, it is some really compelling stuff and it absolutely needs to get into the hands of a forensic audio professional. So the question is was Kelly's last voicemail altered in any way and if so, what would be the point If this was something Eddie had done? The motive would be to perpetuate his theory that Kelly really got into a car, leading to the unexplained disappearance and a trail that police just can't seem to find. EmHost44:55 And so the next question becomes when could something like this have happened that night? Well, there are a couple of gaps in time between the text messages sent by Kelly that night, and so not only does this start the gap of time, but this is also right where we see the largest chunk of possibly deleted text messages about four or five of them between 9.24 until 9.31. The next time Kelly's phone sends a text isn't until 10.51. And so that's just about 90 minutes of radio silence from Kelly. Katie KaplanHost45:26 So texts from Kelly's phone begin again at 10.51, pretty consistently until the final significant gap, and it's also at this time we see another possibly deleted text. 45:37 During this particular gap Kelly's phone is quiet for nearly an hour until 12.29, when the final series of messages are sent to Eddie. 30 minutes later that final voicemail from her phone is left on Eddie's phone Again, remember. Detective Rountree confirms that this is the last communication from her cell. Now Kelly's friends took it upon themselves to contact Dr Robert Leonard, who is a professor of linguistics and director of the Graduate Forensic Linguistics Program at Hofstra University. They sent him a sample of their own texts with Kelly and the texts between Eddie and Kelly from the night she vanished. The professor and his class apparently detected anomalies in the language structure in the thread of text from just before Kelly went missing. So that lends the question is it possible that something bad happened to Kelly earlier in the night and that someone used her phone to make it look like Kelly was still able to text? And then you tie this into the theory that that voicemail was manipulated and it could look like an attempt to alter the timeline of events that night in an attempt to misdirect the investigation? EmHost46:43 Kelly's friends also tell us that they believe Eddie had a second phone at this time. They obtained the number, gave it a call and heard Eddie's voice and name on the answering machine recording for that number. So let's move on to what happened that morning. After Eddie says, he wakes up and realizes Kelly isn't there. While some of his movements on this day are interesting, the first activity we see on his phone after it had been turned off around 12.59 am is at 8.03 when he makes a call to Kelly's phone, and then again at 8.21. And then at 8.54 he sends her a text saying what are you doing? And we know that between 8 and 9 am Captain Roundtree says he can see Eddie on the security camera and he tells us it does look like Eddie is looking around the parking lot. But then he sees him start bringing his stuff out of the motel room and loading up the car. 47:34 Then right around 9 am, eddie checks out of the motel room. So this is something I find odd. He's claiming at this point he doesn't know where Kelly is. But he has to know that if Kelly is going to come back she would come to the motel. So why would he check them out of their room and beyond that. We know he sends her a text while he's in the process of cleaning out the motel room, but yet he doesn't bother to tell her that he's checking out of their room. So Kelly's friends know that she was always on her phone, so much so that it was always draining the battery and was dying on a regular basis. So it stands to reason that Eddie would know this too and consider it a possibility that Kelly's phone was dead that next morning. But he left town. So we ask why would Eddie have left Kelly stranded in Live Oak without her purse and likely a dead cell phone, and then check out of the motel room, leaving Kelly with nowhere to come back to? Katie KaplanHost48:29 So, as we've established, eddie has told me that he left Live Oak to go look for Kelly at the farm in McEnoby because in text messages from the night before she had threatened to drop off some of his stuff there. But some of Kelly's friends questioned this move. They say first of all Eddie had Kelly's car keys and the next morning he would have seen all of his stuff still inside Kelly's car. And her friends also wonder why he would make the three hour round trip when he could have just picked up the phone and called some of them who lived nearby. EmHost49:00 But Eddie didn't call any of her friends until he was already back in Live Oak that night. So again we wonder what was the purpose of this trip. He claims that he was looking for Kelly, but we know he didn't stop at any of Kelly's friends' houses the ones whom she was known to crash with when her and Eddie fought. He was also low on funds and we saw that he called his credit union at 8.24 that morning and yet he still took Kelly's car and spent money on the gas that it would have taken to make this trip. Many questions have come up through our discussions with Captain Roundtree and Kelly's friends. One thing that both groups think is that the idea of Kelly getting in a car that night might be a complete red herring. There is a chance that she never even left the motel. And if she did get into the car, that doesn't mean that she didn't end up coming back to the motel later that night. 49:50 And I'll add one final thought that I had about Eddie. I watched him explain his theory on that show never seen again. He makes a statement about what he thinks happened to Kelly that night, but there's something about it that really struck me. In the statement he says he believes that whoever picked Kelly up in the car that night had tried to get her in the car several times prior to that, but it wasn't until she left him that final message that she changes her mind and thinks yeah, I will get in. So there's two things that really just don't sit right with me here. 50:20 First off, eddie's actually speaking to Kelly's ongoing decision-making process about this alleged car. He says she had turned down a ride several times and then he quoted her exact thought process saying, quote yeah, I will get in unquote. I don't know how he felt so confident speaking to Kelly's decision-making process, especially assuming a scenario in such great detail. And this leads me to a second thought how does Eddie know or assume this car tried to pick her up several times and then go on to say that she eventually decided to get in that same car? It's like he is speaking on a factual basis about a scenario of this car, but according to law enforcement, eddie has never actually provided them with a description of a car. So how would he know about the actions that it took? Katie KaplanHost51:08 Again. As for Eddie, he denies any involvement in Kelly's disappearance and I asked him directly about it just a few days after Kelly vanished. Did you do anything to harm her? Absolutely not. 51:23 However, Eddie does take responsibility for putting Kelly in a dangerous situation and says in some way he is culpable for whatever ended up being her demise. He has said publicly that he believes somebody killed Kelly that night. I'll add that he wasn't very pleased that I included details of his domestic violence arrest in my initial investigative report on Kelly's case. In a phone call he had told me he was worried it would detract from finding out what really happened to her. He just called me the other day to say he didn't like something in a recent article I wrote. But he still reaches out to me when human remains are found in the nearby region wanting to know if they are Kelly. 52:02 It is important to note we don't know what happened to Kelly or who might be responsible, and I want to take a moment to point out that Eddie is a person of interest, but so are five other people. He is not a suspect and has not been arrested or charged in this case. We also know that Chuck Edwards and Amber are persons of interest, along with Theo and another woman that were at the hotel that night. Captain Roundtree has made contact with several of them on many occasions. We don't know what the extent of their interaction with Kelly was. However, Eddie and all other persons of interest in this case are considered innocent until proven guilty. EmHost52:44 And so what we've talked about are just some of the avenues and theories that have come up throughout the investigation. Not so jokingly, Captain Roundtree told us that he has at least eight theories about what could have happened to Kelly that night. Captain RountreeInterviewee52:57 The issue with this case is that there's still a large amount of possibilities that are open, and that makes the case difficult. EmHost53:04 And the private eyes hired by Kelly's friends. They have their own suspicions. PI Mike ThompsonInterviewee53:09 Some of the relationships that were developed while they were in Live Oak. I don't believe it was somebody that just jumped off of I-10 and came down 129 into Live Oak and scooped Kelly up. I believe she ran across somebody that she knew or was familiar with. That's what I believe. Katie KaplanHost53:28 There are still other possibilities besides homicide. Kelly struggled with mental health issues. Some of the police record dipoles show those issues may have reached a tipping point in the months leading up to the road trip with Eddie. Perhaps she took her own life and her body is somewhere in the abundant North Florida overgrowth waiting to be found. EmHost53:47 And then there is Kelly's extensive nomadic history. We've heard stories about how, as a child, kelly would train hop and there are active tracks directly across the street from the motel but would a seasoned traveler leave their ID and money behind? Would a New Yorker let these items out of their sight in a dark parking lot? And finally, it's possible, she just doesn't want to be found. Let's all have the right to disappear if they want, especially if it's to escape an abusive partner, but then again, it's near impossible for someone to go three years without being seen by anybody, especially since she has a lack of ID and money, and also with so much media attention on her case. And Kelly's friends say that she would never have done that to her mother. 54:32 And then there is the human component to all of this. Kelly has so many friends throughout the United States. She's been lucky enough to speak to some of them and she would not let them struggle with the, not knowing the amount of work and analysis that they have put into this investigation. It's absolutely mind blowing and really awe inspiring. If you were to ever go missing yourself, these are the type of people that you want in your corner, the kind that never give up and pour months and months of man hours into pulling every tiny string of thread that they can find and this kind of friendship. It doesn't just go one way. For Kelly to have inspired this and her friends means she cared about them just as much as they do about her, and so all of this tells us that it's likely Kelly isn't missing voluntarily. Katie KaplanHost55:24 One thing both live Oak PD and the private eyes believe is that if we find Kelly's rare left handed guitar, that it will lead us to the person who knows where Kelly is. It is a left handed Fender Stratocaster with a sunburst finish and Kelly had taken the strand and Kelly had taken the brand sticker off of the headstock. We have a picture of it on our website and all of our social media sites. Please take a look at it. It could be anywhere by now and if it ended up at a pawn shop then law enforcement can trace it. So check with your friends who are into music, look on Craigslist and if you come across one, it may be an important piece of evidence. So please notify the live Oak PD. 56:07 Captain Roundtree says there are more than 124,000 files in Kelly's digital case file. Roughly a dozen different law enforcement agencies across the continent have worked on this case. We have been told the PD has a person of interest list and that there are six names on it. Police have not given up on Kelly. Her friends have not given up on Kelly. We don't know what happened to Kelly, but it is likely there is someone out there that does know. If that is you, please call live Oak PD. Kelly is five feet five inches tall and weighs 110 pounds. She was last seen wearing a white shirt and black shorts. She has a tattoo of the letter A with a circle on her right hand just above the thumb. Kelly's dental records, dna and her fingerprints have been entered into NamUs. EmHost56:56 Kelly's elderly mother has spent three years grieving for her daughter, waiting by the phone, hoping Kelly would call, and, tragically, she's never going to get that call. As we just learned, she passed away suddenly earlier this month. Her friends told Katie that her mother never gave up on Kelly and was devastated by her disappearance. Kelly is miss Thanksgiving's, christmas's, mother's Day and her own birthdays. Kelly's friends are adamant that she would never have left her mother alone without answers, and so they fear the worst. Katie KaplanHost57:30 Just a few weeks ago, around the three year anniversary of Kelly's disappearance, I was asked to attend an event covering her case. Some of Kelly's friends drove up from Gainesville with hundreds of fresh missing flyers in hand, in both English and Spanish. They have vowed to never stop looking for Kelly. Kelly was a strong, outspoken and independent woman who did not deserve to disappear. It is now up to those of us who are left behind to be her voice, to make some noise and let's pursue the justice she and every missing person deserves. 58:04 And if you are struggling with domestic abuse, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233. That's 800-799-7233. It is free and open 24-7 and we also have resource links on our website, twosilistpodcastcom that might be able to help. Please know you are not alone and you are cared about and there are people ready to help you. If you have a tip about the Kelly Brannon case, call Live Oak PD or you can call Swanee Valley Crime Stoppers and remain anonymous. There is a $1,000 cash reward for information that leads to an arrest. We'll have both those numbers on our website and linked down in our show notes. Kelly Brannon did not deserve whatever fate has befallen her. EmHost58:54 And she deserves to be remembered and found. We want to know your thoughts on this case, so come connect with us on social media and let us know what you think might have happened to Kelly Brannon. We'll be back on Tuesday, october 31st, with a new case for you, but until then, stay vigilant and stay curious, fellow sleuths.
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