SC SC - Brandy Hanna, 32, North Charleston, 20 May 2005

Where is Brandy?

Photos and new info here

Name: Brandy Renee Hanna

Classification: Endangered Missing Adult
Date of Birth: 1972-11-16
Date Missing: 2005-05-20
From City/State: Charleston, SC
Missing From (Country): USA
Age at Time of Disappearance: 32
Gender: Female
Race: White
Height: 69 inches
Weight: 115 pounds
Hair Color: Sandy
Eye Color: Blue
Complexion: Light

Identifying Characteristics: Tattoo of a "sun" on right shoulder, tattoo of a "heart" between thumb and forefinger of right hand, three piercings in left ear, two piercings in right ear, gap in upper front teeth, crooked upper teeth, missing molars.

Clothing: Possibly wearing a light blue shirt, blue jeans, white athletic shoes.
Jewelry: Diamond ring (very small diamonds make up the shape of a flower).

Circumstances of Disappearance: Unknown. Brandy was last seen after 10:00pm on May 20, 2005 at her residence in the vicinity of the 3300 block of Florida Ave. in Charleston, SC. All of her belongings were left behind.

Investigative Agency: North Charleston Police Department
Phone: (843) 745-1015
Investigative Case #: 2005019398
__________________
If you think you have seen one of our missing persons, please contact the law enforcement agency listed. Every missing person is loved by someone and deserves to be found. Thank you.

Kelly Jolkowski, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
http://www.projectjason.org


A Message from Brandy's Mother:

"Brandy is my oldest child and my only daughter I always told her she was her mothers child. She is so much like me in so many ways. Brandy is a very quiet & private person. It takes her a while to open up to people.

She has 2 brothers whom she loves dearly, especially her baby brother. He was her baby . We all miss her so much words cannot begin to express the ache in my heart or the hopelessness that I feel. My life cannot go on until I find out where she is or what happened. This is something you never think will happen to you . Thank you."


Brandy worked with her mother at a local restaraunt. She had her own apartment, although it was not in a good part of town. Brandy's mother is certain her daughter had no involvement in drugs or other criminal activities. She lives a quiet life.

kelly - thanks for posting this. i was reading the paper this morning and came across an article about her. this is the first i've heard about her!!

here's the article from the charleston post and courier...

'The good, the bad, I've got to know'
9 weeks ago, Brandy Hanna seemingly vanished, leaving her friends and family searching for clues

BY BRIAN HICKS
Of The Post and Courier Staff

Brandy Hanna left work in a playful mood that Friday, planning her weekend on the keypad of a brand-new cell phone.
That night, she would go shopping with her best friend and on Saturday see her boyfriend before heading out to the beach. Sunday, she was supposed to have breakfast with her mother and younger brother.

But she never did any of those things. Sometime on the evening of Friday May 20, Brandy Hanna vanished.

She left behind her clothes, her money and an apartment devoid of clues -- a blanket and pillow on the couch, a cup of tea on the table. There was no suggestion of a forced entry, no signs of a struggle. No hint of where she had gone.

It looked as if she would be right back.

The disappearance of the 32-year-old North Charleston woman has baffled police and kept her family and friends in an agonizing limbo for nine weeks now. At Alex's on Dorchester Road, where Hanna and her mother work, the restaurant's reader board asks: "Where is Brandy?"

It is a question that seems to have no answer.

Click here for entire article.

Thanks, Anne.

If you have a moment, could you please email the entire text from the article to me?

Kelly
kelly.jolkowski@projectjason.org

If there is no sign of a struggle or breakin then Brandy must have left with someone she knew. I wonder if she went shopping or if her girlfriend came and Brandy wasn't home? What about her boyfriend...was he a decent guy and did they get along well? I'm sure they have questioned him by now.

Brandy doesn't sound like a person that would just leave and never contact her family. Sounds like her and her mom were close. My heart goes out to her family. That not knowing is horrible. Your imagination runs wild. I hope she is found soon and that she is alright.

Brandy's story is featured today on the Project Jason-Voice for the Missing blog.

It is entitled “I Love You, Mom…See You Later”, which were the last words she spoke to her mother. In the story, we'll also share a special announcement about national media coverage for Brandy.

http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/


Be sure to help out the families of the missing by telling others about the blog. This is just another way we can reach out and let the faces of the missing be seen. We welcome appropriate website links. Other ideas are posting the blog link on other forums you frequent, and sending it out to your friends and family via email.

Thank you for helping us to help others.

Kelly Jolkowski, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
http://www.projectjason.org
Read our Voice for the Missing Blog
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/

Project Jason announces that Brandy Hanna is on the current 18 Wheel Angels campaign. Her campaign will continue through September.

18 Wheel Angels is a national missing person's locator program in which truck drivers or other business travelers are recruited to place posters of a specific missing person along the way as they travel.

For additional information, and to print Brandy's poster, please see:

http://www.projectjason.org/18wheel.html

We ask that you print and place one or more posters wherever you live.

You do not need to be a truck driver to help place posters. You can also help by telling any truck drivers or trucking companies you know about this program.

This is also a reminder that if you haven’t already, you may want to read Brandy’s story on the Project Jason-Voice for the Missing blog. It is one of our reader’s favorites. You can read it here:

http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2005/08/82305-i-love-you-momsee-you-later.html

Thank you.

Kelly Jolkowski, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
http://www.projectjason.org
Read our Voice for the Missing Blog
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/

http://www.charleston.net/stories/Default.aspx?newsID=41275&section=localnews

Mother presses hunt for missing woman
Leads are few, hopes are many 4 months after Brandy disappeared

BY BRIAN HICKS
Of The Post and Courier Staff


She looked a lot like Brandy, even answered to her name.
A man had seen the woman in the Big Lots on Rivers Avenue, stopped and talked to her briefly. She had told him, "I'm not missing."

His story carried just enough detail to give Donna Parent the familiar stirrings of hope.

In the four months since her daughter, Brandy Hanna, disappeared from her North Charleston apartment, Parent has heard it all.

Folks claim they have seen Hanna in North Charleston hotels, and walking along a Johns Island road. A search team came to town with tracking dogs, and one national television show has expressed interest. But so far, police have few leads in the 32-year-old woman's disappearance, and no one has even called about the reward money.

Such is life for the family of a missing person.

The Big Lots sighting seemed like a credible story. The man had seen the girl one day, told her friend the next. Two days later, Parent and North Charleston police were at the store, looking at surveillance videos.

"She bore a striking resemblance to Brandy," Parent said. "It gave me hope, but it's such a letdown when you figure out it's not her."

On May 20, Hanna left work at the Alex's Restaurant her mother manages on Dorchester Road, caught a ride home with a customer and settled in for a long weekend. She planned to go shopping that evening, see her boyfriend and go to the beach on Saturday, meet her family for breakfast on Sunday. But sometime that evening, between 9 and 10:30 p.m., Hanna vanished.

Since that time, Parent has learned a lot about the world of missing adults. There are more than 97,000 missing person cases in the country. Most are for people who disappear without a trace.

There is so little that can be done. Police have given polygraph tests to Hanna's boyfriend and ex-boyfriend, they've questioned friends, co-workers and family members. They searched her apartment for clues, and came up with next to nothing. Hanna disappeared with her new cell phone, and apparently didn't take much else with her -- not even money.

With detectives stumped, Parent became frustrated. She got some hope when Monica Caison, founder of the North Carolina-based CUE Center for Missing Persons, brought a five-dog team in August to scour the area around Hanna's Florida Avenue apartment. Ultimately, they found nothing concrete.

Gary Dillon, Hanna's stepfather, hung new posters in West Ashley, designed by a national missing persons organization. "Hopefully, we'll get an answer," he said. "At least something would be better than not knowing anything."

Dillon describes Parent as "holding up pretty darn good, considering." He says her work as manager at Alex's keeps her busy seven days a week. But even at work, she cannot escape the family horror. Posters and articles about Hanna hang on the restaurant's wall. Outside the reader board still asks, "Where is Brandy?"

"A lot of people come in and ask about her and say, 'I'm praying for you.' Well, I say pray for her -- this is about Brandy," Parent said.

In the past month, Parent saw a chance to bring publicity to the case lost when Caison's appearance on "Larry King Live" was canceled because of Hurricane Katrina. Caison planned to highlight Hanna's case on the show.

The case has gotten a national boost this month from Project Jason, a Nebraska-based missing persons center. Kelly Jolkowski, president of the organization, featured Hanna's story on her Web site and this month is distributing posters through her 18 Wheel Angels program. Truck drivers and anyone else who volunteers can download posters with photos and a detailed description of Hanna and post them in truck stops, restaurants and any other public place throughout the country.

In about a year and a half of work, the program has gotten about 9,000 posters of missing persons distributed throughout the country. Jolkowski, whose own son has been missing since 2001, said she chose Hanna's case for the program because she fit the profile of a missing person with some hope of being found.

"Awareness is the key in these cases," Jolkowski said. "It's really tough with missing adults, because the older they get, the harder it is to get attention for them."

For now, the trail is going cold and the police can only react to new leads. Parent is left to come up with anything new she can to keep people helping her look. Brandy's birthday is in November, and she has considered a candlelight vigil for her on that date.

Then she stops and thinks. "She will have been missing nearly six months by then," Parent said.

Brandy is such a pretty young woman and she looks like she would be so sweet. Her disappearance is sure a puzzle. She must have left her apt with someone she knew with the idea of only being gone for a little while. What kind of neighbors does she have in her building? Anyone that could have lured her out?

Evidentally both previous boyfriends have been cleared by LE. I feel so bad for her family. It's probably for the best that Brandy's mom works every day but I don't know how she does it. I don't think I could concentrate. Keeping busy does help though. I just hope that she finds her daughter. It's to bad that Brandy didn't tell the customer who upset her on the phone or who she was scared of. Someone knows what happened to her.

Bobbi, where can I find the reference to a call Brandy received that upset her? I have been reading the posts and stories and did another scan after seeing your post but can't locate it, thanks.
After seeing what happened to Alicia Ross I am wondering if LE is seriously considering that she became a victim of opportunity to some sicko canvassing the area that night. She sounds like the type to maybe open her door to someone asking for help, possibly a so-called stranded motorist with a flat or needing a hot shot and wanted use of a phone, excuse type to gain entrance. The tea, pillow and blanket all sound so much like my sister and I know she would surely open the door to a stranger requesting help or something similar.
I'm not so sure it's a good thing for LE to focus on known subjects to the apparent victims so much because of the statistics as they are, it's possible they are losing valuable info untimely that goes undiscovered. Although a large number are indeed committed by individuals known to them that isn't always the case, there are as we've seen all too often stranger abductions. They are called predators for a very good reason.

To Brandy's family, my heart goes out to you, to every parent that has to go through this horror. You are truly amazing for the simple fact that you are able to get out of bed each morning, I don't know how you do it but it restores my faith in unconditional love. May God hold you and keep you, you are all in my prayers. I am truly in awe of you.

strach304 said:

Bobbi, where can I find the reference to a call Brandy received that upset her? I have been reading the posts and stories and did another scan after seeing your post but can't locate it, thanks.
After seeing what happened to Alicia Ross I am wondering if LE is seriously considering that she became a victim of opportunity to some sicko canvassing the area that night. She sounds like the type to maybe open her door to someone asking for help, possibly a so-called stranded motorist with a flat or needing a hot shot and wanted use of a phone, excuse type to gain entrance. The tea, pillow and blanket all sound so much like my sister and I know she would surely open the door to a stranger requesting help or something similar.
I'm not so sure it's a good thing for LE to focus on known subjects to the apparent victims so much because of the statistics as they are, it's possible they are losing valuable info untimely that goes undiscovered. Although a large number are indeed committed by individuals known to them that isn't always the case, there are as we've seen all too often stranger abductions. They are called predators for a very good reason.

Click to expand...

Go to post #1 here written by Kelly....Click on New Pic and Info and then go to post #4 there.

Brandy has a new website. Please come and sign the guestbook!

http://www.missingbrandyhanna.com/

Thank you.

Kelly

I keep hoping that Brandy will be found. She just looks like such a sweet person. It's hard to believe that anyone would want to hurt her. I wonder if LE are still working on this case? If they have had any new leads? This must be so hard for her mom...to keep hope alive. I hope that the family get some answers soon...bless them.

Brandy has been added to Project Jason's Adopt a Missing Person program. Please consider helping reunite Brandy with her family by wearing her photo button and sharing her story with others. For more details on how you can make a difference, please see:

http://www.projectjason.org/adopt.html

Thank you!

Kelly Jolkowski, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski
President and Founder,
Project Jason
www.projectjason.org
Read our Voice for the Missing Blog
http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/

Have there been any updates at all re: Brandy? How could this poor woman just disappear out of thin air?

tia

ang

Bumping for Brandy.

Prayers for her family and love ones.

bumping for Brandy

Hoping for some good new about Brandy.

Daughter's disappearance an open wound

BY BRIAN HICKS
The Post and Courier

It has been a year, and still she cannot sleep.

Her life has become one long nightmare, a hunt that never ceases. Everywhere she looks, Donna Parent sees her daughter - on the street, in the store. She has to force herself not to follow every passing car with a thin blond woman inside.

It's not her, she constantly has to tell herself.

The restaurant she manages has become a shrine of missing person posters and well-wishers who come in to eat every day. A year later, and the Alex's Restaurant's reader board still asks 'Where is Brandy?'

After work, Parent spends much of her time on the computer, reading about and corresponding with people who are just like her, who have lost someone without a notion of when they may find out what happened. Like her, they try to avoid the unthinkable: that they may never know. So many people out there like her, she realizes with great sadness.

Every night as she lies down to attempt sleep, Donna Parent looks at her daughter's picture and asks the same question:

Where are you?

On Saturday night, nearly 100 people gathered at Alex's Restaurant on Dorchester Road to mark the one-year anniversary of Brandy Hanna's disappearance with prayer and a candlelight vigil. On May 20, 2005, Hanna, then 32, got off from work there on a Friday afternoon with big plans for the weekend.

She caught a ride home with a customer and made plans to go shopping that night, to be ready for a trip to the beach. She spoke with her mother once more on the phone. And then nothing.

All leads in the case have proven dead ends. The few suspects brought in passed polygraph tests, leaving police stumped. Every day more time passes without answers, without clues.

One year later, and all of the sudden Brandy's disappearance is a cold case.

'This is a situation that a year ago I never thought I would be in,' Parent says. 'I can't stop looking, because if I stop, who's going to look for her?'

Parent has become disillusioned about a lot of things. Mostly, she is upset that no one has found her daughter. When she first reported her missing, it was nearly a week before police would investigate, because adults have a right to be missing.

Police departments across the country say they cannot investigate every call that comes in on a missing adult - they would get little else done.

There are nearly 2 million people missing in the United States right now, about half of them adults. While there are networks and agencies and Amber Alerts for children who go missing, there is no mechanism ? save for dozens of networks that exist on the Internet and in the kitchens of people who have suffered loss ? to hunt for adults who disappear.

'Adult missing person cases are hard. You have the right to be missing, a right to privacy,' says Monica Caison, the founder and executive director of the CUE Center, a missing persons organization in North Carolina. 'I've heard police say they don't want another Runaway Bride story. We've got to stop judging people, and listen when families say someone is missing. If they turn up on a beach drinking pina coladas, so what? Let it embarrass them.'

Caison says that if police had looked quicker at Brandy Hanna's last-known whereabouts, they might have turned up a clue. But in this case, there are no guarantees. Because, unfortunately, hers was a trail that went cold fast.

North Charleston Detective Eric Jourdan said there has been no new information in Brandy's case since last August, when Caison brought search teams and cadaver dogs to town to search several areas. Police followed up on a few leads from those searches, but they were all dead ends.

'What's most frustrating is that she had such a close circle of friends, only four or five people she associated with, and none of them could think of any reason she would want to disappear on her own,' Jourdan says.

A boyfriend, as well as a recent ex-boyfriend, were considered possible suspects, but both submitted to polygraph tests and passed. Since then, one of them, Ray McAdams, has died of natural causes.

'I check Brandy's Web site all the time, looking for anonymous tips, and I check into all unidentified bodies found in the state,' Jourdan says. 'But there's not a lot we can do without some sort of clue.'

Parent has pushed the city to do more, and in February got Mayor Keith Summey to agree to put up billboards with Brandy's face, asking for information in her disappearance.

Parent is upset those billboards have not gone up, but Summey said he's at the mercy of charity. MAC Advertising has agreed to put up a city-designed Brandy billboard starting June 1. They will leave it up all summer, moving it to a new location every month.

'We've been working with MAC, but we've had to wait until they had space available,' Summey said.

On Saturday night, Parent set up a table with Brandy's pictures - as a baby, in the ROTC, at work at Alex's - and the vigil attendees signed the guest book with notes such as, 'We all pray for your safety' and 'You are and always will be my best friend.'

Cindy Cornell, who worked with Brandy at Pappy's in North Charleston, said when she first heard the news, she assumed her friend had 'just gone off somewhere.'

'I hope that's right, I hope she's off somewhere,' Cornell said. 'I just hopes she comes back.'

As the people crowded around the shrine to Brandy began to light their candles, a mighty wind blew up where moments before it had been calm. For several minutes, they tried in vain to light a few flames to Brandy's memory on the anniversary of her disappearance.

Eventually, Parent said it was no use and asked them to simply hold the candles high above their heads for a moment. There would be no candlelight at this vigil.

It was a disappointment for sure, but Parent has had many of them in the past year. This was a small problem, she knows. There is a much bigger one out there, one that has been looming over her entire life for a year now.


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http://www.charleston.net/stories/?newsID=89037&section=localnewsBack to top

One Year Later: The Search For Brandy Hanna Continues

Sunday May 21, 2006 5:53pm

Reporter: Courtney Ward Posted By: Courtney Ward


North Charleston, SC -

It's been a year since a local woman's disappearance and police still have no real leads.



Brandy Hanna’s mother, Donna Parent, clearly remembers the last thing her 32-year-old daughter said to her.



“She reached down and she kissed me and she said ‘Bye Mom I'll see you later’...and that was it.”



But later has turned into a year - one Donna Parent says she’s struggled to get through.



“In one word hell. It's a bad word but that's what it's been. It's been a long, very long nightmare.”



While Parent says no real leads have surfaced...leaving police at a standstill, she continues to post flyers around town and Brandy's pictures on the internet because she says someone has to know something.



Brandy's apartment complex was the last place she was seen before her disappearance. Parent says mother's intuition told her something was wrong that night.



“I felt it here [pointing to her heart] and he can tell you I came home and I told him there's something wrong. It's serious. I have three children but I knew it was her.”



Parent says she sees Brandy in dreams and that whoever was in her daughter's apartment that night got in because Brandy let them in.



“In the dream I kept feeling I'm choking and she has come to me in a dream and she was in my bedroom and she had told me who did it. But I can't prove it.”



And because she can't, Parent won't say who she thinks is behind her daughter's disappearance. But while she's trying to stay positive that her daughter will be found, Parent says with each passing day it gets harder and harder. Right now, she says, she’s not confident that Brandy’s still alive, but that she needs to know for closure.



Parent says on June 1st a billboard of Brandy Hanna will be posted along I-26 and will be moved to other locations around the area for three months.


http://www.wciv.com/news/stories/0506/329690.html