BY KIMBERLY C. MOORE
and J.D. -
http://www.floridatoday.com
MELBOURNE - Her nickname growing up in Holopaw was "Redneck," and to friends, Brandy Hall was always one of the "Bull Creek Girls" -- as comfortable flying down the St. Johns River on an airboat as others might be driving a car on the interstate.
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Was it suicide, murder or did Brandy Hall choose to leave behind her problems?
Whatever the answer, detectives and loved ones are continuing efforts to find her. But now police are saying they are
empty-handed.
"The trail has gone cold," said Palm Bay Police spokeswoman Yvonne Martinez. "It's not only a who-done-it. It's a what happened?"
One telling moment in the case came when Osceola County Sheriff's Deputy Justin Boutilier pulled Hall aside during a July 2005 search of her airboat-building business in Melbourne.
"I asked Brandy if I could talk to her about her involvement in the grow operation," Boutilier wrote in a report. "She stated, 'I don't want to talk to you guys, people will do anything to get even.' "
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By all accounts, Brandy's life began unraveling in July 2005, when her husband -- the former Osceola County fire chief -- and onetime firefighter and partner Paul Hirsch were arrested.
The two were charged with growing marijuana on the Halls' 13-acre Holopaw property.
The sophisticated operation used diesel-fueled generators to power grow lights inside a mobile home and barn for four years.
Investigators said the pair sold about 40 pounds of "Crippy," a particularly potent strain of marijuana, to one buyer every two months, easily clearing a $30,000 profit, investigators said.
The buyer was not named in police documents.
Investigators were tipped off to the operation by an anonymous caller, prompting four deputies to hike through the woods and climb over a fence onto the property without a search warrant.
Nothing could be seen from the air or from any side of the heavily wooded compound.
The deputies were met with the scent of drying marijuana as they neared the Halls' mobile home and barn.
They left and returned with the required search warrant.
Deputies also found $70,000 in equipment, some of which they said was bought through Brandy's airboat business in Melbourne.
"Brandy Hall told me that she knew that her husband was manufacturing cannabis, but she just looked the other way," Deputy Boutilier wrote in a report.
"Jeffrey Hall told Sgt. Devlin that his wife had warned him that he would eventually be caught by law enforcement for manufacturing the cannabis," he wrote
Brandy was arrested several days after her husband and Hirsch, but the charges were dropped this past July 11.
Her mother, Debbie Rogge, said Brandy believed her husband when he told her the mobile home had been rented out, and Brandy never visited the property.
"I asked her and she told me that she would never jeopardize her job or her kids for anything, and I believe her," her mother said.
But the Palm Bay Fire Department didn't believe Brandy and fired the 10-year veteran in December 2005, despite a decade's worth of exemplary performance reviews.
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Investigators say whatever happened to Brandy Hall took place sometime after 10:45 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 17, the night before her husband's sentencing hearing, when she left the Malabar Volunteer Fire Department for the last time.
Brandy broke away from doing inventory and said she needed to travel to Kissimmee the next day for her husband's sentencing, Malabar Volunteer Fire Chief Joe Gianatonio said.
Although she was scheduled to work until the next morning, she said she was going home.
A surveillance video released by the Palm Bay Police Department shows Brandy standing in the fire-house living room, talking with colleagues and looking relaxed before walking out the door and driving away.
The next day, a fisherman found her firefighting gear in a bag bobbing in a hidden pond off Treeland Boulevard.
Police arrived at the pond about 3:30 p.m. and spotted a fuel slick on the water.
The cooler Brandy kept in the back of her truck was floating a few feet away. The soda and beer inside was still cold to the touch, records show.
A police dog sniffed the west side of the pond, but found nothing.
Once Brandy's Chevy pickup was pulled out of the pond, investigators, their shoes crusted with mud and dirt from the pond's embankment, had more to work with, but little to go on.
For 30 hours, detectives refused to release any information on Hall, including her name or photo, saying that this was no ordinary missing person case.
"This entire situation is odd. When you step back and look at it, there are so many things that could have happened to her," Palm Bay Detective Jess Suelter said.
"But until we find Brandy Hall, you don't know," he said.
Suelter added that once detectives learned Brandy's history -- the marijuana operation, her husband's conviction, her numerous platonic relationships with fellow firefighters -- "it did raise suspicions.
"But there are also times when people just get up and leave," Suelter said. "Until you get evidence that there's foul play, it's treated as a missing persons case."
That evidence came when "substantial amounts of blood" found in the cab of the truck were identified by the lab as being Brandy's.
Investigators eventually drained part of the pond to search for clues, but it failed to yield Brandy's body.
During another search, a well-worn cell phone was recovered. But it may not be hers, officials said.
In the first few days, investigators pieced together Brandy's last contacts, even her moods, from friends and family.
Police said Jeffrey Hall was at home with his children the night Brandy disappeared. He has custody of the boy and girl.
"The last thing she told me was that Jeff (messed) up her life," said Stacey Jellison, 30, the youngest of the Bull Creek Girls. "She held a huge grudge about him. It grabbed her job right out from under her."
Detectives subpoenaed bank records, phone transactions, even e-mail records.
So far, nothing has surfaced -- no withdrawals, no phone messages, no hints Brandy is alive.
Her last phone calls were made to two people, including a Palm Bay firefighter investigators say remains one of several "persons of interest" in the case.
"(The firefighter) did speak to her the night she disappeared. We did talk to him, but he has since gotten a lawyer," Suelter said of the unnamed Palm Bay firefighter.
The firefighter's department-issued sport utility vehicle was turned over to forensics investigators. No preliminary connections to Brandy were found.
He has not spoken to FLORIDA TODAY.
~ BBM. I was under the impression that she didn't know about the MJ growing operation, but this certainly states differently. not that it matters one way or the other, since the police have ruled out any link in that direction, I just wanted to add it to the information in the thread.