Going West: True Crime - Kelley Brannon // 294

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

In July of 2020, a 36-year-old woman took a roadtrip to move out of state with her boyfriend when his car broke down, stranding them in a small Florida town. After heading to a motel together for the night, a fight ensued, and she left. The following morning, when her boyfriend awoke, a cryptic voicemail from the middle of the night was the only trace of her. This is the story of Kelley Brannon. BONUS EPISODES Apple Subscriptions: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/going-west-true-crime/id1448151398 Patreon: patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES 1. NBC: https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/loved-ones-missing-florida-woman-kelley-brannon-hold-hope-she-n1247949 2. WCTV: https://www.wctv.tv/2021/05/28/unsolved-florida-what-happened-to-kelley-brannon-pt-2/ 3. Disappeared blog: https://disappearedblog.com/kelley-brannon/ 4. Valley News: https://www.newspapers.com/image/833760345/?terms=christine%20brannon&match=1 5. Kelley's website: https://kelleybrannonprojects.com/ 6. Kelley's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelley-brannon-09936444/ 7. Never Seen Again: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.bd9d009f-4ad1-4e3d-81a6-a30920a8ab36?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb 8. Empty Spaces: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6046942/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_pl 9. Where is Kelley Brannon? website: https://www.whereiskelleybrannon.com/ 10. Eddie's album: https://eddieemerson.bandcamp.com/album/swell 11. Missing Kelley Brannon Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/whereiskelleybrannon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on True Crime fans? I'm your host Teeve and I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to Going West. Hello everybody happy Friday or whatever to your listening to this. Just wanted to give a quick shout out to Shelby for recommending today's case. This one takes place in Florida during a road trip. It is a very, very weird story. So thank you guys for tuning in to this one. Yeah, I mean, this one needs a lot of help. So please make sure that you share this episode as we always say. Also, we have a back catalog of about 85 episodes that you can binge over on Patreon,

or you can find those on Apple subscriptions. Yes, the links to both are in the description of this episode if you'd like to join, and then you get to a month as the months go on. So thank you so much to everybody who has subscribed there. Otherwise, we do two free episodes here over at Going West every single week, but subscribing is just for extra content

and if you wanna give a little kick back to the show. Also, if you don't want to subscribe and you wanna help us out a little bit, feel free to leave us a nice review. You know, that really helps out our show as well. And we'd really appreciate that. All right, guys, this is episode 294 of Going West, so let's get into it. In July of 2020, the first time we've ever woman took a road trip to move out of state with her boyfriend

when its car broke down, stranding them in a small Florida town. After heading to a motel together for the night, a fight ensued and she left. Then, the following morning, when her boyfriend awoke, a cryptic voicemail from hours earlier was the only of Kelly Brandon. Kelly, Kristen Brandon, was born on May 2, 1984 to Christine and John Brandon, and she also had a brother named Mark. The family resided in Charles Town, New Hampshire, which is a very rural town about an hour and a half drive from the capital city of Concord and just over a two-hour drive from the Atlantic Ocean.

Tragically, when Kelly was just five years old, she lost her father, John, who passed away after a brief illness. So this was an incredibly hard time for Kelly as a young girl and understandably something she never fully moved on from. But from childhood she was a free spirit and was described by her friends as quirky and creative. After graduating from high school, Kelly left her hometown to find adventure and she did every step of the way. She started by hitchhiking her way around the country and also ventured into both Mexico and Canada. Kelly went on to attend the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, which is only a couple hours away from her hometown, where she obtained her BFA after studying in the studio for interrelated

media program. Following graduation, she moved to Brooklyn, New York in 2010 and invested all her time in her endeavors as an artist. Her LinkedIn page described Kelly S. Quote and experienced curator, writer, artist, actor, photographer, director, filmmaker, and activist with a demonstrated history of working in the creative industry. Wow, that's a lot of things to be doing. It really is.

And while she worked in the service industry on the side, she also completed her MFA in creative writing with a concentration in screenwriting from Goddard College in Vermont. After completing the program, she wrote and produced a feature-length film called Empty Spaces, which Kelly described as, quote, a minimalistic slash art house dark comedy revolving around a group of rowdy and disenfranchised female artists. She also had an affinity for writing poetry, and in one passage, she penned, quote, I am wild and sad, damaged but grateful, kind yet selfish. And I think most people I know here are like this.

She coined a medium of visual art called smoke drawings in which she used smoke from stick candles to discolor paper and unique patterns. And these have actually been displayed in galleries all over the country, including Chicago, Miami, Washington, D.C., New York City, and one collection was even put in China. So, in addition to her endeavors in written and visual art, Kelly was also a musician and singer, and she actually toured and performed as a one woman punk rock act, and in true Kelly fashion, it was more offbeat than most. She would accompany herself while playing the E-string on the electric guitar and singing or sometimes screaming along. In the spring of 2020, she recorded an EP along with three other musicians, and many of their songs were inspired by Kelly's deep devotion to civil rights activism, as well as animal

rights and social justice. And her friends really admired her principled stances and her strict moral compass, but they also remembered that it could sometimes get her into some trouble. One of her oldest friends remembered, quote, Kelly could be very impulsive sometimes, to the point of it being a little bit scary for the people who cared about her. She had this interesting duality, driven and principled, emotional, kind and vulnerable, and could also be kind of a pain in the ass sometimes. But that was just Kelly. After living for about a decade in New York City, Kelly decided to roam around the country

and eventually wound up in Gainesville, Florida. While performing a show with her one woman band, she met audience member and fellow musician, Eddie Emerson. Now, Eddie remembered being absolutely captivated by her performance, calling her quote, an artist in every respect. So he approached her after the show and the two got to talking.

And within the course of a few months in the summer of 2019, they had moved in together and were making plans for their future. So she and Eddie decided to relocate from Florida to the burgeoning art scene of Detroit, Michigan, where they could purchase a fixer-up-or-home for only a few thousand dollars. Eddie remembered, quote, quote, We were about to start a new chapter in our lives together. However, the couple did run into some problems before they embarked on their new venture.

On December 27, 2019, the couple got into a fight so volatile that their neighbors called the police, which actually resulted in Eddie being arrested on a domestic violence charge. According to the 911 caller, quote, "'During the alley behind my mom's house, she keeps saying, "'Eddie, stop!' She just said, ow, it sounded like he hit her. He's saying, get out of here. It sounds like she locked herself in somewhere because he's saying, unlock this now and get the fuck out." The police arrived to find Eddie trying to kick in the door

behind which Kelly was hiding. Police then announced themselves and ordered Eddie to drop to the ground, which he did. And Eddie was arrested for assault and served a week in jail before being released and forced to wear an ankle monitor. And Eddie was apparently deeply regretful of that night, saying, quote, I made a big mistake, I just kept asking her to leave, and she wouldn't, so I pushed her outside, and I hit her in the face when I was doing that. Kelly went to stay at a friend's house after the arrest, and she showed up with a black and swollen eye. Her childhood friend Cheryl remembered, quote, it was very toxic and it just became more

and more concerning for me and for a lot of her friends. So of course her friends begged her to leave him, but she wanted to work on their relationship so they stayed together and pursued their plan of moving to Detroit. Then just over six months later, on July 9, 2020, the couple headed out in their respective vehicles, along with Eddie's dog and their eight chickens. But just 77 miles or 123 kilometers into their trip, Eddie's Toyota pickup truck ran into transmission problems, straining the couple in a small Florida town. Live Oak, Florida is a town of about 7,000 people

near the border of Georgia, but because it's situated along US Highway 90, US Highway 29, and Interstate 10, the population could be as much as five times higher depending on the amount of traffic passing through. The couple towed the truck to Reese's Auto Repair in the heart of Live Oak and decided to camp out for a couple of days while they waited for their car to be fixed. But remember, they did drive separate, so obviously they could technically take Kelly's

car, but they're not just going to leave his car. Exactly. And she's not going to go without him. Right. So in the short time that they were there, they kind of came to be known around town, just meeting locals and fellow travelers, and dining and drinking at local establishments. They frequented a local spot called the Little Bar.

They made regular check-ins at Reese's Auto Repair while Eddie's car was being serviced, and even had a sketch of themselves drawn at a local art shop. Now according to Eddie's recollection of events, they ate at a Mexican restaurant called Armando's one evening, and they became pretty friendly with the staff and chef. When Kellyanne Eddie told the employees that they were stranded while their car was being worked on, one of the employees offered to let them house their chickens in the staff members own chicken coop, and to camp out on their property while they were waiting on Eddie's car.

So they did this for a few days, but eventually they did get tired of roughing it. So on Tuesday, July 14, 2020, so five days later, they moved over to a motel. That afternoon, Kellyan Eddie checked into the sunshine in at 827 Howard Street in Live Oak. But the sunshine in didn't have the best local reputation, and one review called it quote, a crappy little hotel in the wrong part of town, plus beyond rude customer service. But Kellyan and Eddie were just thrilled to be staying indoors for a few nights until they could leave Florida altogether. But as they settled into room 70 on the second floor and argument erupted

when it came time to figure out what to do with their eight chickens. So Kelly, who was concerned about their well-being, insisted they be brought into the room along with themselves and Eddie's dog. But Eddie worried about being kicked out of the motel and recommended that they leave the chickens in their cage outside near the car. He later explained, quote, I found a grassy spot in the shade for them but Kelly wanted to bring them up to the room. I already had my dog with us.

We didn't need the chickens in the room too. We had a long couple of days and I was tired. So yeah, I got angry. I threw my hat on the ground and yelled, and we just kept arguing. And not to side with Eddie, but in this particular situation, I can kind of understand why having eight chickens in a motel room might be controversial and maybe not the best idea. I mean, yeah, I definitely very sweet of Kelly to want to do that though. And especially since she cared about them so much and maybe didn't want them to get stolen outside or something like that, she was very

passionate about them being in the room with her and then this whole fight ensued because they very much had different stances there. So their confrontation continued to escalate and by his own account, Eddie remembers yelling, quote, this is fucking stupid and telling Kelly, quote, I'm tired of your stupid shit. At that point, Kelly stormed out of the room, got into her own car, and left the motel by herself. But from there, the argument continued over text messages. According to Eddie, Kelly was sending a series of angry texts

which she finally interrupted to ask if she could bring back a pizza for dinner, just trying to de-escalate the tension according to him. But this only made Kelly more agitated. So she responded, seriously, I'm not your fucking lassie. You're gonna have to do better than that. So she stayed out for a little while and seemingly tried to cool off,

but later that evening she returned to the motel and the fight continued. So at one point, Eddie locked her out of the room in an attempt to end the argument. Now, Kelly sent him another sequence of angry texts, including, thanks for ignoring me and locking me out, con man. No fucking way I'm falling for this shit again. I'm not gonna be some white trash Florida girl letting you throw me around in the parking lot of a cheap motel, and also, asshole. Also according to Eddie, he responded very little, wanting to let her speak her mind,

and waiting for her to tire of fighting, assuming that she would come inside at some point, and they would just go to bed and move past it. Eddie also added that Kelly had been drinking during the afternoon, consuming a bottle of wine and some rum from a bottle that they had. It's unknown exactly how much rum she had throughout the day and the evening, but the bottle was found empty later. And for reference, the bottle contained about 17 shots of rum, so it's definitely possible that she had been drinking this over the course of multiple days, but that's unclear.

But there was security footage from outside the motel. And Kelly at least appeared coherent and she wasn't stumbling on the security footage found of her in the parking lot. So after Eddie locked Kelly out of the motel room, one flurry of aggravated messages was sent while Kelly was pacing around the parking lot and sitting on the stairs between the first and second floor rooms. And for a little bit of background about the sunshine in, so Kelly and Eddie were known to multiple people staying there, as we said they had already met many people in and around town and they made

friends easily in general. But multiple guests staying there that night did have criminal backgrounds of various sorts, and the motel was a known drug hotspot. John Robert Bennell, who was staying next door to the couple in room 69, was known to police for felony theft and drug use charges. And due to nearby access to multiple interstates and because it was cheap and low key, the Motel has seen many transients come and go, some of whom were undoubtedly engaging in illegal activities.

Now according to Eddie John, again the guy next door, he could be heard trying to console Kelly under the guise of getting her to come into his room, but she continued to refuse and seemed to be getting very frustrated at him. And we can imagine that he heard like their entire fight because he's right next door, so he probably knows exactly what's going on. But around 10.30pm, John knocked on the door to tell Eddie that Kelly was downstairs crying and that Eddie should go check on her.

Eddie found Kelly sitting on the steps, sobbing, but claimed that she continued to refuse to come inside. So Eddie took her car keys from her to ensure that she didn't drive after she'd been drinking and went back to their room. And according to John, who again was the neighbor of Kelly and Eddie at the motel, went to Eddie's room to explain that Kelly was downstairs crying, and thus Eddie went to go check on her and asked her to come in, but to no avail. And then he took the car keys away from her so she couldn't drive away since she had been drinking that day.

After this, Eddie states that he returned to their room alone, just hoping that she would come back in at some point and they could just move past the argument. Then, a couple hours later, around 12.30am on Wednesday, July 15, 2020, amid the barrage of continued text messages, Eddie texted Kelly quote, "'Why don't you come to sleep?' But she responded, "'Nah, I'd rather starve to death or be eaten by vultures than share a room with someone like you.'"

With that, Eddie put his phone down and he claims that he went to bed. Then, 30 minutes later, at 12.59 AM, Kelly left Eddie a voicemail that said quote, Oh great, you're sleeping. I'm so glad I got that message from you before telling me how you're sorry and you love me, how you want me so much and all that bullshit just to get my car. Well anyways, I moved to my own room at the sunshine in and I've reported my car stolen. You are not a partner. You turn on me in a split second. You tell on me out of nowhere and I deserve way better.

I did nothing to be called a fucking stupid idiot. So you know, I'm sick of your abuse. So go find, oh, I'm getting into a car right now. Okay, bye! In just a break that down very quickly, Kelly said that she got her own room and then she ended the call with saying that she was getting into a car. So not her car as we know that Eddie had her car keys anyway. Yeah, off the bat just makes me wonder if that's true or if she's saying it to worry him because she's upset. You know, so she's trying to say, oh, bye, I'm heading out of here. Like you should be worried about me.

You know what I mean? I feel like a lot of people do that kind of thing. I've done that before. So it makes me wonder off the bat if that is what's going on here and she's not actually getting into a car, but we're going to get into that. But either way, that final voicemail is the last time that anyone has ever heard from Kelly. So here's the thing, she actually never rented her own room, nor did she report her car stolen, so it's believed that she was just trying to get a rise out of Eddie

So if she was actually getting into a car It's possible that the car was arriving as she abruptly ended the voicemail and from her tone It sounded plausible that she was familiar with whoever she saw and perhaps she even called them herself But again because she had falsely said that she had gotten a room and reported her car stolen, it just makes me wonder even more if she said the whole, oh, I'm getting into a car right now. Okay, bye. Thing just kind of hoping to concern Eddie and get him to care and to apologize again.

Well, that's the thing. I mean, no one's actually sure whether she did get into a car, but the notion that she got into a car is a pretty likely scenario here, because there didn't seem to be any trace of her after she left the motel parking lot. Exactly, but let's fast forward to when Eddie states that he got up for the day and discovered all of this. So, the following morning, Eddie woke up at around 9am and Kelly was nowhere to be found, though she probably

wouldn't have had an easy time getting into the room anyway since Eddie had locked her out, unless she went down and got another key, so Eddie probably expected to wake up alone anyway. And again, since he also had the keys to her car, her car was still locked and in the parking lot of the motel when he went down to check on it. And inside her car was her purse, her ID, and her credit cards, which would make sense why she didn't actually get herself a room. But Eddie wouldn't know this at this point if his story is true.

So the only things Kelly had with her were her guitar and her cell phone. See, here's the thing. It's, I'm the type of person that I could never go to sleep, mad at someone. But the fact that they're, he's going to sleep in there in an argument, but also, he locked the door and locked her out and they're on this road trip together to move somewhere. It's like, it's just sending big red flags.

No, I actually thought of you during when I was, you know, was searching for this part because I, because yeah, you, like when we get into an argument, like you're like, no, we're not going to bed. We're figuring this out. Exactly. No, I don't do that. But for them, I mean, if, again,

it's like, it all depends on whether or not Eddie is telling the truth. If he's telling the truth and she would not come into the room, then I understand a little bit why he would lock the door because for his own safety, if he is going to bed and he just wants her to come back in, then he's locking the door. But what is he expecting her to do?

Like, she can't go into her car and she can't come inside when she wants to, if she does want to later on. So in his mind is he just like, oh, if she wants to come in, she wants to, if she does want to later on. So in his mind is he just like, oh, if she wants to come in, she can knock. Does she have her own key? Like, these are unknown to us. And another part of this is Eddie's the only person

who's telling us that she had been drinking, and that's why he took the keys to her car from her. Right. So we can't corroborate that. We don't know if that's true. We have no idea. Well, that's why this case is so difficult, because we know he has a past of domestic violence.

We know that there was abuse in the relationship. We know that they get into a lot of really heated arguments. We know how our friends and family feel about this, and we're going to get into that more later as well. So that makes it harder to know if what we're telling you guys is even true. Yeah, and the other hard part about this is yes, everything is what you're saying is true, but also the fact that they're staying in a kind of city area of town. This motel sounds

very sketchy in itself. And also, if she did happen to walk off, probably not the best place to walk off. Oh, absolutely. But also we have to remember the only thing that we really have from her words are obviously the text messages. We know that she didn't, you know, he did text her saying, you know, come to bed. And she was like, no, I rather starve to death, you know? So it is clear at least in those texts that he did ask her to come back and she didn't. But I do wonder how he expected her to return at all if he's going to lock the door unless she has a key, which again, I don't know.

Yeah. And also law enforcement does or did look through Eddie's phone to see these text messages. And also we were able to hear the voicemail. So that's what's so confusing to me is that she's saying, hey, I'm getting into a car. Do we trust that that's true? Or is I mean, or did something else happen here? Right. It's just so hard to know what to believe at all in the story. So that morning after calling and texting Kelly multiple times with no response, Eddie set out on foot wondering if she'd just maybe run out to get breakfast, even though she

didn't have any money on her. But when she was nowhere to be seen, Eddie notified her friends who started reaching out to her by texting and calling her cell phone. Kelly's phone was still charged to some degree and powered on because it was ringing for a while before going to voicemail. So some of her friends even started emailing her, wondering if she just needed a break from Eddie. And she had possibly just went off on her own for a bit. But she wasn't answering anyone. So later that day, which was July 15, 2020, Eddie reported 36-year-old Kelly

Brandon missing. He was interviewed for close to four hours that day in regards to her disappearance, but he swore that he had nothing to do with it, and he also had no idea where she had gone. While police were initially skeptical of Eddie and considered him a person of interest, Eddie was very forthcoming about the fact that they had had a fight and explained the details to the police without hesitation, no matter how it made him look. He described the sometimes rocky nature of their relationship, including reliving his domestic assault conviction, and gave police full access to his phone, which contained their

text message conversation from the previous night, and also the last voicemail that she left for him, as I mentioned earlier. And while that doesn't eliminate him completely, it might make the possibility of his involvement less likely as he seemed to have nothing to hide. But that's just based on the actual evidence in this case, which is you can already probably tell is very slim. So next, police tracked Kelly's phone activity

and luckily they were able to find a location. So it appeared as if Kelly's Gmail account had last updated around 1 a.m. So about 30 minutes to an hour after she left the motel and it was accessed just southeast of the sunshine in on the main street of downtown Live Oak. There was also a rumor posted to Facebook which claimed that her phone had pinged near the corner of Dowling Avenue and Court Street in downtown Live Oak, but her Google location

data showed that she had been in that location in the early morning hours of July 15th, so this was no rumor. But her friends, while researching this more heavily, found that the location of that ping was near the exact center of Live Oak, which may just point to her phone having been nearby. buy. After digging deeper into her Google location data, police say that she may not have been nearby at all, as it appeared that someone had manually entered live oak florida as a past location after deleting her actual past location data from both her browser history and her laptop, which is really quite suspicious. Yeah, like, why would somebody be doing that unless they were trying to cover something up? Right, and you have to ask as well, why would she do that? She probably wouldn't.

So police questioned multiple guests at the motel who reported having seen Kelly walking that direction, so away from the sunshine in and toured it downtown with her guitar over her shoulder. So that's, so now it appears that she may not have gotten into a car unless, unless she had gotten into a car possibly somewhere downtown, but people are saying that she walked away with her guitar over her shoulders. Yeah, and I guess it just depends on who you want

to believe, the hotel guests, or Kelly's voicemail, right? Right. So security footage was available from the motel, but did not show her getting into a car as she was believed to have vacated the property by that point. So for the next four days, Eddie remained in live-oak,

spearheading the movement to bring Kelly back. He asked around for her, interviewed locals, put up missing posters, and requested assistance from local businesses. He later said, quote, I'm looking around town, nobody is seen or nobody has a clue. But after four days with no trace of her, Eddie drove back to Gainesville in Kelly's car, which again is only an hour away from Live Oak, and eventually settled back into his hometown in Massachusetts

to stay with his parents for a bit. He said later in an interview, quote, I was thinking, I can't believe I have to start driving our trip without Kelly. And I guess I was just hoping that maybe I'd see her along the way or something, maybe hitchhiking, but I never did. However, Live Oak Police Captain Jason Roundsree has continued to call Eddie Emerson a person of interest in this case, saying, quote, Eddie has and continues to be a person of interest in the investigation, primarily as a result of his relationship to Kelly.

However, we've not ruled out or discounted other persons throughout this investigation. And it's estimated that Eddie's been questioned for over 13 cumulative hours regarding Kelly's disappearance. Police continued the investigation without Eddie conducting over 15 ground searches, utilizing volunteers, cadaver dogs, and drones. But this didn't turn up any sign of Kelly, her phone, or her guitar. The two most prevailing theories about Kelly's disappearance are that it involves someone

at the sunshine in, or that it was someone who worked at the local Mexican restaurant Armandos, remember the place where they made friends with a couple staff members. But just a heads up on Tuesdays, which is when Kelly went missing, Armando's clothes is at 9pm So it's not like she could have walked down there to get a drink and chat with people because they would have been closed Like for over three hours at that point, right and it actually appears that all the bars in live oak Close at midnight on Tuesdays and she would have been walking downtown around 1 a.m. If she did indeed walk down there But also here's the thing, she did have her cell phone. So it's possible that if she had that contact for these people who worked at Armandos, she

could have possibly contacted them and said, hey, like I want to meet you somewhere, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And actually speaking of Armandos, Eddie said this of what they did with the chickens before settling into the motel. Quote, the owner of Armandos gave us a place to put the chickens. We followed him down with Kelly's car like 20 minutes south in Live Oak down the 129.

We're like, this is kind of sketchy, but we get there and they have this coop. We put the chickens in the coop and we camped outside this coop just to save money so that we have the money for the house in Detroit. But strangely, when police questioned the owner and employees of our Mondo's, no one could say whether this had actually happened and the owner flat out denied it. And this is so weird to me because the police aren't saying like, did you make Kelly disappear? They're just asking if you helped them with the chickens and if they camped on your property before Kelly went missing.

And if you're not involved in whatever happened to Kelly, why not be honest? Because it feels like to me they were not honest because i don't see why eddie would make this up like he literally said it you know it was twenty minutes south of live oak we drove down the one twenty nine like why would you make that up yeah and i was actually reading a social media post uh... that was on a page dedicated to finding kelly and it said that there may be many reasons why these staff members don't want to have contact with police and maybe don't want to be involved in the investigation in any way. It could be a

variety of different reasons we don't know, but I just wanted to throw that out there. Yeah, I mean definitely possible that they're not involved and they just didn't want to speak to the police, but I do agree that it does suck that they didn't want to be helpful. And because it's hard to tell if maybe if they did see Kelly that night and they don't want to speak about it because for whatever reason they don't want to talk to police or they don't want to get involved, they might know something that they're not saying. So just definitely muddies it up a little bit. But it's also entirely possible that a guest at the Sunshine Inn was involved like the guest next door to them, possibly John Robert Bennell.

So the day that Kelly disappeared, Eddie stopped by John's room to question his whereabouts after Eddie had spoken with him the night before. And John explained to him that he had gone to bed a short while later, around 10.45 pm. And Eddie found that unlikely, saying, quote, nobody's going to sleep around here at 10.45 pm. And Eddie found that unlikely, saying, quote, nobody's going to sleep around here at 10.45. They're night people. There's no reason to lie to me about what time

you went to bed unless you have something to hide. And I guess I can kind of see that if it does seem like a motel where people are up very, very late. But also, maybe it is possible that he went to bed at 10.45 pm. I mean, who knows? I mean, 10.45 isn't that early, even for like a night person? True. It's only at 7 pm.

Right. Like, who knows what this guy's daily agenda was. But also, Kelly did seem very adamant about not going off with this John guy when he was trying to, you know, possibly console her that night. And I wonder how he could have done something to her without Eddie potentially hearing next door. Again, not saying he didn't do something to Kelly against her will, and not saying that she couldn't have unwillingly gone into his room, but it is kind of risky him being

right next door. But also, remember, John had knocked on Eddie's door regarding Kelly crying downstairs at 10.30. So this would mean that he went to sleep only 15 minutes later. Right, and that does make, that does kind of seem a little bit more suspicious that, oh, 15 minutes later, I just went right off to bed. But maybe he did, you know, and there also, so I had mentioned earlier that he had a criminal record. He was, he had a felony theft and then drug charges.

So it's not like he was ever convicted of anything violent, which doesn't mean that he doesn't have violence in him or is not capable of violence. But I did just want to circle back to that. Yeah, and just to speculate for one second about this. Yes. I mean, is it possible that she could have walked off in john possibly had seen her walk off

and then gotten his car drove down the road to to console her and say hey get in the car like let's go somewhere for a bite to eat or whatever and then you know something happen that's just where my mind is going even though they can't because nothing's open remember oh i guess it's true, yeah. But I know what you mean. You know what I mean.

Definitely, definitely. Yeah, especially because multiple people apparently saw her walking away from the motel with her guitar. So people are looking at her. And that's where my mind is going. I don't know why these witnesses would have any reason to lie about what they saw, about seeing her walking away from the motel, you know what I mean?

Yeah, and unless they wanted to put her away from the motel instead of inside it and, you know, get off the hook. Yeah, involved in some way, sure. Right, but I also want to mention to John, of course, was questioned by the police, but he maintained that he had nothing to do with Kelly's disappearance. So let's talk about Kelly's family for a minute. So back in New Hampshire, Kelly's mother Christine, who was in her 70s, was an absolute agony.

It was very unlike Kelly to go without contacting her mom for this long, and they typically spent every mother's day thanksgiving and Christmas together. Kelly's childhood friend Cheryl said quote, she's a free spirit and can certainly be stubborn, but she'd never not contact anyone for this long, especially her mom. This is extremely hard for her. Kelly was always in contact with her mom, and Kelly always made it home for Thanksgiving. But it's just been so long and we have no answers. made it home for Thanksgiving. But it's just been so long and we have no answers. And Eddie said, quote, she loves her mother deeply, and even when she was touring for a show, she'd find a way to call her mom. It's the saddest thing in the world. She's 74, and this is killing her.

That November of 2020, Christine spent her first ever Thanksgiving without her daughter. While police questioned whether she had the motive or opportunity to disappear herself, her friends and family maintained that there was no way. According to friends as well as her LinkedIn, Kelly was hard at work on her first book. She titled it Pretty Girl Crazy and described it as a hybrid novel memoir I'm calling a Nove War. Cheryl said quote, she gives her all to each and every project that she takes on. She has so many goals and when she sets her mind on something, she wouldn't stop until

she completed them. 2020 was a tenuous year for politics and Cheryl maintains that there was no way that Kelly would have missed out on being a part of that. She said, quote, for her to not vote in this election is very worrisome. She's an activist. She would want to be a part of it. Kelly's friends led an online crusade to find her, starting a website at whereiskellybrannon.com,

an Instagram profile at whereiskellybrannon Brandon and a corresponding Facebook page missing Kelly Brandon. Multiple PIs were put on the case but never found any evidence as to where Kelly wound up. Her friends are more skeptical of Eddie's involvement than the Live Oak Police Department were and have also been critical of the Live Oak PD's investigation. On the website dedicated to spreading awareness and information about Kelly's disappearance, her friends wrote, quote, When Kelly's boyfriend Eddie Emerson first reported Kelly missing to the Live Oak Police

Department's loan detective Captain Jason Roundtree, he established a quite strong and persuasive narrative. Kelly and Eddie had had an argument. Kelly was an explosive and unpredictable person. She was drunk. Eddie slipped the keys off her waist that night, and she left a voicemail that state she got into a car. Of course, it doesn't say what or whose car, and the other things she said she was doing

in the voicemail didn't happen. No one seems to question one person's mostly anecdotal sequence of events, car and the other things she said she was doing in the voicemail didn't happen. No one seems to question one person's mostly anecdotal sequence of events, which is strange considering Eddie psychologically and physically abused Kelly for many months, according to police records, Kelly's friends, and Kelly's own writing. It has been difficult, if not impossible, to get a hold of Captain Roundtree to discuss all this. When we have been able to speak with him, he speaks of how hard he's working on the

case and spends many late nights. But we see that the L.O.P.D. Instagram page is full of publicly catered lunches, donuts, public appearances, and self-congratulatory posts, but never anything about Kelly. Sadly, no one has turned up so much as a footprint of Kelly's, nor any real trace of her since she left that voicemail. The following summer, which was 2021, Eddie recorded an album that he dedicated to her, writing all of the songs except for one which he and Kelly co-wrote. And this is in no effort to romanticize Eddie or take potential responsibility away from him in Kelly's case. We're just reporting what's going on here. So he wrote in the album description

quote, dedicated to Kelly Brandon, a true revolutionary. The lyrics to one of the songs titled Taken Away, read, questions left unanswered forever, somebody knows, like seeing water flowing down in a black hole, don't know where it goes. I walk down the road, carry on my mind another day. I know that you're in a better place, but there's still so much to say. She was taken away, life is just a passage anyway. This is some strange kind of nightmare.

You were so close to me, like a tree dropping its biggest branch, I fall to my knees. I'm slowly picking up the pieces of what I can save. This is going to haunt me until I fall to my grave. She was taken away. Life is just a passage anyway. At the time of her disappearance, Kelly Brandon was 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed around 130 pounds. She had blue eyes and grey black hair which she wore cut short and with bangs. She has a tattoo of an A inside a circle on her right hand, which someone would believe would be like the anarchy symbol could be, and she was last seen wearing a white t-shirt and black shorts with her guitar slung over her back and

Her guitar was quite unique. It's a left-handed fender brand strata caster with a color gradient finish and the brand on the top of the neck of the guitar is standard off If you have any information about the disappearance of Kelly Brandon If you have any information about the disappearance of Kelly Brandon, please call the live oak police department at 386-364-7464. Also, if you want more information regarding Kelly's case, there seems to be a lot of updates being posted on her on the social media accounts that were made for her, which again, are at Where Is Kelly Brandon on Instagram, and then there's also a corresponding Facebook page missing Kelly Brandon. And lastly, Where Is Kelly Brandon dot com? Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West.

Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode and on Tuesday we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into. Yeah, again, make sure you share this story. Cases like this are just the worst when there is just absolutely no trace of a person that you just, you know, she was seemingly just plucked off the planet, but obviously something happened to her and her friends and her family deserve to know what that is. Exactly, it's so important to share this case.

Also, if you wanna talk about this case, we have a Facebook discussion group. Go join that and we can throw out some theories and hopefully this case will be solved very soon. All right, guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you. you