http://www.c-bstatesman.com/news/2010-08-05/Front_Page/UNSOLVED_MYSTERY.htmlUNSOLVED MYSTERY
After four years, Brownsboro woman remains missing Paul Bryant
Wells TYLER — Brandi Wells was always an accepting person, willing to see the best in others.
And that may have been the reason she went missing just over four years ago after leaving a Longview nightclub.
“Brandi has always been a very caring, gentle person,” Wells’ godmother, Michelle Cole, said. “She was extremely trusting, and I always told her she was too trusting. But she always wanted to see the good in everyone. She was always that way.”
On Aug. 2, 2006, Wells left her mother’s house in Tyler and made the 45-minute trip east to Longview. After calling for directions to the club several times that night, she arrived at Graham Central Station alone.
Surveillance video shows her providing identification inside the club and leaving a few hours later.
However, as she made her way toward the parking lot, it appears an unidentifi ed man behind and to the left of her may have gotten her attention. The video also shows her feet changing direction before Wells walks out of the frame after midnight.
Cole said Longview police have offered little to no information about the man in the video.
“We do not know who he is,” she said. “His cowboy hat, unfortunately, has been to his advantage through this whole thing. They aren’t sure who he is, and we don’t know if he had anything to do with it. Maybe he said something to her about helping her with the gas or something like that. Or, maybe she just realized she parked on the other side of the parking lot.”
Wells, then 23, reportedly asked club patrons for help with gas money, because the black, four-door Pontiac Grand Prix she was driving was running on empty. The car was found a few days later on westbound Interstate 20 near Farm-to- Market Road 2087 in Gregg County.
Wells’ mother, Ellen Tant, said she believes her daughter had been taken against her will before she left Graham Central Station.
“I honestly think she met the wrong person that night. I wonder if she had even gotten into her car at the club. I always hope she’s out there somewhere, but I just have a feeling we are looking for bones right now.
“It’s been four years, and the longer it gets, it doesn’t seem real. Not knowing where she is and what’s happened to her is the worst thing.”
The Laura Recovery Center of Friendswood and Texas Equusearch of Dickinson have conducted multiple searches for Wells. But each turned up nothing.
“There have been thousands and thousands of people discovered by just people stumbling upon their bones,” Tant said. “Unfortunately, that is the one hope I have — that she is going to be found that way.”
In 2009, the case was featured on the Investigation Discovery channel’s “Disappeared” and has been rerun numerous times, including as recently as Sunday.
“There’s really been nothing since we got her on that national television show,” Tant said. “She’s one of 13 persons it concentrated on.”
Janell Midkiff, a friend of Wells, was one of several people interviewed by ID.
“It had probably been a year or two since I had seen her,” she told The Statesman. “But we did talk over the phone. It’s a little hard, because we don’t know whether she is alive or dead.”
Midkiff, 26, traveled to Texas from her home in Minnesota to help Laura Recovery Center in its search in December 2007.
“It may have been the second or third one they did, but it was kind of hard for me to keep taking time off work to go deal with it,” she said. “I have no idea what happened to her. Our imaginations are running wild trying to figure out what happened.”
Midkiff lived near Wells before she moved to Minnesota about six years ago. Like Midkiff, other friends of Wells have left the area, and Cole said that was one of the reasons Wells went to Graham Central Station that night.
“She did not know a whole lot of people in the area anymore,” Cole said. “What she had told me was that she wanted to go over there and just meet some people.
“I told her that she was about to go back to school in Athens and that these people were going to be a good distance away from her.”
But Wells was determined to go to the club, anyway.
“She said she heard it was a nice place to go and a lot of fun,” Cole said. “She did not go to drink but just to meet people. Brandi would talk to a total stranger and not think twice about it. She’s always just been a wonderful person.”
Wells had been living in Brownsboro for a few months when she disappeared, but she planned to live on campus at Trinity Valley Community College. The night she drove to Longview, Tant expected her to spend the night with her in Tyler.
“She just wanted to go check it out,” Tant said. “I thought she was going to a club in Tyler, and she didn’t tell me she was going to Longview. She just wanted to meet some people and was maybe thinking about going back on weekends.”
Cole said Wells asked her to join her that night, but her godmother declined because she had to work the next day. Wells also asked her sister to go.
“I guess she just ended up going alone. She was supposed to take her sister, too, but she was too tired to go that night. Brandi made the decision to go by herself. I wish she hadn’t.”
When her car was found, Wells’ purse and a cell phone were inside. Although that phone belonged to her ex-fiance, the cell phone she used was reportedly found a few blocks away by “a person of interest.” It had been used days after Wells was last seen by relatives.
“I have not heard (police) talk about him in quite a long time,” Cole said. “They just have not told us very much about him. At the club, a girl had admitted she hung out with Brandi that night, but she won’t talk to anyone about it. I just wish we could find some answers.”
Tant said the best of Wells may have led to her death, and she warned others not to take their safety for granted.
“She lived by the golden rule, and she thought everyone else lived by it, too. She always thought if she was nice to them then they would be nice to her. People need to quit saying that it won’t happen to them, because it definitely can happen.”
Whatever happened to Wells, her family and police do not believe she drove the car to where it was found. The front seat had been pushed back too far for Wells to drive it. They also found a plastic gas container in the trunk, but relatives do not believe it belonged to her.
“The police tried to start the car several times, but it wouldn’t start,” Tant said. “So they put some gas in it. I don’t think she was driving it in the first place, because the seat was too far back. My ex-husband is 6-foot-2, and he fit behind the wheel just fine. Brandi is 5 feet tall, at the most.”
Neither Sgt. Darin Lair of the Longview Police Department nor Laura Recovery Center immediately responded to requests for comment.
