http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1206/11/ijvm.01.htmlJANE VELEZ-MITCHELL
Young Mom Vanishes after Visiting UncleAired June 11, 2012 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jane, is there any circumstance that you think it`s OK for a parent to spank their child, as an example?
JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL, HOST: Well, this is not a circumstance where it would be OK. This is a child playing catch. And I think the father may be using -- the stepfather may be using this child to work out his own issues.
And we`re starting with a very urgent story out of Alabama. A desperate search for a 19-year-old mother who disappeared after telling her family she was going to visit some friends, but there`s a very odd twist in this case. Her family joins me live next.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VELEZ-MITCHELL (voice-over); Tonight, a race against time in Alabama to find this beautiful missing 19-year-old mom, Brittany Wood, last seen walking down the road away from her home. Her cell phone last pinged less than a mile from her uncle`s. But now cops say the uncle has committed suicide. Did he take the secrets of what happened to Brittany to the grave, or could this be a stranger abduction? We`ll talk to Brittany Wood`s mom live.
::snipping2::
CHESSIE WOOD, MISSING GIRL`S MOTHER: I want (ph) you, baby. We love you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thursday Brittany Wood tells family members that she was headed to this house near Styx River to see her Uncle Donnie. Donnie Wood returned home to Fair Hope on Friday and shot himself. Brittany hasn`t been heard from since.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her uncle has committed suicide, and supposedly he was the last one she was with. And so we`re worried about that.
WOOD: I`m hoping to God, and I really don`t think he`d hurt my baby.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we haven`t talked to her in over a week, and we need some help finding her.
WOOD: You know your children`s routine. She has not done nothing routine. She always calls me. And she ain`t called me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: A beautiful young mom vanishes after visiting her uncle. Then he commits suicide. Are the two cases connected?
Good evening. I`m Jane Velez-Mitchell.
Brittany Wood has been missing for nearly two weeks. She disappeared from Mobile, Alabama, leaving her 2-year-old daughter behind. Look at this beautiful pair.
She told her family she was going to visit friends. But her last cell phone transmission happened less than a mile from this rural area where her uncle reportedly had a home near the Styx River. Now she reportedly told her friends that she was visiting her uncle there. When she didn`t return, her frantic mother called the cops.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WOOD: Brittany, come home. We love you. Please come home to your family.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: This is Brittany`s uncle, Donald Holland, the man Brittany was said to be visiting before she disappeared. He is dead now. Just as she was reported missing, he kills himself with a shotgun. Now Brittany`s parents don`t know what to think. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her uncle has committed suicide, and supposedly he was the last one she was with. And so we`re worried about that.
WOOD: I`m hoping to God. And I really don`t think he`d hurt my baby.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Call me: 1-877-JVM-SAYS, 1-877-586-7297. What are your thoughts about this mystery?
Straight out to our exclusive guest, Chessie Wood, the mother of missing Brittany Wood.
First of all, our hearts go out to you. I know this is such a difficult time. There are no words. We want to be of help. So let`s start by clarifying a key issue here. When your daughter walked out of the house, where did she tell you she was going, and how did she plan to get there?
WOOD (via phone): She was going to her friend Courtney`s (ph). I believe Courtney (ph) was supposed to come get her, but Courtney (ph) never -- never saw her.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: What are your fears as to what has happened to your beautiful daughter?
WOOD: I`m just fearing that something is wrong with her. She has a 2-year-old baby that she hasn`t contacted. And ever since that baby has been born, that`s my daughter`s heart and soul. So it just don`t seem right.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, there`s definitely something wrong. We`re going to try to figure out what happened.
Now, one of the big challenges of this case is nobody really knows where Brittany was headed when she vanished. Listen to her father talk about Brittany`s final cell phone pings.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the last place her phone was pinged. They found the signal bouncing off one of these towers, and we haven`t talked to her in over a week, and we need some help finding her.
WOOD: You know your children`s routine. She has not done nothing routine. She always calls me. And she ain`t called me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Brittany left from this location, her mother`s house in Tillman`s Corner. But then she supposedly went all the way to another area, Styx River, which is over 30, almost 40 miles away. That`s where she reportedly met her uncle, but her uncle then returned to his home in Fair Hope, and then he committed suicide. So this case is literally all over the map.
I want to go to Stephanie Hanke, another exclusive guest of ours tonight, Brittany Wood`s stepmother.
Do you have any knowledge -- did you know this uncle at all?
STEPHANIE HANKE, STEPMOTHER OF BRITTANY WOOD: Yes. I`ve met him on several occasions. He`s been to my home. Very nice man. He was not only close with Brittany; he was close with the other children.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Did he have any reason to commit suicide? Did he have any financial problems, relationship problems, despondency?
HANKE: That I would have no idea of.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: All right, Chessie, did he have any -- did Donald Holland have any reason to commit suicide right after your daughter disappears?
WOOD: Well, we really don`t know that. That`s what we`re trying to figure out. I mean, I`m pretty sure he has financial problems. I believe we all do. At this time.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Let`s take a look at the route that Brittany might have taken. She was last seen walking on foot from her mom`s house in Tillman`s Corner. Then her cell phone pings under a mile from the house her uncle was at, apparently, reportedly, by Waterworld Road, which is more than 40 miles away from her mom`s house.
If you look, the route she most likely took was near Interstate 10. So if she was abducted on I-10, she could be anywhere. It stretches coast to coast. In fact, just recently we`ve been covering a case right here on the show of another beautiful young girl, Mickey Shunick, who went missing near Interstate 10 in Louisiana.
And I actually went down to New Orleans and did a ride-a-long with a retired cop as we tried to find her. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, with the I-10, it -- like I said, it runs -- it runs from Jacksonville all the way out to San Diego. So if anybody picked her up and put her in that car or truck, you know, there`s no telling where she could wind up. Hundreds of cities she could be in now. But this -- it runs the whole length of the country, so that`s what the problem is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Marc Klaas, child advocate, president of the Klaas Foundation, you are helping this family. The first reaction that everybody has, obviously, is if this young woman, this beautiful young woman goes to visit the uncle, and the uncle then commits suicide and she`s disappeared, there`s got to be a connection there. Something untoward. What are your thoughts on that?
MARC KLAAS, KLAAS FOUNDATION: Well, Jane, I have no idea, obviously, what happened to her.
Before I get into that a little bit, I`d like to point out some informal research that I`ve done indicates that, of children that are abducted, more than 80 percent of them are abducted within four miles of a major interstate freeway entrance or exit, which I think is kind of a fascinating statistic which I`ve not seen anywhere else.
But back to Brittany`s case, we have no idea where she is. The Klaas Kids Foundation was contacted by the family. And our search-and-rescue team, which is located here in Pensacola, Florida, is going to be assisting them beginning on Wednesday morning.
We`re working with the authorities in Mobile, Alabama, on this search, and what we will be looking for is anything that would be associated with a girl of her age. We will work with the authorities to try to find the locations that are most reasonable to search, and then look for clues. Look for her, look for clues, look for anything that might lead us to the - - to the resolution of this mystery.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Stacey Honowitz, you, as a Florida prosecutor supervise the sex crime unit. Again, what are your thoughts about this uncle suddenly committing suicide right after she says, reportedly, she`s going to visit him?
STACEY HONOWITZ, SEX CRIMES PROSECUTOR: Well, certainly, Jane, when you hear the facts of this in this scenario, you have to initially think there that has to be some kind of connection. Why else would there -- would we be talking about it, quite frankly? That`s where she said she was going. That`s where she is, and then he commits suicide. Obviously, the parents are probably thinking, does he have a secret? Was there something that we didn`t know?
But now that`s all going to be part of the investigation. Just like you mentioned before. Was he depressed? Was he having issues? What was the relationship the two of them had? Are there going to be people -- people coming out of the Woodwork now to say that there was a relationship between the two of them? But these are all part of the investigation.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anybody in the family, get in touch with us and let us know that you`re OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Where is 19-year-old Brittany Wood? The beautiful woman left her mom`s house leaving her 2-year-old daughter behind. She says she`s visiting friends, reportedly. Then friends say that she told them she was visiting her uncle. That uncle later commits suicide. What is going on here?
There she is. Beautiful Brittany Wood with her 2-year-old daughter. She is missing tonight. Her family is frantic. We have exclusive interviews with her mother and her stepmother.
I want to go to Stephanie Hanke again, the stepmother. Here`s what I don`t understand. Why would she say she`s visiting friends, and then friends say she told them she was visiting her uncle?
The obvious question is, could she have had some kind of secret relationship with her uncle that nobody else knew about? Is her uncle married? What is -- what does the uncle`s wife say about his suicide? Fill us in here, so we can be of help.
HANKE: Well, as far as that -- (AUDIO GAP).
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I`m going to throw that same question out to Chessie Wood, because you`re Brittany Wood`s mom. We were having audio problems. Chessie, what`s going on here?
WOOD: Well, I do not believe they have a relationship. He was married to my sister. And he was -- he was -- my son has even went to their house a lot.
My sister was at that house with Donnie the Thursday night, that would be June 1st. So we don`t know if she even made it to Don`s. She was not actually seen with Donnie. The reason we`re searching that area is because her phone was pinged there.
Now if it had some relation -- something to do with my brother-in- law`s suicide, we don`t know. The Mobile Police Department and the Baldwin County Sheriff`s Department is taking care of that. We as a family and a community is just searching for Brittany.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well -- well, we did dig into the uncle`s history. And we have to say this, full disclosure, because we want to be helpful. We can`t just censor things.
We found something bizarre and disturbing on his Facebook page. He has an album of photos called "Girls at the Condo." You`re looking at the photos from that album. We`ve blurred the faces, but pretty much, it`s a bunch of beautiful young women in bikinis who are around the same age as Brittany.
Now, Jon Lieberman, investigative reporter, HLN contributor, what can we make of this collection of photos of young women in bikinis on the uncle`s Facebook page, the same uncle who later committed suicide after Brittany Wood vanished?
JON LIEBERMAN, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: Well, we`ve been digging into that a lot, too. And one thing police are doing is they`re looking at his social media footprint. And as you have there on the screen, are these pictures.
So what police are trying to nail down right now, as Ms. Wood said, is was this young lady at her uncle`s house that evening? A neighbor says that he saw her outside of that house, but never saw her with her uncle.
Now, another thing that could explain at least part of the uncle`s mindset. We found on his Facebook page, somebody posted that they believe that he had recently lost his mother and his brother. And so there was some speculation about some rampant drug use to deal with those losses. So another thing police are looking into is if drugs play any role in this case, as well.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: All right. And again, we`re all looking at these facts to be of help, to find this missing young woman. Diane, Pennsylvania, we`re going out to the phone lines. Diane, your question or thoughts?
CALLER: Hi, Jane. How are you?
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Good, thanks.
CALLER: Jane, you know what? I have a couple of comments and a question.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: OK.
CALLER: OK. On -- first of all, she`s 19 years old, and she -- her child was left behind. You know that most mothers would not do that. And she`s missing.
And then with the uncle, Donnie, between -- I`m wondering between the different things that were going on, and he likes to look at the young girls on the computer and so forth, on -- is there anything in his background for the reason why he committed suicide? And I just want to say checking because...
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Thank you, Diane. Jon Lieberman, can you give us an update on the uncle?
LIEBERMAN: Yes, the uncle just has minor criminal charges in his background. No felonies that we could find. So that speaks to his criminal record. But one thing that police are looking at is the family dynamic.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WOOD: Brittany, come home. I miss you, baby. We love you. Please come home to your family.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: This poor family. Where is Brittany Wood? There she is, a beautiful 19-year-old with her young daughter.
She says she went to visit friends. Friends said she went to visit her uncle. Her uncle later commits suicide. She`s missing. What happened to this beautiful young woman?
We`re talking exclusively with her mom, Chessie Wood. What can you tell us? What would you like to say if Brittany is out there watching? What would you like...
WOOD: Not only to Brittany, but to the public. If anybody knows any information on Brittany Wood, if you`ve seen her, if you know her, give Brad a call at Klaas Kids at 1-850-525-4807.
If Brittany is watching, baby, please come home. We need you in our life, because we love you, honey. We`re worried about you. Please let us know that you`re OK.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Our hearts go out to you, your entire family. There are no words. And we are trying to get to the bottom of this. So anything we bring up, as far as facts, please understand that we`re doing it to try to be of help.
Unfortunately, we have to reveal whatever comes up. We can`t just pick and choose if we want to be helpful.
Now the uncle who committed suicide, Donald Holland, as you just heard, he has a minor record. It was in 2005, charged with operating a vessel, presumably a boat with [SIC] a personal flotation device. That`s nothing. And he`s without a life jacket.
2007 he had a traffic violation. Driving on a suspended license.
2010, three separate traffic charges.
And you heard, Marc Klaas, the family says, well, he has money problems. We all have money problems these days is what they said. Marc, you`ve heard all the facts. What -- what are you making of it?
KLAAS: Well, Jane, I think the mother`s demeanor says more than anything that we can see. She obviously has a bad feeling about what happened to her daughter.
I don`t see a lot of good scenarios coming out of this. And I really doubt that Brittany is sitting in front of a TV watching this right now. She doesn`t seem like the kind of a girl that would torture her family and abandon her young child.
So it`s really a matter of working with the authorities and combing the areas where she might be until we`re able to solve what happened to Brittany.
Of course, we all want her to come home alive. There`s absolutely no question about that. And miracles do happen. But I think it would take a miracle for her to be found alive.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, tonight we`re wishing for a miracle. We`re hoping and praying for a miracle.
And again, to the Wood family, our hearts go out to you. And we`re going to stay on this story and do everything we can to find your daughter.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
::snipping2::