Brianna Vibert (Jack of Hearts, Michigan)

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Speaker 5 Our card this week is Brianna Vibert, the Jack of Hearts from Michigan. In the summer of 2017, Brianna was at a crossroads in her life.

Speaker 5 At the young age of 24, she was recently divorced from her husband and now living with an allegedly abusive boyfriend, all while battling some personal demons.

Speaker 5 So on July 15th, when Brianna mysteriously disappeared, some people might assume she just walked away away from it all and left her troubles behind.

Speaker 5 The Flint Township Police in Michigan are not those people. And seven years on, they're still looking for Brianna and whoever took her.

Speaker 5 I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck.

Speaker 5 It was 3 p.m. on Monday, July 17th, when a man named Michael walked into the Flint Township Police Department to report his daughter Brianna missing.

Speaker 5 With him was Brianna's ex-husband, Eric Weibert, whom Brianna shared three boys with. The fact that an ex-father-in-law and ex-son-in-law had shown up to file this report together spoke volumes.

Speaker 6 They were very concerned. She has children and she had not been in contact with her children, which was a huge red flag.

Speaker 5 That's Flint Township police detective Lacey Lopez who took the initial missing persons report. At the time, she was working as a patrol officer.

Speaker 5 Part of Michael's concern and sense of urgency centered around the fact that the boyfriend Brianna lived with at the time, Brandon, and their housemates had apparently known she'd been missing, but hadn't said a word to them or been the ones to even call police.

Speaker 5 They just posted about it on Facebook and word made its way back to Brianna's ex, Eric.

Speaker 6 Eric stated he received a screenshot on Facebook Messenger by one of the roommates that Brianna lived with, and it was a post about Brianna being missing and not having been seen since July 14th.

Speaker 5 Couple this with the knowledge that the two had a rocky relationship that had gotten physical in the past, and you can see why Michael was so concerned.

Speaker 5 Though he didn't run straight to police when he got that message, Detective Lopez believes that they thought they could handle finding her themselves.

Speaker 6 It appeared that they kind of did their own investigation for a few days or a day before they actually came in here and made a report.

Speaker 5 Because they'd already done so much digging on their own, they had a lot of information to provide police. They'd even been able to trace Brianna's last movement before she disappeared.

Speaker 5 The two had learned from Brandon that the last time he saw Brianna was on Friday. She was intoxicated and the two had gotten into an argument.
Sounds like it was about her possibly cheating on him.

Speaker 5 Police at least seem to think that's the case, but Detective Lopez points out that they don't have any direct evidence to prove that.

Speaker 5 So whether cheating was the cause of this argument or not appears to be a little murky.

Speaker 5 But he says that she got so upset, she threw a brick at the house and then left, walking in the direction of the marathon gas station on Miller Road.

Speaker 5 Now, as luck would have it, Michael actually knew a guy named Sam who worked at that very gas station, so he and Eric went there next.

Speaker 5 Sure enough, Sam told them that Brianna was there in the early morning hours at around 12.30 a.m. on what would now be Saturday, July 15th.

Speaker 5 Like Brandon, he also mentioned to them that she seemed intoxicated. And there was something else.

Speaker 6 He did allow him to watch the cameras and she latched with this unknown black male and a panic Aztec.

Speaker 5 Sam indicated that Brianna didn't appear to know this guy, but she got into the front seat and they left in an unknown direction at about 1 a.m.

Speaker 5 No license plate could be seen, but this gave Michael and Eric a crucial tip, something tangible that they could give to police. But they needed to make sure she was really gone.

Speaker 5 I don't know if they knew about the true crime trope where families are told their loved ones will just show up.

Speaker 5 I don't know if they just wanted to be prepared and make sure that they could tell police they already checked with every single person they could think of of before resorting to them.

Speaker 5 Or maybe they still just thought there was no way this could really be happening to them. A missing loved one.
That only happened to other people.

Speaker 5 Whatever it was, Michael and Eric checked with friends and family, and they verified that no one had spoken to or seen Brianna since the 14th.

Speaker 5 A family member of Brianna's actually paid for her cell phone, and through her, they found out that her cell phone had been turned off.

Speaker 5 They also spoke with another friend of Brianna's who we'll call Casey. And she said she got a text from Brianna at around 1.30 in the morning on the 15th, asking if she could stay with her.

Speaker 5 And she said yes, but Brianna never arrived.

Speaker 5 Now, there is some conflicting information on this because Detective Lopez believes that this was actually a call that happened around 1.48 in the morning and lasted 25 seconds.

Speaker 5 So just like, you know, 18 minutes difference here. Now, when Michael checked with Brianna's work, he was told that she didn't show up and that a check was waiting for her there.

Speaker 5 So the fact that she wasn't even picking up money was alarming. So this is just red flag after red flag.
This is when they knew it was time for the real detectives to take over.

Speaker 6 I went into the detective bureau immediately because this lady is not contacting her children or her ex-husband even about the children. It's been since the 14th, it's now the 17th.

Speaker 5 The detectives already had a head start because of Michael and Eric's legwork. And so their first step in the investigation was was an obvious one.

Speaker 5 They went to the gas station to look at the camera footage themselves.

Speaker 6 Brianna is obviously upset in the store and one of her arms appears to be injured. Like she's holding it and I think it was bleeding.

Speaker 5 This was an injury her boyfriend Brandon had mentioned to Michael and Eric when he first spoke with them.

Speaker 5 Brandon said he suspected that Brianna had self-inflicted a wound on her arm, possibly in an attempt to take her own life.

Speaker 5 Brianna apparently had a history of self-harm and attempted a suicide that was known to both Michael and Eric. So it was possible.
If anything, it just reinforced the urgency for police to find her.

Speaker 5 And to find her, they needed to find out who that guy driving the Pontiac Aztec was.

Speaker 5 So they got a copy of the footage and distributed it everywhere they could. Local news, social media, just trying to capture a broad audience.

Speaker 6 We had even asked some family members and friends if they knew who that blackmail was, and they did not. They had no idea.

Speaker 5 Police turned to Brianna's cell phone records and GPS data hoping that they could help track her down that way.

Speaker 5 Her phone was still off so it wasn't helpful at first, but they requested an emergency GPS ping allowing Brianna's phone to be pinged for its location every 15 minutes in case it turned back on, even briefly.

Speaker 6 It's pretty simple. It'll pop up on your email and say, no phone or phone is off, service is off, something like that.

Speaker 6 But if there is, it'll give you latitude, longitude of the coordinates with the approximate meters of how far away it could possibly be from that cell phone tower.

Speaker 5 Now they just needed the phone turned on long enough to get that ping. They could tell from cell phone records that someone had been turning the phone off and on over the last few days.

Speaker 5 They could see that someone had been checking the voicemail from the 16th to the very last day they got this ping approved on the 18th.

Speaker 5 But there was still no sign of incoming or outgoing calls during that time. Just someone checking the the voicemail and then apparently shutting the phone off again.

Speaker 5 While they waited, the historical phone records they had were helpful in other ways.

Speaker 5 Detectives started tracking down some of the last people who'd been in contact with Brianna leading up to the time she went missing.

Speaker 5 They saw that she had called a coworker around midnight right as the 14th turned into the 15th. That coworker told detectives that Brianna had called asking for a ride.

Speaker 5 They said she sounded intoxicated and that she said she was walking down Miller Road. But this coworker wasn't able to pick Brianna up.

Speaker 5 So Brianna just hung up, but then called back a short while later and told her she was going to ask another coworker for a ride.

Speaker 5 Detectives confirmed that there was that text or call to Brianna's friend Casey one to two hours later, presumably the one where she asked if she could stay the night.

Speaker 6 Brianna had told her that she had gotten a ride to take her there. That's it.
She never heard back from Brianna.

Speaker 6 She had tried texting and calling her, which is confirmed on phone records, and Casey could never get a hold of her again. And that was the last anybody ever heard anything anything from Brianna.

Speaker 5 Now, as I stated earlier, there's some conflicting information on when this text or call took place. Some police records have it at 1:30 in the morning.
Detective Lopez thinks it was at 1.48.

Speaker 5 Either way, it begs the question: where was Brianna between leaving the gas station at 1 a.m. and then reaching out to her friend 30 to 50 minutes later?

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Speaker 5 The next day, July 19th, police get what seemed to be their first promising tip. Someone thought they knew where they might be able to find the mystery Pontiac Aztec and its driver.

Speaker 5 No one was home at the address they were given, but a neighbor told the detective that a woman owned the home and she had a boyfriend who fit the description of the person they were looking for.

Speaker 5 One who had the same kind of car that was parked there occasionally when he was over.

Speaker 5 The man the neighbor was talking about was a 47-year-old guy named Dale, who wasn't actually a boyfriend, but rather the homeowner's fiancé.

Speaker 5 Detectives learned that Dale might not actually live with his fiancé. Likely he was just visiting her from time to time because he had another address tied to him.

Speaker 5 This other address was his mother's house. So the detective tried tracking him down there, but he didn't see the car parked in the driveway.

Speaker 5 They were on to something big because Dale's mom's house is where they should have been all along.

Speaker 5 And they found that out the next day on the 20th when the police got a ping from Brianna's cell phone. And wouldn't you know it?

Speaker 6 So when detectives knocked on the door, mom and Dale came to the door and Dale was immediately acting like hesitant to talk.

Speaker 6 And the detective at the time had told him he was there about Brianna's cell phone and he immediately asked for an attorney. So he was allowed to call an attorney.

Speaker 6 After the phone call to the attorney, he said he wanted to talk, but not in front of his mom. He saw the press release on the news of him and Brianna at the gas station.

Speaker 6 And then he stopped talking and said, I'm going to wait for my attorney. And that was all he would say right away.

Speaker 5 After a brief discussion with his client when he arrived, the attorney gave police permission to enter the house.

Speaker 5 While Detective Lopez was unwilling to give us specific details on what exactly happened in the house or even where the police searched, she would say that Brianna's cell phone was found there.

Speaker 5 What wasn't found there was Brianna. Not in his car either, which they also searched.
Still, Dale clearly had a lot of explaining to do.

Speaker 6 So Dale said that he was driving down Mill Road, stopped for gas at the gas station at Lennon and Miller Road. When he pulled in, he entered the gas station and Brianna was there inside the store.

Speaker 6 He saw that she had an injury to her arm and asked her if she was okay. He said that she looked at him and gave him a look that he thought indicated that he was bothering her.

Speaker 6 So he exited the store and left. When he left, he stated that he felt that he was at the gas station for a reason and he felt the reason was to help her.

Speaker 6 He stated that him and his fiancée were very religious, so he returned to see if she needed help. When he returned, Brianna asked him to take her to an address off of Vermilia Street in Flint City.

Speaker 6 She actually told him he better not take advantage of her and he responded with, you better not blame me for that, indicating you better not blame me for the injury on her arm.

Speaker 5 The house she asked Dale to take her to belonged to Brianna's friend, Casey. But as they drove, she changed her mind.

Speaker 5 Near Casey's house was a strip club called Teasers where she used to work as a shot girl. And Brianna asked Dale if he could take her there instead.

Speaker 5 She said she still had friends there who could help her. So he did.
Even went inside with her. Dale hung behind while Brianna went into the back.

Speaker 5 And a little while later, she came out with her arm bandaged. They then left together, presumably the plan still being to take her to Casey's.

Speaker 5 But they had to make another stop because Dale said he needed gas. Again.

Speaker 6 He bought $5 worth of gas at that marathon at Atherton and Saginaw. And while at the gas station, Brianna went inside.

Speaker 6 He waited for her to come out, even went in the store trying to find her, but he couldn't find her in the store. So he waited by the front door looking outside for her.

Speaker 6 And she eventually exited from a back room inside the gas station. They both exited the store and he got back into his Aztec.

Speaker 6 As he was getting back into the Aztec, a green truck pulled up next to a pump and Brianna went over and began talking to the people in the truck.

Speaker 6 He got sick of waiting for her and it appeared that she knew the people so he left.

Speaker 5 Dale told detectives that as he was driving, he realized that Brianna's purse was still in his car. So he turned around and went back, but when he pulled up, he said she was gone.

Speaker 5 So Dale said he then went to McDonald's to get a bite to eat, where he decided to throw her purse into the trash.

Speaker 5 Dale said he was afraid his fiancé might find it and she wouldn't have approved of him having a girl in his car, let alone going to a strip club.

Speaker 5 He said he found Brianna's cell phone in the car the following day. And when detectives asked why he kept turning the phone on and off, Dale told them this.

Speaker 6 He gave the explanation that his mother had once lost her phone and someone found it and she just kept calling her phone until someone answered.

Speaker 6 So he was turning it on and off to check voicemails to see if she had called looking for her phone. He was hoping Brianna would have called it, leaving a message so he could get it back to her.

Speaker 6 He said he only did this because he thought it was the right thing to do. He claimed he did nothing other than give Brianna a ride as she asked.

Speaker 5 Detectives were now tasked with proving what, if anything, in Dale's story was true. They got the security camera footage from the strip club teasers, and it's all there.

Speaker 5 It shows Dale and Brianna going in. Later, Brianna has her arm bandaged, and the two of them left the club together.

Speaker 5 Detective Lopez told our reporter that the employees at Teasers who helped Brianna that night have only recently been identified.

Speaker 5 So what Brianna might have told them about how she injured her arm or about any fight she might have had with Brandon or anything about Dale remains to be seen.

Speaker 5 But what Dale told police about their stop at Teasers was lining up, and everything he said about the second gas station proved to be true as well.

Speaker 5 The employee working that night told the detective that the Pontiac Aztec pulled into the station and the car caught his attention because it was the only one to pull in.

Speaker 5 Brianna entered the store and wandered into the back room for employees where she was caught on camera.

Speaker 5 Dale is also seen on camera near the station's front door and then eventually looking for Brianna.

Speaker 6 Why he couldn't find her was because she went to the back room. She appeared really unsteady on her feet like she was lost, didn't know where she was.

Speaker 5 Now there's some speculation that Brianna could have maybe taken something at teasers, which is why she was so unsteady on her feet at the second gas station.

Speaker 5 But Detective Lopez says this is not something they have confirmation of. And according to her, it appears Dale was not a known drug user.

Speaker 5 Eventually, Brianna came out of the back room, just like he'd said. She and Dale exit the store, just like he said.

Speaker 5 And the employee also witnessed Brianna walk up to a green S10 or Ranger-style pickup truck and start talking to the occupant or occupants.

Speaker 5 I don't know which it is because there's nothing about this employee being able to describe whoever's in that green truck.

Speaker 5 But the employee said that Dale at some point drove away and then he watched Brianna leave the gas station on foot.

Speaker 5 A few minutes later, he confirmed that he saw the same Pontiac pull back in, circle, and then leave. Now, the gas station did have cameras outside.

Speaker 5 But unfortunately, the only footage police could get was from inside. And that's because by the time police got there, the footage had already already been deleted.

Speaker 5 The only reason they even had what little they did from the inside was because the employee had taken a video of the security camera feed with his cell phone, like a recording of a recording.

Speaker 5 Brianna had trespassed by going into the back room and he thought that they might need that footage to ID her.

Speaker 5 But according to Detective Lopez, there is other footage that hasn't been released publicly. It sounds like from another building, and that's of Brianna outside of the gas station.

Speaker 6 We have video that shows her walk away from this green truck and walk kind of like towards the back of the gas station, which would be east on Atherton.

Speaker 6 And it gets really dark and it's really dark to begin with, but that's it. It's like she vanishes into thin air.

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Speaker 5 Detectives have even more footage from outside the gas station that shows Dale's car and that green truck coming and going from the second gas station.

Speaker 5 It shows Dale's car arriving for the first time at around 2.50 a.m., and then he leaves at 2.52.

Speaker 5 He comes back at 2.56 and then leaves right away for the final time, seemingly, or at least according to his story, without Brianna.

Speaker 5 But I have seen this footage and it's too far away to make out anyone inside the car.

Speaker 5 And though Detective Lopez points out that times on camera systems can often be problematic and not display correctly.

Speaker 5 For the most part, this appears to back up both Dale and the gas station employees' accounts of things. And as strange as Dale's story was, things seemed to be matching up.

Speaker 5 Except, there is one part of the story I just can't make sense of. And that's the timing of it all.
Per Sam, who worked at that first gas station, Brianna leaves with Dale at like one in the morning.

Speaker 5 Dale's story is that they left to drive to Casey's, but then got diverted to the strip club Teasers, which was right near where Casey lives.

Speaker 5 Teasers is like 10 to 15 minutes away from the first gas station. I mapped it myself.
It says 11 minutes.

Speaker 5 But in the footage we got from the strip club, it shows Dale and Brianna entering at 2.15 in the morning and then leaving at 2.30.

Speaker 5 If they left point A at 1 and they get to point B, which is 10 to 15 minutes away at 2.15,

Speaker 5 where did Brianna and Dale go for the hour in between?

Speaker 5 We asked Detective Lopez and she said that where they were during this time is unknown.

Speaker 5 And because Dale had lawyered up, they've never been able to get a clear answer from him about this timeline discrepancy.

Speaker 5 Something else they don't have evidence of is Dale going to McDonald's after leaving the gas station, like he said.

Speaker 5 Detective Lopez is unsure why they don't have that, especially because he said he threw Brianna's purse away there. But that purse has never been recovered.

Speaker 5 So our guy Dale is far from being off the hook.

Speaker 6 But as Detective Lopez points out, they've done everything legally that they can do with Dale.

Speaker 5 So if Dale was involved in Brianna's disappearance, detectives would need more. And if not Dale, then who?

Speaker 5 On the same day police had talked to Dale and began trying to corroborate his story, They received another tip from a neighbor regarding Brianna. They had found a bag of her clothes in a ditch.

Speaker 6 The bag was found towards the area of the gas station. It did contain things that obviously belonged to Brianna.
There's a couple pair of shorts, her work stuff.

Speaker 6 I think even the work stuff might have had her name tag on it. She worked at a taboo restaurant at the time as a waitress.
There was no blood or anything suspicious about the bag.

Speaker 5 Looking at this today, it appears to Detective Lopez that this was stuff Brianna might have packed from her her house so let me get away for overnight this is what my guess would be and she had done that in the past she had gone to a friend's house on bromelia when her and brandon would fight and i think that's where she was trying to go i actually know that's where she was trying to go police suspect brianna put this bag in the ditch to later come back and retrieve it the gas station was just a short walk from brianna's house and from what i can tell the place where her clothes were found was kind of in between the house that she left and this gas station over the course of several days and weeks police continued to canvass the area where Brianna was last seen.

Speaker 5 And at the same time, they weeded out potential sightings of her.

Speaker 6 We had gotten a couple sightings of Brianna and none of them were ever confirmed.

Speaker 6 I think, you know, she is a taller girl, but she, I think she's kind of a normal-looking white female and it probably could be easily confused for other people.

Speaker 5 It wasn't just the police dealing with false Brianna sightings. Brianna's good friend Courtney experienced this firsthand while searching with Eric and Brandon one day.

Speaker 7 We were like driving down, I think it was Atherton, maybe somewhere around there, and this girl was walking down the street with her head down and she kind of looked like her.

Speaker 7 So we were all freaking out, like super excited. I parked the car really fast and it wasn't her, obviously.

Speaker 5 On August 1st, police did a canine search in and around the second gas station where Brianna was last seen. There were several vacant houses and a large wooded area, but ultimately nothing was found.

Speaker 5 And it sounds like there were multiple organized searches like this happening around this time. Brianna's friend Courtney even remembers being part of one.

Speaker 7 We all just kind of walked like arm's lengths from each other and just walked straight, looking at everything on the grounds and through the woods.

Speaker 7 It was like, I hope we find her, but at the same time, like, I hope we don't, because I don't want to see that, you know?

Speaker 5 While police had done their legwork on Dale, one person they still hadn't talked to was Brianna's boyfriend Brandon.

Speaker 5 Detective Lopez isn't sure why it took so long because there was definitely reason to be suspicious of him.

Speaker 5 During their investigation, police learned from another family member that a month before she went missing, Brianna had asked her for help getting away from Brandon.

Speaker 5 She wanted out of the relationship. According to the family member, when they replied and asked how they could help her out of the situation, she never responded.
And then they never spoke again.

Speaker 5 Brianna's friend Courtney points out that she thinks Brandon was a violent guy.

Speaker 7 She had like messaged me at one point saying that he choked her or whatever and they were broken up at that point. But then I heard that they got back together like a day later.
I don't know.

Speaker 5 Now it wasn't that police had forgotten about him early on. They were having some trouble getting a hold of him.

Speaker 5 They played a game of phone tag and then the one time they got him on the line, it was actually because they'd called Eric who said he was out with Brandon at the time and detectives said, well, put him on.

Speaker 5 He was hesitant to get on the phone and when he did, he claimed that he was concerned about being arrested because of something known as a friend of the court warrant that had been issued for him, which in Michigan appears to revolve around child support.

Speaker 5 So Detective Lopez chalks up his hesitance to disliking the police. Brandon also claimed that he had some cell phone issues at the time, making him even more difficult to get a hold of.

Speaker 5 But you can't avoid Johnny Law forever. So on August 17th, Brandon finally came in to be interviewed.

Speaker 5 At first, he just briefly explained explained how he and Brianna met in 2016 while they both worked at a club. Brandon was a bouncer and she was a waitress or shop girl.

Speaker 6 He did admit that their relationship did turn physical a few times, but he said he would never hit her. She would freak out and he would have to grab her to restrain her.

Speaker 6 Brandon said that he never hit Brianna. There were several times that she would hit him.

Speaker 5 What Brandon didn't know was that detectives had pulled Brianna's medical records before he showed up. On at least one occasion, Brianna had gone to to the hospital.

Speaker 6 She had a final diagnosis as a contusion on her head, lower back, and pelvis, laceration to her left hand, and a traumatic rupture of her left eardrum.

Speaker 6 She was listed in the records as a victim, and the records reflected that Brianna informed medical staff that she was arguing with her boyfriend and was thrown to the ground.

Speaker 6 She then grabbed a knife and threatened to harm herself and accidentally cut the palm of her hand. And it was documented in medical records that Brianna opted to leave the hospital prior to treatment.

Speaker 5 As for what happened in the hours leading up to Brianna's disappearance, Brandon was oh so vague.

Speaker 6 He stated that the night they had both been drinking and Brianna was drunk. And when he returned, she was gone.

Speaker 5 Brandon had his own kids that night and he had decided at some point to go drop them off at his dad's house.

Speaker 6 And before he left, she was sitting Indian style in the front yard with her bags like packed. Nothing was said between them.

Speaker 6 He said that he was told by one of the other roommates that when he left, she was bleeding.

Speaker 5 And he told the detective that he thinks that brianna cut herself because she has a history of that and that she had also texted him quote-unquote angry and she then stopped returning his messages brandon was also under the impression that brianna was getting a ride from this guy named q q whoever he is has remained a mystery detective lopez says they've never been able to identify him And as far as Brandon was concerned, that is who picked Brianna up.

Speaker 5 Well, in reality.

Speaker 6 he thinks that she's getting a ride to go do something, not realizing that she walked to the gas station and got a ride from a stranger.

Speaker 5 One thing Detective Lopez points out with Brandon's statement to police is that it's different than what he told Eric and Michael when they came to talk to him.

Speaker 5 In that version, Brianna threw a brick at the house and she walked off. In this version, Brianna was still at the house when he left.

Speaker 5 So Brandon was now telling a new story or a slightly different version of events. Before he left detectives, Brandon agreed to do a polygraph at some point.

Speaker 5 He also promised detectives that he would forward any leads he received to them.

Speaker 5 Brandon had been very vocal on Facebook about Brianna's disappearance, but according to Detective Lopez, it was never really about Brianna.

Speaker 6 He was really loud about trying to help find Brianna and how devastated he was. He made several posts about how terrible he felt.

Speaker 6 It was really about Brandon. Brianna's the one missing, but it was really about Brandon.
And he wanted to make sure people knew he was upset.

Speaker 5 So upset that it took him over a month to finally come and talk to the police. Whether Brandon could have had anything to do with Brianna's disappearance remained to be seen.

Speaker 5 And remember, her cell phone was eventually with Dale. So Brianna had no way of contacting Brandon at a later point.

Speaker 5 So the thing to think about is if he found her, it would have had to have been by chance. Something Brianna's friend Courtney points out.

Speaker 7 I stop and think, like he wouldn't have known where she was because she got that ride from somebody and then went to these different places.

Speaker 5 When it was time for Brandon to take his polygraph, he said that he was going out of town to Florida to help with some hurricane relief. Interesting timing.

Speaker 5 From what I can gather, Brandon never took that polygraph. According to Detective Lopez, at some point police checked out the house Brianna was staying in, but found nothing of evidentiary value.

Speaker 5 And so just weeks after the investigation began, it seemed to stall out. And it continued to stay like that for years.

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Speaker 5 It wasn't until 2021 that Detective Lopez, who was obviously no longer a patrol officer, took up the case. And that's when things picked back up.

Speaker 6 I just asked for this case because I took the initial report. I feel for her family.
I feel for her children. Just, it devastates me when I think about it.

Speaker 6 I can't imagine as a child, like not knowing where your mom is the whole time you grow up, not knowing if she's dead, she's alive.

Speaker 5 One of the first things Detective Lopez did was to start gathering information about some of the players involved in this case.

Speaker 6 I was able to get phone records for several people involved, which shows their GPS locations. And Facebook records also contain your private messages.

Speaker 6 So any messages that you have between each other, I have copies of. And that's pretty much all I'll say.

Speaker 5 When it was time for her to start knocking on doors, Detective Lopez realized that it didn't appear any of Brandon and Brianna's roommates had ever been interviewed back in 2017.

Speaker 5 So for her, it made sense to start with them. She went first to talk with one of the roommates, who we'll call Amy.

Speaker 6 She basically denied being home during this fight that they had. Prior to her picking up her boyfriend, she had been working at Taboon the night that Brianna went missing.

Speaker 6 She had received a text from Brandon saying that him and Brianna were fighting and that some of her things got damaged.

Speaker 5 Now, there is some conflicting information here because Amy also said that Brandon told her Brianna had walked off.

Speaker 5 But we know in 2017, Brandon said that he had left and Brianna was still at the house. Brandon also seemed to place his roommates at the house.

Speaker 5 Now, Detective Lopez points out that, you know, this is years later. Memories of events fade.

Speaker 5 But the other roommate, who we'll call Matthew, who was dating Amy at the time, seems to place both of them at the house.

Speaker 6 He explained that she had picked him up from work at General Motors around 11, 11.30 that night, and then they went back to the house. So he's contradicting what she just said that she wasn't there.

Speaker 6 He guessed that they arrived at the house between 11:45 and 12 a.m. And when they arrived, Brianna and Brandon were arguing.

Speaker 5 Because Brandon's children were at the house, Amy suggested they bring them to Brandon's dad's house, get them the hell out of there.

Speaker 5 So, Brandon, Matthew, and Amy got into his car and dropped the kids off. And then, by the time they got back at around 12:45, maybe 1 a.m., they said Brianna was gone.

Speaker 5 So, for the most part, some hiccups aside, Brandon's original story matched up to this one. But this is where things get fuzzy and where some suspicion starts falling on Brandon.

Speaker 5 Matthew said that after they got home, Brandon went to look for Brianna. He returned sometime later and said he had found her in a parking lot of a pizza hut.

Speaker 5 They decided to break up and then she was apparently going to get a ride.

Speaker 5 Now, when Brianna could have been in this pizza hut parking lot is unknown, considering most of her night was documented on surveillance video and by witness accounts.

Speaker 5 And to me, the one missing hour we have from her, I don't think that could be it because you would think that Dale would have said something because in that hour, he is presumably with her.

Speaker 5 Now, Detective Lopez told our reporter that there was a pizza hut across the street from the first gas station, but they don't have surveillance footage from it to prove if what Matthew was saying was true.

Speaker 5 And by this point in 2021, Brandon wasn't answering any questions. So he's never been asked about this pizza hut story.

Speaker 5 But to go back to to what Matthew was telling her, he stated that after that, Brandon and another friend, who we'll call Keith, went up the street to look for Brianna at the gas station, which Detective Lopez takes the time to point out would be odd if Brianna and Brandon had just broken up.

Speaker 5 Like, why are you now going to look for her? But Matthew said they didn't find her at the gas station, and so they decided to get in the car and look elsewhere.

Speaker 5 But when they pulled out, they didn't realize that Amy's cat was on top of their car, and sadly, they ran over it. So this story was just going from bizarre to more bizarre.

Speaker 5 Now, with an injured cat, this crew supposedly drove to the vet.

Speaker 6 He estimated that they arrived at the vet around 2 a.m. and were there till 4 a.m.
He said that Keith and Brandon never left the vet office while they were there.

Speaker 6 After they left the vet, they arrived back home around 4 a.m. Brandon wanted to go back out looking for Brianna, but everyone convinced him to just go to bed.

Speaker 5 Matthew also mentioned that at one point he got upset at the vet vet for not helping, like so upset that the vet's office actually called 911 on him.

Speaker 5 And this is where some of the strangeness in Matthew's version actually starts to pay off. Because when Detective Lopez followed up on this, she found something very interesting.

Speaker 6 So I looked up that call. There was a call, in fact, for a disorderly person at the vet office.
And the only record that they have of people that were there is only Matthew and Keith.

Speaker 5 Matthew and Keith, but apparently no Brandon. Who, by the way, never mentioned anything about a vet visit in his initial interview with detectives, which you would think is kind of important.

Speaker 5 You'd think you'd remember running over someone's cat considering it had just happened weeks before he met with detectives and on the night his girlfriend disappeared.

Speaker 5 Not to mention putting himself at the vet would have given him an alibi during the timeframe Brianna would have been walking away from the second gas station.

Speaker 6 I even got with the officers that responded and because it was three years later, they didn't remember. They weren't sure.

Speaker 6 And even the staff at the vet facility, I went to see if they remembered and they did not remember.

Speaker 5 So Detective Lopez chased down Keith. And when I say chased down, the dude dodged her.
But she did eventually talk to him. And when she asked him if he was at the vet that night, he said he wasn't.

Speaker 5 Which Detective Lopez points out seems almost impossible.

Speaker 6 Mind you, I've confirmed that he was there based on officers running his name through the system and it's all documented.

Speaker 5 This same logic goes for why we know Brandon wasn't there. Police had run their names through the system.
Brandon's wasn't one of them. So if he wasn't at the vet, where was he?

Speaker 5 Did he slip out before the police arrived or is it something else? Detective Lopez is interested in knowing. And she even has a possible theory.
Remember that green truck?

Speaker 6 It could be somebody that Brandon knows and called Brandon and told him where she was. Because Brandon has a lot of friends in that area.

Speaker 6 And one theory about the green truck, we had received some information that one friend of Brandon's possibly had a green truck back then, but we could never confirm it.

Speaker 5 Lopez isn't aware of Keith or Matthew owning a green truck. So if one of Brandon's friends had a green truck, it doesn't sound like it was either of them.

Speaker 5 Detective Lopez plans on re-interviewing Brandon. And don't worry, she hasn't forgotten about Dale either.
Our reporter Madison tried reaching out to both Dale and Brandon.

Speaker 5 She called them, left them voicemails, texts, reach out on Facebook. She even called Dale's attorney.
But as of the recording of this episode, crickets.

Speaker 5 Detective Lopez wasn't willing to say anything about where her investigation regarding Dale stands today.

Speaker 5 But she was willing to say that Dale and Brandon are considered persons of interest in Brianna's disappearance.

Speaker 5 And while Brianna's ex-husband, Eric, can't be ruled out, sounds like him and Brianna were even in a custody battle at the time, Detective Lopez doesn't seem to think that he's involved.

Speaker 5 For one thing, he lived a half hour from where Brianna had disappeared.

Speaker 6 Not convenient for him to be out at like 3 a.m. and happen to find her walking down Saginaw Street.

Speaker 5 And by all appearances, he seemed willing to cooperate with the police. Not to mention answered several of our questions, at least via text.

Speaker 5 And remember, along with Brianna's father, he filed the missing persons report.

Speaker 5 Now there is another option that we haven't talked about, that maybe a random stranger could have done something to Brianna. At the time she disappeared, in Flint, several other women were missing.

Speaker 5 At least two bodies had been found that are possibly connected to those cases.

Speaker 5 And while Detective Lopez didn't go into detail on those because they're with an entirely different police department, she is a little hesitant to even try and connect them to Brianna.

Speaker 6 I have absolutely no evidence showing that she's linked to these females. And unfortunately, a lot of these were sex workers.
She's not. It doesn't really match.

Speaker 6 But she's also walking on the street at very early morning hours. So maybe somebody thought she was.

Speaker 5 Whatever happened to Brianna Vibert in the summer of 2017, one thing is clear. Her friends and her family deserve answers.

Speaker 5 Brianna has a fourth child, an older daughter who lived out of state at the time of her disappearance.

Speaker 5 She's old enough to look up things about her mother's case, and it would be nice if one day she could see that it was finally solved.

Speaker 5 As for who Brianna really was, she shouldn't be remembered for the story of her disappearance or the struggles she was going through.

Speaker 5 As her friend Courtney fondly recalls, first and foremost, she was a mother.

Speaker 7 I went to her for advice to help with my kids. She was a great mom.

Speaker 7 We liked to do crafts a lot, so we would include the kids in that when they were old enough to, I mean, we would play outside with them, do sidewalk talk, bubbles, whatever.

Speaker 5 She was really patient with them.

Speaker 5 As for Detective Lopez, who went from taking the initial missing persons report to now leading the charge in solving this case, she's hopeful that somehow what you're listening to today can make a difference in getting this thing solved.

Speaker 6 The biggest reason that I did this podcast is to get any information possible for Brianna.

Speaker 6 There's so much up in the air with this case and her family and friends, especially her children, deserve so much more than this. So much more.

Speaker 6 She has four children that are without their mother for the rest of their life, potentially. They do not know where their mother is.
Can you imagine how that must feel?

Speaker 6 Not knowing what happened to your mom. If she's alive, if she's dead, where she's at.

Speaker 6 If someone knows something but is unwilling to speak on it, please think about Brianna's children and the rest of her family and how they feel.

Speaker 6 They need answers and someone has them and is choosing to stay quiet. That could not be a comfortable thing to live with.
Crime Stoppers of Genesee County and Flint. You can be completely anonymous.

Speaker 6 There's a $2,500 reward for any information regarding Breanna Vibert.

Speaker 5 At the time of this recording, Breonna Vibert would be 31 years old. She was described as 5'9 and 120 pounds at the time of her disappearance.

Speaker 5 She was last seen on July 15th, 2017 at around 2.45 in the morning at the mobile gas station on South Saginaw Street, walking toward Atherton Road in Flint, Michigan.

Speaker 5 She wore a cream-colored top, black capri pants, and flip-flops. Brianna has the word family tattooed on her right shoulder, as well as a tattoo on both wrists.

Speaker 5 She also has a pierced nose and pierced ears.

Speaker 5 If you know anything about Brianna's disappearance, you can reach out to Detective Lacey Lopez's direct office line at the Flint Township Police Department. Her number is 810-600-3266.

Speaker 5 You can also anonymously report information to Crime Stoppers of Flint and Genesee County. Their number is 1-800-422-5245.

Speaker 5 The deck is an audio Chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.

Speaker 5 So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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