Mobile-area teenager Brittney Wood disappeared in 2012 just as some members of her extended family were coming under scrutiny for widespread, multi-generational sex crimes. The quest to understand her fate roused to life again this week as investigators searched a lot in Grand Bay.
The latest round of activity apparently was triggered by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which released an age-progressed image showing what Wood, who was 19 when she disappeared at the end of May 2012, might look like now at age 27.
According to information provided by the Mobile Police Department, the publication of that image resulted in a tip received by the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office. MCSO got a search warrant for 11070 Ramsey Blvd. in Grand Bay, where it a unit working with a dog reported “hits” by the dog. That in turn led to a warrant for a dig, which began on Monday.
Mobile Police Sgt. Jeffrey Corley said that the 11000 block of Ramsey Blvd. has previously been searched, but the tip and the dog’s response justified new action. The MCSO is taking the lead at the site because it is out of the Mobile police jurisdiction.
By midday Tuesday, no discoveries had been made public. Sheriff’s Office Capt. Paul Burch said that investigators had begun digging with hand tools on Monday but had been interrupted by rainy weather. When work resumed on Tuesday, he said, heavy equipment had to be brought in to deal with debris piles including heavy chunks of concrete and machinery. With those out of the way, he said, work was to resume with hand tools on Tuesday afternoon.
Burch said that the area had been “pretty well searched in the past” for any signs of a body, but no excavation had been done. In the latest search, he said, two trained cadaver dogs had been used.
“Two separate dogs showed interest,” he said. “It was not an all-out alert.”
Investigators believe that on May 30, 2012, Brittney Wood went to visit an uncle, Donnie Holland, who lived near Fairhope. At that point Holland already was under suspicion of child molestation; by the next day he’d been found dead of a gunshot wound to the head that was believed to be self-inflicted, though doubts have been raised about that.
Holland’s death obscured the fact that Wood was missing, for a short time, and made it impossible to determine exactly where she’d been or who she’d been with leading up to her disappearance. As the search for her continued, a horrifying picture began to emerge of web of relatives who aided each other in sexual atrocities. Not all family members were involved, but those who did allegedly committed offenses in Stockton, Saraland, Fairhope and Mobile
Donnie Holland’s wife, Wendy Holland, was sentenced in 2015 to 219 years in prison with no possibility of parole. She’d been convicted of sodomy, sexual torture, criminal sexual abuse and endangering child welfare. At that point, 11 people, including eight relatives, had been charged or convicted.
Nicki Patterson, an assistant District Attorney in Mobile County, said at the time that Holland’s place in the web of offenses was representative of generations of abuse. “We have generations of people who were abused and never disclosed it,” Patterson said. “Their lack of disclosure, unfortunately, allowed the next generation of kids to be abused as well.”
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The search for Brittney Wood: Investigators digging after new tip on 2012 disappearance - al.com
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