Debbie Rogge is a resilient woman. No, she's more. She's sort of my hero.
Days that start out full of hope — no matter how few pop upfor the woman whose daughter went missing more than 12 years ago — inevitably end much differently. And yet she presses forward, searching, hoping, waiting for her daughter to come home.
One of these days we will actually learn what happened to Brandy Hall.
Until then, Rogge will wait and continue enduring days like Wednesday when dozens of volunteers,two cadaver dogs and a forensic anthropologist — known for testifying in the Casey Anthony trial that his new technique could detect signs of human decomposition in air samples — arrived in Palm Bay to try and solve the case.
Brandy Hall, a 32-year-old firefighter and mother of two, left the Malabar fire station on Aug. 17, 2006, about 10:45 p.m. and has not been seen since. Her truck was found submerged in a nearby pond the following day.
There have been leads, persons of interest, searches, interrogations and yet here we are. The courts have ruled the case a homicide.
"I'm just hoping for some kind of answer," Debbie Rogge told me Friday. "When am I going to get some answers. I still have hope. She just needs to be found."
Cases like this can bring out the best in some. But it can also drag in others.
More:Years after disappearance, Palm Bay woods being searched for Brandy Hall
Listen to the podcast:Murder on the Space Coast takes on Brandy Hall case
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Psychics, mind readers, fortune tellers, mediums and the plain curious have all come out of the woodwork. Some want to share their dreams of where Brandy might be and others, well, they are even stranger. Just Thursday morning I received an e-mail from someone claiming to work for a missing person organization. He wanted to donate his time to find Brandy. All he needed was her fullbirth name.
"Why's that?" I asked.
"Because I talk with the dead," he responded. "Brandy will tell me what happened to her."
On Wednesday, Debbie Rogge rode around town with Arpad Vass, the forensic anthropologistwho testified in the Casey Anthony case. They were trying out his newly-patented grave-detecting machine. The contraption, made up in part of plywood, PVCpiping, a funnel and copper tape, resembled a Seusical contraption the Grinch might use to shoot presents back under Christmas trees.
"Maybe it works," Rogge said hopefully. "But, it kind of looks like a toy."
She supplied him with finger nails as themachine calibrates offa family member's DNA. An article about Vass'sinvention claimed it can detect a single drop of blood that is 20 years old and has a range of about three miles.
I reached out to Vass and he e-mailed me back saying he doesn't comment on active investigations.
While teams of volunteers poked around a field in Malabar with metal detectors and shovels, Vass discovered a point of interest several miles away. The cadaver dogs seemed to verify that a body might be nearby. Maybe this contraption does really work, I thought. If so then it will revolutionize how we search for the missing and presumed dead.
A phone call was made to one of the search coordinators and within moments, a volunteer was off in his black pickup truck to assist. I jumped in my car to follow. Mr. Black Pickup Truck took off like he was auditioning for Dukes of Hazard and I followed suit with my best Starsky and Hutch driving. I'm sure my wife's Mazda 6that I borrowed that day got airborne a few times as we drove on.
"He must be excited to get there," I anxiously thought to myself as I recorded a video of me driving toward the site for posterity's sake.
"Wouldn't it be something if we find Brandy Hall," I exclaimed.
Suddenly the pickup truck pulledover and he toldmethe media wasn't welcome. I explained to him that the police, not he nor any of the other volunteers, can limit my movements. We finally arrive at the site in question.
This time I'm stopped from going into the woods by one of the dog handlers. She tells me that she doesn't want to jeopardize a potential crime scene. I can buy that. But she also told me that Debbie Rogge, Brandy's mother, didn't want me back there.
And thatI knew was a lie and immediately raised a red flag. This was starting to feel like a show and it was getting stranger by the minute.
But I knew one thing for certain. We weren't going to find Brandy today.
Can the Brandy Hall case be solved?
Private investigator Nic Sandberg, working for Rogge, was also prevented from going further. He got Debbie on the phone who said she wanted both of us with her in the woods.
"I'm glad you didn't believe them," she told me Friday. "I want you and Nic (Sandberg) there with me for everything."
We learned that Mr. Black Pickup Truck detectedjewelry six feet down.
That's when suddenly everything stopped.
The GPS coordinates were relayed to police and now we wait. And we wait. And we wait and it's terrible.
Imagine what this waiting feels like for Debbie Rogge.
Contact Torres at 321-242-3684
or jtorres@floridatoday.com.
Twitter:@johnalbertorres
Facebook:/FTjohntorres
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