What Happened to Brittney Wood?
“The wood family didn’t have turkey for thanksgiving, they had children,” said the district attorney.
Brittney Nicole Wood was a 19-year-old single mother who disappeared from her Tillman’s Corner home, never to be seen again.
On May 30, 2012, Brittney walked out of her home with a blue tote bag hung from her shoulder. When her mother, Chessie, asked her what was wrong she replied, “I just don’t think you’d understand mom, but I’ll be back.” Brittney told her mother that she was headed to her friend Courtney’s house for the night and proceeded to walk down the street, past the neighbors fence, and out of sight.
Unbeknownst to her family, Brittney had made plans to meet up with her uncle, Donald Holland Sr. He presumably picked her up at the end of the street around 7:30 p.m. and drove 40-miles to a home in Styx River, where he was staying.
Two days later, Donald’s wife, Wendy Holland, called Baldwin County Detective Eric Windberg stating he had been acting erratically and contemplating suicide. The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office issued a BOLO for Donald, was wanted for questioning in a 3-month sex-ring investigation. Thirty minutes before he was meant to meet with Detective Windberg to discuss the investigation - for which he was believed to be the “ringleader” - Wendy and her friend, Jennifer Gonzalez Moore, found him clinging to life in a secluded area overlooking Fish River in South Baldwin, Alabama.
He was discovered sitting in the front seat of his SUV, engine running, bleeding from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the back of the head just behind the right ear. Before police arrived on scene, Wendy erased four messages, as well as a few voicemails, from his cell phone and manipulated the scene. In Donald’s suburban. Fairhope police found a .25 caliber Raven handgun, which Donald allegedly used to shoot himself, as well as a cell phone battery.. Donald’s hands were bagged and he was airlifted to a hospital in Pensacola, Florida.
At the hospital, doctors removed the bags from Donald’s hands after without testing for GSR, claiming gunshot residue testing was not routine. Additionally, doctors failed to remove the bullet from his skull in order to compare it to the gun found at the scene. Chessie made several attempts to contact Brittney to inform her of Donald’s condition, but they went unanswered.
Believing she was staying with a friend, Chessie was not concerned. Before succumbing to his injuries, Wendy began asking Donald - who was declared braindead - where Brittney was. Chessie called Courtney who confirmed she had not seen her nor did they have plans. Concerned, Chessie reported her missing.
Detectives soon discovered that the gun found in the vehicle belonged to none other than Brittney. According to Courtney, she obtained the gun shortly before her disappearance for unknown reasons.
The Woods family soon learned that Brittney’s cell phone pinged near Styx River Basin. Detectives pulled up to the property as Chessie and other family members were about to break down the door. The detectives searched the home and brought out Brittney’s tote, however, no other evidence was found in the home, on Brittney’s belongings, or in the immediate area to suspect foul play. According to the Woods family, there was a freshly poured 4x6 concrete slab. Chessie believed that her daughter may have been buried under it. However, the family wouldn’t be able to get answers for seven years. In 2019, the home once owned by Jennifer Gonzales Moore was given back to the bank. Ray Mooney of KlaasKids Foundation used GPR to see if Brittney’s remains were under the stab, while he discovered a large disturbance, he was able to determine that Brittney was not there.
The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office spent two days searching the home in Styx River and found no evidence of foul play. A week later, a search team along with over 70 volunteers conducted a large-scale search where Brittney’s phone last pinged. A pair of women’s underwear and a bath cloth were discovered, however they were unrelated to the investigation. In spite of the evidence, or lack thereof, Detective Windberg believes that Brittney’s life came to an end that night in Styx River. He has his suspicions that her body was dumped at a truck stop.
The following week, the Fairhope Police Department finished processing Donald’s Suburban and released it to Wendy. Inside the truck, Wendy found a cell phone battery belonging to Brittney inside the center console and returned it to Chessie. When she phoned the FPD, they stated that the cell phone battery held no significance in the case as it held no data. However, till this day, Brittney’s phone has never been found.
Cell phone records showed that a friend, Bradley, was the last person Brittney spoke with before her phone went to voicemail. Investigators interviewed him three times and he claimed he couldn’t remember the conversation and no longer had the cellphone. However, before his passing he was cleared by investigators.
As news of an incest sex-ring spread throughout Mobile, Alabama, a motive for Brittney’s disappearance began to take form. Three days before her disappearance, Brittney received a Facebook message from a cousin who claimed she had been raped. “I told on Daddy for what he done to me…Daddy, Scott, Dustin, they raped me.” When Brittney was 8-years-old, she was raped by her grandmother’s boyfriend, Ronnie. Chessie reported it to the police and Brittney bravely stood trial, testing against him. It is widely believed that Brittney confronted her uncle about the allegations the night she disappeared. Donald’s eldest daughter corroborated the claims, stating she believed her sister “because he did it to me.”
After Chessie began receiving letters from an inmate who claimed to have served time with Wendy, a new theory emerged. “Donald Holland never took Brittney Wood anywhere on May 30, 2012. However, he did drop her off $300. That’s why his truck was seen in the neighborhood…But the only person that saw him with Brittney was Wendy’s twin Mendy. Mendy called Wendy and told her what she saw. Wendy had use of a pickup truck… Donnie had the suburban. She said her and [unknown] used bleach to clean Brittney’s blood off of the back of the truck. I know all the details.”
“Wendy admitted to me that Donnie never committed suicide and how Brittney’s gun got in his truck. Wendy told Donnie what she did to Brittney and she said that he had threatened her by saying whenever he went to talk to the detective that day that he was going to tell them about Brittney. That’s when she shot him in the back of the head. She planted the gun in the truck to make people think that he used Brittney’s gun to kill Brittney and then to kill himself. The bullet was never removed from Donnie’s head. Had it been removed they would have known that it didn’t come from Brittney’s gun.” Even after the inmate was released, she kept to her story. After the letters, Detective Windberg began to question whether or not Donald’s death was a suicide.
More than a year later, a letter written to Mendy by Wendy, who were both serving sentences in relation to the sex-ring, stated “Brittney wrote a letter with a lot of evidence on it pertaining to Jennifer, her, you, Mendy, and (child victim). She said if anything happened to her, give it to the police. (Unknown) is scared to give the letter up” and “you need to…get that letter that Brittney wrote. This can seriously fuck you up.”
Wendy followed up the letter with another which stated, “Even if they do turn it in (the letter) they won’t know if Brit wrote it or not. They cannot compare handwriting.”
Is Brittney’s disappearance connected to the investigation?
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