On November 2, 2008, around 5:00-5:15 pm, 17 year old Brittney Gary left her South Doyle Street home in Jennings, LA and walked a few blocks to a Family Dollar Store on Plaquemine Street to purchase pre-paid minutes for her cell phone. She never returned home.
She was observed on FDS surveillance video at approximately 5:30 pm where she is seen making her purchase and then exiting the store alone. The camera does not indicate that she was with anyone else while in the store. That was the last time anyone had seen or spoken to her.
Brittney’s mother, Teresa Gary, reported her missing more than 24 hours later and soon started to fear the worst……that a possible serial killer, who had previously targeted six other women, had found their 7th victim. Brittney was not known to disappear for long periods of time. When she did leave she always called or at least answered her calls. Calls to Brittney’s cell phone went unanswered and her voicemail indicated her inbox was full.
At 12:30 p.m. on November 15, a searcher found her body on a roadside a half-mile south of LA 1126 on Keystone Road, about 4 miles south of Roanoke. Although classified as a homicide, her cause of death, autopsy report and toxicology tests have not been publicly released. UPDATE: According to a blog post made August 21, 2009 by her aunt, Brittney’s cause of death was listed as asphyxiation.
When Brittney Gary went missing, the Garys had returned to Jennings less than a week earlier after living with family in Houston and Lufkin, Texas for four months. They had moved to Texas with hopes of securing a better life. According to her mother, Brittney had done drugs in the past but was clean while living in Texas and that her daughter had never engaged in prostitution. After returning to Louisiana, Brittney was trying to distance herself from her old friends.
Brittney and/or her family were connected to all six of the prior victims; they knew all of them. Brittney Gary’s cousin, Kristen Elizabeth Gary Lopez, was the third victim. Her best friend, LaConia Shontel “Muggy” Brown, was the fourth victim. The second victim, Ernestine Marie Daniel Patterson, was one of Teresa Gary’s employees at Wendy’s.
Oddly enough, at the time Brittney went missing police were not suspicious that foul play was involved and were simply treating the case as a missing juvenile. The Jennings Police Department was the lead organization in the search for Brittney and Detective Joshua Crochet said the department had not lumped her with the other victims. The Sheriff’s office looked at the case differently though and took the common sense approach that she might have been a 7th victim. Based on that assumption, the Sheriff’s office chose to run an investigation parallel the the city police. Authorities have stated that they have received information as to where Brittney may have been and who she was with the night before she went missing.
Brittney had expressed previously, to her mother, her fear and concerns regarding the other women’s deaths. She was scared and wasn’t sure who could be trusted anymore. A week before Brittney Gary went missing, a serial killer profiler told private investigator, Kirk Menard, that another girl would be killed before Christmas. Menard had recently been hired by several people close to the deceased women to investigate the deaths independently from law enforcement.
Brittney was the 7th body discovered in a rural part of Jeff Davis Parish and the 5th to turn up within a 2-3 mile radius of each other in the past three years. Her body was found about 3 miles from where the first remains were discovered in 2005.
Brittney was buried Sunday, November 23, 2008, in Bertrand Cemetery. Brittney’s uncle, Butch Gary, said the family does not have insurance or any way to pay for a funeral. Donations for the funeral can be made at The Bank in Jennings, 337-824-0033, or directly to Matthew & Son Funeral Home, 337-824-4420.
