Blaine Brown

Warning. This episode contains graphic crime scene detail. Please listen with discretion. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together we're going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go all righty guys, Today we are jumping into a brand new unsolved case and I am going to be sharing with you about the unsolved homicide of a thirty nine year old man named Blaine Brown. In nineteen eighty six. Blaine was found deceased in Fort Pierce, Florida, and his identity remained a mystery until January of twenty twenty five, when he was finally identified. However, the circumstances surrounding his murder still to this day, remain a mystery, and that is where we come in. Sharing his story is important, sharing the details that we know and hoping that somebody will come forward with information so this one will be fully solved once and for all. Let's go ahead and get into Blaine's story a little bit and we are going to go from there. Blaine Lewis Brown was born on December third of nineteen forty six. Blaine was often known by the people that surrounded him as Bunny Bunny Brown. That was kind of his nickname at the time of his death. He was married with two young sons. On October seventh of nineteen eighty six, a Becker Groves employee found a severely decomposed head. The remainder of the deceased human's body was found in a canal about fifteen feet from the skull in a grove area on Ral's Road in Fort Pierce, Florida. In a twenty twenty interview, the cold case investigator said that initially the worker thought the head was a football. Upon further inspection, he realized that it was in fact human remains. And contacted the local authorities. Now, investigators did believe that animals could have been responsible for separating the head from its body. The unidentified victim was bound with his hands behind his back, and he was shot several times execution style. The skull had several fractures consistent with bullet wounds, and there was also allegedly recovered bullet fragments from the scene. They estimated that the body had been there for two to six weeks. Due to the advanced state of decomposition of the remains, the man was found to have three hundred and fifty dollars in cash on him and was wearing expensive clothes for that time and era. Remember this was nineteen eighty six. The victim had on Jordash jeans with a thirty four inch waist, a Hennessy buttoned down shirt, Nakona boots size ten D, and Nike socks. He also had a expensive watch on with a leather band. Robbery was quickly ruled out as a motive for his death. They determined that the man was between thirty seven and sixty years old, but his identity remained a mystery for so many years. Saint Lucie County Sheriff's Office investigated the death, but there wasn't anything specific that they could link to a specific suspect. The victim, who remained a John Doe, was buried in the Fort Pierce Cemetery in an unmarked grave, where he remained unidentified for decades. In twenty nineteen, a detective from the Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit, Detective Paul Taylor, decided to reopen the investigation to try and identify this person, and finally, in twenty twenty, they made the decision to exhume the body for further DNA testing. The DNA results remained insufficient until twenty twenty four when the Florida Department of Law Enforcement approved a grant funding for testing by Authroom Labs. As we know, I talk about authream all the time, and they specialize in the type of DNA technology that can test very degraded remains, and they are truly revolutionizing the way DNA testing is done, and they are solving crimes left and right, giving victims their identity back. And it's truly amazing for me, at least to be alive in twenty twenty six when this type of technology exists and this type of thing is happening daily. We are giving people their identity back on a daily basis. It is amazing. The type of testing that they did to help identify Blaine was called kin SNP rapid relationship testing, and I'm going to read directly from Authraam's website about this type of DNA testing. It was developed by authrem and it allows investigators to infer kinship in closely and distantly related individuals, combining the speed of traditional forensic str testing with the power of advanced SNP testing. Rapid confirmation or exclusion of relationships between an unknown person and potential relatives, protect privacy test viewer candidates, and get results. In days not months. Using the power of tens of thousands of SNP markers enables sensitive and accurate measurement of kinship for even distantly related individuals of credited laboratory from receipt of evidence to DNA analysis without assessing online genealogical databases and tools, maximizing privacy and security. So basically, in Layman's terms, they have a new technology where they're able to use the different DNA markers to identify even very distantly related individuals, so they're able to come up with an identity for this person. In January of twenty twenty. Five, Authorn was able to identify possible cousins of the victim and that led to a possible half brother of the victim. Once they completed the testing, they were able to positively identify the victim as thirty nine year old Blaine Lewis Brown Junior. So what do we know about Blaine? How did he end up as a John Doe? For so long? Was he ever a missing person? Were there people searching for him. What were the circumstances surrounding his disappearance? How did this happen? How did he become a John Doe and remain a John Doe for such a long time. So, like I said, Blaine was married and he had two young sons. At the time of his disappearance. He was a businessman and was the owner of Double Bee Farms, Incorporated, which was a horse ranch located in Okalla, Florida, and he also owned Brown's Fine Furniture, which was also in Okalla. Now there is some reports that say Blade might have been involved in drug smuggling as well. I have not personally been able to confirm that that is true. That is just what some news articles and reports say, and authorities have reported that he did have ties to Akalla, Miami, Fort Pierce, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the nineteen eighties. The claims that he did have involvement in drug smuggling. However, I cannot confirm nor deny that. But truly, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what he was involved in, because his life was taken in a horrific way and the person or persons responsible. Need to be held accountable. So Blaine was last seen by his family on September twenty sixth of nineteen eighty six, when he told them that he was traveling via car to my Emmy in relation to his horse ranch business. So there was a gray nineteen eighty six to four pickup truck that was rented under Blaine's name. The truck was later found abandoned in a Miami parking lot. His family did. Report him missing in Marion County, Florida, on October seventh of nineteen eighty six, which also happens to be the same day that his remains were found. Unfortunately, his family believed that he had left on his own accord and didn't want to be involved with them anymore, so they accepted this as fact. They did report him missing. They did their due diligence in that, but they truly did believe that he had just left. And that is really really sad when you think about two young kids and their mother thinking that Blaine just willingly left them behind. So, the area where Blaine's remains were found was one hundred and eighty seven miles and almost three hours away from Okalla, where Blaine had lived with his family. I was trying to sort out in my head why the missing persons report for Blaine wasn't brought up as a possible tie to the John Doe for such. A long time. My only explanation is that the locations were so far away that it might just not have been on the radar, especially in nineteen eighty six. Today, maybe not so much, But in nineteen eighty six, I'm sure they weren't searching missing persons three hours away thinking that this. Could be their John Doe. Now, investigators do believe that Blaine was killed the same day that he left for his road trip. The detective who was with the Cold Case Division and was responsible for reopening the case and going back through everything and eventually positively identified this victim as Blaine Lewis Brown Junior. He said that when he. Reached out to confirm that this was in fact Blaine, he contacted Blaine's son, and Blaine's son said that he never knew what happened to his dad, and he thought that maybe he just decided to leave. And not come home. And I can't imagine, like I said, his wife and kids living with the notion that they just thought he disappeared and not knowing all this time that he had been unidentified John Doe. Far from home, three hours from home. It must have been such an emotional rollercoaster for them, and finding out the news that he was in fact deceased and had been since nineteen eighty six. I can't imagine the range of emotions that must have come with that. To go your whole life to think that your dad left and was out there somewhere, and then. To realize the good news that he. Didn't just leave, but the horrible bad news that he was brutally murdered and then was a John Doe for so long. I can't imagine the different ranges of emotions there, because on one hand, you have to be relieved that your dad didn't leave you, but on the other hand, you're trying to come to terms with the fact that he was taken in such a horrific way and. You didn't know it for all of those years. I cannot even imagine that now. Like I had mentioned earlier, there had been interviews done with family and there was allegedly reports that maybe Blaine was involved in some type of drug dealing, but investigators are still working on that claim to substantiate it. Now If that is the case, this could very well be related to his death, and investigators are eager to speak with anyone that can give any insight on this being a potential motive for Blaine's murder because it kind of sets up like that. He was shot execution style, he wasn't robbed in any way, shape or form. He still had money on him three hundred and fifty dollars in cash, which in nineteen eighty six was a lot of money, but it very. Well could be drug related. In a statement that was given by Saint Lucy County Sheriff's Office Richard del Toro, he said, quote, I want to commend Detective Paul and retired State Attorney Bruce Colton for their tireless dedication and commitment to the case. Their relentless pursuit of the truth and years of meticulous investigative work have brought us closer to justice for Blaine Brown, Junior and his family. We will not stop until those responsible are held accountable. End quote. Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact Paul Taylor at seven seven two three five nine four four oh seven, and the people that they want to talk to are anybody that had any interactions with Blaine Brown Junior in in nineteen eighty six or leading up to nineteen eighty six, If you were around in those times and you know some of the things that he was involved in, or you want to share maybe possibly what you know, what you've been told, all of those things are going to be important in this investigation into finding out what happened, because somebody out there knows what happened to Blaine, and after being a John Doe for so long, he deserves justice. His family deserves to know what happened to him. He obviously went away from his family for a reason. He says it was a work trip. Was it a work trip? Was it not a work trip? Was he going to meet somebody? These are the questions that remain. He rented a vehicle to go out on this road trip, work trip, So why did he rent that vehicle that day? What were the circumstances surrounding his reasoning for renting that truck, How did the truck become a d Who did he come across? Was he meeting somebody? These are the questions that investigators have, and until people come forward, they're not going to be able to piece together this information. If you saw something that day, if you saw somebody abandoned that vehicle in Florida, you might have information that you don't even know you have. This happened a long time ago, almost forty years ago, in nineteen eighty six, but people are still out there that might have information that could very much help investigators piece this one together and figure out what happened to Blaine. I know this episode was a little on the shorter side, but I still very much wanted to share it with you guys, because although we do have one piece of the puzzle filled in, and that is who Blaine is, there is still a lot more to figure out. And getting eyes and ears on Blaine's case means possibly finding people that knew him and had interactions with him around the time that he was killed, and those people might be able to lead us to the person that took his life all those years ago. His family spent so many of their years not knowing what happened to him and just assuming that he willingly left them and started a new life elsewhere, and that was not the case, and he lost his life in such a tragic way. So I think, if anything, they need answers as to what happened. They deserve answers, and that's why having a platform like this, I feel like it's my duty to share these cases that don't really get much attention. And a lot of people might shy away from sharing an episode that really doesn't have a lot of nitty gritty details and is only what sixteen minutes long, But these are the important ones. That we have to talk about, we have to share. There isn't a lot to go on here, but it's still important that it gets out there. He is a John Doe for a long time, thirty nine years, and I think we should make the fortieth year the year that we find out exactly who's responsible for taking Blaine's life, giving his family some answers so they can start navigating that part of their grief journey and figuring out where to go next. And hopefully that person that took Blaine's life is still alive and out there so they can serve their time for what horrific thing they did to Blaine. I mean, they brutally killed this man, and not only that, but they stripped him of his identity for thirty nine years, and that alone is horrible. Nobody should ever be a John Doe for almost forty years. So I say twenty twenty six is. The year that Blaine Lewis Brown Junior gets some justice and his family gets the answers that they so very much deserve. So I thank you guys so much for listening to this week's episode. I hope you have a great weekend. Ahead, Stay safe, and I will catch you next weekend for a brand new unsolved case. Have a good one. Bye. Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We're going to go ahead and get into right now in true crime. So we do have an update in the death of Anna Keepner. She is the young girl who was allegedly killed on the cruise ship by her sixteen year old step brother. He has been the primary focus of this investigation, and last week he appeared in front of a federal magistrate in a lack court room with his public defenders, prosecutors, and US marshals. Now, I do. Believe that this is being treated very privately. He is a minor, he is sixteen years old, and any charges that he may face have not at this point been publicly released. Anna was eighteen. Years old, and she lost her life on the Carnival Horizon cruise ship on November seventh, while she was on vacation with her family. She was on that cruise with her father, her grandparents, her stepmom, and her stepmom's two children, one of which includes this sixteen year old boy. Anna was found to be sixty eated under the bed on the cruise ship, inside of a room that she was sharing with her sixteen year old stepbrother. So this one is kind of ever evolving. I am sure there's going to be more coming out about it, but at the moment, this is all we know. But it seems like things are kind of moving forward in a way. But I will. Continue to keep you guys updated on this one, and if there is anything else that happens, I will be sure to let you know. I do have an update in the Hailey Buzzby case. So Tyler Thomas, thirty nine years old, was officially indicted on federal charges of sexual exploitation of a minor and travel in interstate commerce with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. If he is charged, he could face up to thirty years in prison on each count. So we got a little bit more detail about how they were able to track this guy down. So they were able to use cameras from neighbors' homes that lived in Haley's neighborhood, and they were able to identify this suv that was in the location around three point thirty am on January sixth, and Hailey's dad had said that her device disconnected from the home Wi Fi around that same time. They were able to track down the owner of the suv that was caught on the cameras, and she had told investigators that she was in Florida that night, but it might have been at Tyler Thomas who was using it. So they were able to track Tyler Thomas's phone from a home in Columbus to an airbnb that was located in Logan, Ohio. And this is an area of. Wayne National Forest. It's about fifty miles southwest of Columbus. It is reported that Tyler stayed there until around nine thirty in the morning on January seventh, and then he traveled to the North County Trail trailhead in Wayne National Forest, and the cell phone analysis that was done showed that he stayed there until approximately two fifteen and then he headed. Back to Columbus. They brought Tyler in for an interview on January sixteenth, and he did admit to picking her up from her home, and then he proceeded to show police the apps he had been using to talk with her. Originally he had met her on a gaming platform, and then the conversation proceeded to move to discord. Tyler said that Haley had asked him to drive her off on the side of the road near Eaton, Ohio, and there is no records showing that Tyler actually did stop and drop anyone off in Eton because it is not on the cell phone records. They proceeded to do a search of Tyler's home and they asked Tyler when he thought Haley would turn eighteen, and he said that she thought she was eighteen, but then he learned that she wasn't eighteen. Investigators straight up asked Tyler Thomas if he had murdered Haley, and he said at that point that he thought she was alive and safe, and there was a lot of deleted communications and interactions between Tyler and Haley. There was messages on Snapchat. There was some sexually explicit images of Haley at Tyler's house and the Airbnb that he had rented. Out as well. When the FBI agents did a search warrant at the airbnb, they found traces of black throughout the home and they seize numerous items that contained traces of blood and those items are still currently awaiting further analysis. On January twenty third, Indiana police found out that Tyler had gone to a gas station near Kingston where Haley had previously worked, and he went here on June fifth of twenty twenty five, which was seven months. Before her disappearance. So if that doesn't tell you that this was a grooming process, that he talked with her for months and months and months and kind of stalked her allegedly, in my opinion, that is so very telling. And they're going to use all of this evidence against Tyler. And then there was some photos on Tyler's phone that show that he met up with Haley again on July second of twenty twenty five. On January twenty third, police went and searched his phone and they found some child sexual abuse material and more evidence that Haley was with him at the airbnb. And on the thirty first of January, Ohio prosecutors charged him with tampering with evidence and pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor. And then on February first, Tyler took the FBI investigators to the North County Trail trailhead in Wayne National Forest and that is where they found Haley's dismember remains hidden beneath snow and dirt. Also, just in case you think Tyler had a string of bad luck and this is all just like this big misunderstanding, the FBI said that when they were searching his cell phone, they also found child sexual abuse material of a girl approximately seven to ten years old, as well as another sexual conversation on discord with another teenager. And this is a discussing individual. This is the type of person that when I talk about all of this online safety for children, and this is the type of person I'm talking about, because this guy was seemingly blending into society and he is absolutely disgusting. And he also is a durnged killer allegedly, And this is the type of person that lurks online and praise on children. Obviously, here we got the worst case scenario. Haley ended up losing her life. He talked to her for months, he groomed her, he went to her place of employment, he basically helped her run away from home, probably promising her the sun, the moon, and the stars, and then he made sexual abuse material with her. She's underage, and then he killed her. And people like this that commit these type of crimes against children need to be punished at the highest level so that way this kind of stuff doesn't keep happening. And these platforms have to do better about protecting children that use them because they are designed for children, that is what they're doing, designed for But these predators are sneaking on, they are able to get through all the security features, and they are able to prey upon children. You are bringing them into your home every single night when your kids are on these gaming platforms and everything. All you can do is try to monitor and educate, educate, educate your children on the dangers of talking to people they don't know online. That is really all we can do because these predators, unfortunately aren't going away, and these platforms aren't safe for children. It's just unfortunately not the case. Even though they're designed for children. Predators are finding ways to get on and they're finding ways to talk to your children, and then they're taking the conversation off of that platform onto another platform where there are no restrictions and you don't know what is going on behind the scenes. I will continue to keep you guys updated on all of this and everything with Haley's case, but that is the update as of right now. Okay, so we have Nancy Guthrie updates. And when I tell you, I'm recording this on Wednesday, and I know I'm probably going to have to rerecord it because I know there's going to be breaking news as soon as I record this. There's been a lot going on in the last twenty four hours. So Tuesday, the FBI released some images of a masked and arm intruder basically going into Nancy's home. And they were images that were on I guess the backup of the Nest camera because they didn't pay for the subscription service, So when you don't pay for the subscription service, it doesn't save that stuff. So they were able to extract this data and get these images. And when I tell you it's chilling, it's one man. He is masked, he's gloved, he has a backpack on, he is clothed from head to toe there's not a inch of skin showing it all except for the area around his eyes. So they release those images. Tons of tips came pouring in, and they ended up detaining a man in Rio Rico, Arizona, which is super close to the Arizona. New Mexico border. So they detained this guy and took him in for questioning. I guess he did at some point deliver packages in Tucson, and he might have been somebody that had delivered a package to Nancy's home. He didn't know anything about it, that is his story. He didn't know anything about it, and he basically was detained, brought in for questioning, and they ended up releasing him and letting him go. They did a search of the property. As far as we know, we don't know anything else about if they found anything or anything like that, but something led them to this man, and I would imagine it would probably have been a pretty credible tip. So I don't want to say that there's nothing there. There might be some stuff that we are not being told. There is a lot going on here, so much online speculation, and I feel like a lot of the times we all can get really lost in that. So I think we do have to be careful about all of the speculation because you could easily be accusing somebody of kidnapping possible homicide that has absolutely nothing to do with it. So I'm hopeful that hopefully things are closing in. This has gone on way too long, in my opinion, I don't really feel like it's your classic kidnapping ransom. Type of situation. I feel like there's something more going on here, and I don't understand how they still haven't found her. I'm sure that. There is a lot more going on behind the scenes that we are not privy to, but this one is so so bizarre to me. There's also apparently been activity on the bitcoin account that first asks for the ransom money. There's all this bitcoin stuff, which I do not understand anything about bitcoin. I don't know what it is. I don't want to know what it is, but it seems to be very prevalent in this case. So I'm sure that investigators are doing their due diligence to try to sort through all of this, because, let me tell you, it is absolutely blowing my mind that everything has gone on that's gone on. We still don't have proof of life for Nancy. I feel so bad for that woman. If she has been held captive this whole time, I feel bad for her no matter what. Obviously, something traumatizing has happened to her either way. So I am going to try to stay on top of this, keep you guys updated, and we are just going to hope and pray for the best for Nancy and her family that she has found safe and sound, hopefully. So that is it for right now and True Crime as of right now when I'm recording this, I wanted to wait it out a little bit and see if there's any more developments in the Nancy case. Yesterday they also said that there was a mask that was there was gloves that were found nearby Nancy's home. And then as of this morning, Thursday morning, law enforcement was back at Nancy's house. They had a white tent set up. So that is the latest as of right now. Now. I'm recording this at nine am, so it's very easy to say that there will be more breaking news, and if that happens, I will be sure to come back and update you guys here, but for now, we are going to go ahead and get into today's episode