When Connie Chavis and her 5-year-old daughter selected attire for kindergarten on a chilly January morning in 1998, they took meticulous care in choosing vibrant hues: an abundance of green, interspersed with splashes of pink.
The ensemble exuded a peppy and buoyant aura, mirroring the spirited nature of little Brittany Locklear herself.
Little did they foresee, as the kindergartener pulled each leg into her verdant overalls, that within a brief span, those same overalls would find themselves abandoned on the roadside, discarded like refuse. The 5-year-old occupant of those overalls would be nowhere to be found.
Unbeknownst to them, the pink-and-white Pocahontas shoes Brittany slipped into that morning would soon find themselves ensconced in a police evidence bag.
The last visual imprint Chavis had of her daughter on the morning of January 7, just past 7 a.m., was of Brittany patiently awaiting her school bus outside their residence in Raeford, North Carolina, akin to any ordinary morning. Though her mother had waited alongside her, the tardy arrival of the bus necessitated her hasty return indoors for a momentary visit to the bathroom.
It was precisely at that juncture that an unseen force plucked Brittany from the roadside, compelling the entire community to confront what a family friend would later deem as "the malevolence within humanity."
Nearly a quarter-century later, those hours and days subsequent to that gut-wrenching moment remain too agonizing to articulate—the words too horrendous to vocalize. Those interviewed for this narrative hesitated, briefly shell-shocked, as they recounted Brittany's final moments, carefully choosing their words, alluding to the unspeakable act done to her, as if avoiding explicit mention might somehow stave off the haunting memories.
The initial hours following the disappearance held a glimmer of hope. Rose Johnson, Chavis' neighbor, hastily informed her that she and her husband had witnessed a man in a brown truck speeding along Gainey Road, off U.S. 401, abducting Brittany. Chavis, grappling with disbelief, rushed to West Hoke Elementary School to ascertain if Brittany had boarded the school bus. The response delivered a gut-wrenching blow: No, the school affirmed, the kindergartener had not been on board.
"I broke down," Chavis later confided to The Fayetteville Observer upon learning of this harrowing revelation.
Alarm bells resonated immediately: Chavis alerted the authorities, prompting the Hoke County Sheriff’s Office to swiftly establish roadblocks in pursuit of the brown pickup truck described by several witnesses.
Hundreds dedicated themselves to the search for the little girl who, as her mother later recounted, "loved everybody."
Yet, within a couple of hours, the search took a harrowing turn: Brittany’s purple backpack surfaced on a road approximately two miles from her residence, succeeded an hour later by her overalls and then her sneakers.
"Right off the road as if someone was driving and threw them out the window," remarked Sheriff's detective David Newton on that fateful day.
Cecil Ard, a former Hoke County sheriff’s deputy, was among the law enforcement members involved from the outset.
“I went out there early, it was 7:30-8:00 o’clock-ish, that morning when she disappeared,” he recounted to The Daily Beast. “I went down to Ryan McBryde [Road] that morning, and as we made a left, we started seeing, I think it was a book bag and then a shoe in the ditch, and then more articles [of clothing] as we went down the road.”
The very same green overalls Brittany had adorned just over an hour earlier were discovered shortly after the backpack, along with her Pocahontas shoes.
Following this grim revelation, law enforcement mobilized comprehensively. Sheriff Wayne Byrd requisitioned a small plane to scour the back roads, state police deployed a helicopter, and deputies distributed flyers featuring Brittany’s photo, concentrating efforts on the locations where her belongings were discovered.
As hundreds of volunteers and deputies scoured for Brittany, the day concluded on a hopeful note, defying all odds: “We are assuming and hoping that she is alive,” Byrd expressed.
The Discovery
The desperate search for Brittany persisted into a second day, with investigators gathering any available clues. The only information at their disposal was that her abductor was seemingly a white or light-skinned man, driving a brown pickup truck, and Brittany exhibited no signs of resistance.
However, the bewildering aspect was how such a brazen abduction transpired so swiftly—and why the culprit targeted such a remote, secluded area, far from the usual routes. By the day's end, the abduction itself would be overshadowed by a more horrifying revelation.
“I stayed out there all night and blocked off the 401 that went into Ryan McBryde,” Ard recalled. Distressed at the thought of 5-year-old Brittany alone in the cold, especially with a baby daughter at home, Ard soon grasped a haunting reality—Brittany had been concealed right under the deputies' noses the entire time.
It dawned on them once the rain ceased, allowing water along the roads to recede.
“There were a group of guys going up the ditch, and I was trailing behind them a bit, and the water had gone down, and there was a culvert there, and [the one guy] looked back and went, ‘Huh,’ and hopped off in the water and leaned over and looked down, and I watched every bit of color and life drain out of his face,” Ard recounted.
Brittany had been placed inside the drainage pipe, submerged in rising water.
“I still, from time to time, can kind of see her feet coming out of the pipe,” Ard said, averting his gaze as soon as he "started seeing feet."
“From what I remember, it looked like she was face down with no clothes on. Like she had been held in the water and then slid into the pipe when it was over, face down in the water.”
The exact location where Ard had stopped his car that morning, just about three miles from her home, was where Brittany was found.
“That has always bothered me that she stayed out in the cold for 30-something hours, and I was within a foot of her and didn’t know it,” he confessed, haunted by her solitary presence "out there by herself in the cold, in the water.”
Investigators later determined that the drainage pipe was the primary crime scene, where the perpetrator had taken her directly.
As Sheriff Byrd disclosed at a press conference two days later, an autopsy revealed she’d been subjected to sexual assault.
“I think within a half an hour, it was done. I think he went straight to that spot, he knew where he was going, he went straight there, he did what he was going to do, and was gone in no time,” Ard surmised.
Deputies, still reeling from the events, were confronted with the heartbreaking reality when Sheriff Byrd announced, “It’s sad news that I bring. I was hoping it would be a live body, but it’s a lifeless body.”
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