(This Blog is an excerpt from Synova’s Book Madhouse Madison County)
In 1989, a young girl was snatched off the side of the road in Fredericktown, Missouri. Law enforcement did its best to find her, but the evidence was slim, and unfortunately, she’s still missing to this day. I didn’t work directly with the family in this case, so I cannot include a picture, but they are readily available online. Her name was Gina Dawn Brooks. She was a beautiful 13-year-old girl with brownish-blond hair and green eyes. Here is an overview of her story. Like every cold case I research, there are so many details that an entire book could be written about Gina. But that is not the point of this book. We are here to establish a pattern of corruption and lawlessness over a long period of time.
Let me start by saying that I don’t believe corruption was involved in this case. Everyone seemed to work hard trying to find this teenager. After researching this case and talking to a few people, I believe strangers were in town looking to score some drugs and saw the beautiful little girl on her bicycle.
August 5th, 1989
Gina returned home at 10:00 PM after spending the evening watching her brother’s baseball ball game. Gina’s mother told her children good night and then went to take a hot bath before bed. But Gina wasn’t ready for bed. It was the last few weeks before summer vacation would be over, and school would be starting soon. It was a warm night, and she wanted to see her boyfriend, TJ, who lived a few blocks away. She hopped on a bicycle and told her brother, who was playing video games, that she would return before Mom got out of the bathtub. Unfortunately, she would never make it to TJ’s house, and she wouldn’t make it back home either.
According to witnesses, a dark-colored station wagon pulled beside her near the Baptist church on College Ave. She rode on, but the beat-up vehicle followed. Her scream would be heard a short time later. Police would find her abandoned bike on the High Street. It was only five blocks from home. Without warning, Gina Brooks had disappeared from small-town America. The entire population was only 4,000 people, and she knew almost everyone. Surely, this was a safe place. How could this happen? It might have seemed like a safe place, but a predator lurked in the shadows.
I’ll try to establish a timeline of events in this case. Keep in mind that thousands of leads were chased down in this case. I will be highlighting the bigger ones that made the local newspapers.
September 7, 1989:
Gina’s stepfather offers a $20,000 reward in hopes of generating leads for law enforcement. Many tips come in, but they lead nowhere. Still, each lead was researched. One lead came in a few days after the reward was posted, and it led to a blood-soaked mattress in a run-down motel in St. Francis County. Samples were taken and sent for testing, but nothing tied it to Gina’s disappearance.
September 14, 1989:
The Wayne County Journal Banner published the newly released composite sketch. It was created by putting a witness under hypnosis, but it’s hard to say how accurate it was considering the fact that the witness saw a man in a beat-up station wagon at 10:30 PM. Not to mention, it was from a distance.
November 10, 1989:
A local true crime show, Missing: Reward, aired the Gina Dawn Brooks case and generated another round of leads for the sheriff’s office to chase down. Missing: Reward only had ten episodes and aired from 1989-1992. It was popular locally but was quickly overtaken by the national hit Unsolved Mysteries.
December 28, 1989:
A local businessman adds $5,000 to the reward in hopes of finding Gina.
February 6, 1990:
According to the Lake Sun Leader, the FBI made an unusual move and sent a mass-form letter to all the postal customers of the Fredericktown Post Office. This letter went over the basics of Gina’s case and asked the public for leads, but very few turned up.
December, 1990:
At some point in December 1990, an anonymous letter showed up for law enforcement. It gives tips on where to find Gina and even seems to have information that is unknown to the public. Unfortunately, this lead dried up quickly, and law enforcement didn’t get any more letters from the anonymous source.
August, 1991:
Law enforcement searched the garage of Al Loness in St. Louis. The papers don’t make it clear how it was tied to Gina’s case, but it would appear to be a credible connection at the time because of the man’s record and some of his associates.
September 5, 1991:
When law enforcement receives an anonymous phone call about the Gina Brooks case, they follow it through, even if it seems like a slim chance. This time, it seemed legit, though. The caller claimed to have insider knowledge of the case and said Gina’s body would be found within 500ft behind the junkyard owner’s house.
The junkyard in question was on HWY 34 near Hiram, Missouri. The owner’s last name was Spade, and he also had connections with Al Loness. The caller said the body would be found near a pond in the junkyard, and strangely, Spade had just hauled in a few loads of dirt to cover the bottom of the pond.
Thirty law enforcement officials from the FBI and surrounding counties descended on the junkyard. They brought in dogs and searched the pond. Nothing was found other than a few dead animal carcasses. An old station wagon was found amongst the junk, but it was quickly ruled out as the getaway vehicle.
Although Spade bought scrap metal from people, including Loness, he didn’t fit the suspect description, and nothing was found on his property. It was another dried-up lead for the Gina Dawn Brooks case.
July 25, 1996:
A tip came in from a woman who said she had seen a vision while praying. She said Gina and the station wagon were submerged in 30ft of water. At this point, it really didn’t matter where the lead came from; law enforcement was desperate to find out what happened to Gina, so they followed the lead.
An abandoned quarry near Elephant Rocks in nearby Iron County, Missouri, was drained over the course of four days in hopes of finding Gina. The search yielded four cars, but none of them were the car they needed. According to the Wayne County Journal Banner, they did find human remains, though. They weren’t Ginas, but they were a man’s remains wrapped in a green plastic bag. They were hoping it might have been the remains of Roger Miller, 69, who had gone missing from a town 80 miles away. Mr. Miller is still missing, so I assume the test results returned negative. I couldn’t find anything to show who the remains belonged to.
September 12, 1998:
Nine years would pass before an arrest was finally made. Surely, this meant justice would come soon, but nothing could be further from the truth. In 1996, a man by the name of Bryant Squires was dying of cancer and on his deathbed and decided he needed to come clean. He told the nurses some terrible tales about eleven murders, including a confession about Gina. He also implicated two of his friends. He admitted that he was the driver in the beat-up station wagon seen stalking Gina in Fredericktown that night. He also named two other men. Nathan D. “Danny” Williams and Timothy R. Bellow.
Both of them have extensive records for raping and murdering little girls. So why haven’t we seen Justice in this case? Brian Squires, The man who confessed, died shortly after his confession. And then Bello tended to like to play with the police. He sent the FBI on a wild goose chase, claiming to know where the body was. He had them convinced that Gina was buried in a freezer full of rotten deer meat on his family property. They spent a massive amount of resources chasing down that lead, only to find out that Bellow had lied.
He was convicted of lying to the FBI and got to serve another 30 months for lying to the police. Both of these men have gone on to be convicted of other rapes and murders, but it doesn’t seem there is enough evidence to actually tie these two men to Gina. Since some of the statements turned out to be untrue, the police know they can’t go off the statements alone. A good defense attorney would tear their case apart based on that alone. It was heartbreaking for the family.
In 1998, they had gotten their hopes up when Williams was charged with Gina’s murder. Now, in 2003, the charges were dropped. It wasn’t because everyone didn’t believe he was guilty; they were just afraid of the double jeopardy law. If they took Williams to court and lost, they could never try him again for her murder. He was serving life in prison for the rape and murder of another young girl, so he wasn’t going anywhere.
That’s where the case sat when I started researching cases in Madison County earlier this year, but all of that may be about to change because while I am writing this book, 35 years later, the police are digging in Bellinger County. Reports indicate they transported an inmate to aid in the search. Although the dig site has been closed, they have reported no human remains were found. They said evidence had been found and would be sent for analysis. Hopefully, by the time this book is published, I’m going to have to have it reprinted because we have found the answers this poor family needs. I will keep you posted on this one, guys.
Check Out Synova’s Chasing Justice Video On This Case:
Madhouse Madison County
Chaos rules in a small Southeastern Missouri County. Madison County spans 500 square miles and has a population of approximately 13,000 people. The county seat is Fredericktown with a population of approximately 4,000 people. This rural county should be a safe place in beautiful Americana, but it hides a dark secret. Fredericktown is one of the most dangerous places to live in America. Check out this quote from neighborhoodscout.com.
“With a crime rate of 31 per one thousand residents, Fredericktown has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes – from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One’s chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 32.”
I started researching one case sent to me by a desperate grandmother. That case led me to fifteen more. Then I realized this county has had murder, corruption, and chaos since before the Wild West days. This book will start with a lynching by a Fredericktown mob in 1844. Hold onto your seats when you read this one. You’re in for a wild, chaotic ride through rural Missouri.
