The Disappearance of Brandi Wells Part One
Gone Cold - Texas True Crime
Vincent Strange
4.4 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Brandi failed to return home, her family initially hoped there was a simple explanation. But as hours turned into days, concern gave way to fear. Unknown to them, Brandi's black Pontiac Grand Prix had already been discovered abandoned along Interstate 20, its driver's door standing open and several troubling details left behind. Personal belongings remained inside, but Brandi had vanished without a trace.
Nearly twenty years later, the disappearance of Brandi Wells remains one of East Texas's most haunting unsolved mysteries. In this first installment, we explore who Brandi was before she became a missing person's case, retrace the final confirmed hours of her life, and examine how an ordinary night out ended with questions that still have no answers.
Part one of two.
If you have any information about the disappearance of Brandi Ellen Wells, please contact the Longview Police at (903) 237-1110.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Gone Cold Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter. Listener discretion is advised. |
| 0:08.6 | For decades, East Texas was defined by distance. Before the interstate, traveling from Tyler to Longview |
| 0:17.4 | wasn't something people did on a whim. |
| 0:27.0 | Folks followed roads like Highway 80 as they wound through one small town after another, |
| 0:31.4 | slowing down for courthouse squares and railroad crossings. |
| 0:39.5 | They stopped for gas at stations where the attendant might recognize their family name, and ate at diners where the waitress had known their parents before she knew them. People noticed strangers. They noticed |
| 0:47.0 | unfamiliar cars parked too long outside a grocery store, or out-of-place men lingering on sidewalks they didn't normally walk. |
| 0:57.1 | A person moving through East Texas left traces of themselves because there were only so many |
| 1:03.6 | ways in and so many ways out. Then came Interstate 20. When construction of the road carved its way across East Texas in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it changed the region in ways few people could have imagined. |
| 1:22.1 | It promised convenience and progress, connecting Dallas to Shreveport, Louisiana, and eventually stretching |
| 1:29.8 | all the way across the deep south, finally ending in Florence, South Carolina. Going west, |
| 1:37.7 | Interstate 20 led to the middle of nowhere, or the western edge of Reeves County, as it is also known. |
| 1:45.4 | It stretches more than 1,500 miles in total. |
| 1:49.7 | A drive that once required patience became routine and much faster. |
| 1:56.2 | Distances that had seemed significant suddenly shrank, |
| 2:00.2 | making East Texas easier to reach and easier to leave. |
| 2:05.7 | Interstate 20 offered freedom. Young people no longer had to limit themselves to whatever entertainment |
| 2:12.2 | existed in their hometowns. They might live in White House and traveled a long view to go dancing, or maybe |
| 2:20.0 | leave Henderson after dinner and be at a high school football game in Tyler before the sun |
| 2:25.4 | went down. Friends thought nothing of driving 30 or 40 miles to celebrate birthdays, or |
| 2:32.3 | simply escape the familiarity of their own small towns for a few hours. |
| 2:37.9 | It became ordinary and was considered safe. |
... |
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