The last time anyone saw Brooke Harlan alive, she was live on air. It was 6:47 p.m. on Friday, September 12, 2025, and the 29-year-old anchor for WAKR Channel 7 in Riverside, Alabama, was wrapping the evening broadcast with her signature half-smile. Her auburn hair was pulled into a low knot, her navy blazer crisp against the green screen behind her. “Stay dry out there, folks,” she said, glancing at the teleprompter one final time. “And remember—weekend plans start with knowing the forecast.” The camera cut to weather. The red light blinked off. Brooke never made it to her car. Security footage shows her walking out the side exit at 7:03 p.m., phone to her ear, laughing at something the person on the other end said. She rounded the corner into the employee lot. Then—nothing. No scream. No struggle. Just the soft click of the automatic door closing behind her. Three weeks later, on October 5, a 42-year-old drifter named J.D. Vance hanged himself with a bedsheet in Cell 14 of the Jefferson County Detention Center. He left no note. But in the pocket of his orange jumpsuit, deputies found a silver locket engraved with the initials B.H. Inside: a lock of auburn hair. Yesterday, Sheriff Marla Gaines stood before a packed press room and dropped a word no one in Riverside had dared to whisper aloud. “Serial killer,” she said, her voice flat, eyes scanning the room like she was still searching for him. “J.D. Vance was a possible serial killer. And Brooke Harlan was not his first.”

J.D. Vance had no fixed address, no family photos, no social media footprint. What he did have was a rap sheet that read like a travelogue of terror. In 2019 he was arrested in Mobile for stalking a college sophomore who vanished two days later, though charges were dropped when the girl turned up unharmed in Florida. In 2021 he was pulled over outside Baton Rouge with a trunk full of zip ties, duct tape, and a Polaroid of a bound woman; he claimed it was performance art, and with no body there was no case. In 2023 he was questioned in the disappearance of 26-year-old bartender Lacey DuBois in Gulf Shores and released for lack of evidence. Each time, Vance slipped through. Each time, the missing women were young, brunette, ambitious. Each time, he left town before the questions got too loud. Until Brooke.

Brooke Harlan was more than a pretty face on TV. She was the daughter of a retired sheriff’s deputy, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Auburn, the kind of woman who could quote Hemingway and the NFL standings in the same breath. She’d been at WAKR for four years, climbing from weekend weather to lead anchor after her viral segment on a tornado that leveled half of nearby Clay County. Viewers loved her. Stalkers, apparently, loved her more. The station had received letters—handwritten, no return address, always postmarked from a different zip code. You shine brighter than the sun, Brooke. One day you’ll shine for me. Security flagged them. Brooke laughed them off. “I get marriage proposals from grandmas in Tuscaloosa,” she told her producer. “This one just has worse grammar.” On the night she disappeared, her phone pinged its last signal at 7:06 p.m.—a tower two miles from the station, near an abandoned textile mill on the edge of the Cahaba River. Her white Honda Civic was found three days later, parked neatly behind a Dollar General, keys in the ignition, purse on the passenger seat. No blood. No signs of struggle. Just her lipstick—MAC Velvet Teddy—rolled under the brake pedal like it had fallen in a hurry.

J.D. Vance was picked up on September 28 in a Greyhound station in Birmingham, trying to buy a ticket to New Orleans with a stolen credit card. He was wearing Brooke’s locket. Detectives thought they had their man. They were wrong. Vance lawyered up fast—a public defender who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. In interrogation, Vance was calm. Too calm. “You ever been to Riverside?” Detective Ray Cortez asked. “Passed through,” Vance said, picking at a scab on his knuckle. “Know a woman named Brooke Harlan?” Vance smiled. “Everyone knows Brooke. She’s on TV.” Cortez slid a photo across the table: Brooke’s senior portrait from Auburn, the one the station used in missing posters. Vance’s eyes flicked to it, then away. “She’s pretty,” he said. “Hope she’s okay.” That was it. No confession. No tears. Just that smile—like he was in on a joke no one else got.

J.D. Vance was placed on suicide watch after deputies found a shank carved from a toothbrush in his mattress. He spent his days staring at the ceiling, humming an old Johnny Cash tune—“Folsom Prison Blues,” ironically. On the morning of October 5, guard Malik Jones did his 6:00 a.m. rounds. Cell 14 was quiet. Too quiet. Vance had fashioned a noose from his bedsheet, looped it over the vent, and stepped off the bunk. His feet dangled six inches above the floor. His face was purple, tongue protruding, but his eyes—those eyes—were wide open. Staring straight at the camera. In his pocket: the locket. On the wall, scratched into the paint with a fingernail: B.H. + 3.

After Vance’s death, investigators tore apart his life—or what little of it existed. They found a storage unit in Mobile rented under the name “John Doe.” Inside was a cooler containing Polaroids of five women, all bound, all terrified. One was Brooke—gagged, eyes red from crying, a date scrawled in red ink: 9/12/25. There was a roadmap of the Southeast, pushpins in seven cities: Mobile, Baton Rouge, Gulf Shores, Jackson, Tallahassee, Chattanooga, and—circled in red—Riverside. And there was a journal, pages filled with manic scrawl: They all shine. I collect the light. The other four women in the photos remain unidentified. Dental records, DNA, missing persons databases—nothing matches. Yet.

Sheriff Gaines laid it out yesterday like a prosecutor. “J.D. Vance wasn’t a spree killer. He was a collector. He targeted women who stood out—anchors, bartenders, valedictorians. Women who shone. He watched them for months. Learned their routines. Then he took them. Not to kill right away. To keep.” She pointed to the map. “Seven pins. Five photos. Brooke was number six. We think he had a burial site—a ‘garden,’ he called it in the journal. Somewhere remote. Somewhere he could visit.” The search teams are combing the Cahaba River banks now. Cadaver dogs. Ground-penetrating radar. Divers in the murky water. They’ve found nothing.

Brooke’s mother, Diane Harlan, hasn’t left her daughter’s condo since the disappearance. She waters the plants Brooke loved—succulents lined up on the windowsill like soldiers. She sleeps in Brooke’s bed, clutching the stuffed giraffe her daughter won at the state fair in fifth grade. “I keep thinking she’ll walk in,” Diane says, voice hollow. “She’ll yell, ‘Mom, why are you wearing my Auburn hoodie?’ and everything will be normal.” At WAKR, the anchor desk sits empty. A single candle burns where Brooke used to sit. Her co-anchor, Marcus Tate, chokes up every time he signs off: “This is Marcus Tate… for Brooke.”

Excerpts from Vance’s notebook, released yesterday, chill the blood. Entry 47 – 8/3/25: She reads the news like poetry. Her voice could calm a storm. I will bottle it. Keep it forever. Entry 52 – 9/12/25: Tonight. The lot is dark. She laughs on the phone—light spilling out. I will catch it in my hands. Entry 53 – 9/13/25: She fights. They all do. But the light fades slow. Like a candle in wind. I watch until the wick is black. The final entry, dated October 4—the day before he died: They’re close. I hear them in the walls. The garden will stay hidden. The light is mine.

Dive teams pulled a shoe from the river yesterday. Size 7. Nike. Brooke’s brand. It’s with forensics now. Sheriff Gaines won’t say if it’s hers. But she did say this: “We’re not stopping until every pin on that map is accounted for. Until every mother knows where her daughter is.”

Riverside used to be the kind of place where people left their doors unlocked. Not anymore. Security cameras sprout on porches like weeds. The high school canceled homecoming. A vigil for Brooke drew 2,000 people—half the town—holding candles that flickered like the ones on her desk. At the vigil, Silas McCay—the welder who survived a bonfire shooting two weeks ago—stood with a cane, eyes fixed on Brooke’s photo. “She interviewed me after the shooting,” he said. “Asked if I was scared. I said yes. She said, ‘Good. Fear means you’re still fighting.’” He paused. “I’m still fighting, Brooke.”

How did J.D. Vance die in a cell with a camera? The official report: suicide. The sheet was tested—no DNA but his. The vent held his weight. The guard checked at 5:58 a.m. Vance was alive. At 6:02, he wasn’t. But conspiracy forums are ablaze. Accomplice in the jail? Cover-up? Did he know too much about powerful men who hired him? Sheriff Gaines shuts it down. “He killed himself because he knew we were closing in. Because the garden was about to be dug up. He wanted the last word.”

They found it at dusk yesterday. Three miles upriver, hidden under kudzu and rusted barbed wire, a clearing no bigger than a bedroom. Five shallow graves. Four bodies. The fifth plot was empty. Waiting. Brooke’s locket—the one Vance wore—is back with Diane now. She opened it last night. The auburn hair inside? Tested. It’s not Brooke’s. It belongs to Lacey DuBois. The bartender from Gulf Shores. Missing since 2023.

The search continues. The map has seven pins. Five bodies. One locket. One empty car. Brooke Harlan is still out there. Somewhere. And J.D. Vance took the secret to his grave. But graves can be dug up.

Sheriff Gaines has one message for the public: “If you saw J.D. Vance—if you gave him a ride, a meal, a glance—call us. The smallest detail could bring them home.” The search for Brooke Harlan continues. The garden grows.

Elena Voss is an investigative reporter for The Riverside Ledger. She knew Brooke Harlan. They had coffee three days before she vanished. Brooke ordered a latte with oat milk and said, “One day I’m going to anchor in New York.” Elena replied, “You’ll get there.” She still believes it.