Episode 175: Brittany Robinson

A teenage girl vanishes during a weekend with her father, sparking a multi-state investigation. What happened to Brittany Robinson?

Episode Media

Brittany Shante Robinson *(Mobile Police Department)*

Age-progressed image of Brittany Robinson *(NCMEC)*

Episode Sources

Episode Transcript

Welcome back to Bite-Sized Crime. This week I’m bringing you a mysterious case that has yet to find justice. This episode discusses sensitive topics, so listener discretion is advised.

Brittany Shante Robinson grew up in Mobile, Alabama, a large port city on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, not far from the Mississippi border. In the summer of 2012, 14-year-old Brittany was looking forward to starting her freshman year at Murphy High School in the fall. Bright and outgoing, Brittany had signed up for several advanced placement courses – she knew she was up for the challenge.

Brittany lived with her mother Tiana, and the two had a very close relationship. Still, Brittany struggled with the lack of relationship she had with her father. Demetric Hooper had been in and out of Brittany’s life since she was small, and every time he came back around, Brittany desperately wanted to reconnect with him. According to Tiana, in spite of the fact that Demetric didn’t contribute physically, emotionally, or financially to their daughter’s life, she understood that Brittany missed having her father around and she wanted to be supportive.

Two weeks after school let out for the summer, Brittany had arranged to spend a few days with her dad, just the two of them. Demetric lived in Dawes, a community outside the city limits, about a 30-minute drive from Tiana and Brittany’s house. On the morning of Thursday, June 14th, Tiana drove Brittany to her grandmother’s house, where Demetric’s sister Sierra would pick her up at 9am. Tiana later recalled how Brittany was so excited to spend time with her father, but even as she rushed out the door, she made sure to give her mom a big hug and tell her she would see her later.

Tiana expected her daughter to be home on Monday, June 18th, but as the hours ticked by, Brittany didn’t show up. Tiana wasn’t worried at first – after all, Brittany was safe with her father. A few more days passed. On Wednesday, Demetric texted Tiana to say that he would bring Brittany home in an hour. But when the hour came and went, Tiana started to worry. What was keeping them?

She called Demetric and asked him what was going on. He said they would be there soon – they were at a wedding party and had gotten caught up. But again, hours passed with no sign of Demetric or Brittany, and now Demetric wasn’t responding to any of Tiana’s calls or texts.

Desperate, Tiana reached out to Demetric’s mother, but she hadn’t heard from Demetric either. Tiana knew she needed help. She contacted the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office and arranged to meet a deputy and the landlord at Demetric’s house on McCovery Road. When they entered the trailer, there was no one home. There was also no evidence that Brittany had been there at all.

Tiana filed a missing persons report with the Mobile Police Department, and the search was on. Local news outlets ran stories with Brittany’s picture, asking the community to keep an eye out for the young girl and her father. Corporal Christopher Levy told FOX10 that they were following up on every lead. “We’ve had a number of calls. People saying they’ve seen her. We’ve investigated every one of those calls; none of them have resulted in finding her.”

Investigators had been closely following Demetric’s whereabouts from the moment Brittany was reported missing. His sister Sierra said that she had been by Demetric’s house a few days after dropping Brittany off on the 14th. Brittany wasn’t there at the time, so Sierra assumed she had gone back home, and Demetric didn’t say anything about it. She had been shocked when Tiana told her that Brittany was missing. She later learned that Demetric had left town shortly after Brittany disappeared.

As they tracked Demetric’s whereabouts, investigators learned that this wasn’t the first time he had been involved in a situation like this. In 2004, Demetric was charged with abducting one of his other children whom he did not have custody of. There is little public information available about that case, but it was enough to cause serious concern for Brittany’s wellbeing. Tiana was shocked by this revelation, telling FOX10, “I thought I could trust him [with Brittany]. Never in a million years would I think this would be my situation.”

In mid-July, investigators got an interesting lead. A man claimed he had met Demetric Hooper on July 9th on a bus from McComb, Mississippi, to Memphis, Tennessee. According to the man, Demetric had asked to borrow his phone to make a call and said he was headed to Arkansas. Unfortunately, the man didn’t remember seeing Brittany on that bus.

Tiana told FOX10 that she recalled Demetric having several driver’s licenses from different states, including Arkansas. She worried that Demetric might try to file for custody of Brittany in one of those states, even though he had never fought for custody before. She just couldn’t make sense of why he would leave the state without bringing Brittany back home to her. “I’m taking it one day at a time. I’m just relying on God and the help from my family to get through it.”

On July 26, 2012, the Mobile Police Department issued an arrest warrant for Demetric Hooper on a Class-C felony charge of custodial interference. Corporal Levy told FOX10 that they hoped an arrest would bring answers. “He needs to come talk to us, tell us where she is. And we’ll go from there.”

While they continued to track down Demetric, search teams scoured the woods near his home. A team from KlaasKids Search and Rescue, a national organization that assists with missing children’s cases, worked alongside police investigators as they performed a grid search. Unfortunately, the search was unsuccessful, but investigators weren’t giving up.

On August 8th, Mobile Police released surveillance images from a Walmart on Rangeline Road. Surveillance cameras captured Brittany and Demetric with an unidentified woman on June 7th, one week before Brittany disappeared. Police asked the public for their assistance in identifying the mysterious woman, believing she might be the key to finding Brittany.

Shortly after releasing the images, investigators got a tip that Demetric was spotted in Fort Smith, Arkansas, 600 miles north of Mobile. This aligned with what the man on the bus had told detectives, so they focused their search on that area.

In September of 2012, three months after Brittany disappeared, U.S. Marshals located Demetric Hooper at a mental health facility in Arkansas. According to news reports, Demetric had sought treatment there for his schizophrenia diagnosis, something he had previously been hospitalized for in Alabama. When the Marshals took him into custody, Demetric resisted arrest and had to be physically restrained by multiple officers. He denied having anything to do with his daughter’s disappearance, but during his arrest, officers discovered that he was in possession of Brittany’s pink iPod as well as knives and a rope.

Demetric was extradited to Mobile and officially charged with custodial interference. He was denied bail, an unusual occurrence for a Class-C felony. However, prosecutors argued that Demetric had spent months traveling throughout the southeast evading arrest. He had a history of mental illness and had threatened suicide during his arrest. He also had prior arrests for domestic violence and assaulting a police officer. He had no strong ties to Mobile and could take off at any moment. The judge agreed that Demetric should stay in custody while awaiting trial.

While Demetric sat in jail, investigators were still searching for any sign of Brittany. In May of 2013, they organized another search of the wooded area behind Demetric’s trailer. They conducted a controlled burn to clear the thick underbrush that had grown in the past year and brought in cadaver dogs to scour the area. Although the dogs hit on several spots, it ended up being a dead end. However, investigators did discover a burned cell phone and pieces of a shovel that were taken into evidence.

Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich told FOX10 that although the search results were disappointing, they weren’t giving up. “We are not going to stop until we find this young lady. It’s something that we have been working very, very closely on for a number of months now, and we’re just not going to stop until we find her.”

In August of 2014, Demetric Hooper pleaded guilty to custodial interference and was sentenced to 10 years in prison with credit for time served. However, in December of 2016, after serving just 4 years of his sentence, Demetric was released on good behavior.

Brittany’s family was shocked by the news. Tiana told WPMI that she couldn’t believe he was walking free while her daughter was missing. “Different occasions come around, her graduation, her prom, birthdays, holidays, family members passing, special occasions, and it’s been very tough on my family. She’s still not here, there still is no sign of Brittany. I haven’t heard from him and he hasn’t shown any remorse and he hasn’t acknowledged anything.”

As the years passed, Tiana fought to keep her daughter’s case in the public eye, but she couldn’t shake the guilt she felt. In November of 2023, she gave an emotional interview to FOX26 Houston, saying, “Did he give her to somebody? Did he sell her to somebody? I allowed her to go with someone who I thought was supposed to love and care about her, and she never returned, and there’s nothing I can do about it except beat myself up… It’s been pretty hard moving on through life without her being there to be a part of it.”

In late 2023, Demetric Hooper was arrested in Oklahoma on assault and burglary charges. While he sat in jail, investigators in Alabama were building a case. In February of 2024, nearly 12 years after Brittany disappeared, a grand jury indicted Demetric Hooper for his daughter’s murder. He was once again extradited to Mobile to face trial.

Demetric pleaded not guilty to all charges, and on June 4, 2025, his trial began. Without Brittany’s remains, the prosecution faced an uphill battle. They argued that all communication from Brittany had stopped after she left her mother’s house on June 14, 2012. She didn’t call or text, and there were no posts on social media. Brittany didn’t drive, and there was no evidence that she had been picked up by anyone. Demetric had been found in possession of her iPod, something a teenage girl was unlikely to give up.

Prosecutors told the jury about the evidence found while searching the woods behind Demetric’s trailer – the burned cell phone and shovel, as well as some bones and human hair. However, the defense told the jury that testing indicated the bones were not human, but had belonged to some sort of animal, and the strands of hair that were found in a bird’s nest ended up being from a wig.

The defense argued that there was no proof Brittany was deceased, that she could have just run away on her own. They brought in a witness who testified that she had worked with Brittany at a strip club in Birmingham around 2014 when Brittany would have been about 16 years old. The woman later recognized Brittany from a picture in a missing persons flyer and had contacted the police. The prosecution tried to discredit the witness by bringing up her history of drug use and mental illness.

After several days of testimony, the jury found Demetric Hooper not guilty on all charges. The prosecution had failed to prove their case. After the verdict was read, defense attorney Russell Bergstrom told reporters, “They didn’t have a body. And they never proved what he did, if anything, to hurt her, harm her, kill her or dispose of the body. So, that was a big gap in the evidence.”

District Attorney Keith Blackwood said that they were disappointed with the verdict, but they felt that they had to try the case. He told reporters, “This did happen more than a decade ago – a very difficult case. It came to be that over time, there was a feeling that not much was gonna change in the investigation. We felt like we had enough to charge it and to really fight for this case… We felt that there was no other reasonable explanation other than that he committed the murder. So it’s something that we felt like we needed to fight for, and that’s what we did.”

At the time of this recording, it has been nearly 14 years since Brittany Robinson disappeared. Her family is still waiting for answers, waiting for justice. If you have any information about the disappearance of Brittany Shante Robinson, please contact the Mobile Police Department at 251-208-7000 or call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678. And please share Brittany’s story. Let’s bring her home.