The Murder of Brandi “Amy” Sullivan (Massachusetts)

17-year-old Brandi “Amy” Sullivan was used to coming and going. She was restless, independent, and always in motion. So when she didn’t come home in the summer of 1996, her family tried not to panic. But this time was different.

Weeks later, Amy was found dead in the woods behind a warehouse in suburban Massachusetts. What followed was an investigation plagued by missing time, withheld details, and a crucial lie that shifted the timeline of her final days. There were people who saw Amy after she was reported missing. People who didn’t come forward. Why?

Nearly three decades later, no one has been held accountable for Amy’s murder. It’s time for that to change.

Amy is Missing

The last time Brandi Sullivan’s parents saw her was in the early hours of June 6, 1996. Their 17-year old daughter (who was known as Amy) called her mother Barbara Sullivan sometime before 1:30 a.m. from the Oakdale Mall, asking for a ride. Barbara went to get her and brought her back to the family’s house on Water Street in Tewksbury, Massachusetts.

Alexandra Mayer-Hohdahl reports for The Lowell Sun that Amy didn’t seem like herself that night. She said she wasn’t feeling well, and the mother and daughter talked quietly about making a doctor’s appointment. Before heading to her room, Amy told her mother she was going to make something to eat and then go to bed.

Later that night, Amy reportedly made a phone call to someone whose identity has never been publicly confirmed. Then she tucked into bed. The last words her mother remembers saying to her were simple and ordinary: I love you.

By morning, Amy was gone again. Several days went by without any sign of her.

At first, her absence didn’t immediately register as alarming. According to reporting by Ellen O’Brien for the Boston Globe, Amy had a history of leaving home for days or even weeks at a time. Still, there was a pattern: Amy always called. She might have let her parents know where she was going, or at least checked in periodically so they wouldn’t worry. This time, there was nothing.

Amy’s father Dennis Sullivan believed there was an explanation that fit what they knew of their daughter. He thought Amy might have argued with her boyfriend and left to clear her head, needing space before coming home again. An Associated Press report in the North Adams Transcript suggests the pair were known to have their disagreements.

So the Sullivans waited. They checked in quietly, trying not to assume the worst. Dennis is quoted by Joe Heaney and Jason B. Johnson in the Boston Herald saying that he “didn’t want to cause a panic” if Amy was simply staying somewhere else. After several days with no word, they began searching more actively. Posters went up in grocery stores asking for information about Amy’s whereabouts. Her two brothers looked, too, checking the places she usually spent time. Friends were contacted. One by one, each possibility fell away. Amy wasn’t staying with anyone they knew.

On June 25, 1996, nearly three weeks after she was last seen, Dennis and Barbara Sullivan reported their daughter missing to Tewksbury Police.

Even then, the picture remained unclear. Tewksbury Police investigated her disappearance but found no signs of foul play – nothing to suggest she had been abducted or seriously harmed. Friends even claimed they had seen Amy around town in late June, after the missing person report had been filed.

In the weeks that followed, hope lingered alongside fear. Dennis knew his daughter’s dream of going to California. As the days turned into five long weeks without contact, he allowed himself to believe that maybe Amy had done what she always talked about – found a way west, chasing the life she imagined, and would eventually get in touch.

Her family waited for a phone call, a sighting that would lead somewhere certain, a sign that she was still moving through the world on her own terms. Instead, the next answer came without warning and without mercy.

On August 7, 1996, an employee at an IRS storage warehouse at 377 Ballardvale Road in north Wilmington, Massachusetts noticed pieces of clothing in a wooded area behind the building, just beyond the parking lot.The employee felt it concerning enough to report the discovery, and Wilmington Police responded to the scene. 

At approximately 9:20 a.m., an officer located skeletal human remains.

The wooded area sat close to everyday routines. Cars were coming and going, people arriving for work, yet the remains had gone unseen for weeks. Investigators secured the area as they began the careful work of documenting the scene. The remains were left in place for roughly a day so a forensic anthropologist could examine the site and recover evidence without disturbing its context.

Through dental records, authorities confirmed what the Sullivan family had been dreading since the day she disappeared. The remains belonged to Amy.

With that identification, the search for Amy ended, but the questions were only beginning.

About Amy

Brandi Amy Jean Sullivan was born on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th. She would have turned eighteen in 1997. Most people knew her as Amy Sullivan. According to reporting by Simon Pristel for the Boston Herald, in December of 1995, Amy’s legal name changed to Brandi after her mother’s husband, Dennis, formally adopted her and her brothers. So the paperwork said Brandi, but her friends still said Amy.

Her path through adolescence was not an easy one. Amy stopped attending high school during her sophomore year, but leaving the classroom did not mean abandoning her ambitions. She planned to earn her high school equivalency diploma and had her sights set on welding school. She was reportedly just two weeks away from completing her GED at the time of her disappearance.

Welding appealed to her not just as a trade, but as an art form. She liked the idea of shaping metal, of making something expressive and permanent with her hands and even talked about opening a welding studio of her own some day.

Around age 13, Amy began using substances while spending time with an older, rougher crowd. Dan Seufert reports for the Lowell Sun that in the summer of 1995, she entered a women’s recovery center in Falmouth for treatment related to cocaine and alcohol use. She stayed for about seven months before the restlessness took over and sparked an impulsive decision. She wanted to go somewhere. 

Amy left the treatment program and she and her boyfriend tried to hitchhike across the country to California to visit Jim Morrison’s memorial site, only to be picked up by police in Colorado for hitchhiking. On that occasion, her parents had reported her missing, and Amy eventually resurfaced.

She moved through the world constantly. Amy was known for hitchhiking, for showing up and disappearing again, for living in motion. But it was only part of her story, not the whole of who she was.

Those who love Amy describe someone far bigger than her turbulent early adolescence. Amy’s parents said she was a social butterfly, surrounded by friends, and intelligent with a heart of gold. She drew people in easily, curious about the world and the people moving through it alongside her.

In the weeks before she vanished, Amy was on the verge of a new chapter, closing the door on one life and reaching for another she had begun to imagine more clearly. But Amy’s life, her plans, the momentum she’d been building, all of it stopped in the woods behind that warehouse building in Wilmington. 

Amy’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.