[Unsolved] Brenda Lambert: Missing Mother

Who Was Brenda?

Brenda Gale Christian Lambert was born on December 26, 1969, in Bluefield, West Virginia. She was the fifth of seven children in a close-knit family.

Brenda was fun, outgoing, feisty, and mischievous. She had a heart of gold and was loved by everyone who knew her. As a child, she was a tomboy who loved climbing trees and playing outside, but she also had a girly side and loved doing makeup and hair.

At 16, Brenda met Raymond Lambert. She soon became pregnant, and the couple married in 1986. They had a second child in 1991.

But by 1992, their marriage was falling apart.

The Troubled Marriage

Raymond Lambert was having an affair with Brenda's cousin, Tammy. The betrayal was devastating for Brenda, and the situation created tension within the entire family.

Raymond had also become physically violent with Brenda. He choked her on multiple occasions, and Brenda feared for her safety.

Despite the abuse and infidelity, Brenda tried to keep the family together for the sake of her children.

The Birthday Party

On July 26, 1992, Brenda hosted a first birthday party for her son at her home in Bluefield. Family and friends gathered to celebrate.

But the party took a tense turn when Tammy—Raymond's mistress and Brenda's cousin—showed up uninvited.

After everyone left, Brenda asked Raymond if she could keep the kids overnight. Raymond refused and took the children with him.

The Disappearance

Later that night, at around 11 PM, Raymond showed up at Brenda's sister's house. He was shaking and visibly upset. He asked if anyone had seen Brenda.

The next day, Brenda's mother went to Brenda's house to check on her. She found Brenda's car in the driveway and the front door locked. But Brenda was nowhere to be found.

Brenda Lambert has not been seen or heard from since July 26, 1992.

The Investigation

Police investigated Brenda's disappearance, and suspicion immediately fell on Raymond Lambert. He was the last person to see Brenda, he had been violent with her, and he was having an affair.

But without a body or concrete evidence, no charges were filed.

Raymond Lambert has never been charged in connection with Brenda's disappearance.

Still Missing

Brenda Lambert has been missing for over 30 years. Her family has never stopped searching for answers.

Brenda's children grew up without their mother. Her family has been left with decades of pain, uncertainty, and unanswered questions.

If you have information about Brenda Lambert's disappearance, please contact the Bluefield Police Department.

Brenda deserves to be found. Her family deserves answers.

This episode was created in partnership with  Light the Way. 

A huge thank you to Brenda’s sister Christy for sharing Brenda’s story with us. 

To keep up to date with Brenda’s case, please join Christy’s Facebook page by searching “Missing Brenda Lambert” Missing Brenda Gail Lambert 

If you’d like to help, please share Brenda’s missing person poster: 

BRENDA GAIL LAMBERT | Light the Way 

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast. A True Crime Podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I'm doing better now that I finally got the little doggy to lay down in his bed with one of my shoes. Did you talk about that on moms and miscellaneous?

I feel like that my favorite was, I may have, yeah, I get, I get my crossover confused. Yeah, if you, if I haven't mentioned it here, basically. The short version is that my newest dog, Rolo has an obsession with my shoes, just mine. No one [00:01:00] else is in the house. He loves them. He takes 'em to his bed. He doesn't s chew them up.

She's not kidding. He just snuggles them. I'm not joking. I literally have. Dozens of photos on my phone of him and videos of him taking my shoes to his bed. And it's wild. Just being comforted. Well, and the, when we were recording a few minutes ago, he got up on our lap and she was like, I need to go get him one of my shoes.

Like that is such a weird thing to say, but it seemed to work. It worked. It did. I brought his little bed into the room where I'm recording and gave him a shoe and oh my gosh, I'm not even joking. He's sleeping right now. I mean, that's great. It's great, but it does seem like a problem. I don't know how, but it does seem like it's a problem.

I mean, it's, it hasn't been a problem. He, he can sleep with my shoes. Okay. That's a compromise. I'm willing to make animals, maybe not people. I'm fine with that. Yeah. Yes. That's good. Absolutely, yes. So for this week's episode, we were able to work closely with a [00:02:00] very lovely woman named Christie, who has been really trying to get more coverage for her sister who went missing in the summer of 1992.

Her sister went missing from Blue, well West Virginia, and she was actually last seen in her own home, celebrating her son's first birthday with family. But 48 hours later, she was reported missing and she hasn't been seen since then. This episode was created in partnership with Light The Way, which is a volunteer organization that works to help families of the missing find answers that they deserve, and.

Probably this will not shock anyone, but our lovely Haley actually, uh, volunteers for Light the Way. So zero Surprise there. Zero surprise. Haley of course, has done a lot of work for the family that we were working with for this story, and as always, she did a wonderful job. We just love Haley and appreciate everything that she does.

She does everything literally. She really does. And thank you to light the way we follow them on Instagram and they're always sharing stories of different families and just they do such great work. Brenda Gale Christian [00:03:00] was the fifth of seven children born to her parents, and she also had six half siblings from her dad's first marriage.

She was born on December 26th, 1969, and when she was eight years old, her younger sister, Christie, who is the woman that we spoke with for this episode, was born and Brenda became like a mother figure to her. Christie described her sister as being fun, outgoing, feisty, and mischievous, but with a heart of gold.

She was a tomboy who wasn't afraid to get dirty, and she wouldn't turn down the opportunity to climb a tree or play outside. But at the same time, she did have a more traditionally girly side to her, and she loved doing makeup and hair for other people. Even when Brenda was an adult, she never lost that playful side to her.

She was always doing fun things like having water fights and playing hide and seek. She was a bit of a prankster and she would do things like waking her sisters up at three in the morning and convincing them to get out of [00:04:00] bed only so that she could spray them with a water hose. I have to say, if my sister did that to me.

I don't think, I would think it was a funny prank. Well, this is why I think Brenda was very likable because they seemed to think that it was a funny prank. Yes, absolutely. Anybody else would like not get away with this, but Brenda's family just adored her and they thought, thought was great. They thought it was great.

Hilarious. Mm-hmm. Yes they did. They loved these types of pranks. So one of Christie's personal favorite memories was when she and Brenda dressed up as Wayne and Garth from Wayne's World and drove around town blaring Bohemian n Rhapsody, while banging their heads along to the beat and just. I love that like image.

You can picture two sisters. Totally. Yes. Yeah, definitely. Brenda went to Bramwell High School, but by the time she was 15 she was really over it. And I don't mean that she was over it in the same way that all teenagers are just sick of going to school. But you know, Brenda really just did not enjoy academics.

She was very intelligent, but the principal of the school even urged her parents. To let her drop out. You know, she was saying she wanted to drop out, she didn't wanna [00:05:00] be in school. She had other things that she wanted to do, and the principal of the school was even like, you should consent to this. Wow.

According to Evaporate, the missing, when Brenda was 16, she met a coworker of her brother named Raymond Lambert. He worked at a local chicken factory with Brenda's brother, Tim. Soon after they met, Brenda was dating Raymond, and a very short time later, Brenda was pregnant. The couple got married in 1986 and went on to have a second child in 1991.

The family lived in a home on Route seven, where Brenda took to motherhood really easily. Being a teen mom was no problem for her. She adapted to it very well, and she was a dedicated stay at home mom. Brenda loved spending time with her kids and with her nieces and nephews, and she did her best to also be a devoted wife.

From an outsider's perspective and even from her sister Christie's perspective, it really seemed that Brenda and Raymond had an ideal relationship. Christie told us that she actually used [00:06:00] to admire what her sister and Raymond had, and originally she based what she wanted to have in her own future to look like their relationship.

Christy also remembered how Brenda and Raymond would slow dance in the kitchen while cooking. They would also have water fights and these other little things that made it seem like they were a very loving couple. Christy said that she was aware that Raymond had cheated on her sister before, but from her perspective as a 14-year-old girl at the time, she thought everything seemed fine, but everything started to change in 1991.

That's when Brenda's cousin Tammy moved into town with her mom and the two cousins started hanging out together a lot. At some point, Tammy decided that she had the hots for Raymond and she wanted to pursue him romantically. Here's where things really don't make sense to me, but Tammy. Claims that she doesn't know that Raymond is her cousin's husband, which how you've been hanging out with your cousin.

Even just hearing the name Raymond, if you meet him just outta [00:07:00] nowhere, you'd have to be like, oh, my cousin's married to somebody named Raymond. Right. Do you share last name and like you said, if you've been hanging out together like you've never met, you've never seen Raymond or heard his name or anything like that?

Yes. Uh uh, that's hard to believe. Hard to believe. Before long though, Tammy and Raymond had begun a full fledged love affair. Meanwhile, as Raymond is carrying on this affair, Brenda's doing all she can to try and salvage her marriage, but things quickly devolved into violence and fights. Raymond started becoming physical with Brenda, and he even choked her on multiple occasions.

Brenda's sisters would see her with black eyes and marks around her neck, but they were lost when it came to what they should do to help her. They would just try and comfort Brenda and encourage her to leave Raymond, but Brenda was resistant to leave because of the kids. Whenever I hear, um, about choking and strangling, it always feels like a great opportunity to mention this crazy statistic.

I actually looked it up earlier just to make sure I had it right, but that there was [00:08:00] a study that showed that. Victims of strangulation or choking are actually 750% more likely to be murdered by the person who strangled them within the next 12 months. So every time I hear about, mm-hmm. A story like this, and it's like he was choking her, he was strangling her, I just like my heart breaks because Right.

Whenever you know that statistic, you're like, you, you can't un remember that really. Exactly. Like it's always in the forefront of your head. Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally. She said that if she was going to leave, she wanted to do it the right way through the court system, not just packing up and leaving suddenly.

Chrissy told us she believed that the physical abuse started after the affair with Tammy began. Eventually though, Brenda got a restraining order for misdemeanor battery and a warrant was issued for Raymond's arrest, but unfortunately, he wasn't actually taken into custody. Two days later, he finds Brenda beats her, puts a weapon to her head, and I couldn't [00:09:00] believe this when I read it forced her to call and drop the restraining order, which.

Oh my gosh. Like to be brave enough to do that and then to have this, I can't think of anything worse. And we still have so much more to get into after a quick break to hear word from this week's sponsors. Before the break, we were getting into the story of Brenda Lambert, who was married to a man named Raymond, and the two of them had two young children together.

At some point, Brenda's cousin Tammy came to town and decided that she wanted to pers. Sue Raymond romantically, despite the fact that this is her cousin's husband. And from there there's been really just a lot of turmoil, obviously between Brenda and her husband Raymond. So by July of 1992, it was clear that there was really no saving things and the couple was actually headed for divorce.

Raymond had already moved outta the house and was living with his parents on their massive property in the mountains. Things were starting to get really hostile as Raymond began taunting Brenda [00:10:00] by keeping their kids away from her. And at this point, the kids are just five and not quite 1-year-old. At this time, Brenda's daughter was actually about to start school.

She was really excited and she had already gone to pick out new outfits with matching bows and socks, and you know, Brenda really was just as excited as her daughter was. She wanted her kids to have the best and would do anything for them, and certainly would do anything to protect them. She wanted to get legal custody of the kids before Raymond could do that.

So she actually planned to meet with a lawyer on July 30th to discuss all of this. Unfortunately, Brenda would never make it to this appointment. Oxygen true crime reported that Raymond actually told Brenda he would see her dead before he let her have the kids. But Brenda was gonna do whatever it took to fight for her babies.

And she told Raymond that if he didn't bring the kids to her, she would go to the police and tell them about all the problems he was causing and all the things he had done. And she also told him that he and his family would be put in prison for the rest of their lives. [00:11:00] In the midst of all this divorce, chaos, Brenda and Raymond's son was about to turn a year old.

Brenda hosted a party for him at home on July 26th, 1992. Raymond and his mom were both at the party as were Brenda's mom and three of her sisters in including Christie. Some of Brenda's nieces and nephews were also there. But things at this one year old's birthday party took a turn for the worst when an unexpected and uninvited guest showed up, and that could only be one person.

Cousin Tammy. Things got awkward pretty quickly once Tammy arrived and started giving Brenda the evil eye leading to multiple people, including Brenda and Raymond stepping outside to the porch to argue over who had invited her. Raymond insisted he didn't invite Tammy, but nobody would say who did. And Brenda was fed up with this whole thing.

It put her in a bad mood. This is her child's first birthday and her estranged husband is bringing the [00:12:00] woman he is having an affair with to her home. But she wants her son to have a good day, so she's trying to keep her composure and return to the party. That sounds like the most frustrating situation.

I don't think you could enjoy it because you are so focused on your kid enjoying it. You're gonna do whatever you can to keep the peace and just feeling it just bubbling and boiling inside. Oh my gosh. 'cause like you said, you have to kind of like push it down and bottle it up. Mm-hmm. Because you can't, you don't wanna ruin every, you know, the whole party.

Right. But, oh my gosh. Just imagining myself in that scenario, like I can just feel my anxiety. Just rising. Yeah, just thinking about being in that situation. I can't imagine. But witnesses said that Brenda seemed nervous the entire evening by 9:00 PM The general move was pretty sour, so people started saying their goodbyes and leaving.

Everyone had parked their cars in a line on the driveway, and as they were starting to leave, Brenda actually went from car to car asking if anyone could stay the night with her. Since Brenda [00:13:00] really didn't seem to be in a great mood, everyone said no. They thought she really just needed to blow it off and relax, and they wanted to get to their own homes.

Brenda's sister, Kay told her that she would stay the night if Brenda came to pick her up later. But Brenda never showed up. Her family had no idea that their lives would change the next day. So once everyone else had left the party, Raymond, his mom and the kids were gonna leave too. Brenda asked Raymond if she could keep the kids overnight, but he said no.

Then he, his mom and the kids left, according to Raymond, he, his mom and the kids left around eight o'clock that night. So there is a discrepancy in time there. Um, but this, as we said, was according to Raymond, he and his mom and kids left at eight. Brenda was just planning to stay home alone that night and clean up after the party.

But then in a bizarre turn of events, Raymond actually showed up at one of Brenda's sister's houses and that's Kat, and he was there at 11:00 PM and started asking if she had seen Brenda because he couldn't find her at the house. [00:14:00] Kat said it looked like Raymond had seen a ghost. He was literally shaking when he arrived at her house.

The next day, Brenda's mom called her, but she wasn't able to get ahold of her, so she ended up going over to Brenda's house where they had all just gathered the night before. But Brenda wasn't there. Brenda's car was in the driveway and her front door was locked, but there was no sign of her After making calls to anyone and everyone that might know where Brenda was, her mom knew something was wrong.

It was very unlike Brenda to just up and leave, and it was really concerning that nobody even knew where she might be. Brenda's mom made several trips over to her house just to see if she had come back, but Brenda was never there. So Brenda's mom decided to try contacting the police, but unfortunately, she was told that she couldn't make a missing person's report until 48 hours had passed.

And on top of that, the police told her they wouldn't accept a report from anyone other than her husband, Raymond. That's wild. That is ly wild. [00:15:00] Wild. And I think even last week we said something about how sometimes you hear about these types of, just like the different things that they did in investigations that right now we would never, you know, expect them to do something like this.

I think now you can even report someone missing before 48 hours. Oh yeah. You can, but, but back then it is wild to think that they're like, no, we're not even gonna, like, we're not even gonna make a note of this. Yeah. Until two days have passed by, like that is, it does seem crazy. Right. But at that 48 hour Mark Raymond did report Brenda missing.

He said he went to Brenda's house at two 30 in the afternoon on the 27th, and that's when he realized she was nowhere to be found. Obviously, though that's not what he told Brenda's sister at 11:00 PM the night before when he came to her door shaking, looking like he'd seen a ghost. Mm-hmm. And saying he couldn't find Brenda anywhere.

Raymond claimed that he believed Brenda ran off with another man and he told the officers that he was at his son's birthday party with Brenda and he left at 8:00 PM and went back to his mom's house. He did not mention that [00:16:00] he had gone over to Brenda's sister, Kat's house looking for her. Officers went out to Brenda's house to look around themselves.

Some of Brenda's sisters showed up, but strangely, maybe the most strange thing is that cousin Tammy also showed up when the police were over there to look around Brenda's house. Since the front door was locked, the officers weren't able to get inside the house, but lucky for them. Tammy actually knew about a window on the second floor that didn't lock, so she climbed up to the second story.

I'm not really clear how she did it. Did she use a tree? Does she just Spider-Man up the side of the house? Not really sure. She climbed to the second story, went through the window and let everybody inside. It is strange and very convenient that Tammy was the one who knew. There was a window upstairs that did not lock as if Brenda was gonna tell her that, that that was the case.

Somebody told her that that window didn't lock. Yes. Inside the house, Brenda's purse was found in a toy box that was in the bathroom. She'd been working on remodeling. And that does seem like [00:17:00] a weird place for her to have her purse, but her sister Christie actually thinks that Brenda was intentionally hiding her purse there from Raymond so that he couldn't steal her money or her license or anything else because he knew that she was going to be seeing a lawyer soon.

So it's plausible that he would wanna do anything to stop her, especially considering that he had already used violence to get her to drop the restraining order before, you know, honestly, what would he be willing to do to stop a divorce? Right? In the bedroom upstairs, there was stuff thrown all over the place and all of Brenda's bras and underwear were gone.

Christie really wasn't sure what to make of this specific detail, but she thinks it's possible that somebody was just trying to stage the scene to make it look like Brenda kind of packed and left in a hurry, which, yeah, it does seem strange that like. All of your undergarments would be gone. Right. You know, it does seem like somebody just was not thinking crystal clearly, but just like GA grabbed a few things, right.

Or a bunch of things from one drawer or something. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The clothes Brenda had on for her son's birthday party, which were a yellow shirt and blue shorts [00:18:00] were found by the bathroom door, but the underwear she had on that day was gone. Investigators think Brenda had changed her own clothes after the party and before she went missing.

Raymond also claimed that Brenda's rings were missing from the house. Brenda's family was shocked and extremely alarmed at her disappearance. She would've never left her kids, and it was unsettling that her personal belongings were left behind, but she had just vanished. Christie has heard that Brenda's house was sprayed with Luminol, but that there was no evidence of foul play found in there.

And we have more to get into after one last break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. So before the break we were discussing the disappearance of Brenda and these initial days when they're looking through her house looking for any clues and really all they've been able to come up with is her brass and underwear are missing, which seems kind of strange as Christie had mentioned.

But she thinks it may have just been like a ploy to look like someone's [00:19:00] grabbing stuff and leaving and you know, that's what they would take. So, although Raymond was considered an early suspect, he was never arrested. Or charged with anything related to Brenda's disappearance. He told investigators that he and Brenda were the best of friends, and that no matter what happened with their marriage, they would always be friends first.

He said that anytime Brenda needed time alone or distance from her family, she always talked to him about it and he said he agreed that her disappearance was strange. But just one week after Brenda was last seen, Raymond was moving Tammy into the house. And when we say the house, we literally mean Brenda's house.

And remember Raymond's living there too until this couple split up and then he goes to live with his mom. So literally a week after his estranged wife goes missing, Raymond goes back to this house that they had lived in together and brings in cousin Tammy to live in there too. Which tells me you don't think Brenda's gonna come back.

[00:20:00] Wild. Wild a a week. Like if you really think somebody's missing, like you would at least want to not make this look like a bad situation and say the mom of your kids that live in this house as well. Like, it's insane. Yeah. But then just to think that this isn't a red flag immediately, that you're moving in to the house with another woman a week later like that.

Is not a good look. No, it's not. And I was gonna say, like I could see if it was, you know, for the sake of the kids to move back in this house that they were used to, blah, blah, blah. But the kids have probably been used to, at this time going back and forth. So it's not like this would be a strange situation to go back to this other house.

To not only move back in, so for whatever reason you think that's okay, but to bring someone else, like all the red flags, like, yeah, every alarm is going off, is not okay. No. And so Tammy moves in and eventually Tammy and Raymond get married. Police seemed to believe [00:21:00] Raymond's story and thought that most likely Brenda did run off with another man.

Of course, this is extremely frustrating and brutal for Brenda's family who know that she would've never done such a thing, and they find it insulting to Brenda to suggest that she would've just abandoned her kids and the rest of her family by choice. In a weird coincidence, five months after Brenda disappeared, a friend of hers named Mark Cook also went missing.

While some people think that Mark and Brenda were having a romantic relationship before she was last seen, Christie doesn't think this is true. She said there may have been some flirting and Mark May have had a thing for Brenda, but the two weren't a couple. They actually went to high school together and they sometimes saw each other at a local nightclub called Pedro's, where they both like to go out dancing.

Mark also worked at the Burger King, where Brenda often went to get food, so they saw each other there a lot too. Marges appeared on January 13th, 1993 in Brush [00:22:00] Fork, which is a town about three miles away from Bluefield. He was last seen leaving Pedro's. Christy said that she heard through the grapevine that Mark had gone to Pedro's and started asking about Brenda, and that's when he got beat up and thrown out.

He was last seen walking towards us. Route 52 in 20 something degree weather. And he was never heard from after that. Wow. So as you can imagine, Mark's disappearance caused quite a stir and rumors started to fly. Tips came in that possibly connected Brenda and Mark's disappearances, and these rumors have actually stuck for the last 30 years.

One tip was essentially that Brenda and Mark had just run off to start a new life together, meaning neither one of them is actually missing. Obviously, Brenda's family is not buying it, but neither is Mark's. The Mercer County Sheriff's Department officially does believe that Mark and Brenda's disappearances are connected and that foul play is involved in both of them.

But Brenda's family has differing [00:23:00] opinions about that. One of her sisters told Cold justice, anybody trying to connect those two is just getting thrown off really bad. But Christie, who is another one of Brenda's sisters, told us that, you know, both her mom and Mark's mom think the disappearances are connected.

So there does seem to kind of be a little bit of uncertainty. Yeah. About whether or not. You know, their relationship, whatever it was, could have had anything to do with, you know, both of them disappearing. Right? But as far as them running off together, why would he have disappeared five months later?

Doesn't make sense. Right? Doesn't make sense. If disappeared, appear the same night, I could see trying to make that connection. But this makes no sense. Yeah, I agree. Just like Brenda though, mark has never been found. He is five foot eight with green eyes, brown hair, and fair skin. Mark was last seen wearing bleached blue jeans, a black t-shirt, black tennis shoes, and a denim jacket with writing on the back.

There's really not much other information available [00:24:00] about him. Uh, he was born in 1969 and he was reported missing by a family friend. In 2003. Authorities tried to drain a pond off of Route 52 after they got a tip that Brenda and Mark's remains were inside of it. A diver was used as well as underwater recording equipment to search this pond, but they didn't find anything of importance at some point as the investigation continued.

Brenda's daughter, who as we said was just five years old at the time she went missing, told Brenda's aunt that Raymond and his dad were in the mountains during that night and day that Brenda disappeared. Her daughter also told Brenda's family that she saw her dad dragging her mom across her grandma's backyard the night Brenda disappeared.

She actually told her grandma right away when she saw this, but her grandma told her that she just had a bad dream and should go back to sleep. Brenda's daughter later told Christie that she knew for sure she wasn't dreaming as Brenda's kids were growing up. They weren't allowed to even say Brenda's name or talk about [00:25:00] her, so her daughter had to be really secretive anytime she even talked to Brenda's family.

And Brenda's daughter also suffered from having Tammy, you know, moved right into her home where she used to live with her mom and now she doesn't have her mom. All she has is a picture of her mom in her bedroom, and Tammy would just come into the room, take the picture down, she would slam it down, face down, and just kind of be really nasty about it.

Not allowing Brenda's daughter to even have a photo of Brenda in her own bedroom. One night in front of the kids, Tammy actually walked up to Raymond and said, quote. Why don't you tell them what really happened to their mommy and Raymond retaliated by hitting Tammy with a weapon? That whole thing is chilling terrifying.

So over the years, many different rumors popped up regarding Raymond and his dad being at a sawmill on the night of Brenda's disappearance. Raymond's family owned the sawmill and it was down the rope from their property, which was basically on top of a mountain. Police were never able to search the sawmill area due to [00:26:00] not being able to get a search warrant for it.

They never searched Raymond's parents' house or their property either. Christie thinks that Raymond killed Brenda and then buried her on his brother's property inside the sawmill. Six years after Brenda was last seen her house burned down while Tammy and Raymond were still living in it. Ultimately, the fire was ruled an accident.

Interestingly enough, it's been reported that the sawmill also burned down at some point, but Christie said she's not able to confirm this, and she's not sure about the sawmill because it's very secluded and located on private property, so she's obviously not able to go there. Sadly, both of Brenda's parents passed away within six years of her disappearance.

According to Christie, their mom grieved herself to death over what happened with Brenda and not knowing what actually happened. Brenda's daughter also passed away in 2020. She had taken her mom's disappearance really hard her entire life and would often call Christie and the other sisters [00:27:00] crying, and she was just 33 years old when she died.

Tammy and Raymond eventually got divorced after Tammy said Raymond was physically abusive towards her. She initially believed that Brenda left on purpose, but as time went on, she started to doubt that story, though she didn't ask any questions out of fear. In 2006, an age progressed photo of Brenda was created In 2016, Christie submitted her DNA to a data bank in hopes of matching it to Jane Doe.

In 2022, Christie petitioned the county commission to issue a death certificate for Brenda, which was granted. All Christie wants now is to bring her sister home so that she can be buried with their parents. In 2023, a billboard was funded by the Aware Foundation and was placed off of Coal Heritage Road in Bluefield, where tens of thousands of people can see it each week.

In 2023, Kristy told WOAY quote, Brenda was murdered and Brenda was hid on property [00:28:00] very close to here. I mean, everybody knows it and everybody knows who Brenda was 22 years old when she went missing. Today she would be 54. At the time of her disappearance, she was five foot two and weighed 110 pounds.

She is white and had black curly shoulder length hair and dark blue eyes. Anyone with information should contact the Mercer County Sheriff at 3 0 4 4 8 7 8 3 6 4. And if you wanna keep up to date with Brenda's case, please join Christie's Facebook page by searching missing Brenda Lambert. And if you'd like to help, please share Brenda's Missing Person poster, which we will link in our show notes, uh, along with the link to the Facebook group and other sources for this episode.

This story just breaks my heart and I feel like they, they all do, but especially because we got to work directly with Christie and got to talk with her and hear, you know, personal stories about growing up with Brenda and the type of family they had and the type of life that they had. It's just so sad, you know, to.

To think about a [00:29:00] mom taken from her kids. So yeah, it was very wonderful to get to work with Christie. Um, I know Christie has been working, like I said at the beginning, really with as many, uh, different resources as she possibly can to get a little bit more coverage of Brenda's story. So we also did wanna shout out, I think I mentioned.

Briefly earlier in the episode, evaporate the Missing. Um, the woman who runs Evaporate the Missing is named Brandy, but she also has worked closely with Christie and our Hailey has also become very close, of course with her as she does. And you know, Hailey says she's really amazing and is really helping a lot of families that we work with get coverage.

So definitely wanna give her a shout out. I think it's so important people doing all this work. It really does take a village of people, I feel like, to bring things like this together and to get a lot of coverage and. Yeah, to make progress in cases like this that haven't really gone anywhere, you know, for 30 years, so right.

Definitely our hearts are with Christie and her family for sure. But you always think about these stories where when there's like renewed interest or it starts coming up in the, in the news, [00:30:00] people get anxious, people that know things and then people who might not be in relationships with people feel like speaking.

Like time does change so much, and we see that all the time. So I'm very hopeful for Christie and their entire family that they'll be able to know exactly what happened to Brenda and that. They'll have justice served in this case. Okay guys, that was it for this week. We are actually not gonna do lasting before we go this week, but if you are missing kind of the little extra chitchat at the end, this might be a great week to go check out the new stuff that we've been doing on Patreon.

It's either mom's and miscellaneous or moms after dark. We haven't really decided. But if you wanna, well, we have, but we might be changing it. We might be. So, um, it's just, we're once a week. We'll do about 15 minutes just of us kind of talking and chatting about whatever is relevant going on in our week.

Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's more serious. And this week was about. Social security [00:31:00] numbers, uh, dermatology appointments, yes, real cool stuff. But that's at patreon.com/moms and Mysteries podcast. And actually the way Patreon organizes things finally is a lot easier. And you have collections. So now, like all of our little miscellaneous things are together, all the ad free episodes are together, all the bonus episodes.

So it's much easier to listen to now. Also, you can link it to your Spotify. There's a lot of good, there's been improvements. If you've ever been on the fence, it's. It's much better now. So now that's our little spiel. All right guys. Well thank you for listening. We will be back next week, same time, same place.

News story. Have a great week. [00:32:00] Bye.