Granite Countertops in Holly Hill, SC

ORANGEBURG COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) - The family of a woman who has been missing since August says they are infuriated after finding exposed remains they believed to be hers.

Melissa Aguilar, 49, of Holly Hill, was last in contact with family on Aug. 17, according to Orangeburg County Sheriff Leroy Ravenell.

Aguilar’s sister, Sarah Shipman, says investigators told her Thursday that remains were found in Holly Hill, less than half a mile from Aguilar’s home.

After asking neighbors for an approximate location, she and Aguilar’s two daughters, Brittany Ranew and Shanna Brown, went to the site the next day, hoping for closure.

“As I was hugging my nieces and consoling them, I looked down and found my sister’s jawbone between my feet,” Shipman says.

After rushing her nieces out of the woods, Shipman says she returned to the site.

“I went back out there to see if that was what I had really seen, I found her dental work and close to 20 more pieces of my sister that they had walked over and left behind,” she says.

The Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office has not confirmed the remains are Aguilars. They say they’ve been sent to SLED for processing and identification.

“We know her smile, and that smile was in the dirt, and you don’t unsee that, and you know someone’s smile,” she says.

Shipman says investigators promised to collect the rest of the remains Monday. When she and Brown returned to the scene Tuesday, they found what appeared to be several more bones and a tooth.

“I knew, there was something telling me there was more,” Shipman says.

They immediately altered authorities again.

Ranew describes her mother as the glue of the entire family.

“It’s hard to list all the amazing things about her because she was so much more than anyone could describe,” Ranew says.

Brown says there are no words to describe the pain of losing a mother.

“My 6-year-old is constantly asking me, ‘Why is Mamie on the news?’ and then my 1-year-old is not going to remember her. I’m going to have to remind him of who she was, she’s going to miss my wedding day,” Brown says.

Shipman says the lack of care from the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office through the entire investigation has “traumatized” their family.

“If the Sheriff’s Department is not capable of doing a job correctly, leaving my sister behind, they should own up and call in outside resources,” Shipman says.

The Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to the family’s claim that they mishandled the investigation.

“The investigation into Ms. Melissa Aguilar going missing is an active and ongoing investigation,” Sheriff Leroy Ravenell said in an email. “We are still asking the public for any information regarding Ms. Aguilar. If you have any information in this case, you are urged to contact us.”

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.

HOLLY HILL, S.C. – (WIS) As the family of an Orangeburg County woman, who went missing four months ago, seeks answers, the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office is releasing new information about the case.

The Sheriff’s Office said Friday in a statement that it put out a public call for leads this week after an “unconfirmed report of a possible sighting.”

Melissa Aguilar of Holly Hill was reported missing by an ex-boyfriend on August 18, a Sheriff’s Office report states.

Investigators believe she left a home Fourwind Road, which is an unincorporated area of Orangeburg County, after an argument with her ex.

Aguilar’s youngest daughter Shanna Brown told WIS in a Friday interview that the last four months have been excruciatingly painful.

Brown said she used to speak with her mother every day, and the fear of the unknown has caused her so much “anger, heartache, and worry.”

“It’s been really hard trying to juggle a job and put on a smile and act like nothing’s wrong when there’s so much wrong,” she said.

Brown described her last conversation with her mother on August 17, the night before she was reported missing.

During that phone call, Aguilar sounded upbeat and happy, Brown said.

Aguilar was excited about her oldest daughter’s upcoming wedding in September, and the pair discussed Brown’s future wedding plans as well, Brown added.

Immediately following her disappearance, the Sheriff’s Office shared the information with the local newspaper, but did not put out a public release through its official channels, nor send the information to other news outlets like WIS.

On Friday, the Sheriff’s Office provided written answers to some questions, but an investigator familiar with the case was not made available for an on-camera interview.

The department did not provide any specifics about who reported the “unconfirmed report of a possible sighting,” when this happened and where.

Family members, however, say they fear Aguilar is gone.

“She would’ve come back by now, or at least called somebody,” Brown said.

Sarah Shipman, Aguilar’s sister, agrees, and said she does not believe that her sibling would vanish without her belongings, and miss important family events.

There was a law enforcement presence at Aguilar’s last known location, the place she was staying with her ex-boyfriend on Fourwind Road, throughout the morning on Friday.

The Sheriff’s Office said they could not explain why so they do not “jeopardize the case.”

“I wish that they would’ve done a lot more than what they did in the beginning,” Brown said.

Brown implored the community to come forward with information, regardless of how inconsequential it may seem.

“If they see anything, they think they see anything, if they hear anything, that we just want to know, we just want to get an idea, a lead, anything so we could bring her home, alive or not,” she said.

Neighbors tell WIS that their statements were taken for the first time on Friday.

The Sheriff’s Office declined to answer questions about whether there is a suspect or person of interest in the case, saying they “cannot comment on particulars of an investigation.”

The public is asked to contact the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office with tips, leads or information.

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ORANGEBURG, S.C. (WCSC) - The Orangeburg County Coroner’s Office confirmed Tuesday that human remains found earlier this month in Holly Hill are those of a woman reported missing in August.

The coroner was able to confirm the remains were those of 49-year-old Melissa Aguilar using dental records, WIS-TV reported.

That’s news that Orangeburg County Sheriff Leroy Ravenell said he learned from Aguilar’s family, not from official channels, shortly before a Tuesday afternoon news conference on the case. That news conference seemed to raise more questions than provide answers, however.

Ravenell said family members told him that someone at the Orangeburg County Coroner’s Office told family members that the human remains discovered on Jan. 4 were those of Aguilar.

“After talking to the family, they informed me that they were informed by the coroner’s office that this was — this actually came back to be Melissa,” Ravenell said.

But the sheriff said his agency had not yet been informed of that confirmation and that he was trying to get a call through to the coroner’s office.

“Officially, we’re still waiting on our own word, but that’s what the family is telling me from the guy from the coroner’s office,” he said. “If that’s the case, I gave the family my condolences and told them that we will continue to pray for them and that this investigation, even though we were working it as a missing person, you know, I will tell you here and now that this was, this investigation, all the time was going in two different directions.”

Aguilar’s sister, Sarah Shipman, said they’ve been experiencing this lack of communication throughout the investigation.

“I don’t know if people know the locations of those two offices but they’re like a building apart,” Shipman said, “Not only did we get a lack of communication, but they can’t communicate with each other.”

Shipman said she filed a formal complaint against the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office through the Attorney General’s Office this past weekend, citing a lack of communication and transparency throughout the investigation.

She said she believes Tuesday’s news conference stemmed from her complaint, but a spokesperson for the agency said they had no knowledge of the complaint at the time.

Aguilar had been reported missing on Aug. 18 by an ex-boyfriend, the sheriff said. Ravenell said their job now is to find out the manner of death.

“And if it was some foul play, then you can be assured that we’ll find out and we will have somebody in custody if there was some foul play,” he said.

Ravenell said investigators questioned people in the months since Aguilar was reported missing, but said without the discovery of remains and the confirmation that the remains were those of Aguilar, they did not know whether anyone was responsible for her disappearance. But he said his agency has a “person of interest” in that disappearance.

“We talked to him, we had enough reason to think that we needed to get his phone and we needed to get this DVR and analyze it,” he said.

The sheriff did not name the person of interest or any possible connection with Aguilar.

Aguilar’s family said the remains were found less than a half-mile from her home.

After asking neighbors for an approximate location of where the remains had been found, Shipman, said she and Agular’s two daughters, Birttany Ranew and Shanna Brown went to the site the next day, hoping for what she called closure.

“As I was hugging my nieces and consoling them, I looked down and found my sister’s jawbone between my feet,” Shipman said on Wednesday.

As of then, the Orangeburg County Coroner’s Office had not confirmed to the family that the remains were of Aguilar. Deputies said the remains had been sent to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division for processing and identification.

“We know her smile, and that smile was in the dirt, and you don’t unsee that, and you know someone’s smile,” Shipman said.

Shipman said investigators promised to collect the rest of the remains, but that when she and Brown returned to the scene the following day, they found what appeared to be several more bones and a tooth.

Ravenell defended his team amid questions about how family members could have found remains after they had supposedly been collected.

“The coroner collected the remains that were there,” Ravenell said.

When a reporter asked about the fact that it struck some people as unusual that there would still be remains left for the family to discover, Ravenell said it struck him as unusual as well.

“You know, it’s just that, just in a case of a dead body, the coroner comes and they pronounce and then they collect and remove. It’s the same thing,” he said.

Orangeburg County Coroner Samuetta Marshall said they “collected what they saw.” She said, although it’s not unusual, there was no boundary set up by law enforcement indicating where the remains were discovered.

Ravenell said he can understand the family being upset about the lack of answers they’ve received so far and said he wished he’d had the information they told him they had received from the coroner’s office.

“I would be upset. I would be angry with somebody. So I don’t hold anything against the family,” he said. “A lot of people would be way more outraged than they were.”

Moving forward, Shipman said she hopes the agency will show more respect to their family and provide answers regarding what happened to her sister.

“We were screaming this to Orangeburg the moment we saw her smile, it wasn’t relief, it was, ‘I told you so,’” Shipman said.

Sheriff Leroy Ravenell released the following statement:

“On Tuesday, I held a press conference with the sole purpose of informing the public after we had conferred with the family as to where an investigation stood into the recovery of human remains near Holly Hill on January 4, 2024. The community has a vested interest in their county and deserve to know where we stood.”

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.

For the second time in less than five years, Holly Hill resident Steven Verren Baker was in front of a federal judge after being caught smuggling protected turtles.

Baker, 38, pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of conspiracy to smuggle wildlife after packages containing the turtles were intercepted in transit between the U.S. and China, according to an announcement by the U.S. Attorney's Office on Wednesday.

Court documents revealed an elaborate scheme that had the potential to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars for the perpetrators.

The smuggling took place between January and June 2016 and utilized fake names and return addresses to evade detection, according to court documents. Shipments were set up through Facebook messages.

Turtles were placed in boxes labeled "snacks" and shipped from Hong Kong, the documents stated. The reptiles were packaged in socks and items like pieces of candy and noodles were placed around them in an effort to conceal them in transit to South Carolina and other parts of the United States.

"The approximate value of the smuggled turtles is between $117,200 and $409,250, depending on the market," documents state.

While 46 turtles were intercepted by authorities, investigators believe more were shipped that evaded detection, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Winston David Holliday Jr.

"The indictment supports hundreds," Holliday said.

Investigators believe U.S. collectors were paying for turtles considered to be exotic from China, while Chinese customers were collecting American turtles in some cases, and consuming them — either as food or for medicinal purposes, the prosecutor said.

The international conspiracy wasn't the first time Baker found himself in trouble for smuggling wildlife.

In 2014, he pleaded guilty to illegally trafficking wild turtles taken from South Carolina's interior and attempting to sell them to a buyer in Florida. He also pleaded to being a felon in possession of guns and ammunition. A search of his residence in conjunction with the turtle probe revealed a wide assortment of guns and firearms.

Baker received three years probation for the turtle-related charge on Sept. 23, 2015, court documents stated.

Less than four months later, the Holly Hill man had set up the international turtle-smuggling conspiracy.

Baker will be sentenced on his current charge at a later date. He faces a maximum of five years in prison and a potential fine of $250,000.

Cases against Baker's five named codefendants are pending, Holliday said.

HOLLY HILL, S.C. (WIS) - As the family of an Orangeburg County woman who went missing four months ago seeks answers, the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office is releasing new information about the case.

Melissa Aguilar of Holly Hill was reported missing by an ex-boyfriend on Aug. 18, an Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office report states.

Deputies said Friday in a statement that it put out a public call for leads after an “unconfirmed report of a possible sighting.”

Investigators believe she left a home on Fourwind Road, which is in an unincorporated area of Orangeburg County, after an argument with her ex.

ANOTHER MISSING WOMAN – JAMILLA SMITH:

Aguilar’s youngest daughter, Shanna Brown, said the last four months have been excruciatingly painful. Brown said she used to speak with her mother every day and the fear of the unknown has caused her “anger, heartache, and worry.”

“It’s been really hard trying to juggle a job and put on a smile and act like nothing’s wrong when there’s so much wrong,” she said.

Brown described her last conversation with her mother on Aug. 17, the night before she was reported missing. She said Aguilar sounded upbeat and happy during that call. She was excited about her oldest daughter’s upcoming wedding in September, and the pair discussed Brown’s future wedding plans as well, Brown said.

Immediately following her disappearance, the sheriff’s office shared the information with the local newspaper, but did not put out a public release through its official channels, nor send the information to other news outlets, WIS-TV reported.

The Sheriff’s Office provided written answers to some questions Friday, but an investigator familiar with the case was not made available for an on-camera interview.

The agency did not provide any specifics about who reported the “unconfirmed report of a possible sighting” or when or where the sighting happened.

Family members, however, say they fear Aguilar is gone.

“She would’ve come back by now, or at least called somebody,” Brown said.

MORE | Homicide ruled out in S.C. death; persons of interests ‘cleared’

Sarah Shipman, Aguilar’s sister, agrees and said she does not believe that her sibling would vanish without her belongings, and miss important family events.

There was a law enforcement presence at Aguilar’s last-known location, the place she was staying with her ex-boyfriend on Fourwind Road, throughout the morning on Friday.

The sheriff’s office said they could not provide details out of concern that doing so could “jeopardize the case.”

“I wish that they would’ve done a lot more than what they did in the beginning,” Brown said.

Brown implored the community to come forward with information, regardless of how inconsequential it may seem.

“If they see anything, they think they see anything, if they hear anything, that we just want to know, we just want to get an idea, a lead, anything so we could bring her home, alive or not,” she said.

The sheriff’s office declined to answer questions about whether there is a suspect or person of interest in the case, saying they “cannot comment on particulars of an investigation.”

The public is asked to contact the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office with tips, leads or information, at 803-534-3550.

Copyright 2023 WRDW/WAGT. All rights reserved.