The family of missing 25-year-old Alyssa Taylor is still searching for answers nearly six months after they last heard from her. Alyssa texted her mom on September 13th to inform her of her plans to tag along on a two-day delivery trip with her truck driver friend but that trip ended tragically and left her family searching for clues to find out where Alyssa is or what happened to her. I don’t want to give the full story away just yet so let’s start at the very beginning.
Alyssa Taylor was born on June 2nd, 1997 in Oak Hall, Virginia where she lived her entire life. Her mother, who was just 14 years old when she gave birth to Alyssa, said they were very close and were more like sisters than mother and daughter. She was your typical teenager who enjoyed having her friends over for sleepovers, makeup, and she really loved dressing up for Halloween because it was her favorite Holiday. She would go all out for it every year. When she was around 19, she gave birth to her first son, Samuel, and about a year and a half later she gave birth to her second son, Julian. Her relationship with their father did not work out and because Samuel and Julian’s father could provide a more stable home for them, they did live with him the majority of the time but that didn’t stop Alyssa from being the best mother she could be. She loved taking them to see new places and doing arts and crafts with them. She especially loved dressing them up for Halloween and taking them trick-or-treating.
Alyssa surrounded herself with as many friends as possible over the years and those closest to her said she is the type of person who would give her shirt off of her back if you asked her for it. In 2022, Alyssa had fallen on hard times and was currently homeless. She was staying at her Mom’s house until her mom went out of town then she started staying at her grandma’s house. That living situation didn’t last very long as she and her grandma got into an argument. Alyssa found herself without a home again. She reached out to one of her truck driver friends, Danny Mcneal, to see if he could pick her up. Danny had a semi-truck with a cab in the back with a bed where Alyssa could hang out until she found a place to stay. Danny agreed to pick her up and said she could accompany him on a two-day trip to North Carolina. She was still very close to her mom and would talk to her every single day. On September 13th, 2022, Alyssa’s texted her Mom and said that she planned on riding with Danny from Oak Hall to Delaware to pick up a delivery that had to go to North Carolina. She let her Mom know she would be gone for the next two days. Sadly, this trip would turn into a journey full of mystery and would leave Alyssa’s family with nothing but questions.
From what I gathered, Danny and Alyssa were just friends at the time but they did have a history of hooking up. He was 51 years old, she was just 25, and he was in a relationship at the time so although they had been together in the past, nothing suggests there was more going on between them at this time. Everyone says Danny was a nice guy that Alyssa got along with very well and this wasn’t the first time she had accompanied him on one of his deliveries. Danny picked Alyssa up from her family’s home in Oak Hall then they headed North to Delaware to pick up a trailer full of frozen chickens. The GPS tracker in Danny’s truck and Alyssa’s cell phone both pinged the same location near Oak Hall, Virginia, so we do know for sure that he did in fact pick her up and Alyssa had texted Danny confirming the pickup location to be the same house he picked her up at in the past. Before they headed to North Carolina, they traveled back toward Exmore, VA which is only about 30 miles from Oak Hall, so Danny could have dinner with a friend. It has been said this friend he was having dinner with was someone Danny had a sexual relationship with so Alyssa stayed in the semi while they visited with each other. Around 8:00pm law enforcement approached Danny’s semi for being illegally parked in Exmore. The body cam footage from this stop, showed a woman speaking to police officers, and several minutes later Danny returned to the truck. The officer recognized Danny from High School so they chatted for a bit before he let them off with a warning and he watched them as they drove away safely. Alyssa’s family has since viewed the camera footage and confirmed that it was Alyssa’s voice but the footage was too grainy to identify her face.
At 10:18 pm Danny receives a call from his girlfriend and this call lasted for over two hours. Around midnight, his girlfriend said while she was still on the phone with Danny, she heard a woman’s voice ask “Where are we?” Danny responded and said “Emporia.” His girlfriend asked Danny who he was talking to and according to her, Danny said it was his CB radio. However, if it was his CB radio it doesn’t make sense that the woman asked where are we instead of where are you? I assume that Danny was lying to his girlfriend about having Alyssa with him on this trip so she wouldn’t get upset with him. Around this time, Danny was stopped at a gas station at 1001 Pleasant Shade, Emporia, VA for just a few minutes. Another interesting factor, in this case, is at 10:10 pm on September 13th, Alyssa missed a call from Danny but nobody knows what the reason for this call was since they were most likely still traveling together. Could it have been that she lost her phone in the cab of the truck and Danny was helping her find it? Did Danny drop Alyssa off somewhere? Did they stop at a gas station and Danny was calling to see if she needed anything from inside? It has been reported that around the time of this missed call, Danny was seen on camera entering and exiting a gas station but Alyssa was not seen on camera. Alyssa’s last phone ping was at 1:09 am when she logged into Facebook. It pinged between Emporia, VA, and Hillsborough, NC so this confirms that she was with Danny or at least in the same proximity as him.
About an hour after her last cell phone ping, at 2:13 am on September 14th, 2022 a 911 call was placed to report that the semi-truck that Danny and Alyssa had been traveling in had crashed and had burst into flames on I-85 in Hillsborough, North Carolina. The accident reports stated the truck was traveling west and ran off the road to the right, struck a guardrail, then overturned and rested on the right shoulder facing west. The fire was so aggressive, there was barely anything left of Danny’s truck and sadly it took his life. His dog, Blu, was also found deceased on the scene but according to the Orange County Sheriff’s office and Highway Patrol, nobody else was found at the scene. As you can imagine, that has been hard to believe for a lot of people but especially for Alyssa’s family since she was supposed to be traveling with Danny, and her cell phone last pinged in this area. The last time her family had heard from her was on September 13th when she texted her Mom about her plans to tag along with Danny. Alyssa’s family couldn’t accept that her possible death wasn’t being handled properly so they visited the crime scene and what they discovered only furthered their doubt in the law enforcement that handled the scene. They found one of Alyssa’s earrings in a storm drain near the crash scene, they also found her pink camouflage blanket and an Old Navy flipflop that was her size. Of course, finding those things doesn’t necessarily mean Alyssa was in the truck when it crashed but she was in the truck at some point. They stayed a week talking to different people trying to get more information but to this day, Law Enforcement is adamant that Alyssa was not in the truck when it crashed.
When the Sheriff’s office was asked about Alyssa they said:
“We are aware of it and I feel awful for the family. The Highway Patrol investigated the crash. Further efforts to see if anything was overlooked at the scene have turned up no evidence that she was still with him at the time of the wreck. The Accomack County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia is in charge of the missing person case.”ALICIA STEMPER, ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE
Because the fire was so aggressive, some speculate that her body was cremated in the fire and her bones were overlooked because they were mixed up with the frozen chickens that Danny was on his way to deliver. Is it possible that her remains were overlooked but Danny’s dog’s weren’t? They used a backhoe to clear the chicken remains and towed the truck away.
Another theory is that Danny hurt Alyssa. His autopsy reported that his cause of death was multiple blunt force injuries and his toxicology reported that his blood alcohol level was at 0.32% which was 8x the legal limit for someone with their CDL which he had. That level would have sent a normal person to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. Why was he drinking and driving so heavily? Some speculate that he was remorseful for hurting Alyssa and he was drinking away the emotion but his GPS tracker never showed that he stopped long enough to do something with her body so to some, that theory seems highly unlikely.
So where is Alyssa Taylor?
Did Alyssa ask Danny to drop her off with someone along the way who had bad intentions? Did some evil person come across the crash before law enforcement and took Alyssa against her will? There are so many possibilities to consider in this case but Alyssa’s family is sure of one thing. That is she didn’t run away to start a new life, they say she wouldn’t do that to her sons or her mother.
Alyssa’s family says that the North Carolina Highway Patrol and the Orange Country Sherriff’s Office have put little to no effort into helping them find Alyssa. This family has begged for them to get the FBI involved, they have asked for landfills to be searched, and for the truck remains to be searched again but little has been done. Her family says they don’t know whether to keep looking for her or grieve for her because they haven’t gotten many answers. Not only that, Danny’s girlfriend and her family claim that the blanket they found didn’t belong to Alyssa, and her earring that was found near the crash scene was planted by her family. Those are major accusations but I also understand that they don’t want anyone speculating about Danny. However, Alyssa’s family deserves to know what happened to her or where she is.
This case is full of mystery and questions – I really want to know what you think of this case and if you have any information that can help law enforcement find Alyssa I highly encourage you to come forward. Please call the Accomack County Sheriff’s Office at 1-757-787-1131 or 1-757-824-5666. The family also invites the public to join their Facebook page “Help Us Find Alyssa Taylor.”
