Susana Morales texted her mother one summer night to say she was walking home after visiting a friend. She was 16 years old. Hours later, she was gone, and her family reported her missing the following morning in July 2022.
Morales was less than a mile from her Gwinnett home on July 26, 2022, when she vanished after leaving the Sterling Glen apartment complex. Investigators later learned she had shared her location with a friend through an app. Court records said her phone suddenly started traveling in the opposite direction at about 40 mph, and detectives said they believed that was the moment she got into a vehicle. The app generated a crash alert at Oak Loch Trace, just under a mile from where investigators believe she was taken, and they said her phone was thrown from the vehicle there. It stayed at that location until the battery died. Her phone was never recovered.
More than six months later, on Feb. 6, 2023, Morales’ remains were found on the side of Ga. 316 near Drowning Creek. Dental records confirmed her identity. An official cause of death was never determined. Her mother, Maria Bran, told the court that it had been very difficult since the first day her daughter disappeared, and said, “Every night I can’t sleep without thinking of her.”
The case eventually led detectives to Miles Bryant, a former Doraville officer who was later found guilty of murder, kidnapping and false report of a crime. He has been serving a life sentence since June 2024 at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison in Butts County. Authorities found a loaded pistol during a search of the area, and prosecutors said it was registered to Bryant. He reported that gun stolen the morning after Morales disappeared, saying it had been taken from his truck, and prosecutors said he specifically asked that a detective not be assigned to investigate the disappearance of his gun or wallet.
Records also showed that shortly after midnight on July 27, 2022, Bryant’s personal and police cellphones were pinged in the same area where Morales’ body was recovered. His phone was back there later that morning, about an hour before he reported the firearm stolen. Analyses of his work and personal phones and his work computer later turned up search history months after Morales disappeared, including the phrase “how long does it take a body to decompose,” along with searches for news articles about her remains being found and about her disappearance.
The case drew widespread attention because Morales was a Georgia teenager whose remains were found months after she went missing, and because investigators never determined how she died. ABC’s 20/20 will revisit the investigation in a two-hour episode titled “Tracking Susana,” airing at 9 p.m. Friday.
