Criminology - Brianna Maitland

Episode Date: October 5, 2019

17-year-old Brianna Maitland disappeared from a small town in Vermont on March 19, 2004, Brianna vanished after leaving her job at the Black Lantern Inn. Her car was later found backed into an abandoned house. This is just one of many bizarre events surrounding Brianna's disappearance. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the disappearance of Brianna Maitland. Brianna's father Bruce joined us for this episode to help shed light on the facts and rumors surrounding her disappearance. This is a very high-profile missing person case in the Northeast part of the United States. Some people have tried to link Brianna's disappearance with that of Maura Murray who disappeared from the Northeast about a month before Brianna. Many have also tried to link Brianna's disappearance with the activities of serial killer Israel Keyes. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to episode 81 of criminology. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you? I'm doing good. I'm busy. Doing 25 hours worth of work in a 24-hour day. But besides that, I'm feeling good. How about you? Yeah, I tell you, aren't we all? I've said this before, but I think we work.

work too hard. And I don't, when I say we, I don't mean you and I. I mean just everybody. Everybody works too hard. Everything is to go, go, go. We don't relax enough anymore. Yeah. And I know you've got multiple podcasts. I've got multiple podcasts. And I just feel that if I'm sitting around not doing something, I feel like I'm wasting time. So I got to keep busy. All right, Marf, we had some new Patreon supporters. So let's give some shoutouts. We had Pam Fitz. Marlene Lewis, Twistie McWhizpoper, Roslyn Hesby, Vanessa DeHiro, and Vili Seppinen. So big thanks to all those people that chose to support the show. We love it. We say it all the time, but it's really true. We definitely appreciate all that Patreon support.

And if you'd like to help support Criminology on Patreon, you can too by going to patreon.com slash criminology. All right, morph, let's jump right into this episode. We are discussing one of the most high profile missing person cases in the northeast part of the United States. It's the disappearance of 17-year-old Brianna Maitland. She vanished without a trace from a small town in Vermont on March 19th, 2004.

She disappeared just a little bit over a month. after Moore Murray disappeared from Massachusetts, and that has led some to speculate that the two New England area cases might be related. 15 years later, Brianna's case, much like Moore Murray's, still intrigues amateur slews and true crime fans alike. But what really happened to Brianna Maitland? That question remains unanswered. Brianna's father, Bruce Maitland, joined us for this episode to help sort the, through the details in Brianna's case. And you'll hear from him throughout the episode. Brianna Alexandria Maitland was born on October 8, 1986 to Bruce and Kelly Maitland.

She has an older brother named Whalen. Brianna and Waylon were raised on a farm outside East Franklin, Vermont, about 300 feet from the Canadian border. Growing up, Brianna trained several years in Jiu-Jitsu. She was raised in a household with no television, so Brianna turn to books to entertain herself. Her mom once called her a voracious reader, because she had read every novel by authors such as Anne Rice, Margaret Atwood, and Maya Angelou, as well as the writings of Greek poet Homer. Breanna enjoyed literary works that held meaningful life lessons. She also loved the outdoors, especially spending time forwheeling or snowmobiling through the countryside, and swimming and hanging at Lake Carmi Beach with her friends.

She also loved music and dancing. Brianna was just an absolute joy to be around. A lot of fun. She could light up a room when she walked in, just personable, fun-loving. She had another side where she was quite a reader. She spent a lot of time reading books, and it was just great to be around her.

As a kid, she was always excited about a lot of different things, and it was just kind of great to watch her grow. And then as she kind of got into her team, and she was very mature for her age, always kind of, I would say maybe from the time she was 10 or 12, she started to act a little bit more like a grown-up in a lot of ways. And in a lot of ways she was still a kid. And it's just kind of that mix.

But she was very outgoing. and very accepting of everybody, meeting new people. In the extent that she was accepting of everybody, I don't think she had a good discernment, you know, between good and bad people. She'd just seen some bit of good in about everybody. And that was one of those things I didn't get too concerned about it, but I sure thought a lot about, you know, after she went missing.

By 2003, Brianna, into a beautiful, creative, and fiercely independent young woman. She attended Mrs. Coy Valley Union High School and was described by many as outgoing, smart, and just really a fun person to be around. Brianna had a mind of her own. And once she set her mind to something, there was no talking her out of it. But Brianna had grown restless and somewhat bored living in the rural area where she was raised. in late 2003, Brianna moved in with her friend, Kate Manning, and started attending a new high school,

Innesburg Falls High School. Brana had moved out of the house. Brana is the person who was, you know, was kind of 17 going on 25. And there had been some disagreements, but we had lived a, we had lived kind of a back to the lander. is the best way I could describe it lifestyle at the time. You know, we had a house in the woods, a mile from the nearest neighbor in the woods, and we made her an electricity and just kind of lived a subsistence life. So she was a bit more isolated, certainly there than what she wanted to be.

And at the time, she was living with a girlfriend of hers at the time at her girlfriend's parents place. And I didn't like the fact that she had chosen that. So, you know, I was like, well, Brianna, you want to act like a grown up? Then you've got to support yourself and stuff. And, you know, I'm not going to, you know, promote this or enable it would be a better word. And I'm not going to enable this by, you know, giving her money and things like that. As 2004 began, Brianna's closest friends from her previous school noticed a change in her. She started partying a lot. She began hanging out with a crowd that, frankly, they didn't like seeing her with.

One of the girls in that crowd was Keely LaCross, whom Brianna had befriended at Enosburg Falls High School. The two met when Brianna introduced herself to Keely and Jim class. And the pair became close friends after that. For whatever reason, Brianna had to move out of Katie Manning's house and ended up staying with multiple friends, and at one point, she was even living out of her car in freezing temperatures. By February 2004, she wasn't hanging out with Keeley and their group of friends as much, and became isolated. This affected her performance at school, and Brianna ultimately dropped out of high school. Brianna then moved in with childhood friend Jillian Stout and her family

in Sheldon, Vermont, and she enrolled in a GED program at a community college. By this time, Brianna's and Keely's friendship was over. Keely spoke in a phone interview with Chloe Canter, who hosts the podcast True Crime Twins, and is also part of the Crawl Space podcast team alongside our pals Tim and Lance. In her interview with Chloe Cantor, Keeley talked about why her friendship with Brianna dissolved. She said that at the time, she had a boyfriend named James Robitai. The two had been together for the past couple years when Keely went out. of state for a week to visit her mother, she said Brianna went behind her back and stayed with

her boyfriend James. Keely found out about this incident from some friends when she returned home and she confronted James. He admitted that Brianna stayed at his house. Keeley and Brianna stopped hanging out after that. Keeley also said that a few weeks later, she saw Brianna sitting in the passenger seat of James' car. Keeley was furious. She said she started screaming, she started calling Brianna names, but Brianna never responded. On February 27, 2004, there was a party at the Pallet Factory in Inesburg. James showed up with Brianna. Keeley was already at the party, and when she saw the two together, she was livid. She intimidated Brianna the entire night, trying to get a rise out of her,

but Brianna didn't bite. Later on in the evening, Keeley noticed Brianna wasn't at the party, but James was still there. He told her that Brianna was sitting out in his truck, so Keely went out to the truck and confronted Brianna, antagonizing her and trying to get her to come out of the truck to fight. At some point, Keely punched Brianna twice, giving her two black eyes and a concussion. Despite being trained in the martial arts, Brianna never fought back, and Keely stopped fighting telling Brianna, you're not worth it. The following day, Brianna's mother Kelly took her to the hospital. Brianna decided to press charges against Keillacross and police started an investigation. It was around this same time that Brianna landed two part-time jobs, one as a dishwasher

at the Black Lantern Inn in nearby Montgomery, and one as a waitress at KJ's diner in St. Albans. She was set to start work at the diner on the morning of March 20th, 2004. On the day of March 19th, Brianna took her GED test in the morning. Then she went out for breakfast and clothes shopping with her mother in St. Albin's. Brianna needed a pair of black pants for the diner job. So the two of them were in the checkout lane at a store when Brianna told her mom that she would be right back.

Her mom paid for the pants and then saw Brianna outside at her car waiting for her. It's been reported that during this quick shopping trip, Brianna's demeanor had changed. She seemed nervous. She seemed as though she wanted to get home very quickly. Kelly didn't press Brianna for details about what was troubling her. There are some people that allege that someone in the store warned Brianna that something bad was going to happen to her. But Brianna's father, Bruce, disputes that her demeanor suddenly changed while at the store at all. I guess the biggest one, because it seemed to have hit the news quite a bit, is, you know, there was situations where maybe Brianna ran into the person or ran into somebody that was trying to warn her the day before when she was with her mother.

And that pops up on the internet. And I really put no stock in that. That's what I consider to be a false head. Brianna was scheduled to work the night shift at the Black Lantern Inn later that night, and she got ready for work when she returned home from shopping with her mom. On her way out, she left a note for Jillian that read, I get off work between 10 and 12, I'll see you after. Brianna's night at work was a busy one.

Her shift ended at 11.20 p.m. Brianna's coworkers asked her to have dinner with them, but she declined, saying she was tired and had to get up early for her second job. The employees saw her get into her light green 1983 Oldsmobile 88 sedan and drive off. Brianna Maitland was never seen again. Between 11.30 p.m. and 1230 a.m. A man was driving on Route 118 when he saw a car backed into an abandoned house that was known to the locals as the Dutch burn house.

He thought the headlights may have been on, but he didn't give the siding a second thought. between 12 a.m. and 12.30 a.m. another man saw the car and said a signal light was flashing. Then around 4 a.m. Brianna's ex-boyfriend drove by that location on his way home from a party. He thought he recognized the car and he stopped to check it out. When he stopped, he immediately knew that the car was Brianna's, but there was no sign of her. And this is where people go down a rabbit hole. and I try to shut this rabbit hole down. Okay. But, I mean, she had an ex-boyfriend who she was not involved with at any point.

And I guess I want to say out front, he's not a suspect. Multiple interviews, you know, my private investigators have talked to a number of times. The state police have done a number of times. They, you know, they claim to have broken him down really good. But he happened to be coming home from another place. And people will say, oh, my gosh, that's too much coincidence. incident, but the truth is, is that little road is, if you're coming in from the west, it's a very mountainous region, that's the only road in and out of that area. And he happened to have lived

in that area. So before people in the true crime group immediately jumped to, oh, it's an ex-boyfriend, in this case, it's not. But anyhow, he found the car and he recognized, he recognized the car, that's Breanna's car got out and he said well he walked over to see if she was in the car she was all right and he shut the doors and shut the headlights off now it was a cold night

rain snow mix that sort of thing I'm not quite sure of his processes of why he actually did that but I believe it was just you know at that point he does nothing either later that morning, tourists were driving on Route 118 and spotted the Palgreen Osmobile, packed up against the

Dutch Burnhouse, and they thought the scene didn't look right. They parked their car, got out, and took photographs of the car. They are the only photographs of the car that can be seen by the public. And if listeners out there haven't seen photos of Brianna's car, it's a very odd-looking photo that you can find by Googling Brianna's name. As they walked around the car, they noticed a water bottle, a broken necklace, which was later confirmed to be Brianna Maitland's, and some loose change on the ground next to the driver's side. Brianna's car keys were missing. Bruce Maitland described the tourists finding the car.

Saturday morning, some guys came by that skied together, and they were on the way to the ski lodge, and they looked there, and they said, oh, my gosh, look that weird how that car is into that building. It's so strange. So they took some pictures. And then they went on their way. At 122 p.m. A Vermont state trooper was dispatched to the Dutchburn house after a call came in regarding

an abandoned vehicle at that location. When he arrived at the house, he observed the car partially parked inside the house. This was almost as if someone had put the car in reverse and rammed it into the house. Police later said the scene looked staged. The trooper figured out who the driver was when he found two paychecks made out to Brianna Maitland. He wrote down the license plate number and then had the car towed to a local automotive shop. The car's owner was listed as Kelly Maitland.

But instead of calling her, the trooper drove to the Black Lantern Inn. So he took this information from one of the paychecks. The Black Lantern Inn was closed and was not set to open until later that day. But the trooper had other work to do that kept him from following up on the car. The trooper assumed that Kelly would eventually call police wondering what happened to her car. Bruce described in detail for us how police came upon the car and he also detailed the damage at the scene. A little later, the state trooper came by when he was on patrol and he found the car. To this day, I don't really know his thought processes. I guess he assumed it was a drunk driver,

but it was just like drunk drivers don't back their car, you know, 50, 60 feet off the road into buildings, but he just called it into a local garage who does their towing and had the car tote. and then he finished his shift for the day and went home. And everything that he found and was in the file was just left. So when the police found the car, the car was just passed into the building as you see it in the picture. Doors closed, lights out. There wasn't too much damage to the car.

There was some trunk damage to the car. I remember there was a big crease in the trunk. The car jumped the rear of the car, the rear bumper of the car, cleared the foundation of the house and kind of bashed into the side of the house, into the wood part then at that point. And so the car was actually stuck in the house, maybe six inches, maybe a foot. Bruce Maylon thinks that had the trooper that initially found Brianna's car been more proactive. The official search for her could have started sooner.

Later on, years later, when I developed some good relations with some of the police, and that was one of the things that they changed procedurally for them, that no one goes home, no troopers go home without filing the reports of what's going on, because the car was registered to Brianna's mother at the time. If we would have received a phone call, you know, that next morning, we would have been two days ahead of where we were. The Dutchburn farmhouse where Brianna's car was found had been abandoned for years, but it had once been the scene of an attack that was big news around town.

Back in the 1980s, two elderly brothers named Harry Dutchburn and Mike Dutchburn were attacked in their home. They had lived there since June 1915 when their family first moved in. At around 2 a.m. on January 31st, 1986, two men knocked on their daughter, door saying they were out of gas. The knocking woke the men up and Mike shouted back that they did not have any gas, but the knocking persisted. Mike got out of bed and walked downstairs. He hadn't even got to the door yet when one of the men barged into their house. In the suburbs of D.C. A woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door

and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved. until new technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Are you currently taking care of a disabled family member or friend? Do they have a long-term physical disability?

If so, they may qualify for programs that can pay you for your time and care. Help at home has the experts to assist in getting those services and programs for your love love. For a limited time, Help at Home is offering a $1,000, on bonus. Plus at Help at Home, we still offer the top pay, weekly pay, overtime pay, holiday pay, and we also offer health care benefits. Call Help at Home today at 215-7703 or go to Helpat Home.com. Mike yelled at the man, you shouldn't be here. The man hit Mike in the face.

He later said the man was wearing brass knuckles or something to that effect on his hand. Mike fought back until he saw another man and said later that he knew he couldn't fight both of these men at his age. Maybe when he was younger, he could have taken them on, but not at this time. Soon after this, Harry came downstairs. One of the men knocked him unconscious with a cane he used to prod his cattle. Both men then turned on Mike and continued to beat him. Harry and Mike were known to keep large sums of money, and it turned out that the men were there to rob them. Harry had approximately $6,000 in his shirt pocket at the time of the robbery, and the men took that along with some other cash they found.

This brutal attack lasted only about five minutes, and then the men took off. Mike laid on the kitchen floor for three and a half hours. too afraid to move. His brother Harry was still unconscious. Harry and Mike didn't have a telephone. At the time of the attack, when Mike saw his neighbor's house light go on at dawn, he crawled out to his Chevy pickup truck and drove the half mile to his neighbor's house to call police. What the robbers didn't count on was that all the money they stole from the Dutchburn brothers had a very distinctive smell to it. Harry and Mike spent hours every day farming and in their barn. So evidently, their money picked up smells that you might

find at a farm. Police alerted all Vermont banks and businesses to be on the lookout for $100 bills with a strong odor. The salesman at Champlain, Chevrolet, and Enosburg knew that odor well, because Mike Dutchburn had purchased a truck there, and the scent lingered in the air long after he was gone. So when two men walked in one day and paid for a car with $100 bills that had a strong odor, the salesman called police. So Morph, when you think about what transpired, this must have been a hell of an odor for it to attach itself to this money, for a salesman to remember that he had smelled it before and to immediately smell it when these two men tried to buy this car. This money eventually led police to two men.

Vermont State Police arrested 37-year-old Daryl Clark and 30-year-old Louis Gilbo and charged them with aggravated assault, assault, robbery, and attempted assault and robbery. Daryl Clark already had a criminal record of larceny and assault. In 1987, a judge sentenced him to five to ten years in jail and sentenced Gilbeau to eight to ten. With all but five suspended for the Dutch burn home invasion and assaults. Gilboe died in 2011 at the age of 56. These were brutal attacks. The brothers barely survived them.

They were hospitalized for a period of time when they returned to their home. The first thing they did was install a telephone and fix up the damage that these guys did to their home. The two brothers lived at this house for some time longer before moving to a nursing facility. Mike died in 1991, followed by Harry in 1999. Then in 2016, the Dutch burn house was destroyed in a fire. On the night Brianna Maitland disappeared and her car wound up backed into the Dutchburn Barn, Jillian Stout wasn't worried about her. When Brianna never showed back up that night,

Jillian assumed she had moved back with her parents. Gillian left town for the weekend, and when she returned on March 23rd, she phoned Kelly Maitland to see if Brianna was there. She wasn't, and Kelly hadn't seen her all weekend. Kelly began calling Brianna's friends, but no one had seen her. Bruce Maitland was in New York. York on business at the time. So Kelly called him and he drove through the night to get back home.

Kelly called police to report their daughter missing. Brianna's friend, who she lived with, happened to have been gone for the weekend. So when Brianna's friend got back home, there was a note there from Brianna and said, I'll, you know, I'll see when I get done work. And so when she got back home, I guess this would have been a Monday at some point. Braina wasn't there. So, She called around and one of the places she called us and said, hey, do you know where Brianna is? And we said, no.

And we thought she was with you. And she said, no, she hasn't been home all weekend. And then, you know, things just kind of started to go downhill from there. The next day, Bruce and Kelly drove to the state police barracks in St. Albans. When they gave information to the officers about Brianna's car, one of the officers showed them a picture of, of the abandoned Osmobile partially lodged inside the Dutchburn house. Bruce and Kelly recognized it immediately as Brianna's car, and they knew something bad had

happened to their daughter. Brana would never have left her car in that condition. Bruce described reporting his daughter missing as well as the response by police. You know, quite frankly, when we got the phone call, from a Brianna's girlfriend, we weren't that concerned right away because it was like, well, you know, Brianna didn't come home and, you know,

we're thinking, well, you know, maybe Brianna went to one of her other friend's houses or something, you know, and just, or came home, nobody was around anyhow, so she went somewhere else. And so it was something that was concerned us. And we called a couple of Brianna's friends, and Brianna's friends says,

well, we don't know where she's at. We haven't seen her. But you're still not at that, level of panic yet because you figure, well, Brianna and the car are, you know, went somewhere because we weren't monitoring her on, you know, an hourly or even a daily basis at that point. But when we did get really concerned, you know, like the next day, it was like, well, we went down and reported it and we happened to be in the police station. When we were reporting it, the actual trooper happened to be in the station, kind of in the

background, and he called us in and, you know, he pulls out his file because he's, taken a file picture and says, well, is this Priyna's car? Well, you know, at that point, shit hits a fan because, you know, in our own mind, we know, oh, my God, the car's there. Where's Breanna? You know, it was just terrifying

to know that, well, you know, and then you get into the questions, well, when did you take this? Well, I took it Saturday. At that point, you just start going crazy. And, you know, we got called in and we, and they said, well, you know, I called in and said, well, the lieutenant

is the one that's in charge, you know, and we talked to him. So we went in, talk to him, and he's like, oh, these kids do this all the time. They take off. You know, they don't tell their parents. She'll be back in a couple days, a couple three days. Don't worry so much, you know. But we'll file a mission report. We'll do all that part of it.

But, you know, in the meantime, I immediately came back and my son happened to be around. So we, you know, we went right to where she worked and started asking questions. You know, have you seen her where you're, you know, because we just, just started looking for. And we started to look there and we, you know, went around where the car was found and started to work out from there and look and see, you know, see if we could find her. And later on, the Class Kids search center, when it kind of hit the news, they called up and we had a massive search. And we had another one the following weekend. And we've just found nothing. The Maitland's along with their son, Waylon, drove to the automotive shop where

Brianna's car was towed. Police had not yet inspected the car. Bruce took a crowbar and pried the trunk open. He was scared to death of what he would find inside that trunk, but Brianna was not in there. Inside the car, though, there were some items that Brianna would not have left behind, including her driver's license, her ATM card, contact lenses, migraine medication, and the two paychecks. Brana did not own a cell phone. K-9 units searched the open field surrounding the Dutchburn house, but found nothing. Brianna's car was taken to the state police barracks, and police conducted a forensic examination of the car. Police found no evidence of foul play and figured Brianna left on her own accord. Friends had said she was,

was thinking about taking a short trip, but the family feared someone had abducted her. Bruce Maitland drove to the Black Lantern Inn to talk to their employees. And for days, after Brianna vanished, her family and friends plastered missing person posters around the area. One of the obstacles they encountered was that nobody knew what Brianna was last wearing, so they couldn't put that on the posters. Brianna's new black pants were still in the shopping bag at the Stout residence, so she wasn't wearing them when she went missing.

But that makes sense since she wouldn't have been wearing them because she apparently bought them for the diner job she was supposed to start the following morning. Brianna wore an apron when she worked at the Black Lantern Inn, but it's not known if she was wearing it when she left that night. Her Aunt Tammy said Brianna always wore a pair of hiking boots, and those boots were missing. Information started coming into the Maitlands after the posters went up.

Someone said they saw a white pickup truck, parked down the road from the Black Lantern Inn on March 19th. Another person said that they heard a man shouting later that night, and yet another person said a man had been flirting with Brianna at the end. Bruce turned all of the information that they received over to the police, but nothing came out of it. Police continued searching for Brianna on land by air, but she was never found.

For whatever reason, they never checked for fingerprints on Brianna's car, and it was months before they requested DNA samples from both Bruce and Kelly. There are no fingerprints on file for Brianna. After she vanished, the assault charges against Keely the Cross were dropped because Brianna didn't show up for the hearing. Bruce Maitland received an anonymous tip that his daughter was, being held against her will about 10 miles from the Dutch burn barn in a farmhouse on reservoir road in Berkshire. The Vermont State Police, U.S. Border Patrol, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife

Agents raided the rented farmhouse, but didn't find Brianna. However, they did find marijuana, cocaine, drug paraphernalia, and guns. Four people were living in the farmhouse at the time. Ramon L. Ryan's of Queens, New York, and his cousin, Nathaniel Charles Jackson of North Carolina. Stephanie A. Machia and Timothy Powell, both of Berkshire, were also living there. Police arrested all four people, and they admitted to knowing Brianna, but all of them denied having anything to do with her disappearance. Ryan's, who went by the nickname Street, and Jackson, who went by Lowe, left the area after their arraignment and bond release. Jackson left the state, and Ryan's went to Burlington, Vermont.

Ryan's and Jackson both flip-flopped their stories on whether they knew Brianna Maitland. One minute they did know her. The next, they didn't. However, investigators were able to make the connection, but had no evidence to support their involvement in Brianna's case. Private investigator Greg Overracker spoke with Lance and Tim of the podcast Crawlspace. And he said this about Ryan's and Jackson. He said, these guys knew her name.

they knew her well. I can put each of them with Brianna one-on-one where people walked in and they were together just the two of them. There's actually an incident where that big old car Brianna had came roaring down the country road and Brianna's brother Wayland sat there and watched her tear past their house. Jackson and Ryans were in a car behind her tearing after her. So they know her and they won't admit it. Overracker also said Jackson and Ryan's moved to Northern Vermont to traffic crack cocaine. This was a huge problem for the state of Vermont. Dealers from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York began to make their way into some of the smaller Vermont communities where they were either short on police staff or in some cases had no police force

at all. The dealers, including Rines and Jackson, targeted and sold drugs to the local kids. In towns where there wasn't much for kids to do, like where Brianna lived, many kids turned to drugs and partying. Brianna is believed to have been part of the drug scene, but her own use of drugs is debatable. Early in the investigation, investigators pretty much said her drug use contributed to her disappearance. However, while not denying Brianna may have dabbled in drugs, her family does not believe it contributed in any way to her disappearance. Brianna's father, Bruce, said that while she may have dabbled with marijuana, she wasn't in the hard drugs. They have always believed she was abducted.

Overecker also said he received the tip about Raymond Ryans. He recounted that tip as follows. Someone asked Brianna to get drugs from Ryans. She gave him the money, went to pick up the drugs, and Ryans didn't have them. He just said pretty much flat out, what are you going to? to do. So at that point, she just got ripped off by a drug dealer and she confronted him and there was an altercation. So I think it's pretty clear that Jackson and Ryan's were not sains. But the question is, did they have something to do with Brianna's disappearance? Chloe Cantor wrote on her

blog, Chloe from Crawl Space, that some of the teenage girls in Brianna's circle felt uncomfortable around Lowe because he pressured them, he begged them to go to the city, either Burlington or even New York City. And he did this by offering them drugs, money, and the opportunity to stay at some of the finer hotels. Chloe also wrote that she learned from multiple sources that Lowe did convince a local girl to go to New York City with him. This girl was excited to see New York City for the very first time, but as soon as they arrived, Lowe tried to pimp her out. When the teenager refused, he ditched her. Shortly after Brianna Maitland's disappearance, some of her friends were at a McDonald's drive-thru, when Charles Jackson allegedly yelled

at them that if he was arrested for Brianna's disappearance, then they'd all go down with him, and they'd all go missing. On July 4th, 2004, 25-year-old La Gia Collins, who went by the nickname Gia, disappeared from her Burlington, Vermont apartment. Ryan's was her living boyfriend at the time and was the first person a reporter missing. Gia's body was found at the end of July 2004 in a wooded area in Green Mountain National Forest outside Ripton, Vermont. She had been murdered. Cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head, and the murder was weapon was likely a baseball bat. One of Ryan's associates, a woman named Ellen De Charm, confessed to Gia's murder and was later

convicted and sentenced to prison in 2006. She told authorities that she hit Gia with a baseball bat while robbing Gia during a prearranged drug deal. According to reports at that time, Gia had armed herself with a handgun and planned on selling crack cocaine to DeCarm early on July 3rd. 5th, 2004. But things went awry. A fight broke out over payment and do charm hit Gia with the baseball bat in a fit of crack-induced rage. She then called her boyfriend Moses Robar and he had another person dumped Gia's body outside Ripton. Robar shot himself in the head. Just a short while later on July

12. Ryan's was never charged in Gia's death, but it's hard to ignore the possibility of Ryan's involvement in really, to me, morph both of these cases. He was acquainted with Brianna Maitland. He was obviously very acquainted with Gia. So you have one woman that disappeared, one woman that was murdered. The common denominator is that they both knew. Ryans. In 2006, police received the tip about a possible sighting Brianna at a casino in New Jersey. A Vermont business owner was visiting the casino on the evening of January 17th when he saw a young woman playing at a blackjack table at Caesar's casino in Atlantic City. She wore a striking resemblance to Brianna. The woman was with an older white male in his 40s, and she didn't appear

to be in distress. She was chatting with her companion and others at the table. The businessman was convinced that the young woman was Brianna. He didn't go up to her and ask if she was Brianna, but he called police when he returned to Vermont, and they went to the casino and obtained the casino's security footage. Images of the woman were released to the media in 2006, but she has never been identified. Brianna's family was shown the footage. Waylon said it was not Brianna, but her parents were initially on the fence about it. But after the images were blown up, Brianna's parents agreed that the woman wasn't their missing daughter. This was only one of several dead-end leads that came in.

Bruce addresses the frustration over so many dead-end leads and what he calls falsehoods. There's been so much falsehoods thrown out. I mean, we could go on for hours. You know, there was pictures of Brianna taken supposedly on a camera in Atlantic City. I consider that to be a falsehood. Someone that looked like Brianna for sure, but it wasn't Brianna. I've always been very open to people with ideas about kind of what they happen. And so people take these cases, you know, online or something.

And, you know, quite frankly, different ideas have come up. And, you know, and actually some good information has come up from time to time. That people pick up on podcast stories or different things like that. So I try to just absorb it in. You know, obviously people will give me information that I know isn't true. And I'm open to it. So I think really I wouldn't consider, you know, a waste. I mean, obviously we're not going to look at something we know is false,

but I certainly wouldn't fall anyone else for looking at it and coming up with different conclusions. Anytime you did a TV show or disappeared or one of those things, you get calls from, you know, or they would get calls from, you know, all over the country. And, you know, quite frankly, all over the world. and they still kind of trickle in. I mean, three, four years ago, there was a, and you just kind of wonder sometimes, but there was a, I'll tell you a story

that I probably never told, you know, but, you know, a policeman from Italy, of all places called in and said, well, you know, hey, there's this girl I've been interacting with. She's obviously American. You know, I think this, you know, this maybe could be Brianna, and, you know, here's her picture.

And, you know, when you get that picture, you know, obviously it's not. But, you know, these kind of things still trickle in, you know. I mean, it's, it is amazing. Your emotional response is, oh, my God, she's alive somewhere, you know. I mean, there's always that, there's that sliver of hope. It kind of gets regenerated. There has been a lot of talk on whether or not Brianna's case could be related to the disappearance of Moora Murray.

Police say that they're not. Mora disappeared five weeks before Brianna on February 9th, 2004, under similar circumstances. We covered that case on episode 46. Mora disappeared after getting into a small single car accident on the night of February 9th. She's never been found. Both girls were young brunettes whose vehicles were found damaged and abandoned. after they disappeared. There has even been talk of a possible serial killer.

FBI investigated whether serial killer Israel Keys was responsible for Brianna and Moore's disappearances. And this is a case morph that I covered with Gibby on true crime all the time. Israel Keys is a fascinating guy. I don't know if that's the right word, but I think it is in the context of our true crime. obsession, Keyes confessed to the 2011 murders of Bill and Lorraine Courier of Exus, Vermont, and he was linked to the murder of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig of Alaska.

He also confessed to as many as five unnamed victims, four in Washington State, and one on the East Coast, a body that he claims he dumped in New York. And I think this is a part of what makes Keyes so fast. He traveled extensively. He planned extensively. He traveled to the East Coast to visit family in Maine. He also had property in Constable, New York. But FBI agents learned through financial records that he was somewhere else on the days that both Brianna and Mora disappeared. And so they subsequently ruled him out as a suspect in both of their disappearances. And when it comes to the connection between Brianna Maitland and Moore Murray, to date, the police have said that there is no evidence to suggest that the two cases are related. Brianna Maitland has never been found. Her case has been featured on Dateline's NBC and investigation discoveries disappeared.

It was also profiled on an episode of the Oxygen Network docu-series, the disappearance of Moore Murray. Since Brianna Maitland vanished, her parents, Bruce and Kelly, Maitland, have divorced, but both are still actively searching for the truth about what happened to Brianna. If there's any bright spot in this case, it's that the search for the truth in Brianna's case led Bruce Maitland to become involved in a project that helps other people that have been through similar experiences. That project is called Private Investigations for the Missing. I use two private investigators that, you know, I cover it. some on them. They've been very, very generous with their time on me. And one great overacker

has probably been with me for over 10 years. And through all the experiences that I've had with private investigators, and Lou Barry is another one that actually has, you know, done a lot for me. But I've come to realize the real, there's some real value in private investigators, especially when the police have gotten to the point of where the case is more or less a cold case for. People good qualify, and I've had a couple of private investigators I worked with, which, you know, I didn't think were that good. But these two guys, I learned the lesson that people will give tons of information to private investigators that they will never give the police. And good private investigators are, you know, atrociously expensive. and for regular people to be able to afford.

You know, when you're talking, you know, 60 to $100 an hour plus expenses, you know, they can just drive a regular middle class guy like me, you know, right? You could destroy yourself financially. The rest of your life in some aspects it's gone to shit, and you really don't, you know, want to destroy all of it. So we talked about this and we thought,

wouldn't it be great if there was an organization that, you know, would connect with families and actually use investigators to help families with their missing loved ones. And, you know, we both thought it was a great idea, and we kind of kicked it around, and I really was hesitant about it for a while. But last year, I decided to do it, and, you know, we started private investigations for the missing. And, you know, the goal there is exactly as the name says is we screen the investigators. And the long-term goal is to have investigators all through the country if we can get the funding. Because I've also determined that having a local investigator that knows the culture, knows the area, knows who's who, is the best way, the best person to get answers. The goal here is to have a team of investigators that we can choose cases where we can help families to find their missing loved ones and be able to compensate those investigators.

And I found I've had a lot of, you know, good feedback from different investigators. And guys are just not going to, it's not, we're not looking for the type of investigators that's just won't spillable hours. We're looking for the type of guy that is willing to do this is not for free, should be paid for the interview time, but, you know, do the research time. And then take it on as sort of a little bit of a giving back mission in themselves. We're fundraising for that now. We're actually looking at some cases that we would like to get on as soon as we get to a funding level that we can, you know, up and go on it. And it's just a tremendous, I know from my own feelings, when nothing's going to be.

going on, it feels a lot worse than if someone's looking or something has something going on. It just gives you, there's a certain spark of hope that it gives to people like me to know that somebody's looking at their loved ones case and is trying to find answers. Check out her website. I'm not much of an internet guy, but I guess we've got a Twitter page and a Facebook page or Twitter account, a Facebook page, and private investigations for the missing.org. You know, we'd love to have people help.

If they can't help in any other way, please, if they're going to buy stuff on Amazon, what our organization is is your organization of choice for Amazon Smile, you know, where Amazon will contribute to half a percent of anything you buy. One of the things when we were kicking it around to get it started is, There's groups for missing people, missing children and stuff,

but very few people do actually on the ground real help the families. The biggest one, you know, is the clearinghouse. Your person will get its name in the clearinghouse, you know, but as far as providing real help the families, you know, the Class Kids Search Center helped me by putting on a search, and that's something they do right away as soon as they can when someone goes missing. But after a case gets cold, as far as I know, there's no one else that's actually going to step in there and step up and help families. So I'm determined to make this all work and happen.

Bruce talked about what drives him to keep going in the search for his daughter. Well, for me, it's never really been a choice. You know, it's just kind of, it's a determination that I'm just going to keep on looking for the rest of my life, you know, and it's necessary to try to find her and find out what happened and possibly, you know, see some people come to justice. And I know I've talked with a lot of different parents over the years of missing kids, and a lot of them kind of take different roots in it. A lot of them kind of just retreat and they move into a hole there.

And, you know, I've just been determined, and I've spent time in that hole, okay, but for sure. And but I've determined myself that I'm just going to keep keep going on. So it's becoming a, you know, a life mission for me. When Brianna Maitland was last seen in 2004, she was described as having brown hair, hazel eyes, she was 5 foot 4, weighed between 105 and 118 pounds. If you have any information about the missing person, case of Brianna Maitland. We want you to contact the Vermont State Police at 802-524-593.

Special thanks goes out to Bruce Maitland for joining us for this episode. And thanks to Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistance. Once again, if you'd like to learn even more about Brianna's case, be sure to check out our friends Chloe, Tim, and Lance over their podcast, True Crime Twins, Quallspace, and Missing Moore Murray. We'll have a great conversation about Brianna's case with Lance and Tim going up on our Patreon feed. So if you're a Patreon supporter, be sure to watch your Patreon feed for that. As always, if you haven't done so yet, take a minute. Go out, give us a five-star rating if you love the show.

Keep telling your friends about criminology. It goes a long way. And if you want to find us on social media, you can find us on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook. Just search for Criminology. Podcast or join our Facebook discussion group, which is criminology podcast discussion and fans. So tough case, more for sure, as a lot of these disappearance cases are, right? Brianna Maitland, Moore Murray, hundreds, thousands of people who have disappeared and are still

missing. I think you can hear that from Brianna's father. It takes an incredible toll on the family. It's something that they live with every single day. You know as a parent and all parents out there listening know as well, there's nothing you wouldn't do for your children and you would never give up searching for them. You'd do anything you had to do. I think it also is heartbreaking when you try to put yourself in that position.

And it's almost impossible not to, right? Morph thinking about that as you listen to a case, as you research a case, I have a daughter. It's not that hard for me to put myself in the position of Bruce Maitland. And it breaks my heart. And I think in some of these missing person cases that we cover, I'm always amazed to see some of the similarities there are between the cases and understand. unfortunately between the families that are going through the same kind of grief looking for answers in the case. So, you know, my heart goes out to them having to deal with that. Yeah, can't be easy at all. But that is it for another episode of criminology. As always,

we'll be back with you next Saturday night with an all new episode. So until then, for Mike Ferguson. And Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care of everyone.