Disappearance of Brianna Maitland

Background

Brianna Maitland was born October 8, 1986 in Burlington, Vermont. On Maitland's seventeenth birthday in October 2003, she had decided to move away from her parents' rural farm. Her mother, Kellie, said there were no serious stresses at home. Rather, she said, Maitland wanted more independence. The teen also wanted to be closer to a group of friends who lived 15 miles (24 km) away and attended a different high school. Maitland enrolled at her friends' high school, but her living arrangements were unstable. By the end of February 2004, she had dropped out of school, moved in with her friend Jillian Stout, and joined a high-school-equivalency program.

Three weeks prior to her disappearance, Maitland was physically attacked at a party by a female acquaintance named Keallie Lacross. The motive for the attack is unclear. Maitland suffered a broken nose and concussion; she later filed charges against Lacross. The complaint was subsequently dropped three weeks after Brianna disappeared. Police have stated that Lacross was cleared of any involvement in Brianna's disappearance.

On the day Maitland disappeared, she and her mother were shopping together around mid-day; her father, Bruce, was out of state working in New York at the time. Earlier that morning, Brianna had taken an exam to receive her GED. As they waited to check out, Kellie said something outside the store caught Brianna's attention. She told her mother she would be right back and left the store. Kellie completed her purchase and met Brianna in the parking lot. She said during the drive to Jillian Stout's home, her daughter seemed shaken and agitated. Kellie, not wanting to pry, did not ask what had happened and dropped her off at Jillian's home. This was the last time her mother saw Brianna.

Disappearance

At the time of her disappearance, Maitland was living with her friend, Jillian Stout, in Sheldon, Vermont, about 20 miles (32 km) west of Montgomery. At about 3:30 p.m. on Friday, March 19, Maitland left a note saying she'd return after work that evening. She departed for the Black Lantern Inn in a 1985 Oldsmobile sedan registered to her mother, Kellie. After a busy, uneventful evening at work, Maitland clocked out at 11:20 p.m. She told her co-workers she needed to get home and rest before working the next day at her second job in St. Albans. By all accounts Maitland was alone in her vehicle when she left.

Early the next afternoon, a Vermont State Police trooper was dispatched to an abandoned house on Route 118 in Richford, about a mile from the Black Lantern Inn. Maitland's car was found backed into the side of the house. Known locally as "the old Dutchburn house," the siding of the home had been breached by the rear end of the car. A piece of plywood that had been covering a window lay on the car's trunk. Two of Maitland's paychecks were on the front seat of the car, and outside it, law enforcement observed loose change, a water bottle, and an unsmoked cigarette. The trooper assumed the car had been abandoned by a drunk driver, and a towing company took the vehicle to a local garage.

Maitland was not reported missing for a number of days. Her mother, Kellie, did not learn about the accident with the Oldsmobile until five days after it was discovered. Jillian Stout saw Brianna's note on Friday, March 19, spent the weekend away, and found the note undisturbed when she returned on Monday. Assuming Brianna was staying elsewhere, she did not call Kellie Maitland until the following day.

On Tuesday, March 23, Kellie began calling various people in order to find Brianna, including friends as well as her employers, none of whom had seen or spoken to her. Failing in her efforts — and still unaware that the vehicle Brianna had been driving had been recovered — she filed a missing persons report that day. On Thursday, March 25, Kellie and her husband, Bruce, gave over photos of Brianna to Vermont State Police in St. Albans. A trooper showed them a picture of the car crashed at the Dutchburn house, upon which they immediately identified the car as Maitland's. Kellie Maitland said in interviews that she was "instinctively revulsed" by the photo, and believed someone else, not Brianna, had left the car in such a way.

Witness sightings of Maitland's vehicle

After Maitland's reported disappearance, several individuals came forward to law enforcement to report sightings of Maitland's vehicle at the Dutchburn house the night she disappeared:

Initial findings

The Vermont State Police, who led the official investigation for the first months after Maitland's disappearance were skeptical that foul play was involved, considering the possibility that Maitland was a runaway. The area surrounding the Dutchburn house was gone over on foot by police and search dogs, but nothing was found. Maitland's vehicle was processed by the state crime laboratory for evidence on March 30, 2004, after the car had been impounded at a local garage for several days. Upon the car's return to the Maitland family, Brianna's father Bruce noted that his daughter's ATM card, glasses, contact lens case, and migraine medication had all been left inside.

It was later concluded by law enforcement that foul play was the probable cause of Maitland's disappearance. Maitland's parents speculated that she may have been abducted by multiple people, stating that it would have been difficult for a single assailant to subdue her given her extensive training in jiu-jitsu. The disappearance of Maura Murray, a college student from Massachusetts in northwest New Hampshire the month before, was deemed unrelated to Maitland's disappearance by law enforcement, in spite of the events occurring within 90 miles (140 km) of each other. In 2004 Maitland's family organized a website, now defunct, titled bringbrihome.org, with a posted maximum reward of USD$20,000 for information leading to her whereabouts. According to a March 2017 article published in the Burlington Free Press, the reward remained unclaimed.

In the week following Maitland's disappearance, the Vermont State Police received an anonymous tip claiming that Maitland was being held against her will in a house in nearby Berkshire, Vermont, 10 miles (16 km) from Montgomery. The rented house, then occupied by Ramon L. Ryans and Nathaniel Charles Jackson, two known drug dealers from out of state, was raided by police. Various drug paraphernalia was discovered inside, as well as substantial amounts of cocaine and marijuana, but no sign of Maitland was found. Ryans was arrested during the raid for drug charges. Upon interviewing Maitland's close friends, law enforcement was informed that Maitland had allegedly experimented with hard drugs in the recent past, specifically crack cocaine, and was an acquaintance of Ryans and Jackson.

In late 2004, police received a letter from an anonymous "older female" who implicated both Ryans and Jackson in Maitland's disappearance and supposed murder. The letter contained allegations, written in graphic detail, that Maitland had been dismembered with a table saw and her body disposed of on a pig farm. Law enforcement was unable to corroborate the claims in the letter. The Maitland family additionally reported that they had received several uncorroborated anonymous phone calls from persons claiming Maitland was "tied to a tree in the woods," and that she had been disposed of at the bottom of a lake.

Later developments

In 2006, security footage at Caesars World casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey showed a woman resembling Maitland sitting at a poker table. The woman was later deemed not to be Maitland.

In March 2016, marking the twelfth anniversary of the case, investigators disclosed to a local television outlet that they had obtained DNA samples from the vehicle Maitland was operating at the time of her disappearance. However, the outcomes of these DNA analyses were not released to the public at that juncture.

Media depictions

Maitland's case has been profiled by Dateline NBC and on the Investigation Discovery documentary series Disappeared in December 2011.

Works cited