The Disappearance of Brianna Maitland (Vermont)
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When a 17-year-old girl left work one night in March of 2004, it began what would become one of the most well-known missing persons cases in New England. Her father and a duo of private investigators have dedicated years in their own pursuit of answers. More than anything, they just want to find her. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Breanna Maitland on Dark Down East.

It was around 1:15 p.m. on Saturday, March 20th, 2004, and a Vermont state trooper had just been dispatched for a report of an abandoned car. As he approached the scene along Route 118 in Montgomery, he tried to make sense of the odd sight in front of him. There was a vintage, boxy boat of a car backed into a weathered old farmhouse. Here's private investigator Lewis Barry. Lewis Barry: It was found

literally backed into and up against, in fact hung up on, the foundation of an abandoned house called the Dutchburn House. The Dutchburn House was an old farmhouse once occupied by brothers Harry and Myron Dutchburn. It had been abandoned since the 90s some years after a violent home invasion that left the farmers severely injured.

Before they boarded the place up, the brothers had seen more than a couple drivers go off the road and right into their yard. It's right on a curve. So cars would go off that curve sometimes when they're driving too fast. So they'd go into the field, get stuck in the snow or the mud or whatever, and they'd come and they'd bang on the Dutch burn store. And they'd get up and get the tractor and haul them out of there.

Whether it be slide-offs during inclement weather or a novice driver failing to navigate the curve, or someone getting behind the wheel while intoxicated, seeing a car off the road right in that very spot wasn't all that unusual. When the trooper responded, his initial reaction was, okay, we had a drunk driver who went off the road, got into an accident, and got a ride home.

The car had to have hit the side of the house with some force to end up the way it did. Hard enough that a piece of plywood covering a window on the house fell off and onto the trunk. The front tires were cut hard to the driver's side of the vehicle. The lights were off, and the doors were closed but unlocked.

The trooper saw some things on the ground around the car, some loose change and a necklace. Glancing around inside the vehicle, the keys weren't anywhere to be seen, but he found two paychecks from the Black Lantern Inn. On the pay line was the name Brianna Maitland.

At that moment, the trooper made a decision. He ran the license plate and the car came back registered to a Kelly Maitland. However, instead of contacting the car's registered owner, he decided to track down the establishment and the person listed on the paychecks. So the trooper called for a tow truck and set off to the Black Lantern Inn, but the restaurant was closed.

The car and its driver became a problem for another day as the trooper signed off duty. It would take several days before anyone realized the boxy old boat of a car backed into the abandoned house was connected to the disappearance of 17-year-old Brianna Maitland. Brianna's story is one I've received countless requests to cover.

With a case that is so widely known and discussed already, I knew I needed the help of someone close to the case to help identify fact from fiction. So I originally reached out to Brianna's father, Bruce Maitland, through his nonprofit organization, Private Investigations for the Missing. I received a thoughtful reply from Louis Barry, who is also on the board of the organization. Bruce doesn't do many interviews these days, and for reasons I don't take lightly, he

It has become, I think, increasingly difficult for Bruce to publicly speak on the case, simply because every time he does, it revives memories that he would prefer to keep in the back of his mind. And he does like the media attention, don't get me wrong. It's good for the case, and he knows that. He just can't bring himself to do it.

And people are after him all the time. And Bruce is very wary also of being exploited because he's seen it happen in other cases. So with Bruce's support, Lou is here on Dark Down East to help share Brianna's story.

At the time of Breanna's disappearance in 2004, Louis Berry was a police chief in Massachusetts. He spent about 35 years in law enforcement, 24 of those as chief of police. He also taught college for 30 years. And after his retirement from law enforcement, he began working as a private investigator. Around 2016, Lou saw an article in the paper and learned that Breanna was still missing.

He reached out to Brianna's father to see if he could be of any assistance. Lou met with Bruce and with Gregory Overacker, another private investigator who had been working with Bruce for many years, to get up to speed. Greg actually wrote a book on Brianna's case with her father's permission called The Hunt for Brianna Maitland, which served as a primary source for this episode. It is considered one of the most comprehensive narratives of the case as of its publishing in 2023.

Lou wrote the afterword for Greg's book. After meeting Bruce and Greg, Lou offered to help investigate Brianna's disappearance free of charge, and he's been part of the search for answers ever since. Brianna Maitland grew up with her parents, Bruce and Kelly Maitland, and her brother Waylon, so far north in Vermont that the U.S.-Canadian border was walking distance from their house.

They lived off the grid, relying on solar and water power for electricity, and heated their home with a wood-burning fire. The rural lifestyle played a part in Brianna's hobbies. She was into hunting and snowmobiling and spending time outdoors. But that same rural lifestyle became more isolating for Brianna as she got older. She wanted freedom and a social life.

After some conflict in his marriage, Bruce considered moving out of the house, and Brianna planned to go with him. However, when Bruce ultimately decided to stay, Brianna did not. Bri moved out of her parents' home in October of 2003. She stayed with various friends, and sometimes her new boyfriend, James, who she started dating around the same time she moved out.

Lou says she also occasionally spent the night in her car, but eventually settled in with her childhood friend Jillian and Jillian's father in the town of Shelburne. Lou says Bruce and Kelly more or less approved of Brie's decision to move out. Though she decided to leave high school in November or December of 2003, Brianna was pursuing her GED while working two jobs to support herself. She was seeking freedom and claiming it.

But it's not like she had completely cut ties with her family. In fact, on Friday, March 19th, 2004, Brie and Kelly spent a few hours of quality mother-daughter time together. According to reporting by Sam Hemingway for the Burlington Free Press and an op-ed written by Kelly Maitland published in the same newspaper, that morning, Kelly and Brie got breakfast together before Brie went to take a math test at the Community College of Vermont.

It was the final step to earning her GED certificate. Brie passed the test, and she was in a great mood as she and her mother continued on to do some shopping in St. Albans. At one point that afternoon, though, Brianna's mood shifted. According to her mother, Brianna said, I'm going outside for a few minutes. Went outside, and then when they left, her mother said she seemingly was a little agitated, a little anxious.

A lot has been made of this. Some of the speculation out there is that Bree saw someone or talked to somebody who put her in that mood. But Lou thinks there's a different explanation. Brianna smoked cigarettes. Her mother didn't approve of it. She'd been with her mother all day. We think Brianna went outside to have a cigarette.

And she was, if she was agitated, according to her father, that happened a lot with her mother, and she would get agitated, as probably every teenage girl does, right? Brianna also had to be to work soon and still needed to go home to change and get ready first, so it's possible that she was just a little antsy. Brianna's mother dropped her back at Jillian's house around 2.45 p.m.

Jillian wasn't home from school yet, so before leaving for her shift, Brianna jotted a quick note. It said, quote, working at Black Lantern tonight. Usually get out somewhere around 10 p.m. to 12, end quote. The phone number to the Black Lantern Inn is written below, and it's signed Bri with a heart dotting the I. There was also a handwritten schedule of Brianna's upcoming work hours through the 28th.

Brie hopped in her 1985 pale green Oldsmobile Delta 88 and drove to the Black Lantern Inn about 30 minutes away in Montgomery. The Black Lantern Inn, or simply The Lantern, is a cozy New England inn housed in a brick building with stately white pillars surrounding its front porch. During the colder months, there might be a wood stove glazing inside. The atmosphere at the inn's restaurant is laid-back and homey.

While there may have been a bar, it wasn't a bar where you might see a party crowd or a rowdy bunch after dark. This was a relaxed, quiet spot in a relaxed, quiet town. As far as Lou has learned, there was nothing remarkable about Brianna's shift that night. She worked as a dishwasher, so she spent most of her time in the kitchen.

Sometimes, after the restaurant closed down, the staff would hang out for some food and maybe a drink. But that night, Bree told her coworkers she couldn't stay. She had just started a second job at a diner in St. Albans, and she had an early shift the next morning.

Some previous reporting on Brianna's case suggests Brianna had plans to go out socializing after work or that she was planning to take a short trip out of town. Lou says there's absolutely zero evidence she had plans one way or another, and these stories are an example of the misinformation and speculation that has made its way into the public sphere, particularly at the beginning of the case. Here's what we know for sure.

Brianna punched out at 11.20 p.m. and walked through the door into the night. Where she went next, that is the big unknown. Brianna's friend Jillian had spent the weekend visiting family in St. Albans, but she saw Brianna's note before leaving on Friday night. When Jillian returned home on Monday, March 22nd, the note was still in its original location and Brianna wasn't home.

Jillian figured Brianna was just staying somewhere else, maybe with her parents, so she didn't really question the fact that Bree wasn't there. But when Brianna still didn't come back the next day, Jillian decided to call the Maitlands. Bruce and Kelly hadn't seen or heard from Brianna all weekend either. They started calling around to friends, hoping to track her down at someone's house, but they couldn't find her.

Bruce and Kelly officially reported their daughter missing to Vermont State Police that day, March 23rd. VSP indicated they would put out an all-points bulletin for her vehicle, the 1985 pale green Oldsmobile Delta 88. And Bruce and Kelly spent the next 48 hours trying to locate their daughter themselves. On March 25th, still with no sign of her, they showed up at the St. Albans State Police barracks.

As they gave another description of Brianna and her very recognizable vehicle, a trooper pulled out a photo of the car he had towed on March 20th that had been found backed into an abandoned house. The trooper still hadn't filed his reports from the weekend before, and so when Bruce and Kelly first reported Bri missing, the car was sitting at Lutz's Automotive in Montgomery unclaimed, the owner still not notified.

With Bree's parents at the state police barracks now, realizations collided. The abandoned vehicle and Brianna's missing vehicle were one in the same. There's no description of emotions I can come up with here that will ever adequately reflect what Bruce and Kelly may have felt when they saw that photo, so I won't try. Bruce and Brianna's brother went to find the car at the garage. They couldn't find the keys,

So they took a crowbar to open the trunk because his fear was that she was in the trunk of the vehicle. And you can imagine that feeling for a few seconds until that trunk opened and she wasn't there. It must have been horrendous. I can't even begin to imagine what he went through in those few minutes there. So that's when they basically started investigating the case as a missing person.

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More than five days passed between the last known sighting of Brianna Maitland and the realization that her car had been backed into a house and abandoned on the side of the road. Five critical days of investigation lost. The search for Brianna was starting at a disadvantage. You can see pictures of Brianna's vehicle backed into the Dutchburn home at darkdowneast.com slash briannamaitland.

The photos will help you visualize one, just how odd of a scene it was, and two, the truly rural setting of the house. It may have only been a two minute or so drive from the center of Montgomery and the Black Lantern Inn on North Main Street, but it becomes farmland fast. In order for her vehicle to end up at the Dutchburn home, Brianna would have turned left out of the inn's parking lot and headed north on Route 118.

The Dutchburn home would have been on her left, and close enough to the road that a passing motorist would be able to see the big green car where it sat. In fact, as Vermont State Police and private investigators have learned, several passing motorists did see it. "But several people went past and saw it there. Headlights on, different reports say the doors were open, they weren't open, depending upon the time."

Interestingly, one witness who claims he saw Brianna's car in the early morning hours of March 20th was James, who was by then, Bri's ex-boyfriend. According to Greg Overacker's book, The Hunt for Brianna Maitland, James told police that he recognized Brianna's car as he was driving home from partying in Canada. James had a few different versions of what he did after he spotted Brianna's car.

In one version, he saw her car around 4.30 a.m. and shined his headlights on it but realized Brie wasn't there so he left. In another version, he saw the car around 2.30 a.m. and fully pulled over, got out of his car, and checked to see if Brie was inside the vehicle. He claimed that the car's headlights were on and both doors were open, so not finding Brie inside or anywhere nearby, he turned off the lights and closed the doors and went home.

In both versions, he claims he didn't report Bree's apparently abandoned car because he was intoxicated and didn't want to get in trouble with police. We'll talk more about James later. Around 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, March 20th, three people who referred to themselves as the "World Travelers" were driving to Jay Peak when they noticed Bree's vehicle at the abandoned house. The bizarre sight compelled them to stop and even take photos.

It's because of the curiosity of these three individuals that the public has seen photos of Brianna's car where it was found. The world travelers looked around the car and finding the doors unlocked, they opened them to see inside. They saw non-perishable foods and some fast food wrappers on the floor. Outside the vehicle, they found a squeezed lime wedge sitting on the trunk, later describing it as something you might see on a cocktail or in a bottle of Corona.

There was a to-go coffee cup on the ground and 65 cents in change a few feet away. Lou tells me that the lime wedge was lost sometime before the investigation began. Before the world travelers and before James saw Bree's car there, there was another sighting. Lou told me that the earliest known sighting of Brianna's car at the Dutchburn home was around 11.45 p.m.,

That means the window of time between when Brianna punched out of work at 11.20pm and the first sighting of her vehicle is just about 25 minutes. 25 minutes at most for something to happen. I asked Lou to be more specific about the information he has regarding the first known sighting of her car at 11.45. I can't really get into detail with that except that

We just have some information that pretty much confirms that it was there then. I don't want to say too much about more information that we have relating to that. Relatively, in retrospect, relatively new information. The existing photos, while helpful, don't answer every question. What gear was it in? Was the car actually stuck on the foundation? Was the seat in a position that reflected Brianna's height? Or was it pushed backwards or forwards?

The things that would assist in any sort of reconstruction were lost when the car was towed. On March 26th, Vermont State Police conducted a search at the Dutchburn property. Of course, with the car having been removed from the area nearly a week earlier, it was anything but a protected scene. There could have been an untold number of vehicles or people or animals in and out of their scents.

According to Greg Overrecker's book, police utilized canine units to search the property and a National Guard helicopter circled above. Investigators turned up some loose change, a water bottle and an unsmoked cigarette. But the evidentiary value of these articles is questionable even today. What was trash left on the roadside and what was connected to the case somehow was next to impossible to discern.

There was also an undisclosed item of interest. That item and others were retained for testing. Meanwhile, Brianna's family was carrying out search efforts of their own. The Class Kids Foundation helped to organize and instruct upwards of 300 volunteers in effective search strategies. While searchers found a few items thought at the time to have some significance, all items were proven to be unrelated to Brianna's disappearance.

Nearly a month of searching failed to locate Brianna. Bruce Maitland wrote a letter to the governor openly criticizing the Vermont State Police response to his daughter's disappearance. The letter reads in part, quote, End quote.

On April 14th, a few days before he sent the letter to the governor, Bruce had received anonymous information that his daughter was being held in the root cellar of a home about 15 minutes away from the Black Lantern Inn in Berkshire, Vermont. He called Vermont State Police and told them, "Either you search the house or I will." Vermont State Police responded to the home on Reservoir Road the next day with Fish and Game wardens and Border Patrol agents.

The occupants gave authorities permission to search the house, but Brianna was not there. Instead, police found pot, crack cocaine, two firearms, and other items. Four occupants of the home at the time of the search were arrested on drug charges, including 28-year-old Ramon Ryans, Nathaniel Jackson, whose age is not reported, and two others. Ramon and Nathaniel were known to sell illegal drugs in the area.

On April 16th, the day after the raid at the house in Berkshire, investigators held an inquest at the Franklin County Courthouse. State's attorney James Hughes said that it helped to eliminate a couple of theories, but also brought new ones to the surface. He also indicated that police were actively investigating the possibility that Breanna's disappearance was somehow tied to the sale of illegal drugs in Franklin County.

According to reporting by H.P. Alborelli Jr. and Jed Kattler, originally published in the County Courier and reprinted with permission in Greg Overacker's book, all four of the individuals arrested at the Reservoir Road home said they knew of Breanna Maitland, but they didn't know what happened to her. After the arrests and arraignments, Ramon left town and was known to be staying in Burlington with 25-year-old Ligia Rae Collins, known among friends as Gia.

In July, Ramon reported Gia missing. A few weeks later, Gia's body was found in the woods of Ripton. She'd been violently attacked with a baseball bat and pushed down a set of stairs during a suspected drug transaction. The investigation led police to Ellen Ducharme, who was arrested and charged with Gia's murder.

Two individuals, Timothy Cruz and Moses Robar, were suspected of helping transport and dump Gia's body. Timothy would be arrested and charged with crimes related to Gia's murder. Moses Robar died by suicide as police approached him for questioning.

Meanwhile, as the trials for Ellen Ducharme and Timothy Cruz were pending, Ramon Ryans left the state and failed to appear in court for the charges relating to the raid back in April 2004 that resulted from the false tip that Brianna was being held in the basement of the house. When police finally tracked Ramon down in May of 2005, he returned to Vermont and pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and cocaine. He was released on time served.

Interestingly, the charges against Ramon were reportedly reduced to misdemeanors in exchange for an interview and polygraph examination relative to Brianna's case. The results of that polygraph have been called inconclusive, with indicators of possible deception. So, the eyes of the investigation were already on this group of individuals,

And the scrutiny only got more intense when Ellen Ducharme's sister, Debbie Gorton, told police she knew who was responsible for Brianna's disappearance. Debbie seemed to toss this bit of information out as a Hail Mary as police were arresting her son for unrelated charges in March of 2006.

She said if they took her son, she wouldn't testify against her sister at trial later that year, and that's when she mentioned having details about Brianna's case too. During a recorded statement, Debbie told an officer that Ramon Ryans and two other people, Timothy Cruz and Moses Robar, who were also implicated in the disposal of Ligia Collins' body, killed Brianna and disposed of her body in a way that she was unlikely to be found.

Debbie claimed that her sister Ellen was there when Brianna was killed, and Ellen told her all of this information. The specifics of Debbie's story that she claims her sister told her about Brianna don't need to be repeated. The story is, in a word, horrific. It turns out to be totally untrue.

There was no basis to it whatsoever. All the information she gave them is not accurate. So that, unfortunately, took a lot of time, effort, and resources from the state police. Brianna's name continued to come up. Part of Ellen's defense at her trial for the murder of Ligia Collins was that she believed Ligia and Ramon Ryans, who she was dating at the time, had borrowed or stolen a handgun from her and Moses Robar.

She believed that Legia and Ramon had used the gun in a crime, and she feared that the crime would come back on her and Moses since it was their gun. The crime in question? Ellen claimed it had something to do with Brianna's disappearance. Investigators have not been able to corroborate any of these claims. Neither Ramon Ryans nor Timothy Cruz have been charged with any crimes as it relates to Brianna's disappearance.

In the case of Ligia Collins, Ellen Ducharme eventually accepted a deal pleading guilty to second-degree murder. She was sentenced to 25 years to life.

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It's everything you want in an SUV. Learn more at chevy.com forward slash equinox. As investigators continued to dig into the circumstances of Brianna's life at the time she disappeared, they learned that she'd been the victim of an alleged assault just a few weeks before she went missing. Brianna's friend Keely, whose full name is public in other sources, had heard that Brie had hung out with Keely's boyfriend, betraying their friendship.

The conflict between the friends escalated to an alleged assault on February 27th. Both Bree and Keely were at the same party, but after Bree left to sit outside in James' truck, Keely attacked her, throwing several hard blows to Brianna's face and head through the truck window. Bree sustained two black eyes and a concussion and went to the hospital for treatment with her mother the next day.

Brie filed a report and pressed charges against Keeley for assault and battery, but the charges were dropped on March 27th, just a few days after Brie was reported missing. On July 28th, 2004, Vermont State Police searched a manure pit and pond on a farm that was owned by the father of the boyfriend in question that apparently precipitated the assault on Brianna.

The substance of the tip isn't clear. However, after running it back to the source, it was found to have no basis in truth. Neither Brianna nor evidence relating to her disappearance was found in the search. Meanwhile, the Maitlands continued their own search and investigative efforts. By June of 2004, they were offering a $20,000 reward for Brianna's safe return or for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for her disappearance.

They independently followed up on tips they received. One tip said that Brianna was dancing at a club in Boston. Sam Hemingway reports for the Free Press that Bruce and Kelly went to sea for themselves, but the woman just looked like Brianna. It wasn't her.

They searched culverts and embankments along Interstate 87 in New York to Vermont Route 100. They'd chased down possible sightings in Hartford, Connecticut and across the border in Montreal, Canada. But they did not find their daughter. In 2006, police received reports that Brianna was seen at Caesars Atlantic City Hotel Casino on January 17th. And there was even surveillance footage of the person believed to be Brianna.

A ceiling-mounted camera captured video of a dark-haired woman at a table game, but her face is obstructed and only partially visible. She was at the table for about an hour, playing the game while smoking cigarettes and drinking. She did not appear to be in distress. Vermont State Police viewed a copy of the footage, as did Bruce and Kelly. They thought it looked like her, and Kelly even said that the mannerisms and hand and foot movements of the woman reminded her of Brianna.

But the more they studied it, the more they were certain it could not be their daughter. The sighting was considered a case of mistaken identity. Lou told me he does not believe they've ever determined the identity of the woman in the video. In October of 2007, Vermont State Police announced the discovery of a pair of weathered jeans found about seven miles away from where Brianna was last seen.

Brianna's mother said they were possibly a brand Brianna was known to wear. They were sent to the FBI laboratory in Virginia for advanced testing on a piece of hair found in the jeans. However, there wasn't enough DNA to determine if they belonged to Brianna.

According to an Associated Press report published in the Rutland Herald, the discovery of the jeans led to an expansion of the investigation with new interviews and re-interviewing old witnesses. However, Lou says that the jeans are not believed to be connected to her disappearance. Police have conducted additional searches in areas of interest throughout the years. They have returned to the Dutchburn house. They brought cadaver dogs to Montgomery and Berkshire. They searched in Richford, Vermont.

In February of 2012, when a human skull showing signs of trauma was discovered in Danby, they followed up on that tip too. The skull was later determined to belong to a woman of Asian descent. Another skull fragment was unearthed in May of 2012 when a private contractor was working on a piece of land in Northfield.

The Vermont State Police Crime Scene Search Team surveyed the area and conducted further excavation over the next week, and it uncovered additional skeletal remains believed to be of human origin. The remains were sent to an FBI laboratory for possible identification. Again, the remains were not Breanna. Fingerprint and DNA analysis has been part of the investigation into Breanna's disappearance from the very beginning.

Vermont State Police processed Brianna's car. They took fingerprints from surfaces inside and out and collected DNA samples from the fabric of the vehicle. They've identified the fingerprints, all people who had legitimate access to the vehicle at one point or another. They've identified the DNA that was found in there, people that had legitimate access at one time or another.

According to Greg Overacker's book, a report from the Vermont Forensic Lab shows that DNA from one of Brianna's ex-boyfriends, not James, matched a sample taken from her vehicle. Other samples were compared to and matched Bri's close friends. A latent fingerprint found in her car also matches a left-hand print of a friend.

In 2020, the Vermont State Police Major Crimes Unit announced they'd be working with Authram for new testing on DNA evidence in Brianna's case. Authram is a Texas-based company billed as the world's first private DNA laboratory, built specifically to apply the power of modern parallel sequencing to forensic evidence. The cost of the testing was fully funded by Paul Holes and the Murder Squad podcast.

A DNA sample pulled from an item of interest found on the ground near Brianna's vehicle had previously been submitted to CODIS, but there was no match, so it was sent to OTHRUM for analysis with advanced sequencing techniques and genealogical research in hopes of identifying the donor.

I asked Lou what the item was, but he didn't specify. However, he did say that the item tested by Othram in this instance was not the unsmoked cigarette, the loose change, or the water bottle found at the scene. So, Othram was able to develop a DNA profile from the item of interest, but that was just the first step. Next, Vermont State Police located and interviewed individuals who could be possible donors of that DNA profile.

Police collected samples from these individuals for comparison to the DNA profile on the evidence. According to Othram, the testing, "...confirmed DNA from one of the individuals matched the DNA on the item found on the ground near Brianna's vehicle." But a match does not mean the case was solved.

And they found who it belonged to. They interviewed him. And it turns out that the individual has pretty much an airtight alibi as to where he was that night. And it was nowhere near Vermont. In Greg Overacker's book, he states that the person whose DNA was identified on the item at the scene was not related to Brianna's case and is not believed to be involved in her disappearance.

So again, the question remains, who was involved? So in Brianna's case, there's, you know, there's been several people that we looked at hard. Now, I don't, I would never want to speak for the state police.

They may have information that I don't have, I don't know that. But as far as I am aware, there is no one at this particular time that really is under a microscope, so to speak. And that's not to say we don't have people that we think could possibly have been involved. A lot of airtime has been given to the theory that people known to be involved with the sale of illegal drugs in Franklin County were somehow involved in Breanna's disappearance.

According to Sam Hemingway's reporting for the Burlington Free Press, Vermont State Police Lieutenant Tom Nelson said in June of 2004 that Breanna had been quote-unquote involved with people known to be connected to the illegal drug world and that Breanna had a quote, very questionable background and made some unhealthy lifestyle choices, end quote. Greg Overacker indicates in his book that there may have been casual drug use in Breanna's life, but according to Lou Barry,

There's no indication that her disappearance is any way tied into any drug use. Any speculation otherwise is almost entirely fueled by the early lead in her case, that she was being held in a root cellar in a home occupied by Ramon Ryans and others, who were implicated in a supposed secondhand story told to police by Ellen Ducharme's sister. Things just snowballed from there.

I should mention that there was more than one drug-related lead that investigators have explored when it comes to Brianna's case. There have been tips about another person involved in the sale of illegal drugs named Jorge Soto, known as the Joker. He apparently boasted about his involvement in Brianna's disappearance. But no legitimate ties to Jorge Soto have been established that we know of at this time.

Let's talk about Brianna's ex-boyfriend, James. Remember, he told police he saw Brianna's car at the Dutchburn house, but his account of that sighting changed at least once. In one version, he openly admitted to being at the scene of Bri's car and touching her vehicle that night when he closed the doors and turned off the lights.

There are conflicting reports about whether James was truthful regarding his whereabouts on the night of March 19th and into the morning of March 20th, and whether he was really in Canada as he said he was and not closer to town. After interviewing many people about James, and James himself, Lou has concluded that James routinely lied about many things, not just about the night Brianna disappeared.

However, in Lou's assessment, James' changing story is not necessarily an indication of guilt. He was not charged in connection with Brianna's disappearance. James passed away in 2019. What about Keely, the friend of Brianna's who allegedly assaulted her at a party a few weeks before Bri disappeared? Now I say allegedly because she was never convicted as the charges were dropped, but Keely has talked about the assault, and it did happen.

Unsurprisingly, given the situation, Keeley has been the subject of scrutiny over the years. But based on her numerous interviews with police, with private investigators, and with public sources, Keeley has nothing to hide. And, you know, I've interviewed this girl. In fact, I talked to her off and on. I talked to her just last week online.

This girl didn't even have a car at the time. Yet there are people that think that she somehow was responsible for Brianna's disappearance. And then they'll say things like, well, she got somebody to do it. Like this 16, 17-year-old girl is going to order a hit. I mean, come on. Let's be real here. Was she involved? There's nothing to indicate at all that she was.

It's impossible to ignore another major area of speculation that began in the earliest days of Brianna's case, and that's the theorized connection between her disappearance and the disappearance of Maura Murray. If you are not familiar with Maura's case, on February 9th, 2004, a little over a month before Brianna disappeared in Montgomery, Vermont, 21-year-old Maura Murray vanished from the side of the road in the Woodsville village of Haverhill, New Hampshire.

Haverhill is about 100 miles from Montgomery. Many media sources and online commenters have pointed out the perceived parallels between Breanna and Morris cases. Certainly at face value, there are similarities. The rural areas, the age range, and both of their vehicles were found abandoned.

However, Vermont State Police, New Hampshire authorities, and even the FBI have reviewed both disappearances and have reached a conclusion that there is no connection with the caveat that until one case or the other is solved, or until any major developments change the understanding of either case, nothing is 100%. Lou also works with Maura Murray's family in their ongoing efforts to find Maura and get answers.

Maura's sister, Julie Murray, released a season of a podcast called Media Pressure in 2024 all about Maura's case. Lou Barry himself is featured in Season 1, Episode 10 of that podcast. One of my fellow audio truck shows, Crime Junkie, also covered Maura Murray's case with the help of Julie Murray. I'll link it for you in the description of this episode. Greg Overacker walks through multiple theories in his book.

But there's one he considers most likely, that Brianna pulled off at the Dutchburn home to meet up with someone and was attacked and abducted. He points out that in photos of Bri's car, the wheels are cut hard to the left towards the driver's side. He believes this could mean Brianna had attempted an evasive maneuver in the car, backing up to retreat from whoever was there, but got stuck on the foundation of the house.

Remember the necklace that the trooper saw on the ground when he first responded to the scene? That could indicate a struggle. If the necklace was Brianna's, we don't actually know if it was. There's nothing to say the necklace had any evidentiary value at all. James said that when he saw the car, both of the doors were open. So maybe Brianna got in through the driver's side but slid across the seat to the passenger side to escape an assailant or was pulled from the car that way.

This theory and others are coulds and maybes and possiblies stitched together in an attempt to make sense of something totally nebulous. There are still many unanswered questions. Did Brianna stop there for some reason? Did someone force her off the road? Was she trying to get away from them, threw it in reverse? I mean, don't forget, this is a, it's a big old car she was driving and she was a very inexperienced driver. She was only 17.

Many theories are built on the assumption that Brianna herself drove her vehicle from the lantern to the location it was found, alone, and did not make any stops in between. But not even that is confirmed to be what happened. Did something happen between the time she left the lantern and the time she got there? And did someone just dump the car there? We have no idea.

Breanna's case remains under active investigation by Vermont State Police and by Lewis Berry on behalf of Breanna's family. Part of the reason why the Maitlands welcomed the assistance of a private investigator to begin with was because of Bruce's early frustration with Vermont State Police and their initial handling of his daughter's case. One of the most common issues that gets pointed out is the trooper's handling of Breanna's vehicle.

failing to connect the car to Brianna's disappearance until several days later directly impacted the initial investigation. We may never know just how different the case would look today had the scene been preserved or searched sooner. However, Lew emphasized that in his experience, the response to the abandoned vehicle wasn't all that unusual. Only in the context of what we know now is the trooper's action or inaction considered a mistake.

There was an article published in the Burlington Free Press on March 30th, 2004. The fourth paragraph is just one sentence, quote, police are not calling her disappearance suspicious, end quote. Roughly three weeks later, Vermont State Police were singing a different tune saying that her disappearance was suspicious and they had not ruled out foul play. But that's just not how it was handled from the jump. Being missing is not a crime.

"Potentially there's a crime that's been involved, but people go missing all the time and there's no crime involved." Therein lies the most basal challenge facing missing persons cases. Too often, disappearances are not treated as suspicious and therefore are not fully investigated with the same resources that might be devoted to an obvious crime like a homicide. It can lead to critical time and potential evidence being lost.

The initial investigation, I don't want to say was botched by any means, but there were, in retrospect, missteps. And I say that only to point out that the procedures up there, pretty much as a result of this case, have been changed so that those missteps don't occur again.

For example, when 29-year-old Tina Fontaine disappeared from Albany, Vermont on January 5th, 2006, detectives were immediately assigned to her case to interview witnesses and collect evidence in the event the suspicious disappearance evolved into something else. In Tina's case, it did evolve into something else. Her boyfriend, Frankie Niles, strangled Tina and buried her body in a shallow grave. He eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Lewis pleased to see that the agency has improved their response to missing persons cases and says that since he began working on Brianna's case, Vermont State Police have been very cooperative. I like to think we work in conjunction with each other. We share information all the time. I've read reports. I've read through their reports. They've shared information with me.

So I can't say enough about the cooperation they've shown. And again, there were some things that could have been done differently, and they'll be the first to admit it. Other agencies have been involved in the investigation throughout the years. In 2024, the FBI announced a reward of $40,000 for information in Brianna's case. Lew says that while he hasn't seen rewards be very productive in other longstanding cases,

they did get some good information after that tip was announced. What that specific information was, he couldn't disclose on record. But it was at least promising that things are still happening in Brianna's case, and there's still information to uncover. In 2018, Brianna's father, Bruce Maitland, founded his non-profit organization, Private Investigations for the Missing.

The organization was born from Bruce's own frustration with the lack of continuity in Brianna's case. It was Greg Overacker who suggested the idea to Bruce, pointing out that it was too bad no organization existed that would fund private investigators for families who work for the family and would keep in contact with the family in ways that law enforcement often cannot. Bruce writes on the website, quote,

It is an unfortunate reality that police have limited resources and time, and private investigators can sometimes get answers from people unwilling to speak to police. It is also an unfortunate reality that the costs of private investigators are beyond the ability of most of us to afford.

Lou Barry is on the board, and he's also heavily involved in case management. He doesn't make a dime for the work he does at the organization.

Our only expense, so to speak, is the investigation expense. No one gets paid in our organization aside from the investigators we hire. And even, I think the majority of them donate their time.

In 2024, private investigations for the missing received 205 case requests. Of the cases that met the requirements for investigation, 11 individuals were located via data search, 19 individuals were located alive or by voluntary disappearance, and three people were located deceased. Other cases remain under investigation.

You can see all the cases currently handled by PIFTM at investigationsforthemissing.org. If you're able, you can also support their investigative efforts with a donation. A link to donate is in the description of this episode. Bruce Maitland wrote the foreword included in the Hunt for Brianna Maitland book. It begins...

For those of us blessed to have known Brie, you will remember what a free spirit she was. Just being around her and her zest for life could bring happiness. He shares memories of dancing with his daughter, her feet on his, jamming out to Dire Straits' hit Walk of Life, her love of the movie, The Muppet, Christmas Carol, how he watched it over and over with her, laughing all the way. He continues, quote, "'There is just something wrong with a parent losing a child,'

The universe is not supposed to work that way. We as parents should be able to watch our children grow, raise families of their own, and enjoy a lifetime relationship. Our parents passed on, we will eventually do the same, and our children inherit the future. It's a life-changing, life-cycle destroyer when it's broken, never to be fixed.

Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-CALL-FBI. That's 1-800-225-5324. Or the Vermont State Police tip line at 1-844-84VTIPS. That's 1-844-848-8477.

If you don't want to talk to police, you can call the Private Investigations for the Missing tip line at 1-866-331-6660 or email piftmtips at gmail.com. Next week is an off week for Dark Down East, but I'll be back the following Thursday with a new episode.

Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.

Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?