Episode 38: The Disappearance of Brianna Maitland
Brianna Maitland, 17, was known to be a free spirit who was a hard worker, skilled in martial arts, and had many friends. She had dropped out of high school after moving around between houses within her social circle, and despite this, maintained a good relationship with her parents. On the morning of March 19th, 2004, Brianna took her exam to get her GED before going to lunch and running errands with her mom, Kellie. She went to her shift as a dishwasher at the Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery, Vermont that night, which was the last time she was seen.
Brianna had left work at around 11:20pm, declining to join her coworkers for dinner, as she had a shift in the morning at a second job as a waitress. She drove away in her mom’s pale green 1985 Oldsmobile and was reportedly alone, according to her coworkers. She had seemed normal and behaved as she normally did at her shift.
The next morning, Saturday, March 20th, Brianna’s Oldsmobile was found backed into an abandoned house a mile from the Black Lantern Inn. The car’s rear wheels were raised and suffered minor damage. Inside were two unopened paychecks addressed to Brianna, her migraine medication, her ATM card, and her contact lenses.
It was five days until Brianna’s parents were alerted to her car being found and her disappearance. Flyers were posted around Vermont and surrounding states, and family and friends conducted searches of their own, on top of the police investigating the location of where the Oldsmobile was found.
To this day, no one is sure of what happened to Brianna Maitland. There have been several theories, including that she ran away or was abducted. A strongly supported theory is that she was murdered due to her drug use, which had only been recently discovered by her parents. Police had received an anonymous phone call in the weeks surrounding her disappearance in which a woman claimed that Brianna had been murdered by two of her acquaintances that were known drug dealers, and that her body had been dismembered and scattered around a pig farm. This, along with other theories, such as her disappearance being connected to that of Maura Murray, has never been confirmed.
Anyone with any information regarding this case or Brianna’s whereabouts is asked to please call the Vermont State Police at 802-524-5993 or the investigation’s official tip line at 802-241-5355.
Image Sources:
reddit.com “Subreddit for News and Discussion on the Disappearance of Brianna Maitland”
disappearedblog.com - “Brianna Maitland”