Brianna Alexandra Maitland went missing on March 19, 2004, when she was 17 years old.
She disappeared after finishing her shift at the Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery, Vermont.
The next day, her car was found backed up against the side of an empty house, about a mile from her workplace.
Since then, Maitland has not been seen or heard from.
Background
Brianna Maitland was born on October 8, 1986, in Burlington, Vermont, to Bruce and Kellie Maitland (née Fisher).
She grew up with her older brother on their parents' farm in East Franklin, Vermont, close to the Canadian border.
She went to Missisquoi Valley Union High School but transferred to Enosburg Falls High School in Enosburg Falls during her sophomore year.
In her youth, Maitland received extensive training in kung fu.
On Maitland's seventeenth birthday in October 2003, Maitland decided she wanted to leave her parents' farm.
Her mother, Kellie, said there were no major problems at home which made her want to leave.
She said Maitland left because she wanted to be close to some of her friends who didn't attend her school.
Maitland eventually started attending her friends' high school.
But her living situation was unstable because she often moved in and out of different friends' homes.
By the end of February 2004, Maitland dropped out of high school and moved in with her childhood friend, Jillian Stout.
Jillian stayed in Sheldon, Vermont, which is about 20 miles (32 km) west of Montgomery.
The Fight Before Maitland's Disappearance
Three weeks before she disappeared, Maitland was physically attacked at a party by a former female friend, Keallie Lacross.
The motive for the attack was not clear initially.
However, Maitland's father, Bruce, later said the fight was due to jealousy over how Maitland was talking to a male friend at the party.
One of her friends at the party said that even though Maitland had martial arts training, she refused to fight with Lacross.
As a result, Lacross hit Maitland in the face several times while Maitland was sitting in a truck.
The fight left Maitland with a broken nose although she later filed charges against Lacross.
The charges were dropped three weeks after Maitland disappeared, and Lacross was cleared of any involvement in her disappearance.
The Disappearance
After dropping out of school, Maitland enrolled in a GED program to continue her education.
On the morning of Friday, March 19, 2004, Maitland took an exam to receive her GED.
After she finished the exam, she and her mother, Kellie, had lunch to celebrate.
Her father, Bruce, didn’t join them because he was working out of state in New York at the time.
Kellie said her daughter was in good spirits and remembered that Maitland had talked about plans to attend college.
After lunch, Maitland and Kellie spent the afternoon shopping and running errands.
While they were in the check-out line at a store, Kellie said that something outside had caught Maitland's attention.
Maitland then told her mother she would be back soon and left the store.
Kellie finished her purchase and joined Maitland in the parking lot.
She noticed that her daughter looked upset, shaken, and agitated.
Maitland told her mother she needed to go home to get ready for her upcoming shift at the Black Lantern Inn, a restaurant in Montgomery.
Not wanting to intrude, Kellie didn’t ask about what happened and dropped Maitland off at Stout's home between 3:30 and 4:00 pm.
That was the last time she saw her daughter.
Before leaving for her work shift, Maitland wrote a note for her roommate Stout, saying she would come back that evening after work.
Maitland then drove to work in a 1985 Oldsmobile sedan registered to her mother, Kellie.
After she finished her shift, she clocked out and left the Black Lantern Inn around 11:20 p.m.
She told her co-workers she needed to go home and rest before her next shift the following day at her second job in St. Albans.
According to all accounts, Maitland was alone in her vehicle when she left, and that was the last time anyone saw her.
Discovery of vehicle
Early the next afternoon, on March 20, a Police officer was sent to an abandoned house about a mile from the Black Lantern Inn where Maitland worked.
Maitland's car was found backed into the side of the house.
The house was locally known as "the old Dutchburn house," and the siding had been damaged by the rear end of Maitland's car.
Two of Maitland's paychecks were on the front seat of the car.
Outside the vehicle, law enforcement found loose change, a water bottle, and an unsmoked cigarette.
The officer assumed the car had been left by a drunk driver, so a towing company transported it to a local garage.
Investigation
Maitland wasn't reported missing right away after she was last seen for several days.
In fact, her mother Kellie only knew about the discovery of Maitland's car five days later.
Her roommate Stout saw Maitland's note on Friday, March 19.
She then went away for the weekend and found the note still intact when she returned on Monday.
Assuming Maitland was staying somewhere else, she didn’t call Kellie until the next day..
On Tuesday, March 23, Kellie started calling different people to find Maitland.
This included her friends and her employers, but sadly, none of them had seen or spoken to her.
After failing in her efforts she filed a missing persons report that day.
She was not aware that Maitland’s vehicle had already been found by then.
On Thursday, March 25, an officer showed Maitland's family the car found at the old Dutchburn house.
They immediately recognized it as their daughter's.
Kellie said she strongly believes that someone else, not Maitland, had left the car like that.
Theories
Voluntary Runaway - The Vermont State Police led the official investigation in the first months after Maitland's disappearance.
They didn't believe that foul play was involved and they suspected that Maitland might have run away voluntarily.
Police and search dogs combed the area around the old Dutchburn house on foot, but they didn’t find anything.
Foul Play: Law enforcement later concluded that foul play was likely the cause of Maitland's disappearance.
On March 30, 2004, Maitland's car was examined for evidence.
When the car was returned to the Maitland family, Bruce noticed that his daughter's ATM card, glasses, contact lens case, and migraine medication had all been left inside.
A 2007 flyer from the FBI suggested that the scene where Maitland's car was found might have been staged to look like an accident.
Abduction - Maitland's parents publicly suggested that she might have been abducted by more than one person.
They said it would have been hard for one person to overpower her due to her kung-fu training.
The police also looked into Maura Murray's mysterious disappearance to check for any possible connection.
Maura Murray mysteriously disappeared a month before Maitland, and her case happened about 90 miles away from where Maitland went missing.
However, law enforcement later confirmed that Maura Murray's case was not related to Maitland's disappearance.
In 2004, Maitland's family created a website called bringbrihome.org, offering a maximum reward of $20,000 for information about her whereabouts.
The website was active until at least 2009.
Drug Dealers: In the week after Maitland's disappearance, the Police received an anonymous tip.
The tipster suggested that Maitland was being held against her will in a house in nearby Berkshire, 10 miles from Montgomery.
The rented house was raided by police on April 15, 2004.
At the time, two known drug dealers from New York, Ramon L. Ryans and Nathaniel Charles Jackson were living there.
After the raid, police found various drug items, along with large amounts of cocaine and marijuana inside, but there was no sign of Maitland.
Ryans was arrested during the raid on drug charges.
When police interviewed Maitland's close friends, they were told that Maitland had recently tried hard drugs, including crack cocaine.
They also confirmed that Maitland knew Ryans and Jackson and did drugs with them.
In late 2004, police received a letter from an anonymous "older female".
She implicated both Ryans and Jackson in Maitland's disappearance and alleged murder.
She said that Maitland had been murdered approximately a week after her disappearance.
The woman who provided the affidavit said that Ryans killed Maitland during a fight over money she had lent him for crack.
She said Maitland's body was briefly kept in the basement of a local woman who had recently been imprisoned.
She claimed that after some time, the drug dealers dismembered her body with a table saw and disposed it at a pig farm.
Law enforcement could not confirm the claims made in the letter.
The Maitland family also reported getting several unverified anonymous phone calls from people.
These callers claimed that Maitland was "tied to a tree in the woods" and that she had been thrown into a lake.
Later developments
In 2006, security footage from Caesars casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, showed a woman who looked like Maitland sitting at a poker table.
The woman was never positively identified.
In 2012, police investigated whether serial killer Israel Keyes, who committed several rapes and murders in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and New York, might be connected to Maitland's disappearance.
The FBI ruled out any connection to Keyes in late December 2012, shortly after Keyes committed suicide in Anchorage, Alaska..
In March 2016, on the case's twelfth anniversary, investigators revealed to a local television station they had recovered DNA samples from Maitland's car.
The results of the DNA tests were not made public.
In July 2016 the old Dutchburn house, where Maitland's vehicle had been discovered, was destroyed in a fire.
In March 2022, the Vermont State Police revealed they had found a match to the DNA sample found in Maitland's car.
The person's identity has not been released.
But officials said the DNA belonged to one of eleven individuals they had previously tested in connection with Maitland's disappearance.
They also noted that this person has been very cooperative and has spoken with them.
As of today, Maitland's disappearance remains an unsolved mystery.
We urge anyone with valuable information to contact the authorities so that her loved ones can find closure.
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