Episode 10
Ep10 - Brianna Maitland
Brianna Maitland disappeared in March 2004 in Northern Vermont. Her body was never found. The case has some similarities to the Maura Murray case.
Transcript
Ep10 - Brianna Maitland
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:00:05] Gracia
Dave: [:Don: [00:00:07] Don
Steve: [:Jill: [00:00:08] Good one. Daddy. I was waiting to see how long it was going to take you to figure that out.
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:00:18] So we're kind of doing a sort of a part two from last week, but before we get started with our crime of the week Gracia can you talk to us about what we're drinking
Gracia: [:So I bought all three cars, kind of girl I am. And he makes these like, uh, cocktail mixers. And the flavors of the season, because they do change by season. He said, so you can't always get all of these flavors. Um, I bought blue brand lavender, Blackberry, and Sage and strawberry rhubarb. The is a company called woodstove kitchen.
If you go to our Facebook, I did link his Facebook. So you can order from him there. He has like drinks of the month. We are having it with, uh, Tito's handmade vodka, and then it's a little sweet for me. So I add a little bit of soda water. Yeah.
Jill: [:I was glad we had the soda water to break it up. Steve, which one are you drinking?
Steve: [:Don: [00:01:22] That's
Gracia: [:Dave: [00:01:25] Yeah, they're good. Um, the, uh, I use the blueberry lavender. Um, I'll probably try the strawberry rhubarb at some point. Um, Blackberry and Sage might not be my thing.
I don't know.
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:01:38] When I was initially like looking at the post, I was like, Oh, those sound odd, but actually they taste
Gracia: [:So, yeah. And I like that. They're all
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:02:00] too important to us and in their glass containers. So, yeah.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:02:10] This week? We're going to talk about Brianna Maitland. And the reason we're going to add her in is because when I was doing the Maura Murray case, I kept getting distracted by Brianna.
She kept coming up in multiple podcasts, multiple books. She comes up all over the place. So, and inherently like I do in these podcasts, I went to left field and researched her too much. So why not do a whole episode on her?
Don: [:Imagine you were her closest friend, a sibling, a parent, and in one seemingly dark moment, she was gone from your life. Imagine the void, emptiness and heartache and loss. Absolutely. Imagine years have gone by - 17 - with no answers. You long for finding her, or at least knowing what happened to her. Hoping somebody would connect the mysterious dots and see something everyone else had overlooked, maybe a podcast listener, Mike
Gracia: [:Her favorite activities were jiu jitsu and being an avid reader.
Jill: [:Don: [00:04:02] Well, let me say something about that for a minute. I think a lot of people who look into, um, this young lady think that well, jiu jitsu, she had jiu jitsu for three years. That means she could take on anybody.
That's not true. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a ground fighting art for the most part. It takes many years of training to use it for in real world self-defense, rape defense, things of that nature.
Gracia: [:Don: [00:04:37] Yes, absolutely.
Gracia: [:Don: [00:04:49] You know, her being too trusting really hurts to hear that. Hurts you to hear that.
Gracia: [:Yeah. So she must have Montgomery, which is like, you know what I mean? Like a bigger city, but not necessarily a city. Um, but she's 17 and she's, you know, getting towards that age. So her parents are like, you know what? You have friends over there. She wants to go to a different school because she wants more opportunities.
So she moves in with her best friend. Her name is Jillian. So she at first goes to high school with Jillian for a while. And then she decides high school is not for me. I'm going to drop out, um, to talk about the area at the time. There is a huge wave of crack cocaine coming in through New York. And Brianna starts to feed into this.
She starts to feed into the party scene. She starts doing some drugs, but she is living on her own now. So she has to be able to pay for all of this on her own. So she gets two jobs. Okay. She drops out of school and becomes a dishwasher and a waitress. She is a dishwasher at the Black Lantern Inn, and she's a waitress at the breakfast place in St. Albans.
th,:She's a smart girl. She just, school wasn't her thing.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:06:35] I agree with you. I think that we all know people in life that just
Don: [:Jill: [00:06:40] I know. Yeah, that's true. It's not, Jesse's either, you know.
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:07:13] I think we've only been as far North as Burlington.
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:07:20] maybe Jesse, but he's not here.
Dave: [:Gracia: [00:07:33] That's already taken me how many years? So it's getting maybe a few more.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:07:45] I don't even know that I like, I like the skis because my feet are two separate. Like I think because you walk. Yeah. When I was snowboarding, I just couldn't keep the balance of just being locked into one thing.
Steve: [:Jill: [00:07:59] My ass kills every day too. I was like,
Gracia: [:Steve: [00:08:07] It's a good ass.
Don: [:Dave: [00:08:21] He thinks you are an ass.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:08:31] Okay. Back to shopping. So Brianna and her mom go for an afternoon shopping trip. They're running some errands while they're down there and they're waiting in line at one of the stores to check out. Kelly said that something caught Brianna's attention and she got a little weird and then just said, mom, I have to go outside.
Brianna goes outside, talks to somebody. Kelly doesn't know who it is, but she does talk to a male. Talks to the man. Kelly's completing her purchases, gets out to the parking lot to meet Brianna. Her daughter seems very unnerved, shaken, agitated, almost nervous. She tells her mother, I need to go home. I still have to work today and you could tell that something's off, but she doesn't want to push her because her quality time with her is, um, not as much as it used to be because she doesn't live in the home anymore, they live far apart. So she's like, you know what, I'm just going to stay in my lane. And if she wants to talk about it, she'll talk about it with me.
Kelly mentioned like, sh I didn't realize that this was the last time I was ever going to see my daughter. Oh yeah. And in hindsight, she like really eats herself up about this. I saw her in a couple of news articles about that moment where she just let it go saying to parents, like, as much as you want to let it go, and you want to preserve the relationship, it's important to just say to your kid, like, Hey, do you need me? Because what if that situation, he was the person who took her.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:10:10] That's where she was saying she was trying to play the safe side and like, but she said, what if that, like, even if she just said, Oh, who was that? Maybe she would have had some indication of who she was in her...
she eats herself a lot. Like the interview was pretty sad and it made me think as a mom, like, what would I done? Like, I would've done the same as her. I probably would've just let it go. She want to talk to me. She want to talk to me, but now look at all the regrets she has because of that. So know there's a balance balance there. I think, you know, anyways, so now
Don: [:Dave: [00:10:45] Yeah. Guilt is certainly one of the phases. And when you don't have a final answer on somebody, like you can never get through the phases of grieving. I mean, if it would be hard enough, you know, when it's your kid anyways to, but you, you don't even know like, You know, I mean, she's gonna wake up some mornings, probably like, is my daughter, maybe my daughter is still alive, you know?
I mean, you know, that's gotta be so awful for her.
Gracia: [:Steve: [00:11:24] 17.
Jill: [:Don: [00:11:33] Actually. You did Jill. You moved right out.
We notice it right away. It got really quiet.
Gracia: [:Steve: [00:11:59] The what if game is like the hardest thing.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:12:04] So she drops Brianna off back at her apartment. She sometime between three 30 and four writes a quick note to her roommate saying I'm headed to work. I'll stay tomorrow morning, goes to work. Shift is normal, no big deal. She's a dishwasher at this one.
She washes dishes till around:Cause we've all been there. And that's what you do after a restaurant night. And she's like, you know what? I have to open in the morning at the waitressing job. At four o'clock in the morning I serve breakfast. I can't go out. I gotta be there in a few hours. So she says no. And starts heading out.
This is where things go wrong. Less than a mile away from where she is, is where her car accident happens. So
Don: [:Dave: [00:13:05] Um, yeah, two minutes.
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:13:09] it takes me less than 10 minutes to run a mile. So in a car, yeah, it should be just a couple minutes
Don: [:Gracia: [00:13:19] I think it is too. We're going to talk about that in a moment about our suspects, but Don brings up a very good point that like she's so close. The person had to follow her from work or had to be in that parking lot or had to be in the car. Just like you were talking before, you know, there had to be some kind of following here.
Um, so we'll talk about the day of the disappearance. Uh, Vermont state police received a report of abandoned car on a property known as the old Dutch barn barn. Old Dutch burn barn. That's like a tongue twister, old Dutch burn barn. Say it again, guys with times fast. This was in the town of Montgomery, Vermont, as we said, and I put a picture of this out on Facebook this week so that you guys could kind of see it in advance because that car that's the barn, it's an abandoned barn.
zy. So she's driving a green,:Don: [00:14:18] So powerful.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:14:22] Remember the car that I drove in college, that my grandfather got me that big boat.
Like, it literally reminded me of that. And you, that thing could take a beating so it could hit that barn at a good force and nothing could be wrong with the car. Cause those cars were so solid
Don: [:Gracia: [00:14:40] Yeah. Like she backed into it. Yeah.
Don: [:Dave: [00:14:49] Pretty hard to get a car in reverse, going fast, going that fast.
Don: [:Dave: [00:14:59] they were spinning out almost
Gracia: [:Steve: [00:15:06] Could it be like a struggle and someone hit a reverse and it went back?
Dave: [:Gracia: [00:15:10] Well, there are no indications that it went off the road in any uncontrolled manner.
There's no skid marks, no nothing. So that's the part that the cops are like, did she just purposely like, you'd have to put it in reverse and just gun it to hit it the way you hit it. You know, she would've had to been going in a good force. Hmm. The responding trooper...
Sorry. I always laugh when the cops come into play cuz they always just do the interesting, most interesting things. He doesn't find anybody there. He walks around the car a couple of times, the doors of the vehicle unlocked, the keys are missing. The officer noted that there were several items inside the vehicle, including two unopened paychecks from the Black Lantern, but they're addressed to Brianna Maitland.
So he heads down to the Lantern to be like, Hey, does anybody know who Brown Maitland is? We just found her car. The establishment is closed. So he just decides it's a drunk driver and goes home
Don: [:Gracia: [00:16:04] Yeah, I'm all set. I'm on vacation. Fuck this girl.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:16:14] So Brianna is not reported missing for a full day because she doesn't live at home with mom and dad. Her roommate is out. Remember, so that's why she deleted the note. So her roommate comes home, sees the note and says, wait a minute, she hasn't been home.
I'm going to call her mom and see if she decided to stay with her mom. She waits till Tuesday. Then Kelly says, Oh, wait a minute. She's not with us. She's not with you. Let's make some phone calls. So the two of them start calling everybody they know. They can't, nobody's seen him, her employers find out she didn't show up to work the next morning.
So there's all these little pieces that start like making the parents panic more and more and more. So then they call the cops, not the cops called them because
Steve: [:Gracia: [00:16:56] No. And the car was registered to the mother. So I feel like that's the first thing a state trooper does, right?
Yeah. Checks the registration calls the owner and says, Hey, we found your car.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:17:15] I mean, we're going a couple of days. Of course, once all of this comes into play, you know,
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:17:20] 2004.
Jill: [:Dave: [00:17:25] She might have, but you know, not everybody had a cell phone in '04 . Right. It was still kind of coming around and she's only 17 working as a dishwasher
Jill: [:Dave: [00:17:37] So maybe not.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:17:44] Yeah. And you're talking about like 900 people in a, in a city that's not, yeah.
Dave: [:Gracia: [00:18:00] Okay. And it's so close to Canada. Like years ago, I went to a Grateful Dead concert up there.
Be quiet on that everybody else. Um, and you can literally see the Canadian border from where the, like one of the fields
Dave: [:Gracia: [00:18:20] If it's any consolation, Bob Dylan opened up. So I saw two greats in one day,
Don: [:Jill: [00:18:32] Take it easy on little Craiggie
over there.
Gracia: [:She goes into the Vermont state police and says, my daughter's missing. Trooper is back from vacation and shows him a picture on his cell phone. Oh, is this your car? Hmm.
Dave: [:Don: [00:18:57] You must be a detective.
Gracia: [:Like, not like in my absence, one of my other people called you and we left messages, like, Hmm. Wanna look at my phone?
Steve: [:Jill: [00:19:23] Well, he had a cell phone though. That's good news.
Gracia: [:They'd probably get like the old fashioned ones with the bags.
Yeah. We're just being funny now. Anyways, um, Kelly says that she is instantly revulsed. Feels like she's going to throw up, but she says that she almost goes like into denial, like, Oh, that's not my car. Like that picture is so crappy that can't be my car. Brianna would never leave a car in such a way. So now, before we continue with the case, cause now we're into the case, right?
We didn't, I mean, we don't even know what happened really, but there was some weird facts about this and Don and I both feel like this is a very interesting part. There are many witnesses that go by and don't call the cops,
Don: [:Dave: [00:20:12] How close is the barn to the road?
Don: [:Gracia: [00:20:17] Right on the road. It's very close.
Craig: [:Jill: [00:20:22] So wait a minute. So half the fucking town drives past the car, that's in a building, but nobody stops.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:20:37] They all drive by like it's none of their business. Like this part, like blows me away.
The call comes in from a neighbor the next day, when she like, gets up to go for her walk and is like, Oh, look, there's a car in the barn. I'm going to make a phone call. But like afterwards, between like all of these times and there's friends who drive by an ex-boyfriend who drives by
Don: [:Gracia: [00:21:05] He literally pulls over, gets out of the car and says, huh, that looks like Brianna's car goes over to it. Turns off the lights closes the door and leaves
Steve: [:Gracia: [00:21:19] Well we don't know
Steve: [:Dave: [00:21:29] So he made sure that her battery didn't die although her car is lodged inside of a building and I'm like, Oh, you're going to..you're going to kill your battery doing that
Gracia: [:Steve: [00:22:01] but, but I would, I would do all that, you know, go to a car if I knew it was hers.
All right. Take things. Check. Everything's fine. And then go contact somebody,
Gracia: [:Steve: [00:22:13] But like try to contact her and try to get in touch with friends. And nobody knows then yeah. Call the cops.
Don: [:Dave: [00:22:23] Yeah. Well, with cons that do drugs so that you wouldn't call nine one one because you'd probably assume that it might be something in their car that they could get caught with.
So, yeah. Yeah. I was thinking
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:22:37] Yeah, sure. But even if you're an okay, to be honest I've never been on crack cocaine. So I honestly don't know how I would react to a car in a building at that state, but I feel like I'd be like, what? This is different.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:22:59] The only experience I have with crack is that Dee and her brother on It's Always Sunny, loves crack cocaine. They talk about it all the time. So anyway, that's only experience. So I get why he didn't call if he was on drugs. But I feel like you would go home and at least make a phone call or maybe like, have somebody else like, Hey, I just saw Brianna's car.
I'm worried. Even if it wasn't your ex, I would say something. If it was a random girl on the side of the highway, like this is definitely an accident. Something definitely happened. It's not like, Oh, that happens all the time. You know, it's not like a normal breakdown where cars on the side of the road.
Yeah. Yeah. So there's a few, her, some of her friends go by a few motorists, go by. No, nobody stops
Don: [:Gracia: [00:23:50] One of her friends later says that she's she stopped, got out of the car, went over to it and found loose, change a bracelet and a water bottle on the ground.
Okay. But you still don't like, say anything. You're just going to tell me what you found. Did you keep it? Like, I don't even understand these people. Wow.
Jill: [:Don: [00:24:14] You wanna murder somebody I know right
Jill: [:Steve: [00:24:21] this is sounding like a Vermont thing and not really a.
Dave: [:Gracia: [00:24:35] I dunno if you guys remember from the last episode, Tim and Lance were two of the podcasters I talked about, they spend like three or four episodes on Brianna trying to connect her to Maura. And one of the parts that they say about it, why they don't think they're connected is Vermont's just weird and what's going on there.
This is so different from what is going on in New Hampshire. How can you link these two? It's just two totally different worlds.
Because like he said the drugs were coming through there. The cops weren't paying attention to a lot of things. Like this is so different than New Hampshire, where she got in the accident. Like, and skidded on ice. Like at least there was a reason for her accident and you saw it like this one just looks like, what the hell?
How did she back into the house? Like this? It doesn't make any sense.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:25:19] It is weird with no skid marks, like, think about how fast she had to go to get her tires up on that foundation.
Dave: [:Craig: [00:25:33] You see the way this car is into the barn and there's no way that she was driving along and accidentally went off the road.
Like clearly it was backed in
Jill: [:Dave: [00:25:49] He's getting out of Vermont You can't blame the guy Like, I've got to get out of here before I get abducted by aliens. And I don't give them the Cape. What the fuck?
Gracia: [:Steve: [00:26:12] Is that like information we're missing because he sounds really like
a dolt
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:26:29] uh, you know, the only thing worse than Vermont.
Fall River.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:26:46] Last year, I went up to this section of Vermont and I hiked I'm doing a go North nine challenge where you hike all of the mountains that are like on the Canadian border. I've done eight out of the nine. My friend Jane is going with me. So two women, but still so fun. And we have one more to go
Steve: [:Gracia: [00:27:02] And there is
Jill: [:Steve: [00:27:10] No, because if you guys,
if you guys go missing, you know, her name is Jane they're like, Oh, and so you don't know the person's name?
Well her name is Jane,
Gracia: [:Dave: [00:27:21] or like Mary Jane up in Vermont.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:27:31] My point of this was the mountains. You've actually come down to the Canadian side. So there's border patrol all around the bar. And when you're up there, you do not get any cell service though. Like even when I'm on the mountain, I have to turn it to airplane, motor, it just drains and drains and drains.
Wow. So I think the fact that nobody called probably has something to do with that. However, they all have, they all have landlines when they get home. So I don't agree with that. Like, I can see it where they're like, Oh, we're a little out of touch up here. But you know, you have some way of communicating with the police.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:28:03] Go there, like go to the police station.
Don: [:Jill: [00:28:10] Not when the entire town drove by the car.
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:28:26] Judgment free,
Gracia: [:So she's at the party. And she flirts with this guy. Well, he has a girlfriend. She's there with her friends. They, they somehow confront her in the party. At that part. They didn't really talk about a lot, but she's confronted in the party enough that Brianna's like, I gotta get myself out of here. I'm by myself.
Yeah. She goes to the car of her. Ex-boyfriend don't know if it's the same ex boyfriend he's at the party. And she was like, Hey, can I go hang out in your truck til my friend gets here that he can drive me home. She goes out to the truck. These girls come out there and they beat her up severely. Like she, she gets a concussion.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:29:28] So she gets beat up, but she, and she doesn't fight back at all. And there's a lot of argument about why she doesn't, she doesn't know how she doesn't know how we think is that she's not prepared for that kind of fighting
Don: [:Gracia: [00:29:48] yeah, if you see the photos of her and I'll grab one off online, but they, she files a report. It was a mess. Yeah. She got her.
Jill: [:Don: [00:29:58] Even blocking
Gracia: [:So there's a bench seat, probably slide over, over slide over. So like, are they crawling in the window? How high off the ground is this truck? Like,
Steve: [:Gracia: [00:30:21] No, I'm not blaming her, but, um
Don: [:No. And this is a case in point. Yeah.
Dave: [:Gracia: [00:31:17] And a large portion of these people are from the New York drug scene.
So they're not even from the area they're coming through and they're moving the drugs to Canada.
Jill: [:Don: [00:31:38] Kickboxing is actually better for streetfighting than Brazilian jujitsu is in the beginning.
Take it from an old martial artists.
Dave: [:Steve: [00:31:49] What was that? A other one? That's good for stuff like this. Oh
Dave: [:Don: [00:31:52] Krav Maga. This is something I recommend for women. Model mugging is something else I would recommend for, um, for women. Very realistic training. Yep. Puts you in the right mindset.
Gracia: [:Okay. So she let's go back to her. She goes to the hospital, she gets treatment. She has two black eyes. Facial cuts, a concussion, a broken nose. Wow. The cops show up. Yeah. They beat the heck out of her.
Steve: [:Jill: [00:32:24] Girls are vicious, man.
Gracia: [:Um, she filed a criminal complaint that was still pending at the time of her disappearance. They ended up dropping it like three weeks after she disappears because her parents were like, she can't show up in any court appearance. We're just going to let this go. We're just hoping our daughter comes back.
We're not going to keep fighting it. Um, so we're going to stop with that part. Now we're going to go on to her car. Um, Don found a couple of cool facts, so there's like three facts I'm going to bring up that are kind of random, but they showed up in his research. So I think we should talk about them a little bit.
On March 30th. So that's about 21 days after all of this happened, the Oldsmobile was finally processed by the state crime lab. So now there's no signs of struggle or that she met with foul play. However, there is some DNA, uh, so they have proof. So whenever they do find a suspect, they have DNA.
They're holding it. They are trying to, but like different to Maura, they at least are releasing some of this stuff. Like the cops are saying, we have this, we have this, we have that.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:33:35] I've actually believe it was something on her jeans or something.
There was other clothes in the car because she just got out of work. She changed her outfit. You know how we often ..Anybody who's worked in a restaurant knows you smell like
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:33:46] Yeah. Right
Don: [:They looked at it in the car. So that was a big one. Yeah. These guys are great.
Gracia: [:Don: [00:33:59] They had search search dogs. We're going to talk about that.
Gracia: [:Don: [00:34:04] They had search dogs combing the area
around the barn on foot. Not only the search dogs, but the cops on foot, but nothing of value was found.
Right. So they looked in the house and discovered drug dealer paraphernalia, according to the cops and a gun.
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:34:21] where the car is parked in sort of okay.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:34:29] Yeah.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:34:36] It's interesting that they said they didn't find anything because all the friends took it like, right.
They didn't find anything out of the car because the friends grabbed their stuff.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:34:49] bracelet,
Don: [:Dave: [00:34:52] Yeah. I mean, it's almost impossible. There wouldn't be blood in the car. If you slammed into something going fast enough to actually put it inside, like there would be your head would slam the windshield.
I mean
something.
Yeah. I mean,
Steve: [:backwards though right,
Jill: [:Dave: [00:35:13] The force would go
Steve: [:Don: [00:35:19] Okay. I was just looking at my notes about the DNA. Pardon me? Um, so the DNA. Causes the police to conclude that Brianna's disappearance was probably the result of something happening to her. Against her will. At the time of the disappearance Brianna had been taking medication for migraines, which have been left behind in the car, along with contact lenses. She left behind her makeup, driver's license, this indicated to investigators that she either intended to return to the vehicle at some point, or she hadn't abandoned it of will.
And yeah, they did submit DNA at that time to Codis. Hmm.
Gracia: [:Dave: [00:36:21] We need help. Does anyone know how read
Gracia: [:Steve: [00:36:29] Our main guy's on vacation,
Gracia: [:And it's a burner. So, so weird
Don: [:Gracia: [00:36:53] Oh,
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:36:58] That we know of. They're not saying anything. At least these cops are saying, Hey, we found it. The police won't release what they found in Maura's case.
everybody dressed up like their favorite DNA.
Dave: [:Gracia: [00:37:19] Cause she changed her clothes is what they think. After work she changed her clothes so the clothes she wore at work that night we're in the car.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:37:33] that's the funny part. When you see that the friend stopped by and like took stuff from the scene, like, what else did they take? If these are known drug dealers, did they take the drugs out of the car? Yeah.
Dave: [:Jill: [00:37:52] Or if you want them.
Steve: [:Gracia: [00:38:05] Before you leave yeah, we go in the bathroom and change because you're gross. Yeah. As a server and a bartender you get shit all over you
Don: [:Gracia: [00:38:16] I'm just saying, he's wondering why, like, when she did it, especially a dishwasher, think about it. She's getting wet and soaked all night long.
Steve: [:Dave: [00:38:27] right before
Don: [:Jill: [00:38:31] probably
Gracia: [:So maybe just cause I've been in the industry, I just assumed she punched out, went and changed her clothes and then told his friends, I can't come out tonight. I've got to work tomorrow and left.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:38:46] Yeah. It sounds like something. I would have done
Steve: [:Gracia: [00:38:52] They drive by just drove past after
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:39:01] yeah. They drive by it. Some of them get out and walk over to hang out,
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:39:08] They have a bonfire now.
Don: [:Jill: [00:39:12] Yeah. Yup.
Don: [:Jill: [00:39:16] Oh when you let Christina the four-year-old drive. That's right. Excellent. Babysitting
Gracia: [:Steve: [00:39:25] Story never gets old.
Gracia: [:The strongest theory in the case, and I think this is a good theory is just that it's a drug related thing. Um, she definitely had some problems with these drug dealers. Uh, there's some stories that she didn't pay some of them that she owed some money. I can't assume crack is cheap.
And she's, she's a dishwasher and a breakfast lunch person, you know, they gotta feel like how much does she really make, she's gotta pay on rent. She's 17,
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:40:26] this is where I think it's a combination of
Dave: [:Gracia: [00:40:41] I listened to a podcast from a guy up in Canada.
It's a good podcast from a guy up in Canada who is researching this case and he spent two years on it and he believes it's involved in the drug trade and he feels like it's in between three and 15 people involved. He feels that three of them were at the car that they were, they knew where Brianna worked.
If they had planned this out for at least a week coming. That she had. And that was who she saw at the store. The three of them followed her to this point, stage the car, took her and killed her somewhere else. That's what they feel. And that's this drug ring is from like the Bronx. And there were coming through there all the time and she owed them a lot of money.
So they did it just out of financial reasons is what he feels.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:41:36] I was my next paragraph, but I love you taking that. Oh, it gives me a second to take a sip. Um, so one of these guys was Raymond Ryans. Do you want to talk about him a little? Okay. And the week following her disappearance, police receive a tip stating that Brianna was being held in a house in Berkshire known to be occupied by the drug dealer.
She was acquainted with Raymond Ryans and Nathan Charles Jackson. They're both of New York. They raided it, but they didn't raid it until April. So they waited those like 15 days. And this is where this guy feels they'd already got her out of there and killed her, but they brought her there for a while and she was there alive and they felt like they had to kill her.
There was no choice at this point. Uh, the house was raided. They uncovered cocaine, weed, drug paraphernalia, but no trace of Brianna, they do believe the house was recently cleaned. And at this time Ryan was only arrested on drug charges. And he's the major suspect.
Dave: [:So that's always a sign that like, especially when you're dealing with drug dealers, they're not like the most clean people on earth. Like every time you hear about like a murder scene, like one of the things is a killer will bleach everything. It's apparent something happened there.
Jill: [:Dave: [00:43:02] Luminol can find blood
Gracia: [:Dave: [00:43:10] They definitely tried it in the OJ Simpson case. Um, so that was,
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:43:20] Vermont still doesn't have it.
Gracia: [:We'll talk about the second one real quick. Cause then that kind of ends this theory, but we can talk more about this theory
Don: [:Gracia: [00:44:22] It's funny. Thanks for taking over on that. I don't know how that paragraph was killing me.
Jill: [:Steve: [00:44:29] So you're saying they interviewed the cops
Don: [:Anyway
Gracia: [:Don: [00:44:55] Another theory of the case is that Brianna simply left of her own accord
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:45:03] once thrown away
Don: [:That's not 17 years though. This period where their history of running away had led some to speculate she simply decided to move somewhere new and start over
Jill: [:Don: [00:45:22] However, yeah. However, police had been unable to uncover any evidence to indicate that she left voluntarily,
Dave: [:Jill: [00:45:39] but how does this thought process work? Oh, fuck. I just backed into a barn. Guess I'm moving, I'll leave the door open and
Don: [:Jill: [00:45:49] Exactly. I better walk home. Yeah like I don't think so,
Don: [:Gracia: [00:45:57] Well, there's a podcaster the same podcaster from the Canada that talks about this one. Yeah. And he says that he believes that there are people in the town that were helping dispose of Brianna. So they were trying to throw a sleight in it. So they were saying she had a history of running away.
So that might be, they were purposely tipping them off on different things that this theory comes up because they were deflecting. Yeah.
Don: [:Jill: [00:46:23] Wait a minute, just one second. So the whole town who drove past the car and didn't think anything of it is now covering up for her.
Gracia: [:But he also says they were telling police these things just to like, uh, throw them off like, Oh, we knew Brianna. We used to party with her. She's always dreamed of running away. She's probably in Mexico.
Jill: [:Dave: [00:47:05] Where's Mexico.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:47:24] All right. So want to go with theory three and I'll do four?
Don: [:Well, they may think that
Gracia: [:Don: [00:47:49] I'm almost 70 years old. I spent, um, many, many years in the martial arts. I started when I was 10 years old. So I can tell you. That, that assumption, the parents made. It's a common one when you sign your kids up for martial arts, but it's not true.
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:48:07] Really, really beat on her. So I think part of this theory is good because the, the multiple is definitely probable. Like you could have planned it tricked her, you know, but for that reason, I don't think
Don: [:Now, see, I believe somebody could have been in that back seat. Before attacking her, she drove home from the Black Lantern Inn.
I know, years ago I taught a rape defense class in Westboro, Massachusetts. Westboro YWCA and as part of that training and read a lot of the FBI data on what kinds of attacks and assaults against women. Very common for somebody to be hiding in the back seat of a car. So you always tell the students don't get in your car at night, look in the back seat, check first. Yeah. But you know, you're tired. You want to get home from work,
Gracia: [:Dave: [00:49:10] It's Vermont. It's not uncommon for find somebody like sleeping in your car randomly. It's like, he's just drunk.
Don: [:So, uh, yeah. It's uh, it was very common,
Gracia: [:Don: [00:49:41] Yeah and you've talked a lot about Maura Murray, so why don't we just lead in and let you talk about the fourth.
Gracia: [:That was about 90 miles from where we are. So it's about an hour and 45 minute ride. However, FBI agents have met with local authorities to discuss the possibility of the links between the two case, including the fact that they both had gone missing after a car accident, they both have their belongings left their belongings behind, and they're both so young, attractive and brown haired women.
However, it is eventually concluded that despite the similarities, the case was not likely connected. However, I'm not so sure because there are two sources that I found in Maura Murray that kind of lead me to say maybe. Sure. So maybe not probable, but this is how it maybe.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:50:38] Okay. So in James Renner's book, theThe True Crime Addict, he puts Kathleen. If you remember, Kathleen was like the addict sister to Maura. Older but addict. Okay. She lived with a drug ring above she moved in there to Vermont. So now you've made some kind of connection. She, she gets out of rehab, meets this guy in rehab and is like, Oh, I love him. They move up
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:51:15] So she moves up to that drug ring and hangs out and moves in with them, starts doing drugs.
Again, goes back to rehab. I mean, it's a vicious cycle with her, but she lives out there
Don: [:Gracia: [00:51:28] And also in that oxygen series, when you got towards like episode five and six, John Smith starts talking about a link, but he doesn't say it. Right. So his going to the A-frame, but let's tell everybody else about that.
So let's talk about the A-frame.
So John Smith is a private investigator that they get starts looking into the Maura Murray case. He is a former police officer. He thinks they're related. He started looking into the case when locals were talking about a story about two brothers, these brothers were involved in the drug scene and were also known to get in a lot of trouble.
There were rumors that they were involved in both murders, even to the point that one brother reached out to Fred ,Maura's father, and told them that he found a bloody knife in his brother's glove box. He believes the Maura's blood is on the knife. He gets this knife to Fred and Fred brings it to the police.
r to do that. Um, but then in:There's human blood. Well, there's blood. They don't know that it's human yet. And in this series, Maggie has the blood tested and she finds out that it is human. It's got two separate sets of DNA. They can't tell whether it's male or female on both, but something human was in that closet and bleeding
Don: [:Gracia: [00:53:17] They can't capture the DNA. Well, then the show then shares it with the police. And the police say that they can't capture the DNA that is too degraded. And that the chain of custody can't be verified, which we all knew that chain of custody was like, not going to happen. However, just check it right.
Like against one of the family members and see if it even could be related. Like, I felt like the series lacked there, because you could at least say like they have this in common. They, you know, you can't definitively do it, but you could have tested against something.
Dave: [:Gracia: [00:53:50] Like, I know it's not admissible in court, but like you could give the parents a good
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:53:58] And you watched the series, you saw how it kind of just like, was leading up to it. And I was like that literally felt like a balloon.
Don: [:Gracia: [00:54:17] On Walden pond, Steve, you were going to say something
Steve: [:Don: [00:54:27] Google that and you will see, I didn't make it up
Dave: [:Gracia: [00:54:37] okay. Maybe I can jog your memory. And Steve, I felt like the show lacked there. Like that was the part that left me wanting more in that oxygen series was because they just dropped the DNA. And that was the real piece of information they had on anybody.
And it was like "Oh. Too old". They had characters when they did like an independent study. You saw the piece of paper, they showed it on this series saying there are two different kinds, have the match Moore's DNA to either one of these. Yeah. And they do the cops just say, Nope,
Don: [:Steve: [00:55:11] And if they don't want to, you know, spend the time doing it, just send it to 23 and me
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:55:21] Well, that series too did something that, um, that I think a lot of people did. So it tries to draw the parallels between Maura Murray and Brianna. Right. But also it tried to like get Holly Perainen and Molly Bish in there too, which those, There's no way they're related to this.
Gracia: [:Steve: [00:55:57] Give me a list of all the girls that went missing
Gracia: [:Dave: [00:56:13] we thought about putting it up on eBay
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:56:23] So I just feel like that hurts though. The validity of connections when you're like this could be related to, you know, something completely random.
Gracia: [:I think like he was like, Oh, can't be that. I was like, w did you do an outside investigation on that? Can't be that like, and maybe they did behind the scenes and we just don't know. But
Craig: [:Don: [00:57:20] See, and you doubt me
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:57:25] I don't think we doubted you. Yeah, it was this sort of like
Don: [:Jill: [00:57:30] he checks everything, but you know, what he didn't do is check your iPad to see if it was gonna make any noise today
Gracia: [:The murder kit guy from the last one is also considered on this one, mostly because he lives in that area. He has places up in Vermont. He's killed people in Lake Champlain. So like, and then he went up to Alaska. So it could be him. I just wanted to mention him because I think we're going to do a whole episode on him.
So when we do, this is two cases that are also possibly linked to him. But since he's dead, we really don't know,
Jill: [:Gracia: [00:58:36] theory, number six
Jill: [:Don: [00:58:40] Now what kind of like illegal aliens?
I know Trump would be right there with you.
Dave: [:Don: [00:58:50] That's what? That space thing was,
Jill: [:Dave: [00:58:56] George Washington, with his lightsaber,
Don: [:let's have a swig of bleach here.
Jill: [:Don: [00:59:11] Dedicate this Donald Trump. Take a swig of bleach.
Jill: [:What do you guys think? You have five theories
Gracia: [:Jill: [00:59:35] Okay. So you don't think there is a relation?
Gracia: [:You know what I mean?
Steve: [:Don: [00:59:44] A very good one. He was
Steve: [:Gracia: [00:59:56] Right?
His professional job is bank robber.
Steve: [:Gracia: [01:00:06] I feel like Israel, I can rule him out, but not, but everybody that rules him out, rules him out for the same reason. You don't just walk up and serial kill, but he does like, they're thinking that serial killers usually make plans
Don: [:Gracia: [01:00:32] And say he went in there one night. Saw her. It only takes a second for him to be like "Hm, let me follow her home".
Jill: [:Yeah, you have to be an opportunist.
Don: [:Gracia: [01:00:56] He wanted to make sure he died. I didn't want to say too much about him in case we do a whole case, but he brutally killed himself.
Jill: [:Don: [01:01:07] No, I know he didn't stab himself, but I don't think he killed this young woman. I'm with everybody else. It is drugs, it is somebody in the back seat of the car, or very close to her following her. They didn't force her off the road.
She went off that road voluntarily. It's one mile away, five minute drive. Why the hell would you drive five minutes? Pull off the road in front of a dilapidated barn, turned around and reversed yourself.
Jill: [:Like, why would you leave it backed into a barn? Although that aside no one in Vermont cared that it was backed into a barn.
Don: [:Gracia: [01:02:01] Why did they stage it?
Jill: [:Dave: [01:02:05] Then you have to get rid of the car because you don't want to get caught with the car.
Right.
Jill: [:Dave: [01:02:22] Because in most places, the police don't go on vacation. They find a crime scene. Like
Steve: [:Gracia: [01:02:34] Well, she, he borrowed money from her and then they, so there was some money exchange is what we don't know. Definitely.
Dave: [:Don: [01:02:42] About that money angle. Um, and one that interests me basically said, if you owe drug dealers money and it's like, small-scale, they're probably not going to kill yet. Right.
Cause they want to want you to pay them that
But she
Gracia: [:Steve: [01:03:03] Would you say she put it up? So she gave money to somebody.
Gracia: [:No, he owes her money. She had money. She gave it to drug dealer. A Ramon.
Jill: [:Don: [01:03:20] That last part doesn't quite jive with me. So yeah. You owe me money
Gracia: [:Jill: [01:03:30] That doesn't make sense. Like, why would you kidnap and kill someone you owe money to?
Gracia: [:And I believe she wasabducted, like back in the car. I think somebody was in there.
Don: [:Gracia: [01:04:04] I think he just took her. I don't know, bully her or do whatever. Yeah. That's fun. I mean, I wonder ifin that theory like, I don't think this is true, but in that theory, that's what I'm hearing.
Dave: [:Gracia: [01:04:24] that's what she told the cops in the cop report.
So like she went to the hospital and then filed the police report.
Don: [:Dave: [01:04:39] she went to the police and there are some people you don't go to the police on either.
Jill: [:Don: [01:04:51] You know, we do recommend you look at the pictures of Brianna Maitland and after that assault I'll put them up. Picture's worth a thousand words.
Jill: [:Maybe it's something like that, you know,
Gracia: [:Don: [01:05:40] It is likely what you're saying about the drug dealers, however, Sex trade is something else.
Yeah. So I read a statistic the other day. Wish it captured in my brain, like the trout and the milk, but it was, um, so hundreds of thousands of people, the United States go missing each year. Yes. 90,000 are unaccounted for each year. And a lot of those 90,000 are young women and they are taken into the sex trade.
Gracia: [:Craig: [01:06:18] The last year that I see, uh, just Googling says that in 2018, there were 612,846 missing persons. I don't know how many state missing, but that's. That's unbelievable.
Jill: [:Don: [01:06:56] Oh, Jill, I I'm so appreciative of the fact that you brought us all into this.
Um, this gives more meaning to my life at this point, because I think of all these young women who speaks for them, their memories alive, right. That's why I'm here in my silly sort of way.
Gracia: [:Dave: [01:07:33] To the parents that worse. There's no closure generally. Um, yeah. In the Skyler Neese case up until the point where the parents actually learned what happened, you know, they were being tormented and, you know, I don't think it gave them any closure to find out that, you know, their daughter's best friends murdered her.
But, um, you know, I mean just the not knowing had to be so much torture for them
Gracia: [:Jill: [01:08:00] Well, and you know, in a couple of weeks we're going to cover Holly Perainen and her parents are still hanging up flyers in grocery stores saying, have you seen my kid?
It's 20 years later still though, you know? And they're still looking. Yeah. Like that just breaks my heart. But these, but I agree with you, dad. I feel like these people, they need a voice. You know, we need to make sure people don't get forgotten.
Don: [:Really? Yeah. It makes us more than worthwhile. Yeah.
Jill: [:And, um, also I find Aaron Hernandez really fascinating. So I'll probably going to try to cover that. Dave, what are you going to be looking into?
Dave: [:And I've also thought of covering, which is slightly outside of the new England area, the case of Skylar Neese, which is a very awful, uh, story about a young girl who was killed by her class mates.
Jill: [:Don: [01:09:40] Looking at the, um, vampire panic that the Smithsonian Institute did feature articles on in new England, in the 19th century.
Um, also looking at, uh, Teresa Corley. Uh, just to let you know, Elise, we're listening to you. This is why I'm doing that. And the serial killer Israel Keyes and why he fascinates me.
Jill: [:Steve: [01:10:17] Yep. Uh, I'll be going to Vermont soon, but when I come back, I'll be doing a episode on a fresh new murder. That's that's been that just
Dave: [:Steve: [01:10:53] I've just read a book about method acting.
Dave: [:Steve: [01:11:12] But seriously. So, uh, I'm thinking of doing the marathon bombing.
I think that was really interesting and fascinating. Yeah. And many people were impacted, um, Okay. Both during it, as well as post when they tried the, uh, to try and catch those two guys.
Don: [:Jill: [01:11:31] I don't know if the bombing is coming again, but that case is going to Supreme court again.
So it was really fascinating.
Gracia: [:Jill: [01:11:42] However, if any of our listeners have anything they'd like us to cover, we're always open to listener feedback.
So just shoot us an email DMS on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. And we will definitely look at, and
Dave: [:Steve: [01:11:59] you can text me.
Don: [:Dave: [01:12:09] Steve knows
Jill: [:Dave: [01:12:17] by way of Vermont.
Jill: [:crime@gmail.com
Gracia: [:Dave: [01:12:36] or Twitter at cm crime one.
Steve: [:all next week.
