Disappearance of Brianna Maitland

Maitland's case was profiled across various local media, on Dateline NBC, and the documentary series Disappeared. In 2017, the case was discussed in the documentary series on missing college student Maura Murray, who vanished a month prior to Maitland in Woodsville, New Hampshire. As of 2020, Maitland's disappearance remains unsolved.

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 farmhouse where Maitland's vehicle was discovered was destroyed in a fire.

Maitland was not reported missing for a number of days. Her mother Kellie did not learn about the discovery of Maitland's car until five days afterward. Stout saw Maitland's note on Friday, March 19, spent the weekend away, and found the note undisturbed when she returned on Monday. Assuming Maitland was staying elsewhere, she did not call Kellie until the following day. On Tuesday, March 23, Kellie began calling various people in order to find Maitland, including friends as well as her employers, none of whom had seen or spoken to her. Failing in her efforts — and still unaware that the vehicle Maitland had been driving had been recovered — she filed a missing persons report that day. On Thursday, March 25, Maitland's parents gave photos of her to Vermont State Police in St. Albans. A trooper showed them a picture of the Oldsmobile found at the old Dutchburn house, upon which they immediately identified the car as their daughter's. Kellie said in interviews that she was "instinctively revulsed" by the photo, and believed someone else, not Maitland, had left the car in such a way.

In 2012, law enforcement investigated a potential connection between Maitland's disappearance and serial killer Israel Keyes, who committed numerous rapes and murders in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, as well as in Vermont and New York, where he owned property in Constable. The FBI ruled out Keyes's potential connection to Maitland's disappearance in late December 2012, shortly after Keyes committed suicide in Anchorage, Alaska.

Maitland's case has been profiled by Dateline NBC and on the Investigation Discovery documentary series Disappeared in December 2011. Maitland's disappearance was also mentioned in a 20/20. In 2017, her case was profiled in an episode of the documentary series The Disappearance of Maura Murray on the Oxygen network.

It was later concluded by law enforcement that foul play was the probable cause of Maitland's disappearance, and a 2007 flyer provided by the FBI stated that the scene at which Maitland's car was discovered may have been staged to appear as an accident. Maitland's parents publicly speculated that she may have been abducted by multiple people, stating that it would have been difficult for a single assailant to subdue her given her jiu-jitsu training.

In the days and weeks following her disappearance, numerous tips were investigated by state law enforcement, including a claim that Maitland was being held captive in a house occupied by local drug dealers of whom she was an acquaintance; however, none of the tips resulted in her discovery. An alleged 2006 sighting of Maitland at a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey brought renewed interest to the case, but the woman seen was never properly identified. In 2012, law enforcement investigated a possible connection between Maitland's disappearance and serial killer Israel Keyes, who committed numerous rapes and murders in Vermont, New York, and throughout the Pacific Northwest, but he was ultimately ruled out as a suspect by the FBI.

In 2006, security footage at the Caesars World casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey showed a woman resembling Maitland sitting at a poker table. The woman was never properly identified.

On the morning of Friday, March 19, 2004, Maitland took an exam to receive her GED. After completing the test, she and her mother had lunch to celebrate the occasion; her father, Bruce, was out of state working in New York at the time. Her mother described her as being in good spirits, and that Maitland had discussed plans of attending college.

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

The Disappearance of Maura Murray, a college student from Massachusetts, in northwest New Hampshire the month before was deemed unrelated to Maitland's disappearance by law enforcement, in spite of the events occurring within 90 miles (140 km) of each other. In 2004, Maitland's family organized a website, now defunct, titled bringbrihome.org, with a posted maximum reward of USD$20,000 for information leading to her whereabouts. The website was active until at least 2009. According to a March 2017 article published in the Burlington Free Press, the reward remained available. In June 2017, however, it was reported that the reward was due to expire in early July of that year.

In the week following Maitland's disappearance, the Vermont State Police received an anonymous tip claiming that she was being held against her will in a house in nearby Berkshire, Vermont, 10 miles (16 km) from Montgomery. The rented house, then occupied by Ramon L. Ryans and Nathaniel Charles Jackson, two known drug dealers from New York, was raided by police on April 15, 2004. Various drug paraphernalia was discovered inside, as well as substantial amounts of cocaine and marijuana, but no sign of Maitland was found. Ryans was arrested during the raid for drug charges. Upon interviewing Maitland's close friends, law enforcement was informed that Maitland had allegedly experimented with hard drugs in the recent past, specifically crack cocaine, and was an acquaintance of Ryans and Jackson.

In late 2004, police received a statement from an anonymous "older female" who implicated both Ryans and Jackson in Maitland's disappearance and alleged murder. The signed affidavit contained allegations, written in graphic detail, that Maitland had been murdered approximately a week after her disappearance. The woman who provided the affidavit claimed that Ryans murdered Maitland during an argument over money she had lent him to purchase crack, and that her body had been temporarily stored in the basement of a recently incarcerated local woman's home; Maitland's body was then allegedly dismembered with a table saw and disposed of on a pig farm. Law enforcement was unable to corroborate the claims in the letter.

On Maitland's seventeenth birthday in October 2003, she decided she wanted to move away from her parents' farm. Her mother, Kellie, said there were no serious stresses at home, but that Maitland wanted more independence, and to be closer to a group of friends who lived 15 miles (24 km) away and attended a different high school. Maitland enrolled at her friends' high school, but her living arrangements were unstable, as she moved in and out of several friends' homes. By the end of February 2004, she had dropped out of school and moved in with her childhood friend, Jillian Stout, in Sheldon, Vermont, approximately 20 miles (32 km) west of Montgomery. To complete her education, Maitland enrolled in a GED program.

Brianna Alexandra Maitland (born October 8, 1986; disappeared March 19, 2004) is an American teenager who disappeared after leaving her job at the Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery, Vermont. She was 17 years old at the time. Maitland's car was discovered the following day, backed into the side of an abandoned house about a mile (1.6 km) away from her workplace. She has not been seen or heard from since. Due to a confluence of circumstances, several days passed before Maitland's friends and family reported her missing.

Brianna Maitland was born October 8, 1986 in Burlington, Vermont to Bruce and Kellie Maitland (née Fisher). She was raised with her older brother on their parents' farm in East Franklin, Vermont, near the Canadian border. In her youth, she was extensively trained in jiu-jitsu. Maitland attended Missisquoi Valley Union High School before transferring to Enosburg Falls High School in nearby Enosburg Falls during her sophomore year.

After lunch, Maitland and her mother spent the afternoon shopping and running errands. While waiting in the check out line of a store, Kellie said something outside caught Brianna's attention; she told her mother she would return shortly, and left the store. Kellie completed her purchase and met Brianna in the parking lot, and noticed that her daughter seemed unnerved, shaken, and agitated. She told her mother that she needed to go home and prepare for her upcoming work shift at the Black Lantern Inn, a restaurant in Montgomery. Not wanting to pry, Kellie did not ask what had happened, and dropped Brianna off at Stout's home between 3:30 and 4:00pm. This was the last time she saw her daughter. At some point before leaving for her work shift, Maitland left a note for Stout saying she'd return after work that evening. Maitland then departed for the Black Lantern Inn in a 1985 Oldsmobile sedan registered to Kellie.