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17-year-old Brianna Maitland spent the day with her mother before heading into her evening shift at the Black Lantern Inn. After clocking out for the night, she was never seen again.
Her mother, Kellie, took her shopping to celebrate Brianna passing her GED test. Mother and daughter visited various shops in the small Vermont town. Her mother mentioned her daughter leaving the store at one point to check on something she’d seen out the window.
Her mother checked on her a few moments later and described her daughter as appearing “tense, shaken, and agitated.”
Coworkers say Brianna declined an invitation to grab dinner after her shift since she had to get up for her second job bright and early the following morning. Hopping into her 1985 Oldsmobile, she headed home.
It would appear Brianna never actually made it home. Locals found her car abandoned with the rear end stuck into an old building. Police found personal items including uncashed paychecks. An officer on the scene had the car towed, not knowing it was tied to anything suspicious. It was later identified as Brianna Maitland’s car.
Before heading into work, Brianna left a note for her roommate Jillian Stout, ensuring she’d be home after her shift that Friday. Thinking they kept missing each other, Jillian didn’t begin to worry until the following Monday. It took over a week for Brianna to be officially reported as missing. Her roommate assumed she was spending the weekend with her parents.
Kellie and Bruce Maitland called all of her daughter’s friends, but no one had seen her since her last shift at the Black Lantern Inn the Friday before. No evidence or signs of struggle were found in her car. In 2016 police revealed they had DNA samples from Brianna’s car but no matches.
Many anonymous calls have some in claiming to know what happened to Brianna. Everyone has a different theory from her being sold into sex slavery to being drowned at the bottom of a lake.
There have been allegations that the disappearance of Brianna Maitland is somehow connected to that of Maura Murray’s. Maura had been reported missing just a month before not far from where Brianna’s car was found. Police have been unable to solve either case.
Since her disappearance in 2004, there have been alleged sightings of the missing girl. One security camera in Atlantic City captured the image of a girl who looked strikingly like Brianna but to this day her story remains an unsolved mystery in Vermont.
