0:00

This is a Glassbox Media Podcast.

0:06

Hey Crawl Space listeners, Lance here. Tim

0:08

and I wanted to share a great

0:10

episode that originally aired in October of

0:12

last year on our other show, Missing.

0:15

This episode is part two of the

0:17

two-part conversation with a person who probably

0:19

does not need an introduction at this

0:21

point. You can listen to part one

0:23

that aired on Crawl Space on Wednesday,

0:25

January 10th. Private investigator Greg Overacker joins

0:28

to discuss his new book, The Hunt

0:30

for Brianna Maitland, The Relentless Pursuit of

0:32

Answers to One of Vermont's Biggest Mysteries.

0:34

And for those of you who haven't

0:36

read this book, there are links in

0:38

the show notes. Tim and I highly

0:40

recommend this book. It's an incredible, fascinating

0:42

story. It's personal. And as most of

0:44

you know, Greg is the primary investigator

0:46

into Brianna Maitland's disappearance, which took place

0:49

on March 19th, 2004. He

0:52

connected with Brianna's father, Bruce, in 2006. And

0:55

for nearly 20 years, he's been working diligently

0:57

on Brianna's case. And a quick housekeeping note

0:59

before moving on to the episode, Tim and

1:02

I wanted to let our fine listeners know

1:04

that over the next few weeks, we will

1:06

be restructuring a bit, which will likely impact

1:08

the release schedule. But fear not. This is

1:10

only temporary and we'll be back on a

1:13

regular schedule before you know it. And we

1:15

thank you so much for your patience and

1:17

understanding in this matter. Again, this is part

1:19

two. You can listen to part one on

1:21

Crawl Space, which aired Wednesday, January 10th. Thanks

1:24

so much for listening, everyone. We hope you enjoy

1:26

it. Welcome

1:54

back to Missing. I am Tim here today

1:56

with Lance. Lance, how are you today? I'm

1:58

doing fantastic today, Tim. because we

2:00

have a sensational second part of

2:03

this conversation with our old friend.

2:06

But Tim, are you feeling the same

2:08

way this time around as you

2:10

were before? How are you? I'm

2:12

doing great. Yeah. I'm excited to

2:14

continue this conversation with private investigator

2:16

turned author, Greg Overacker, all

2:18

about the disappearance of Brianna Maitland. So

2:20

make sure to check out Greg's book

2:22

at bloatedtoe.com and make sure to click

2:25

on that link in the show notes.

2:27

And if you didn't hear part one

2:29

that was aired just a few days

2:31

ago. So go back to the previous

2:33

episode of missing and you'll hear part

2:35

one. And again, this is a

2:37

continuation of that conversation. How's

2:44

it going, everyone. It's Tim and

2:46

Lance here. Have you ever wanted

2:48

someone to read you creepy bedtime

2:50

stories in the most velvety voice

2:52

ever? Well, you had me hooked

2:54

at velvety, Tim. We are excited

2:56

to share a podcast that is

2:58

exactly that. It's called nighty night

3:00

bedtime stories to keep you awake.

3:03

And Tim it's narrated by a

3:05

friend of ours. That's right. New

3:07

York times, bestselling author and podcaster

3:09

Rabia Shadri. Nighty night is an

3:11

anthology featuring classic horror stories this

3:13

season and fictionalized true life stories

3:15

in season one that are so creepy

3:17

that you will realize reality is scarier

3:19

than fiction. And Tim, I know our

3:21

favorite part of each episode is at

3:24

the end when Rabia says, but wait,

3:26

there's more to the story. And we

3:28

get to hear those fascinating details about

3:30

the author and the context of the

3:32

tale. What's your favorite episode?

3:34

My favorite episode is the tiny hairs

3:36

from season one, which takes us on

3:38

a harrowing journey when the narrator runs

3:40

into a dangerous man in the woods.

3:42

What about you? Well, mine comes from

3:44

the current season. It's called the Hordla

3:46

in which we witness the protagonist spiral

3:48

into a descent of madness. Tim, I

3:51

feel like I'm constantly spiraling into a

3:53

descent of madness. So I really relate

3:55

to that one. Well, I hear that.

3:57

So dim your lights, get under a

3:59

cozy blanket. Find and subscribe

4:01

to nighty night wherever you get

4:03

your podcasts nighty night

4:05

everyone nighty night everyone nighty

4:08

night everyone I

4:19

think the I guess elephant in the room or

4:21

the elephant of the story is the group of

4:24

people that are heavily featured in your book that

4:26

operated and Ran the

4:28

drug trafficking and did the drugs and

4:31

dealings and murders and

4:33

all of that Can

4:36

you without I guess terrifying people

4:38

can you go into

4:40

some of these characters because we've talked about

4:42

them in Lesser

4:45

detail than your book describes and your

4:47

book is like staggering in the sense

4:49

of how brutal these people were and

4:51

how out of their Minds they were

4:53

when they were in a desperate situation

4:56

over something like $200 And

4:58

then what they do the lengths they would

5:00

go for something like that. Can you talk

5:02

about these people a little bit? I think

5:04

the big one is so there was a

5:07

woman in Burlington who? killed

5:09

a girl in her home

5:12

over drugs and when

5:14

she ended up going through her court process

5:16

and stuff she mentioned Brianna's name and Her

5:20

sister actually gave a statement to police the

5:22

police had gone to her sister's home And

5:25

we're gonna arrest her son out of petty warrant

5:28

She started screaming and saying, you know, if you

5:30

take my son, I won't tell you what happened

5:32

to Brianna Maitland And of course the

5:34

cap it was a high-profile case in Vermont and Vermont

5:37

being so sparsely populated even though it's an hour south

5:40

They're very familiar with it. So

5:42

he was like, what are you talking about? He took her

5:45

into a room in

5:47

the presence of another officer and he recorded the

5:50

conversation and she tells this god-awful

5:53

story of Dismemberment

5:56

and just and murder and all this other stuff. So

5:58

then we We

6:01

actually came upon that police

6:03

report by happenstance and then

6:05

we went and found it.

6:07

We had to. We were very fortunate that

6:09

we found it. I mean, it wasn't public

6:12

information. It wasn't something we would even know

6:14

existed. So once

6:16

we got involved in that and looked into it

6:18

deeper, what we found out was that someone

6:21

that was in Brianna's social

6:23

hemisphere, who was Ramon Ryan's, had

6:25

moved down south to Burlington,

6:28

had taken up residency

6:30

with a young girl that was the

6:32

young girl that got killed. So

6:35

now he's kind of around

6:37

Brianna when she goes missing. Now he's with a

6:39

girl that gets murdered. And at the

6:41

time, you know, he didn't know what

6:43

happened to her. There was another girl that went

6:45

missing near him, you know. But anyway, Ellen Ducharme,

6:48

the girl that killed her, brought

6:50

in her sister, brought Brianna's name

6:52

into this big saga of murder.

6:57

So when you look into that and

7:00

you look into Ellen and how, what

7:03

a traumatic life she led. And that's

7:05

in detail in the book. And I think

7:07

when people read it, they're aghast. I mean,

7:09

my brother, when he read

7:11

it, called me and said, this

7:13

is just hard to absorb. The people,

7:16

a person would live this way and

7:18

be this horribly mistreated and all this

7:20

other stuff. So if that's what you're

7:23

referencing, and then of course the offshoot of

7:25

that, which is a man who

7:27

lives in Burlington to this day, who

7:29

of course, Ellen's still in prison many

7:32

years later. She's been in prison since 2004. But

7:36

this other person has been involved in another

7:38

murder and disposing of that girl's body. And

7:41

he's got a rap sheet the size of a dictionary.

7:43

And Ellen's

7:46

appreciated. Pages and pages

7:48

of this arrest record. I mean, it's

7:50

like, yeah, it's ridiculous. And you even,

7:53

did you even say like there was a couple that you didn't

7:55

put in there? I mean, pages of like, just to end the

7:57

book. The

8:00

point of how much of a career criminal

8:02

like literally the definition of a career criminal

8:05

everything you could imagine on this Oh, yeah,

8:07

this was a person who? Given

8:10

choices he was always gonna make the wrong

8:13

one every single time. He was

8:15

consistent though. Yeah, and he got caught every single time

8:17

Yeah He would get caught every single time and he

8:19

would always do the same thing He would blow the

8:21

other person in to try to get a better deal

8:23

Even if it even if they didn't do anything he

8:25

would try to blow them in and that's Tim Cruz

8:28

we're talking about Yeah, okay It's funny

8:30

because his name always came up and you know and

8:32

people always talked about his past and we knew

8:34

about his past and stuff Like that But when you

8:36

actually go and you get all the information and put

8:38

it down on paper and look at it and

8:40

go Wow, and then when

8:42

they went and picked him up he had

8:45

murdered it a boy and um outside of

8:47

Essex was at Westford It's

8:49

it's not far from Burlington He

8:51

had killed him and then and nobody knew

8:53

where he was. He was missing his name's

8:55

Craig Jackman he was missing for I

8:58

think under just under five years, but When

9:01

they ended up picking up crews for that murder He

9:03

was in California in jail and we couldn't get the

9:05

records out of California to find out what he was

9:08

in jail there for It was to this day. We

9:10

don't know they flew him back here

9:12

I mean he had taken a young 16 year old boy

9:14

into the woods and and hit him in

9:16

the over the head with an axe multiple times

9:18

and then Then

9:21

of course got released, you know, it's Vermont

9:23

so they just kind of say oh he didn't

9:26

mean it He killed somebody killed this poor kid

9:28

16 year old Craig Jackman

9:30

by chopping him in the head with

9:32

an axe numerous times and You

9:36

said because it's Vermont We

9:38

need to elaborate on this how in the world does

9:40

somebody walk? Lou and I talked about this all the

9:42

time in the running joke is in order to go

9:44

to jail up there You have to put a pickaxe

9:46

in the back of the governor's hat because it just

9:48

they I don't know what the deal is

9:50

they'd Look

9:53

at Alan's rap. She I mean She

9:55

started collecting charges when she was 16

9:57

years old and there's it I

10:00

went and would go to the public, this is the way it used

10:02

to work, I don't know if it works this way anymore. They

10:04

have a public terminal you can go to in

10:07

the courthouse and you

10:10

can yourself enter information

10:12

about someone and print their criminal record. So

10:16

I went in there, this was years ago and

10:18

a woman was helping me out and I'm like what do I do,

10:20

how do I do this and this and that and everything. She goes

10:22

to tell me how much it costs and everything and per

10:25

page and everything and she's like okay if you want

10:27

I'm printing and I printed it. The

10:29

printer just kept going, it's just kicking

10:31

out tons of information. I walked out of there

10:33

with a stack because

10:36

the people I was looking at were

10:38

just a revolving door. I

10:41

mean when you look at Cruz's rap sheet, the first

10:43

thing you're going to think of is why isn't this

10:45

person in prison for the rest of his life. He

10:48

would go in and he would get charged with

10:50

a habitual offender and every time he

10:52

would say he would give over

10:54

information or something to the prosecutor so they would

10:56

drop the habitual offenders charge. He should

10:59

have been in prison for the rest of his life years

11:01

ago. He's

11:03

a free man today. He murdered a

11:05

16 year old kid and left him in the woods. Parents

11:08

were in agony for years until they found his skull.

11:10

Eventually got convicted of that. You know,

11:13

Ligia, he took her body out in the woods and left

11:15

it out in the woods like garbage. You

11:18

know, got six years for that because he

11:20

turned information on somebody. You know, you'd be

11:22

blown away by that. So

11:24

Tim Cruz, did he and Brianna, did

11:26

they know each other as well? So

11:29

that's part of the book is that what it

11:31

does if anything else is it dispels

11:33

all these rumors that

11:35

go around. And you know, it's funny when

11:38

you look at Maura Murray's Facebook

11:41

pages and you

11:43

look at Brianna's Facebook pages, Maura's are

11:45

extremely active. People

11:47

discussing things and stuff like that. Brianna's

11:50

not so much and I think

11:52

part of that is because we come out and

11:54

tell people that's all garbage. The stuff you're talking

11:56

about is garbage. So people stop talking about it pretty

11:58

much. In the first

12:00

case, they just keep churning that garbage. Cruz,

12:04

first of all, we think he was in jail at the time. That's

12:06

kind of explained in there. But also,

12:09

there's nothing that would ever definitively make you

12:12

think he knew her had anything to do

12:14

with her. So, okay.

12:16

You know, there was always this talk of

12:18

Brianna spent time in Burlington. As

12:20

far as we know, that's complete and utter bullshit.

12:24

Again, she's a 17 year old kid. And

12:26

people think she's an adult that's traveling

12:29

around the state and being

12:31

a drug meal and all this other stuff. And

12:33

you talk to her friends and like, wait time

12:36

for that. She's not doing that stuff. You know, she

12:38

was a kid. But she did

12:40

know Ramon Ryan's. That's the

12:42

connection. Right. So that's the

12:45

connection. So, Ramon's girlfriend,

12:47

Ligia Collins, was murdered

12:49

by Ellen Ducharm and

12:52

Tim Cruz and Moses Robar,

12:55

disposed of Ligia's body.

12:59

So Ramon Ryan's had

13:01

nothing to do with that murder. He

13:04

didn't know. He is actually the one

13:06

who reported her missing. Ligia

13:08

missing, which I thought was interesting

13:10

because just a few months earlier,

13:12

an acquaintance of his, Brianna Maitland, went

13:14

missing. Right. It

13:16

is interesting. Yeah. And I think

13:19

that they're involved in stuff that's dangerous

13:22

and unsavory. You know, he is. And

13:25

yeah, but he's the connection to

13:27

Burlington there. But

13:29

is that just an insane coincidence then?

13:32

Yeah, I mean, you know,

13:34

again, I don't want to give the whole book away. And

13:37

I think that chapter is pretty intense. I

13:39

mean, a lot of people approach me about

13:41

it and say, holy shit, you

13:43

know, that's a lot

13:45

of really intense information. But

13:50

you have to remember that Ellen and her

13:52

sister brought Brianna into this

13:55

story. They're the ones that came forward

13:57

and said stuff about Brianna. They

14:01

say a lot of things that border on delusional or

14:04

are delusional. So you have to

14:07

really look at it. And that's what we did. We

14:09

looked at it really closely, as closely as we could.

14:11

You know, and I tell this in the book too, I'm

14:14

not privy to everything that the police did but

14:16

they looked at it pretty intensely too. They knew,

14:18

by the way, people give the

14:20

Vermont State Police a lot of grief, a lot of grief.

14:23

And in the book, I kind of explained that at the

14:25

end and have my

14:27

opinion about that. They

14:29

knew when I was walking into court and

14:31

getting, retrieving documents. They knew. They

14:35

were on top of stuff. Word would get

14:37

back to me that they knew what I was doing. And

14:39

they were working hard. Who

14:42

would deliver the word back to you? It

14:45

would come back through the family and stuff.

14:47

Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, speaking

14:49

of the family, Bruce Maitland writes a great

14:51

forward to your book and he also provides

14:53

a series of photographs of Brianna. A couple

14:55

of them we

14:58

have seen circulating on the internet and several

15:00

of them no one's ever seen as far

15:02

as I know. There are pictures in there

15:04

that I've never seen and these are ones that

15:07

were provided by Bruce. What

15:09

was striking to you about his willingness to give

15:11

you these photos that seem

15:13

very personal and how

15:16

was that incorporated into the book? Where did you

15:18

find the appropriate moment to put it in the

15:21

book? So there's that thing

15:23

again where I know this huge group

15:25

of people from doing this for so

15:27

many years and you know that. There's

15:29

a huge following where everybody

15:31

knows everything you can possibly observe publicly about

15:33

the case. So when

15:35

you, but you have to put in those pictures that

15:37

have been going around for the people who don't. People who buy

15:39

the book don't know anything about it. They want to see those

15:41

pictures that have been going around forever. Then

15:45

Bruce gives me these pictures that no one's

15:47

ever seen and he wouldn't even physically give them to

15:49

me. He's like these are mine. You

15:52

know I'll share them but I'm not giving you the physical

15:55

picture. You would scan them and send them to me so

15:58

that I could have him but he would keep possession. of

16:00

him so that was important to him. By

16:05

the way, before I forget, the other

16:07

night one of Brianna's friends sent me an article and she said

16:09

I want you to see this and it was one

16:12

of those articles you see like on pops up

16:15

on Facebook or something about the case and it's

16:17

an overview and she had actually commented on it

16:19

and told the writer how bad of a job

16:21

she did. And

16:24

there was so much so many mistakes in it and

16:26

stuff that I commented on it

16:29

and I said this article is garbage.

16:31

I'm stupider for having read it because

16:34

it pisses me off. Anyway.

16:38

One thing I didn't know when looking at those pictures

16:40

or maybe I did but it just is

16:43

like chilling like when you show the date and

16:46

there's a digital picture of Brianna and it

16:48

was the day before right? The day before

16:50

it disappeared. Yeah, there's two from the date,

16:52

the night prior to her going missing and

16:54

there's at least

16:56

a couple from the night prior to that. Yeah,

16:59

there's a popular picture of her where it's

17:01

sort of her profile and she's kind of

17:03

half looking at the camera and smiling but

17:05

it's not a big smile and you guys

17:07

know the picture I'm talking about and that

17:09

was the night before, right? Yes.

17:12

And that's a picture that comes up in the

17:14

top search when you search Brianna Maitland you'll see

17:17

this picture. I don't know how many people don't

17:19

know that that's the night before.

17:22

That's a great point actually because you start

17:24

to get dumbed down from all the information

17:26

that you get and when you see that

17:28

picture you go okay you see the picture

17:30

it's a nice picture whatever but you don't

17:32

realize the significance of it. The significance of

17:34

it is that it was the night prior.

17:37

Yeah, for sure. Yeah,

17:40

that's that awful part of getting information

17:43

regurgitated at you all the

17:46

time without

17:48

someone explaining to you the importance of it

17:51

and stuff. Yeah, for sure. Right,

17:54

I believe in one of those

17:56

photos she was coloring eggs with her friend. Yeah,

17:58

she was coloring eggs with her friend. dying

18:00

eggs for Easter. So

18:03

yeah, I mean, and just a couple

18:06

days later, obviously, everything was so different.

18:09

So Shauna spent a couple nights there

18:11

with her prior to her disappearance. This

18:15

is a really important thing to know

18:17

about that. So you know, Branna

18:19

had the friends that she got, she

18:22

was at the party with, that she got in the fight

18:24

with 20 something days prior to her disappearance, which you know,

18:26

everybody gravitated that that must have something to do with it

18:28

and stuff. She had

18:30

that group of friends. And then she

18:33

had friends like Shauna, who were kind of separate,

18:35

they didn't those those girls didn't commingle, they didn't

18:38

weren't friends with each other. They knew

18:40

of each other, but they weren't friends with each other. So

18:42

you when you talk to Shauna, or you talk to those

18:44

other girls, you get two different perspectives. And

18:46

that's really important. Now when I

18:49

came up to Vermont, two or three

18:51

weekends ago, three weekends ago, I did

18:53

an interview a radio interview in Waterbury. I

18:56

went out to dinner with Shauna and her sister

18:58

Andrea and her fiance

19:00

Charlie. And they

19:03

give you their point of

19:05

view, which is really

19:07

interesting. I mean, Andrea said she was like

19:09

my little sister, you know, and

19:12

Shauna just absolutely adore Branna

19:15

loves her and spent

19:19

a lot of time with her there. But

19:22

the girls that were at the party that

19:24

she hung around with, when

19:27

this whole fight happened,

19:30

they were mad at Branna, because Branna had

19:32

spent time with a boy with one of

19:34

them's boyfriend, she was out of town. That's

19:38

how the fight evolved. So they were mad

19:40

at her. So what happened in essence is

19:42

they all kind of got

19:45

upset with her. She

19:47

was upset. They

19:50

weren't hanging around there at

19:53

the last couple of few weeks. In

19:56

essence, they weren't monitoring her anymore.

19:58

In other words, just naturally. from

20:00

being around those girls and the phone call

20:02

exchanges and all that stuff under normal circumstances

20:04

they would have been monitoring her life. She

20:07

may have said something to them, they

20:09

may have seen something, instead there was

20:13

radio silence and that

20:15

led to her being kind

20:18

of out there without being monitored.

20:21

I mean you think about that every day when you get

20:23

up and go about your way you're being monitored without even

20:25

knowing it because of the people you

20:27

see and you have interactions with and stuff like that

20:30

and your loved ones and stuff. That

20:33

fell by the wayside. So Shauna was

20:35

incredibly important. I told her that after

20:37

dinner I said the information that she

20:39

had given without maybe her knowing certain

20:43

things about certain things

20:45

was extremely important

20:49

and a peek in a window into that what

20:51

was going on. What was

20:53

so different about Shauna's perspective

20:55

of Brianna that

20:57

differed from her other friends? You

21:00

know Shauna for starters was

21:03

when you look at everybody we dealt with up there she wasn't

21:06

into the drug culture and all that stuff.

21:09

She just didn't do that stuff. She had a

21:11

different life going on. Again,

21:13

she wasn't hanging around with a bunch

21:15

of people on that side of Brianna's

21:17

life so she had a

21:19

different type of relationship with her which was

21:22

kind of wholesome. And

21:25

Brianna was spending time with her family. She

21:28

went there two nights prior to her disappearance for St.

21:30

Patty's Day and celebration and just

21:32

kind of hung out with her family and stuff like

21:34

that and those pictures are in there. And

21:36

we'll be right back after a quick word from

21:39

our sponsors. Thanks

21:41

to our sponsors and now we're back to the program. When

21:45

Brianna went missing she had been staying at Jillian's

21:47

house with Jillian and her father and

21:50

Sheldon in driving to work and back.

21:52

So that wasn't a horribly long ride either. She

21:55

was in route from work to Jillian's

21:57

home when she went missing. And

22:00

I think that's important to mention because people get all

22:02

caught up in the drugs and all of that and

22:04

that seedy underbelly. And

22:07

she had an option. When she left school,

22:09

she had an option to not get her

22:11

GED. When she left home, she had an

22:13

option to hang out with

22:15

those people and live in those environments.

22:17

But instead, she went to Sheldon. And

22:21

it seemed to me like maybe trying to put

22:23

a little space in between herself and

22:25

that lifestyle and then hanging out in

22:29

those wholesome environments that you're talking about.

22:32

I think after that fight, she

22:35

realized she screwed up and she just was

22:37

being real lowkey. I'm pretty

22:40

sure that that's what happened. You

22:42

can almost sense it when you talk to people that

22:44

she realized she screwed up and upset

22:46

her friends were really important to her. And,

22:48

you know, her friends say that that

22:51

stuff would have blown over, but

22:53

they were mad at her, no doubt. So

22:55

I hope that came across in the book that

22:57

the stuff that was going on, like with the

22:59

fight and all this, you know, people insist on

23:02

saying that the fight had something to do with

23:04

her going missing and stuff like that. It's just

23:06

like informational fog. It's looking back and trying to

23:09

make things fit. In

23:12

other words, instead of following any evidence of what

23:14

happened to her, you're going back and saying,

23:16

this is something to do with this. This

23:18

has to be cause and causation. And, you

23:20

know, when it doesn't,

23:23

it's informational fog. You

23:25

know, the girl that she got in a

23:27

fight with punched her in the face a

23:29

couple of times that leap from that to

23:31

murder is huge. Right. I'd have

23:33

to see evidence of anything like that to

23:35

believe it. I just don't believe it. Even

23:38

though charges were dropped because

23:40

Brianna went missing. So theoretically,

23:43

the person who hit Brianna had something

23:45

to gain, but you're still

23:47

saying it's a huge leap from

23:50

a couple of punches to

23:52

making someone go missing. I

23:54

think so. I think for sure. For

23:56

somebody to say, I'm going to beat somebody up is one thing for them

23:58

to say, I'm going to kill them. And

24:02

again, we're talking about kids. That's

24:05

another thing that's lost in the mix. These are kids we're talking

24:07

about, 16, 17 year old kids. Okay,

24:10

so there was the fight, there is

24:13

the drug scene and culture around Brianna

24:15

at that time as well. But

24:19

it seems like in your opinion, those

24:21

don't necessarily have anything to do with

24:24

where Brianna is now. In

24:27

the book you wrote about predators of interest.

24:29

Can we go over some of those? Yeah,

24:33

interesting. Yeah, very interesting

24:35

because if you exclude those two

24:37

points in Brianna's past, what are

24:40

you left with? Well,

24:42

so unlike other states like here

24:45

in New York, who

24:47

would think an hour away in

24:50

Syracuse something had something to do with

24:52

here, an hour away in Albany

24:55

or whatever. But in

24:57

Vermont, it's very different. If

25:00

you live in St. Albans, you know people that live

25:02

in Burlington, they're friends of yours. It's

25:04

not that far away. The

25:07

whole state is that way because it's so

25:09

sparsely populated. So when there's crimes

25:11

that happen in one area, it's

25:14

considered the backyard of everywhere. So

25:16

Israel Keys comes up. So Keys

25:19

killed a couple in

25:21

Vermont. And

25:23

so he was always, people

25:25

wondered about him. And

25:27

oddly, he committed

25:29

crimes near where I live in New York. And

25:33

he was thought to actually rob a bank really close to where

25:35

I live. And there's

25:37

a woman missing here he was kind of suspected of and

25:39

stuff like that. But the

25:41

FBI came forward and said he

25:44

was somewhere else at the time. And

25:47

supposedly they know that through financial records.

25:51

But he was interesting. And then there's

25:53

a whole bunch of them in there. It

25:55

explains each one in detail. Peter

25:58

Johns was a man who. hidden

26:00

a general store on Route 118,

26:02

hidden the closet, young girl was

26:04

working there. And

26:06

I don't know if it was, I can't remember if

26:09

it was after hours, after she closed up or after

26:11

everyone left, but he came out of the closet and

26:13

attacked her. And

26:15

that was really brutal. He got around

26:17

the floor and was ramming her head against the floor.

26:21

She ended up dragging her out to his vehicle, he

26:23

had parked it around behind the store. She

26:26

got away from him, took a handful

26:28

of hair out on her way. She

26:30

ran across the road and got, you

26:32

know, you're in Vermont, again, it's like a

26:35

hamlet probably. And she ends up at

26:37

a house and they call the police, he gets picked up.

26:40

He got, you know, it's Vermont, he got almost no

26:42

time for it. I think he got two years and

26:44

was released in less than that, whatever. But

26:47

that was Route 118, which is Route 118

26:49

is where Brianna went missing. And

26:52

I can't remember how close it is to the

26:54

actual spot. But it was years prior, he

26:56

was back out of jail when it happened. Howard

26:59

Godfrey, which is one that I

27:02

should have elaborated more on in the book, and I'm sorry

27:04

I didn't. But a girl

27:06

named Patricia Schoelwel went missing in Stowe. She

27:09

had moved from Boston, she was a young girl, again,

27:11

100 pound,

27:14

I don't remember how old she was, I'd have to

27:16

look 20 year old or something like that or 22

27:18

year old or something. She

27:20

had moved to Stowe, which if

27:22

you've ever been to Stowe, there's not much

27:24

of a population there. She was only there

27:26

for a few weeks and she went missing. Her parents

27:28

ended up, this is a really interesting aspect

27:30

of her cases, her parents ended up pushing

27:34

to have Vermont get

27:36

a DNA repository where

27:39

criminals would have to donate their DNA

27:41

and they finally

27:43

got it through. Believe it or not, politicians

27:45

objected to it, they had to fight it

27:47

out. Who objects to something like that? Nice

27:51

to know politicians are looking out for you. Once

27:55

it got up and running, it solved cases immediately

27:57

and one of the cases it solved was their own daughter's

27:59

mother. murder. The man

28:02

that did it, Howard Godfrey, had

28:05

attacked a woman. He was working for the Burlington

28:07

Free Press. He had gotten a job, I don't

28:09

know, deliver papers or something and she came to

28:11

his house to go over the

28:13

billing with him and stuff, how to submit his

28:15

paperwork. And he got up

28:17

to get a drink of water and hit her

28:20

over the back of the head with a mallet.

28:22

It was assaulting her. She fought him off. I

28:24

should have went into detail about that because it's

28:26

a really wild story. But he

28:28

got convicted, had to submit his DNA and

28:31

it got him busted for the murder of

28:33

Patricia Scholville. So that was an interesting case.

28:37

Then there was one that we picked up on, a few of

28:39

them that we picked up on early on that we

28:41

looked into and stuff. And Lou

28:43

has unique perspectives on these cases because

28:47

he knows what he's doing. But one of them was Gerald

28:49

Montgomery who

28:51

killed Laura Winterbottom in Burlington. He's

28:55

still in prison. He'll be in prison for years. One

28:57

of the more notable ones is Brian

28:59

Rooney. Brian Rooney

29:02

killed Michelle Gardner Quinn in Burlington, abducted

29:04

and killed her, which is an extremely

29:06

sad story. She was a college

29:08

student in Burlington and her parents were there for parents

29:11

weekend. And they

29:13

went out to dinner together, probably all the

29:16

parents did with their kids that night. And

29:18

she went out for drinks with her friends afterwards and they

29:20

went back to their hotel room and they were

29:23

going to get together the next day for the

29:25

rest of the parents weekend or

29:27

whatever. She disappeared. They

29:29

ended up finding out that, of

29:32

course, this mad search went on. I'm sure

29:34

the parents just turned their lives inside out

29:36

at the time. But the

29:38

police ended up finding footage of her walking down the

29:40

street with Rooney. One of her

29:43

friends, she had walked up to a guy, Rooney,

29:45

and said, can I borrow your

29:47

cell phone? She'd lost her friends in the mix.

29:49

Those crowded people, crowded bars that night. She

29:52

called one of them. They didn't answer and they called back and

29:54

Rooney answered the phone. Said something

29:56

about, oh, the little hottie that's with me or something

29:58

like that. But

30:01

she disappears. They ended

30:03

up finding her. Luckily, someone stumbled

30:05

upon her body in Iraq, crevice,

30:08

while they were hiking. It was five

30:10

miles from where he lived. He had taken her out

30:13

of Burlington towards where he lived. I think it was

30:15

up in Essex. But he went to trial, and

30:18

they had his DNA from

30:20

a rectal swab, and he still denied

30:23

it was him. Nope,

30:25

not me. And the

30:27

statistics of the chances of it being him in

30:29

the book are pretty interesting. It

30:32

was one in 295

30:34

quadrillion, and he still

30:36

denied it was him. One quadrillion

30:38

is a thousand billion, and

30:41

the year's population is 7.75 billion. But

30:44

it wasn't him. It was a reasonable doubt,

30:46

though. Yeah, I don't know

30:48

if that's any reasonable doubt there. And

30:52

then they tried – his lawyers tried

30:54

– of course, there's automatic appeal. His

30:57

lawyers tried to say that he

30:59

beat her to death in strangler and raped

31:03

her. And his

31:05

attorneys tried to say because you can't

31:08

prove that she died during the rape,

31:11

it's not aggravated murder. Therefore,

31:13

this should all be thrown out. Courts

31:15

disagreed with that. Yeah, good, good.

31:17

It sounds pretty desperate. Yeah, so he's

31:19

not getting out. But he

31:21

was one of the more interesting ones, and I can't remember who

31:24

else is in there, but there's a few. You

31:26

wrote a little bit about false confessions in

31:29

the book, and they're

31:31

really interesting to hear everything

31:34

that goes on in a missing

31:36

person's investigation, and still there's nothing

31:38

to really grasp onto. I

31:42

think you sort of captured that feeling

31:44

in the book really well. But

31:46

can you tell us a little bit about false confessions

31:48

and what that's like? Yeah, I didn't go

31:50

into that a lot, but there was

31:53

Ellen Ducharme's thing where she

31:56

told so many stories it was just distracting.

32:00

I think it's part of the time she was at least part

32:02

of the time she was just throwing stuff at the wall to

32:04

see what would stick Because she

32:06

was trying to figure out a way to get out of a murder charge Which

32:09

is bringing a missing girl into your

32:12

case to try to get out of a murder charges

32:14

Apparent then Soto the

32:17

Joker Who was another person

32:20

who was in the lore of all this that

32:22

people thought was involved? He would

32:25

constantly tell people that you killed her in

32:28

Buried her in his Well

32:30

behind his home and stuff so

32:33

that's Just bizarre and of course when the

32:35

police go to him and these guys that are in

32:38

the system in a revolving kind of way It

32:42

doesn't faze them much to talk to the police

32:44

because they know they can't be convicted of something

32:46

that there's no evidence on And so

32:49

then they would talk to him. He would say Nah,

32:52

I just shooting off my mouth. Just trying

32:54

to scare people and stuff, you know You

32:58

get it It's something to keep in mind is most

33:00

people don't have this in their life people that live

33:02

really controlled lives and just go to Their office every

33:04

day and you know go golfing on the weekends and

33:06

stuff They don't realize that there's people out there that

33:08

you can't believe a thing out of their mouth That

33:11

everything they do is to cheat you to rob you to

33:14

lie to you to manipulate you and they're

33:16

just awful fucking people And there's a lot

33:18

of them out there It's just that most

33:20

people don't have live normal lives Don't have

33:22

contact with those kind of people and we'll

33:24

be right back after a quick word from

33:26

our sponsors Thanks

33:28

to our sponsors and now we're back to the program and

33:33

Getting involved in this so personally with

33:35

Bruce and with Lou and friends

33:37

and even with us Like how do you keep

33:39

out your own personal? Opinions, how

33:41

do you stay on? The

33:44

fence of it could be this or it

33:46

could be this and not let your opinion

33:49

or your theories sort of navigate your narration

33:51

I don't know. I talk a lot differently

33:53

in private than I do here publicly I

33:58

don't know. I mean I have I take

34:00

everybody's information and try to find the truth,

34:03

you know, and it's good

34:05

when you got people like Lou and Bruce that

34:09

You know, they have time for bullshit It's funny

34:11

because you see the difference

34:13

between when you're talking to people that are giving you

34:15

tips and stuff like that or or want

34:18

to Help they will try

34:20

to make things fit scenario. We'll try to

34:22

plug things in to make things fit Lou

34:25

for an example does the opposite He

34:28

will shoot down everything you see will tell

34:30

you what's wrong with everything that you're proposing That's

34:33

the way you're supposed to do that. It doesn't work, you

34:35

know, he'll shoot it down So you'll

34:38

start to realize okay, this doesn't this isn't functional.

34:40

This is there's no way that this could be

34:42

true That's the

34:44

way you should decipher things, you know, you know,

34:47

what what is first of all If

34:50

somebody tells me something that's bullshit, especially

34:52

on purpose for their ever on I'm

34:55

gonna question everything that they say This

34:57

is something that's grown with me over the

35:00

years looking back now even at the relationships

35:02

I've had and friends that I've had Stuff

35:04

like that. I'm realizing now how

35:06

much I've grown and how much Less

35:10

I withstand from people and

35:13

just tell them right up front I just I don't want

35:15

a part of this if it's not the truth. I don't

35:17

care what I want to hear All

35:20

right. So where can our listeners get

35:23

your book? It's sold

35:25

specifically through my publisher Which

35:28

is bloated toll enterprises, which is funny name, but

35:30

it's a reference to hiking and the rad around

35:32

X My publisher by the

35:34

way is awesome. It's just a wonderful people.

35:37

He's what he's one of my favorite authors Lawrence

35:39

goolee And he's got some great

35:41

books if you go to the site to order the book look at

35:43

some of his other books He's got a

35:46

book about Robert Garo who killed campers? Up

35:49

in the Adirondacks and It

35:52

was it's a phenomenal book. What was

35:54

the other one? Oh escape from Dan Amora One's

35:56

called the ones about Garo's called terror the

35:59

Adirondacks But there's a lot of other stuff

36:01

in there too that's fantastic. He does a lot of

36:04

historical stuff for the Adirondacks in true

36:06

crime. But if

36:08

you Google the name, the hunt for Brianna Maitland,

36:10

it'll come up, you can order it there. Or

36:12

you can order directly through me and I'll sign

36:14

a copy if you send me a request on

36:16

Facebook. Private message me, pay for it

36:18

right on PayPal or with a credit card or whatever you wanna

36:20

do. It's being sold in

36:22

one store up in Vermont at the eloquent

36:25

page in St. Albans. It's

36:27

a really cool store. Donna will help you out if you

36:29

call there or go there. And

36:31

I was gonna try to get into

36:33

some bookstores in Burlington and stuff too, but it

36:36

was just such a rig of her ode to do

36:38

it. And she made it easy, Donna made it easy.

36:40

These other people just kinda made it difficult. And

36:43

someone want, they want 50% of your book. I'm

36:46

not giving them 50% of my book. I got 20

36:49

years of experience in it and wrote

36:51

it myself. Why do they get 50% of my book? That

36:54

is a lot, 50%. I'd give that money

36:56

to the nonprofit before I'd

36:58

give it to them. You know what

37:00

I mean? What is your

37:02

second book about? Yeah,

37:05

I don't know. I knew this material really well. So

37:09

I don't know. I thought about, I actually, you

37:11

know what? I thought about writing one about Louis

37:13

Lent and then I bought the book that you

37:15

guys had, the author of it. Oh

37:17

yeah, Hidden Demons, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was

37:19

a good book. It was good, yeah. It's very specific.

37:22

I mean, it's very, it could use to write something

37:24

else on. But that was very specific, but it was

37:26

good. I actually contacted

37:28

the Mike Daly over here

37:30

in Herkimer County. He

37:32

was a prosecutor at the time. And

37:34

I said, Mike, did you know you're in a book? And he's like, no.

37:38

He's like, well, book, and I told him

37:40

so. He'll be reading it soon. Well, I

37:42

do feel like you left a little bit

37:44

of meat on the bone as far as

37:46

your bounty hunting career goes. So I look

37:48

forward to reading your follow-up about

37:50

your bounty hunting adventures. You know, the

37:53

putt and my publisher wanted me to

37:55

do specifically just that. He said,

37:57

just do a book about that. And I'm like, it's

37:59

good. says something weird about writing stuff about yourself,

38:03

I was really uncomfortable with that in this book

38:05

because it's like pulling your pants down in public.

38:09

That's private stuff and stuff. Not

38:13

for me. But

38:15

I have to say though that

38:17

so few people know that experience

38:19

of doing that work that it's

38:21

a glimpse into a world that

38:24

almost every reader wouldn't know anything about.

38:27

Even though it might feel self-indulgent on your part, I

38:29

think there's real value out there for the reader. Some

38:34

of it was absolute insanity for sure. Just

38:38

crazy shit. It's funny

38:40

when you're talking about cops

38:42

see weird stuff, we

38:45

would see the weirdest shit. When

38:48

you deal with people that are really disenfranchised,

38:51

people that are very dysfunctional, you're

38:54

going to see crazy shit. I

38:57

think when people read my book, Soto

38:59

for instance, his life, it's

39:02

just insanity. How do

39:04

you come out of that being normal? Well, Greg,

39:07

thank you so much for joining us

39:09

here today. This was a great reunion

39:11

of sorts and a conversation about your

39:14

book and about your investigation

39:16

into the disappearance of Brianna Maitland.

39:19

Thank you for your time and service. Thanks, buddy.

39:21

Appreciate you guys having me on. Thank

39:26

you. Thank

39:56

you. This

40:08

is the Glass Belt Media Podcast.