0:00

This is a Glassbox Media Podcast.

0:40

Welcome back to Missing. I am Tim

0:42

here today with Lance. Lance, how are you today?

0:45

I'm doing fantastic today, Tim, because

0:47

we have a sensational second part

0:49

of this conversation with our old

0:51

friend.

0:52

But Tim, are you feeling the same way this

0:54

time around as you were before? How are you? I'm

0:57

doing great. Yeah, I'm excited to

0:59

continue this conversation with private

1:01

investigator turned author Greg Overacker,

1:05

all about the disappearance of Brianna

1:07

Maitland. So make sure to check out

1:09

Greg's book at bloatedtoe.com

1:12

and make sure to click on that link in the show

1:15

notes. And if you didn't hear part one that was aired

1:17

just a few days ago, so go back to the previous

1:20

episode of Missing and you'll hear part one.

1:22

And again, this is a continuation

1:24

of that conversation.

1:31

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2:11

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Hurt by a truck? Call Colombo Law. I

3:27

think the elephant in the room or

3:29

the elephant of the story is the group of

3:31

people that are heavily featured in your book

3:33

that operated and ran

3:36

the drug trafficking and did the drugs

3:38

and dealings and murders

3:41

and all of that. Can

3:44

you, without I guess terrifying people,

3:46

can you go into some of these characters?

3:49

Because we've talked about them in

3:53

lesser detail than your book describes

3:55

and your book is like staggering in

3:57

the sense of how brutal these people

3:59

were. and how out of their minds they were

4:01

when they were in a desperate situation

4:04

over something like $200 and what

4:06

they'd do, the lengths they would go for something

4:08

like that. Can you talk about these people a little

4:11

bit? I think the big one is,

4:14

so there was a woman in Burlington

4:16

who killed a girl

4:19

in her home over drugs.

4:21

And when she ended up going through her court

4:23

process and stuff, she mentioned

4:25

Brianna's name. And her

4:28

sister actually gave a statement to police.

4:30

The police had gone to her sister's home and

4:33

we're going to arrest her son out of petty warrant. And

4:36

she started screaming and saying, you

4:38

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

4:40

to Brianna Maitland. And of course, the cap,

4:42

it was a high profile case in Vermont and Vermont

4:45

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

4:47

south, they're

4:48

very familiar with it.

4:50

So he was like, what are you talking about?

4:52

He took her into a room in

4:54

the presence of another officer and he recorded

4:57

the

4:57

conversation. And she tells this

5:00

god-awful story of

5:02

dismemberment and

5:05

murder and all this other stuff. So then

5:08

we actually came upon that police

5:11

report by happenstance and

5:13

then we

5:14

went and found it. We had to.

5:17

We were very fortunate that we found it. I mean, it

5:19

wasn't public information. It wasn't something we

5:21

would even know existed. So

5:24

once we got involved in that and looked into

5:26

it deeper, what we found out was that

5:28

someone that was in Brianna's

5:31

social hemisphere, who was Ramone Rions,

5:33

had moved down south to

5:35

Burlington, had

5:37

taken up residency with a young girl. That

5:40

was the young girl that got killed. So

5:42

now he's kind of around

5:45

Brianna when she goes missing. Now

5:47

he's with a girl

5:49

that gets murdered. And at the time, he didn't know

5:51

what happened to her. There was another girl that went

5:53

missing near him. But anyway,

5:55

Alan Ducharme, the girl that killed her, and her sister

5:57

brought Brianna's social media. name

6:00

into this big saga of murder.

6:04

So when you look into that, and

6:07

you look into Ellen and how

6:10

what a traumatic life she led. And that's

6:13

in detail in the book. And I think when

6:15

people read it, they're aghast. I mean, my brother,

6:18

when he read it, called me and said,

6:21

this is just hard to absorb that

6:23

this people, a person would live this way

6:25

and be this horribly mistreated

6:27

and all this other stuff. So if

6:29

that's what you're talking, you're referencing. And then,

6:31

of course, the offshoot of that,

6:34

which is a man who lives in Burlington to this

6:36

day, who of course, Ellen's

6:38

still in prison many years later, she's

6:40

been in prison since 2004. But

6:44

this other person has been involved in another

6:46

murder and disposing of that girl's body. And

6:49

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

6:53

And a lance appreciated

6:55

pages and pages of this arrest record.

6:57

I mean, it's like, yeah, it's ridiculous. And

7:00

you even did you did you even say, like, there

7:02

was a couple that you didn't put in there? I mean, pages

7:04

of like, just

7:07

to emphasize the point of how much

7:09

of a career criminal, like, literally the

7:11

definition of a career criminal, everything you

7:13

could imagine on this. Oh, yeah. This was

7:16

a person who, who,

7:18

given choices, he was always going to make the wrong

7:20

one every single time. He was

7:22

consistent, though. Yeah, and he got caught every

7:25

single time. Yeah, he would get caught every single

7:27

time. And he would always do the same thing. He would blow

7:29

the other person in to try to get a better deal. Even

7:31

if even if they didn't do anything, he would

7:33

try to blow him in. And that's Tim Cruz we're

7:35

talking about. Yeah. Okay, it's funny,

7:37

because his name always came up and you know,

7:40

and people always talked about his past, we knew about his past

7:42

and stuff like that. But when you actually

7:44

go and you get all the information and put

7:47

it down on paper and look at it and go,

7:49

Wow. And then when they went and picked

7:51

him up, he had murdered a boy in

7:54

outside of Essex was at Westford. It's

7:57

not far from Burlington. He

7:59

had killed him and then nobody

8:01

knew where he was. He was missing his name's Craig Jackman.

8:04

He was missing for I think, just

8:06

under five years, but when

8:09

they ended up picking up Cruz for that murder,

8:11

he was in California in jail. And we couldn't get

8:13

the records out of California to find out what he was

8:16

in jail there for. To this day, we don't

8:18

know. They flew him back here. I

8:20

mean, he had taken a young 16 year old boy into

8:22

the woods and hit him in the

8:24

head with an ax multiple times. And

8:27

then,

8:28

then that course got released. You know, it's Vermont.

8:31

So they just kind of say, oh, he didn't mean it. He

8:34

killed somebody, killed this poor kid, 16 year

8:36

old Craig Jackman, by

8:39

chopping him in the head with an ax numerous

8:41

times. And you

8:44

said, because it's Vermont, we

8:46

need to elaborate on this. How in the world does

8:48

somebody walk? Lou and I talk about this all the time

8:50

and the running joke is in order to go to jail up

8:52

there, you have to put a pick ax in the back of the governor's

8:55

head because it just, I

8:57

don't know what the deal is. They,

9:00

you look at Allen's ramp sheet. I mean, she

9:03

started collecting charges when she

9:05

was 16 years old. And there's, I

9:07

went and would go to the public. This is

9:10

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

9:12

have a public terminal you can go to

9:14

in the courthouse

9:17

and you can yourself enter

9:19

information about someone in print or criminal record.

9:23

And so I went in there and this was years ago

9:26

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

9:28

do? How do I do this and this and that and everything? And she goes,

9:30

and she goes to tell me how much it costs and everything and

9:33

per page and everything. And she's like, okay, if

9:35

you want them print it. And I printed it and

9:37

the printer just kept going. It's just kicking

9:39

out tons of information. I walked out of there

9:41

with a snack because

9:44

the people I was looking at were

9:46

just, it was just a revolving door. I mean,

9:48

when you look at Cruz's rap sheet, the

9:51

first thing you're gonna think of is why isn't this person

9:53

in prison for the rest of his life? He

9:55

would go in and he would get charged with a habitual

9:58

offender

9:59

and every.

9:59

time he would say, you know, he would give

10:02

over information or something to the prosecutor so

10:04

they would drop the habitual offenders

10:06

charge. He should have been in prison for the rest

10:08

of his life years ago.

10:10

He's a free man today. He murdered

10:13

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

10:15

were in agony for years until they found his skull.

10:18

Eventually got convicted of that. You know, Ligia,

10:21

he took her body out in the woods and left it out in

10:23

the woods like garbage.

10:25

You know, got six years for that because

10:27

he turned information on somebody. You

10:30

know, you'd be blown away by that. So

10:32

Tim Cruz, did he and Brianna,

10:34

did they know each other as well? So

10:37

that's part of the book is that what

10:39

it does, if anything else, is it

10:41

dispels all these rumors

10:43

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

10:45

when you look at Maura Murray's

10:48

Facebook pages and

10:50

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

10:53

are extremely active. We're

10:55

discussing things and stuff like that. Brianna's

10:58

not so much. I think part

11:00

of that is because we come out and tell people that's

11:02

all garbage. The stuff you're talking about is garbage.

11:04

So people stop talking about it pretty much. In

11:07

Maura's case, they just keep churning that garbage.

11:10

Cruz, first of all, we think

11:12

he was in jail at the time. That's kind

11:14

of explained in there. But also,

11:17

there's nothing that would ever definitively

11:20

make you think he knew her had anything to do with

11:22

her.

11:23

Okay. You know, there was always this talk

11:25

of Brianna spent time in Burlington.

11:28

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

11:31

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

11:34

know, people think she's like an adult that's

11:36

traveling around the state and being a

11:39

drug, meal and all this other stuff. And

11:41

you talk to her friends and like, wait time

11:44

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

11:46

was a kid. But she did know

11:48

Ramon Ryan. That's the connection.

11:51

Right. That's the connection. So

11:54

so Ramon's girlfriend, Ligia

11:56

Collins was murdered by Ellen

11:58

Ducharme and Cruise

12:00

and Moses Robar disposed

12:04

of Ligia's body. So

12:08

Ramon Ryan's had nothing to do with that murder.

12:11

He is actually the one who

12:13

reported her missing, Ligia

12:16

missing, which I thought was interesting because

12:19

just a few months earlier an acquaintance

12:21

of his, Brianna Maitland, went missing. Right.

12:24

It is interesting, yeah. But

12:26

they're involved in stuff that's dangerous

12:30

and unsavory, you know, he is.

12:33

And yeah, but he's the connection

12:35

to Burlington there.

12:37

But is that just an insane coincidence

12:39

then?

12:40

Yeah, I mean, you know, again,

12:42

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

12:45

I think that chapter is pretty

12:47

intense. I mean, a lot of people approach

12:49

me about it and say, holy shit, you

12:51

know,

12:52

that's a lot of really intense

12:54

information.

12:56

But

12:58

you have to remember that Ellen and her sister

13:01

brought Brianna into this story. They're the ones

13:04

that came forward and said stuff about

13:06

Brianna. And they are,

13:09

they say a lot of things that border on delusional

13:12

or are delusional.

13:14

So you have to really look at

13:16

it. And that's what we did. We looked at it really closely,

13:18

as closely as we could. You know, and I tell

13:20

this in the book, too, you know, I'm not privy

13:22

to everything that the police did, but they

13:24

looked at it pretty intensely, too. They knew,

13:26

by the way, you know, people give the Vermont

13:29

State Police a lot of grief, a lot of

13:31

grief. And in the book, I kind of explained that at the end

13:33

and have my opinion about that.

13:37

They knew when I was walking into court

13:39

and getting retrieving documents,

13:41

they knew

13:43

they were on top of stuff. Word would

13:45

get back to me that they knew what I was doing

13:47

and they were

13:48

working hard. So who would

13:50

deliver the word back to you? It would come

13:53

back through the family and stuff. Okay.

13:55

Yeah. Well, speaking of the family, Bruce

13:57

Maitland writes a great forward to your book.

14:00

also provides a series of photographs

14:02

of Brianna, a couple of them we

14:06

have seen circulating on the internet

14:08

and several of them no one's ever

14:10

seen as far as I know. There are pictures in there

14:12

that I'd never seen and these are ones that were

14:14

provided by Bruce. What

14:17

was striking to you about his willingness

14:19

to give you these photos that

14:21

seem very personal and how

14:24

was that incorporated into the book? Where

14:26

did you find the right, like the appropriate moment to put

14:28

it in the book?

14:29

So there's that thing again

14:31

where I know this huge

14:34

group of people from doing this for so many years and

14:36

you know that there's a huge following where

14:39

everybody knows everything you can possibly observe publicly

14:41

about the case.

14:43

So when

14:44

you have to put in those pictures that have been going

14:46

around for the people who don't, people who buy the book don't

14:48

know anything about it, they want to see those pictures that have been

14:50

going around forever.

14:51

Then

14:53

Bruce gives me these pictures that no one's ever

14:55

seen and he wouldn't even physically give

14:57

them to me. He's like these are mine.

15:00

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

15:02

picture. You would scan them and send them to me

15:05

so that I could have him but he would keep possession

15:08

of them so that was important to him.

15:13

By the way before I forget, the

15:15

other night one of Brianna's friends sent me an article

15:17

and she said I want you to see this and it was

15:20

one of those articles you see like on pops

15:22

up on Facebook or something about the case and it's

15:25

an overview and she had actually

15:27

commented on it and told the writer how

15:29

bad of a job she did.

15:31

There

15:32

were so many mistakes in it and

15:34

stuff that I commented on it and

15:36

I said this

15:38

article is garbage. I'm stupider

15:40

for having read it because

15:42

it pisses me off. Anyway.

15:46

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

15:48

or maybe I did but it's like

15:51

chilling like when you show the date and

15:54

there's a digital picture of Brianna and it was

15:56

the day before right? The day before her disappeared.

15:59

Yeah there's two. from the day, the night prior

16:01

to her going missing, and there's at

16:04

least a couple from the night prior to that. Yeah.

16:07

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

16:09

sort of her profile and she's kind

16:12

of half looking at the camera and smiling,

16:14

but it's not a big smile. And you guys know

16:16

the picture I'm talking about and that was the night before,

16:19

right? Yes. And that's a picture

16:21

that comes up in the top search. When

16:23

you search Brianna Maitland, you'll see this picture. And I

16:25

don't know how many people don't know that that's

16:28

the night before. That's a great point

16:31

actually because you start to get

16:33

dumbed down from all the information

16:35

that you get. And when you see that picture, you

16:37

go, okay, you sell the picture. It's a nice picture or whatever,

16:39

but you don't realize the significance of

16:41

it. The significance of it is that

16:43

it was the night prior.

16:45

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

16:48

That's that awful part of getting

16:51

information regurgitated

16:53

at you all the time without

16:56

someone explaining to you the importance of

16:58

it and stuff. Yeah,

17:00

for sure.

17:01

Right. I believe in one of

17:03

those photos, she was coloring eggs with

17:06

her friend. Yeah, dying

17:08

eggs for Easter. So

17:11

yeah, I mean, and just a couple days

17:13

later, obviously, everything was so

17:15

different. So Shawna spent

17:18

a couple nights there with her prior to her

17:20

disappearance.

17:21

This is a really

17:24

important thing to know about that. So

17:26

you know, Branna had the friends that she

17:28

got, she was at the party with, that

17:31

she got in the fight with 20 something days prior

17:33

to her disappearance, which you know, everybody gravitated

17:35

that that must have something to do with it and stuff.

17:38

She had that group of friends.

17:40

And then she had friends like Shawna, who were kind of separate.

17:42

They didn't those those girls didn't commingle.

17:44

They didn't weren't friends with

17:46

each other.

17:47

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

17:50

you when you talk to Shawna, or you talk to those other

17:52

girls, you get two different perspectives. And

17:54

that's really important. Now when

17:56

I came up to Vermont

17:58

two or three weekends ago. three weekends

18:00

ago, I did an interview, a radio interview in

18:02

Waterbury. I went out to dinner with Shauna

18:05

and her sister Andrea and her fiance

18:08

Charlie. And

18:10

they give you their point

18:13

of view,

18:14

which is really interesting. I mean, Andrea said

18:16

she was like my little sister,

18:19

you know,

18:20

and Shauna just absolutely adored

18:23

Brianna, loves her

18:24

and

18:26

spent a lot of time with her there. But

18:30

the girls that were at the party that she

18:32

hung around with,

18:34

when this whole fight

18:37

happened,

18:38

they were mad at Brianna, because Brianna had

18:40

spent time with a boy with one of them's boyfriend.

18:43

She was out of town. That's

18:45

how the fight evolved. So they were

18:47

mad at her. So what happened in essence

18:50

is they all tend to

18:52

get upset with her.

18:54

She was upset. They

18:58

weren't hanging around there

19:00

at the last couple of few weeks. In essence,

19:04

they weren't monitoring her anymore. In other

19:06

words, just naturally from being

19:08

around those girls and the phone call exchanges

19:10

and all that stuff, under normal circumstances,

19:12

they would have been monitoring her life. She

19:15

may have said something to them. They

19:17

may have seen something. Instead,

19:20

there was radio silence and

19:23

that led to her being kind

19:26

of out there without being monitored.

19:29

I mean, you think about that every day when you

19:31

get up and go about your way, you're being monitored

19:33

without even knowing it because of the people

19:35

you see and you have interactions with and stuff like

19:37

that and your loved ones and stuff.

19:40

That fell by the wayside. So Shauna

19:43

was incredibly important. I told her that after dinner.

19:45

I said, you know, the information that she

19:47

had given without maybe her knowing

19:49

about certain things was

19:54

extremely important

19:56

and a window into that,

19:59

what was going on.

20:00

What was so different about Shana's

20:02

perspective of Brianna that

20:05

differed from her other friends?

20:07

You know Shana for starters

20:09

was

20:11

When you look at everybody we dealt with up there,

20:13

you know, she wasn't into the drug culture

20:15

and all that stuff She just didn't do that

20:18

stuff. She had a different life going on You

20:21

know again, she wasn't hanging around with a bunch of

20:23

people on that side of Brianna's

20:25

life So she just she had

20:27

a different type of relationship with her

20:29

You know,

20:30

which was kind of a wholesome

20:33

And Brianna was spending time with her family. She

20:35

was going she went there two nights prior to her disappearance

20:37

for st. Patty's Day and

20:39

Celebration and just kind of hung out with her family

20:41

and stuff again that pic those pictures are in there

20:44

And we'll be right back after a quick word

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That's n o o m dot

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21:25

Tristan Redmond the host of the new

21:27

podcast ghost story goes

21:29

where no son-in-law should ever go

21:31

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21:33

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21:36

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21:38

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21:41

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21:43

of the family this all? Started

21:45

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21:48

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21:50

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21:54

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21:58

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21:59

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22:02

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22:07

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22:09

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22:12

It so happens that right next door to

22:14

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22:17

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22:19

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22:39

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23:50

So when Brianna went missing, she had been staying at Jillian's

23:52

house with Jillian and her father. And

23:55

Sheldon

23:56

in driving to work in back. So that wasn't a horribly

23:58

long ride either.

23:59

she was en route from work to

24:02

Jillian's home when she went missing. Right

24:05

and I think that's important to mention because people

24:07

get all caught up in the drugs and all of that

24:09

and that seedy underbelly

24:12

and she had an option when she

24:14

left school she had an option to not

24:16

get her GED. When she left home she had an option

24:19

to hang out with those people and live in

24:21

those environments but instead she

24:24

went to Sheldon and and

24:26

it seemed to me like maybe trying to put

24:28

a little space in between herself and

24:30

that lifestyle and then hanging out in

24:34

those wholesome environments that you're that you're talking

24:36

about. I think after that fight

24:39

she realized she screwed up and she

24:42

just

24:42

was being real low-key. I'm

24:44

pretty sure that that's what happened. You

24:47

can almost sense it when you talk to people that

24:49

she realized she screwed up and

24:51

upset her friends were really important to

24:53

her and you know her friends say

24:55

that that stuff would have blown over but

24:58

they were mad at her no doubt. So

25:00

I hope that came across in the book that the

25:03

stuff that was going on like with the fight and all

25:05

this you know people insist on saying

25:07

that the fight had something to do with her going missing and stuff

25:09

like that. It's just like informational fog.

25:12

It's looking back and trying to make

25:15

things fit. In other

25:17

words instead of following any evidence of what

25:19

happened to her you're going back and saying

25:21

this is something to do with this. This

25:23

has to be cause and causation and you

25:26

know

25:27

when it doesn't it's informational fog.

25:30

You know the girl that she got in

25:32

a fight with punched her in the face a couple of times

25:34

that leap from that to murder is huge.

25:38

I'd have to see evidence of anything like that to

25:40

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

25:42

charges were dropped because

25:45

Brianna went missing so theoretically

25:48

the person who hit Brianna had something

25:50

to gain but you're still

25:53

saying it's a huge leap from a

25:56

couple of punches to making someone go

25:58

missing.

25:59

I think so. I think for sure. For

26:01

somebody to say I'm gonna beat somebody up is one thing

26:04

for them to say I'm gonna kill them.

26:06

Right.

26:07

And again, we're talking about kids.

26:09

That's another thing. It's lost in the mix. These are kids

26:12

we're talking about, you know, 16, 17 year old kids.

26:15

So. Okay, so there was the fight.

26:17

There is the drug scene and culture

26:19

around Brianna at that time as

26:21

well. But it

26:24

seems like in your opinion those

26:26

don't necessarily have anything to do with where

26:29

Brianna is now. In

26:32

the book you wrote about predators of interest.

26:35

Can we go over some of those? Yeah.

26:38

Interesting, huh?

26:39

Yeah, very interesting because if

26:41

you exclude those two points

26:44

in Brianna's past, what are you left with?

26:47

Well, so unlike other

26:49

states like here in New York, you

26:52

know, who would think an hour

26:54

away and

26:55

Syracuse something had something to do with

26:57

here or an hour away in

27:00

Albany or whatever. But in Vermont

27:02

it's very much it's very different.

27:05

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

27:07

live in Burlington, the friends of yours. It's

27:09

not that far away. It's you know, and the

27:12

whole state is that way. I mean, it's because it's so sparsely

27:14

populated. So

27:15

when there's crimes that happen in one area,

27:19

it's considered the backyard of everywhere.

27:21

So Israel Keys comes up.

27:23

So Keys killed a couple

27:26

in Vermont.

27:27

And so he was always people

27:30

wondered about him. And oddly,

27:32

you know, he committed

27:35

crimes near where I live in New York.

27:38

And he was thought to actually rob a bank really close

27:40

to where I live. And there's a

27:42

woman missing here. He was kind of suspected of and

27:44

stuff like that. But the

27:46

FBI came forward and said he

27:50

was somewhere else at the time and

27:52

supposedly they know that through financial records.

27:56

But he was interesting. And then, you

27:58

know, there's a whole bunch of them in there. He explains

28:01

each one in detail.

28:03

Peter Johns was a man who hid

28:05

in a general store in Route 118,

28:08

hid in the closet. Young girl was

28:10

working there. And I don't know

28:12

if it was, I can't remember if it was after hours

28:14

after she closed up or after everyone left,

28:17

but he came out of the closet and attacked her.

28:20

And that was really brutal. He got

28:22

her on the floor and was ramming her head against the

28:24

floor. He

28:27

ended up dragging her out to his vehicle. He had parked it around

28:29

behind the store. She got away from

28:31

him,

28:32

took a handful of hair out on her way.

28:35

But she ran across the road and got,

28:37

you're in Vermont. Again, it's like a

28:39

hamlet probably. And she ends

28:42

up at a house and they call the police. He gets picked

28:44

up.

28:45

It's Vermont, he got almost

28:47

no time for it. I think he got two years

28:49

and was released in less than that, whatever.

28:52

But that was Route 118, which is Route 118

28:55

is where Brianna went missing. And I

28:57

can't remember how close it is to the actual spot.

28:59

But it was years prior, and

29:01

he was back out of jail when it happened. Howard

29:04

Godfrey, which is one that I

29:07

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

29:09

I didn't. But a girl

29:11

named Patricia Schoelville went missing in Stowe.

29:14

She had moved from Boston, she was a young girl. Again, 100

29:19

pound, I don't remember how old she was, I'd

29:21

have to look 20 year old or something like that or 22

29:23

year old or something. She had

29:25

moved to Stowe, which if

29:27

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

29:29

much of a population there. She was only there for

29:31

a few weeks and she went missing.

29:33

Her parents ended up, this is a really

29:35

interesting aspect of her cases, her parents

29:37

ended up

29:38

pushing to have Vermont

29:41

get a DNA

29:42

repository where

29:44

criminals would have to donate their DNA.

29:48

They finally got it through, believe it or not,

29:50

politicians objected to it, they had to fight

29:52

it out. Who objects to something like that?

29:56

Nice to know politicians are looking out for you. And

29:58

once you get there,

29:59

got up and running, it solved cases immediately.

30:02

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

30:05

murder.

30:06

The man that did it, Howard Godfrey,

30:10

had attacked a woman. He

30:12

was working for the Burlington Free Press. He had gotten a

30:14

job to, I don't know, deliver papers or something and she

30:16

came to his house to go over the billing

30:18

with him and stuff, how to submit his

30:20

paperwork. And he got

30:22

up to get a drink of water and hit her over the back of the head with

30:24

a mallet. It was assaulting her. She

30:27

fought him off. I should have went into detail

30:29

about that because it's a really wild

30:31

story. But he got

30:34

convicted, had to submit his DNA and

30:37

it got him busted for the murder of Patricia

30:39

Schoelville. So that was an interesting case.

30:42

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

30:44

of them that we picked up on early on that

30:46

we looked into and stuff. And

30:48

Lou has unique perspectives on these

30:50

cases because

30:52

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

30:54

Montgomery

30:55

who killed Laura Winterbottom in Burlington.

30:59

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

31:02

One of the more notable ones is Brian

31:05

Rooney.

31:06

Brian Rooney killed Michelle Gardner Quinn

31:08

in Burlington, abducted and killed her, which is

31:10

an extremely sad story. She

31:13

was a college student in Burlington and her parents

31:15

were there for parents weekend.

31:17

And they went out to dinner together,

31:20

probably all the parents did with their kids that

31:22

night.

31:23

And she went out for drinks with her friends afterwards

31:26

and they went back to their hotel room and they

31:28

were going to get together the next day for

31:30

the rest of the

31:31

parents weekend or whatever. She disappeared.

31:34

They ended up finding out that,

31:36

of course, this mad search went

31:38

on. I'm sure the parents just turned their lives

31:40

inside out at the time. But

31:43

the police ended up finding footage of her walking down the

31:45

street with Rooney. One of her friends,

31:48

she had walked up to a guy, Rooney, and

31:50

said, can I borrow your cell phone? She'd

31:53

lost her friends in the mix. Those crowded people,

31:55

crowded bars that night.

31:57

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

31:59

Rooney answered the phone. I

32:01

said something about, oh, the little hottie that's with

32:03

me or something like that. But

32:06

she disappears. They ended up finding

32:08

her. Luckily, someone stumbled upon

32:11

her body in a rock crevice

32:13

while they were hiking.

32:15

It was five miles from where he lived. He had taken her

32:17

out of Burlington towards where he lived. I think it was up in

32:19

Essex. But he went to trial

32:23

and they had his DNA

32:25

from a rectal swab and he still

32:28

denied it was him. Nope,

32:30

not me.

32:32

And the statistics of the chances

32:34

of it being him in the book are pretty interesting. It

32:38

was one in 295 quadrillion

32:41

and he still denied it was him. One

32:43

quadrillion is a thousand billion and

32:46

the Earth's population is 7.75 billion.

32:49

But it wasn't him.

32:50

It was a reasonable doubt though. I

32:53

don't know if that's any reasonable doubt there. And

32:57

then they tried – his lawyers tried – of course

32:59

there's automatic appeal.

33:02

His lawyers tried to say that he

33:05

beat her to death in Strangler and

33:08

raped her. And

33:10

his attorneys tried to say because

33:12

you can't prove that she died during

33:15

the rape,

33:16

it's not aggravated murder. Therefore

33:18

this should all be thrown out.

33:20

Courts disagreed with that. Yeah, good,

33:22

good. It sounds pretty desperate. Yeah,

33:24

so he's not getting out. But

33:27

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

33:29

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

33:31

You wrote a little bit about false confessions

33:34

in the book and

33:36

they're really interesting to hear

33:39

everything that goes on in a missing person's

33:41

investigation and still there's

33:43

nothing to really grasp onto. I

33:46

think you sort of captured

33:49

that feeling in the book really well. But

33:51

can you tell us a little bit about false confessions

33:54

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

33:56

a lot, but there was Ellen Ducharme's.

33:59

thing where she told

34:02

so many stories it just got it

34:04

was just distracting. I think it's part of the time

34:06

she was at least part of the time she was just throwing

34:08

stuff at the wall to see what would stick because

34:11

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

34:15

which is bringing a missing girl

34:17

into your case to try to get out of a murder charge

34:19

is abhorrent. Then Soto,

34:22

the joker who was another

34:25

person who was in the lore of all this

34:27

that

34:28

people thought was involved he would constantly

34:30

tell people that he killed her

34:33

and buried her in his

34:35

well behind his home and stuff so

34:38

that's

34:39

just bizarre and of course when the police go to him and these

34:42

guys that are in the system

34:44

in a revolving kind of way it

34:47

doesn't phase them much to talk

34:49

to the police because they know they can't be convicted of something

34:51

that

34:52

there's no evidence on and so

34:54

then they would talk to him he would say nah just

34:57

shooting off my mouth just trying to scare

35:00

people and stuff you know

35:03

you got it it's something to keep in mind is most people

35:05

don't have this in their life people that live

35:07

really controlled lives and just go to their office every

35:09

day and you know go golfing on the weekends and

35:11

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

35:13

there that you can't believe a thing out of their mouth

35:16

that everything they do is to cheat you to rob

35:18

you to lie to you to manipulate you

35:20

and they're just awful fucking

35:22

people and there's a lot of them out there it's

35:24

just that most people don't have live normal

35:26

lives don't have contact with those kind of people and

35:29

we'll be right back after a quick word from

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38:21

And getting involved in this so personally

38:23

with Bruce and with Lou and friends

38:26

and even with us, how do you keep out your own

38:28

personal opinions? How do you

38:30

stay on the

38:32

fence of it could be this or

38:34

it could be this and not let your

38:37

opinion or your theories navigate your

38:39

narration? I don't know. I talk a lot differently

38:42

in private than I do here publicly. I

38:46

don't know. I take

38:48

everybody's information and try to find the

38:50

truth. And

38:52

it's good when you got people like Lou

38:54

and Bruce

38:55

that you

38:57

know they have time for bullshit. It's funny

38:59

because you see the difference

39:01

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

39:03

tips and stuff like that or

39:05

want to help.

39:06

They will try to make things fit

39:09

scenario. They'll try to plug things in

39:11

to make things fit. Lou for an

39:13

example does the opposite. He will

39:16

shoot down everything you see. He will tell you what's

39:18

wrong with everything that you're proposing.

39:20

That's the way you're supposed to do that. It doesn't work. You

39:23

know he'll shoot it down. So

39:25

you'll start to realize, okay this

39:28

isn't functional. There's no way that this could

39:30

be true.

39:31

That's the way you should decipher things. First

39:33

of all, if somebody

39:37

tells me something that's bullshit, especially

39:40

on purpose, for their ever on

39:43

I'm going to question everything that they say.

39:45

This is something that's grown with me over the

39:47

years looking back now even at the relationships

39:49

I've had and friends that I've had and stuff

39:52

like that. I'm

39:53

realizing now how much I've grown

39:55

and how much less

39:58

I withstand from people.

40:01

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

40:03

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

40:05

don't care what I want to hear, I want to hear the truth.

40:08

All right, so where can our

40:10

listeners get your book?

40:12

It's sold specifically through my publisher,

40:15

which is Bloated Toll Enterprises, which is a funny

40:18

name, but it's a reference to Hiking and the Radirondacks.

40:21

My publisher, by the way, is awesome. It's

40:23

just wonderful people. He's

40:25

one of my favorite authors, Lawrence Gooley.

40:28

And he's got some great books. If you go to the site to order

40:31

the book, look at some of his other books, he's got

40:33

a book about Robert Garrell, who killed campers

40:37

up in the Adirondacks.

40:38

And it's a phenomenal

40:40

book.

40:41

What was the other one? Oh, Escape from Danamora. The

40:45

ones about Garrells called Terror in the Adirondacks.

40:47

But

40:47

there's a lot of other stuff in there, too, that's fantastic.

40:50

He does a lot of

40:52

historical stuff for the Adirondacks in True

40:54

Crime.

40:55

But

40:56

if you Google the name, The Hunt for Brianna

40:58

Maitland, it'll come up. You can order it there. Or

41:00

you can order it directly through me and I'll sign a copy

41:02

if you send me a request on Facebook,

41:05

private message me, pay for it right on PayPal

41:07

or with a credit card or whatever you want to do.

41:09

It's being sold in one store up

41:11

in Vermont at the Eloquent page

41:13

in St. Albans.

41:14

It's a really cool store. Donna will help you

41:16

out if you call there or go there.

41:19

And, you know, I was going to try

41:21

to get it into some bookstores in Burlington and stuff, too, but

41:24

it was just such a rigmarole to do it. And

41:27

she made it easy. Donna made it easy. These

41:29

other people just kind of made it difficult. And so they want 50

41:31

percent of your book. I'm

41:34

not giving them 50 percent of my book. I get 20

41:36

years of experience in it and wrote

41:39

it myself. Why do they get 50 percent of my book? You

41:41

know, that is a lot. 50 percent. It

41:43

is. I'd give that money. I'd give that money to the nonprofit

41:46

before I'd give it to them. You

41:47

know what I mean?

41:49

What is your second book about?

41:52

Yeah,

41:53

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

41:56

so I don't know. I thought

41:58

about it. I actually you know what? I thought. What about writing,

42:00

what about Lewis Lent? And then I bought

42:02

the book that you guys had, the author.

42:05

Oh yeah, Hidden Demons. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

42:08

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

42:10

very specific. I mean, it could use to write something

42:12

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

42:15

I actually contacted Mike

42:18

Daly over here in Herkimer County. He

42:20

was a prosecutor at the time. And

42:22

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

42:25

He's like, what book? And

42:27

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

42:29

I do feel like you left a little bit of meat on

42:31

the bone as far as your bounty

42:34

hunting career goes. So I look forward

42:36

to reading your follow up about your

42:39

bounty hunting adventures. You know, the

42:41

putt, my publisher wanted me to do specifically

42:43

just that. He said, just do a book

42:45

about that. And I'm like,

42:47

it says something weird about writing stuff about yourself.

42:51

I was really uncomfortable with that in this book

42:53

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

42:56

You

42:56

know, that's private stuff and

42:58

stuff, you know.

43:00

Not for me. But

43:03

I have to say, though, that so few people

43:05

know that experience of doing

43:07

that work, that it's a glimpse

43:09

into a world that

43:12

almost every reader wouldn't know anything

43:14

about. So even though it might feel self-indulgent

43:16

on your part, I think there is real value out there

43:19

for the reader. Yeah, it's some

43:22

of it was absolute insanity for sure.

43:24

I mean, just just crazy shit.

43:27

It's funny when you're like, like we're talking

43:29

about

43:30

cops, the weird stuff,

43:32

we would see the weirdest shit.

43:36

When you deal with people that are really disenfranchised,

43:39

people that are very dysfunctional, you're

43:41

going to see crazy shit.

43:44

And I think when people read my book, Soto,

43:47

for instance, his his life,

43:50

it's just insanity. I mean,

43:52

how do you come out of that being normal?

43:54

Well, Greg, thank you so much for joining

43:56

us here today. This is a great

43:59

reunion. of sorts and a conversation

44:01

about your book and about your investigation

44:04

into the disappearance of Brianna Maitland. We thank

44:07

you for your time and service. Thanks

44:09

buddy. Appreciate you guys having me on.

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