The Burlington Free Press from Burlington, Vermont • Page 4

4A The Burlington Free Press Sunday, April 4, 2004 MISSING: Teen's disappearance a mystery 1 i 1 4 their daughter, Brianna, who has ill 5j XvX- Xv-, Kellie and Bruce Maitland embrace at Montgomery Town Hall p-w 1 1 5 tx 4 1 nl Xv- Wvx wMmt Kellie Maitland wears a pin Jy, I XVt with a photo of her missing -iV -wX lJ I i k- WtM Photos by ALISON REDLICH, tree Press been missing for 17 days. Maitland and his son, Waylon, Continued from Page 1A conducting a forensics examination of her car. Without proof connecting a crime to her disappearance, all police can say of the Maitland case is that it's "suspicious." The uncertainty about just what happened to her best friend is what upsets Jillian Stout the most. "Its worse not knowing than knowing," she said. "Maybe someone was stalking her and she didn't know it.

She's a pretty girl." Early years Brianna Maitland was born Oct. 8, 1986, and lived until last fall with her parents and older brother, Waylon, in the woods of East Franklin at the end of a rutted, one-mile driveway in a modest home 300 feet from the Canadian border. "There's not much to do up there, that's for sure," said Shawna LaBelle, a friend who, like Stout, grew up in East Franklin and later moved away. "We liked to go four-wheeling, or go to the beach at Lake Carmi," LaBelle said. "Bri was fun, outgoing, very smart.

She was not a girly girl." She also had a mind of her own, her brother said. "When she set her mind to something, there was no way of changing it," Waylon Maitland said. "We used to argue about who was going to get to shower first in the morning and, regardless of what was decided, she'd get up earlier and get there first." LaBelle recalled a time in school when, irritated that some of her classmates were goofing off, Maitland decided to do something about it. "The teacher was trying to keep order and she stood up and said, 'You guys all shut up. I'm trying to learn LaBelle said.

By last year, Maitland had grown restless at home. When tensions in the home caused her father to temporarily move out, she decided to low suit. Her father proposed renting an apartment for both of them in Enosburg Falls so she could attend Enosburg High School. "I guess she felt if I could move out, she could, too," Bruce Maitland said. The arrangements for the apartment fell through.

Her father decided to move back home. Maitland chose to go live with a boyfriend. As 2004 began, LaBelle had grown concerned about the direction her friend was headed. "She was partying a lot and it was a crowd I didn't like seeing her with," said LaBelle, 20. "I talked to her about it time and time again.

I said, 'You've got to stop hanging around those people and get yourself Eventually, she said, Maitland agreed, but it took a fight with a girl at a Feb. 27 party in Enosburg for her to get the message. The incident, still under investigation by police, allegedly involved a girl who slugged Maitland twice, giving her two black eyes and a concussion that prompted her mother to take Maitland to the hospital the following day. Soon afterward, Maitland moved into the Stout home. "Every teen goes through a party stage," Jillian Stout said.

"She didn't party when she moved in with me. She didn't want to party. She'd come home, read a book or watch TV." Brianna vanishes There is no evidence that anyone was with Maitland or was waiting for her when she left work at the Black Lantern the night of March 19. The owner of the restaurant, Deb Winders, declined comment on the case. There is also no evidence Maitland went anywhere or met anyone after she finished her shift, said Vermont State Police Lt.

Thomas Nelson, who is in charge of the investigation into her disappearance. Finally, there's the mystery of when that night Maitland's pale green 1985 Oldsmobile sedan was driven backward into the abandoned home or whether she was driving it at the time. The place was once the home of Myron and Harry Dutchburn, two elderly men who were brutally beaten during a 1986 robbery at the house but survived. Both men later passed away and the home has been unoccupied for six years. Volunteers Keith Graham of Franklin (from left) and Arnold Byam of Franklin talk with Bruce 23, at Montgomery Town Hall to coordinate search efforts for Brianna Maitland.

on Friday during the search for Guard helicopter. Late last week, a missing child search center was set up by a group named in memory of Polly Klaas, a California girl abducted and murdered in 1993. In Montgomery, the Maitland case is the talk of the town. "We're independent and isolated," said Scott Perry, a member of the Selectboard. "I'm sure a lot of kids her age are very concerned." Donna Bartsch, a Montgomery storekeeper, said the case had caused some parents to become more vigilant about their teenage children's social lives.

"They want their daughters to call in and tell them where they are, who they're with and when they're leaving where they are," she said. "We're just a community of 900 people. We've never thought of something like this happening here." Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or "Every teen goes through a party stage. She didn't party when she moved in with me. She didn't want to party.

She'd come home, read a book or watch TV." Jillian Stout, friend of Brianna Maitland I MONTGOMERY TOWN HALL i vrj Web extra For links related to missing persons, go to www.bur-lingtonfreepress.com. Bruce Maitland said last week he's satisfied with the effort police are now putting into his daughter's case, but expressed frustration with what he said were early missteps by the police particularly their failure to promptly notify him about the abandoned car. "Had I known they had found the car, we would have gone into high gear right away," he said. According to Daniel Be-giebing, commander for the St. Albans state police barracks, the trooper handling the abandoned car complaint that day figured out Brianna Maitland was the car's operator after finding her paychecks from the Black Lantern in the car.

Instead of calling her mother, who was listed as the car's owner, the trooper went to the restaurant to look for the teen. The restaurant was closed, and other work kept the trooper from following up on the matter over the next two days, Begiebing said. "He assumed that sooner or later, the vehicle's owner would come in and ask where the car had been towed to," Begiebing said. "In this county, we get a lot of abandoned vehicles." Meanwhile, Stout grew concerned over that weekend about Maitland's whereabouts, but convinced herself her friend must have gone home to East Franklin to stay with her parents. When Stout still hadn't heard from her friend Tuesday, she called the Maitlands, who then called police to say their daughter was missing.

Not until Thursday morning, when the Maitlands went to the barracks to fill out paperwork and provide photographs, did police make a con- nection between the missing person report and the abandoned car. By then, Brianna Maitland had been missing more than five days. "It makes me mad," LaBelle said. "She's not just another somebody." Montgomery searches Bruce and Kellie Maitland have spent most of the past 10 days putting up posters and poking around the outskirts of Montgomery near where the car was found for clues about their daughter's whereabouts. They've been told of a white pickup truck seen parked down the road the night Brianna Maitland disappeared, about a man heard shouting late that night, about a man flirting with their daughter at the Black Lantern the last night she was seen alive.

"I turned it all over to the police," Bruce Maitland said. Police, meanwhile, have done their own searches with troopers, dogs and a National Montgomery Selectboard member Scott Perry and Sylvie McDermott, a Montgomery Rescue representative, hang banners and missing-persons posters on the front doors of Montgomery Town Hall on Friday. Town Hall has become the headquarters for a search party for Brianna Maitland, including help from The Polly Klaas Foundation..