Father of missing Vt. teen starts nonprofit to help families of missing people

The father of Brianna Maitland, a Vermont teenager now missing for nearly 15 years, is starting a nonprofit organization to help families of missing people afford private investigators.

"I've gone through a lot of hell in life because of what happened to her," said Bruce Maitland, Brianna's father.

Brianna Maitland, a 17-year-old from Montgomery disappeared on March 19, 2004, after leaving work at the Black Lantern Inn. Her car was found a day later backed into a farmhouse. Police still say foul play is involved with various alleged sightings and tips to this day.

"We don't want to forget about these cases," says Maj. Glenn Hall with the Vermont State Police. "Unlike some cold cases, this is a case that we continue to receive active information on a yearly basis. Not as much as we did in the early stages of the investigation, but we still do receive tips on this case."

Hall says investigators are working on active leads right now, though he could not elaborate on what those leads are. Maitland says private investigators have also turned up leads.

"They do a lot of work that relieves the police from doing a lot of that," he said. "So both my investigators do work with the police and there's a point where it has to be turned over the police."

Maitland has now started Private Investigations for the Missing, an organization to help families searching for their missing loved ones.

"I'm trying to do something good by helping other people that are kind of in the same boat as me and something good to come out of what's really been a bad situation," said Maitland.

According to Hall, the Maitland case has changed the way VSP looks at missing person cases.

"We would love to be able to commit time and resources to every one of our homicides or missing persons cases but we know that's not the case," Hall said.

But VSP is not giving up on Brianna. They are offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

"We continue to investigate and we obviously believe there is someone out there who could help us," said Hall.