MONTGOMERY, Vt. (AP) — Vermont State Police detectives are hoping unidentified DNA evidence will help them solve the 2004 disappearance of 17-year-old Brianna Maitland.
The state police are working with a Houston company called Othram to conduct genetic genealogy tracing of evidence recovered during the investigation into Brianna’s disappearance.
Brianna was last seen the evening of March 19, 2004, leaving The Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery, where she worked. Her car was found nearby the next day.
Although initially believed that Brianna might have run away, police believe she could have been a victim of foul play.
“We’ve never lost sight of Brianna’s case and have worked relentlessly to find out what happened to her so we can provide answers for her loved ones and hold any offenders accountable,” Capt. Scott Dunlap, commander of VSP’s Major Crime Unit, said in a statement. “This partnership, leveraging the latest scientific tools and techniques available, provides our investigators with another avenue to pursue.”
State police are using a similar technique to try to identify the remains of infant boy found in Northfield in 1982.
On Sept. 22, a man was arrested and charged in the 1974 killing of a Fort Worth teenage girl after nearly 50 years of investigation and the advancement of DNA technology, police said.
Glen McCurley, 77, of Fort Worth, was arrested and charged with capital murder in the abduction, torture, rape and slaying of 17-year-old Carla Walker. He is confined to the Tarrant County Jail with bond set at $100,000.
Online records do not list an attorney for McCurley.
Police had said the Fort Worth high school student was in a car with her boyfriend outside a Valentine’s Day party at a bowling alley the night of Feb. 17, 1974, when a man pistol-whipped the boy and grabbed the girl. Her body was found three days later stuffed in a culvert near Lake Benbrook, which is near where the abduction happened.
McCurley had been one of a number of persons under suspicion since the crime occurred, but investigators had been unable to link him definitively to Walker’s death.Othram was also used in that case.