The Skeleton Key Chronicles

16 hours ago

It was just after 11:20 p.m. on March 19, 2004, when Brianna Maitland walked out of work on a cold winter night. The 17-year-old had finished her shift at the Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery, Vermont, a small town not far from the Canadian border. Coworkers reportedly were the last to see her leaving the restaurant and sometime after that, she vanished.

The next morning, her car was found in Richford, Vermont, about a mile from the restaurant. It had been backed into the side of an abandoned building along Route 118, the back bumper pressed into the structure hard enough to break through the siding. It certainly didn't look like a reasonable way to park.

Inside the car, some of her belongings were still there, including two of her paychecks, other personal items, and even her glasses and contact lenses.
Outside the vehicle, loose change was scattered about and a water bottle was found on the ground nearby.

Investigators later determined in the hour or so after she left work, people who went by the abandoned house gave slightly different accounts saw her car already oddly parked at the abandoned house. One witness said they remembered the headlights were on, while another noticed a turn signal light still blinking.

At the time, the vehicle was treated as abandoned and was towed before it was connected to a missing person case. About a week into the search, a K-9 sweep of the area led to an item investigators considered significant. A test on that developed a possible DNA profile, which was entered into CODIS and compared against multiple individuals over the years, but nothing came back. Years passed with no movement in the case.

Then in late 2020, investigators took another step and sent the items found at the scene to Othram, where newer sequencing methods and forensic genealogy were used to try to generate potential leads. With that, a list of possible individuals was developed and sent back to law enforcement for follow up.

Authorities tracked people down, conducted interviews, and collected fresh DNA samples for comparison. One of those samples ultimately matched DNA that had been recovered from an item found on the ground near Brianna’s vehicle. But even with that development, investigators have made it clear this match doesn’t automatically identify who was responsible for her disappearance. It’s a piece of the puzzle, but not a final answer.

More than two decades later, investigators are seemingly no closer to solving Brianna’s case than they were in the early days of the investigation.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

23 hours ago

There has been an update in the case of James "Jimmy" Gracey. Newspapers in Spain have reported the body of the University of Alabama student was found Thursday at sea.

A University of Alabama student travelling in Barcelona, Spain has gone missing and now investigators are trying to determine whether something may have happened to him after he left a popular beachfront club.

On the night of March 16, 20-year-old Jimmy Gracey, an accounting major from Elmhurst, Illinois, hasn’t been seen since.

Gracey was visiting friends in the city who were studying abroad, and that evening they went out together to Shôko, a restaurant and nightclub in the Olympic Village area.

Investigators say surveillance footage shows him outside the club at around 3 a.m. on March 17, and according to authorities, he was seen leaving the area with another person. At some point after that, he never made it back to where he was staying.

When he couldn’t be reached, concern escalated quickly, and authorities in Spain were notified and as the search got underway, his father traveled to Barcelona to be there on the ground to assist. His mother later shared that police are now in possession of his phone, though it hasn’t been clearly explained where it was found or how it came into their possession.

Authorities also reported earlier today that his wallet was found floating in the sea.

Investigators in the area have been working through the timeline, trying to identify the person he was last seen with and retrace where he may have gone after leaving the club.

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The Skeleton Key Chronicles

2 days ago

It was just after midnight, technically March 18, but in Boston it was still riding the tail end of St. Patrick’s Day, when the city had been packed with crowds for hours.

Inside the museum, 23-year-old security guard Rick Abath was working the overnight shift. Shortly after 1:20 a.m., two men dressed as Boston police officers approached a side entrance and rang the buzzer, saying they were responding to a disturbance call. At that hour, with the city still coming down from the night before, it didn’t immediately sound out of place.

Abath spoke with them through the intercom, then made a decision that would later be picked apart for years, unlocking the door and letting them inside despite standing instructions that no one was to be admitted overnight.

Once inside, everything changed. The two men told him he was under arrest, brought in a second guard, and within minutes both were restrained and moved to the basement while the men moved freely through the building.

Over the next hour and twenty minutes, they went through the galleries, pulling five works directly from their frames and leaving empty spaces behind on the walls. By the time they left, 13 pieces were gone, including major works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet, and Degas, in what would become the largest art heist ever recorded.

And when you look at what was taken, it doesn’t reallt add up. Some of the most valuable works in the museum were left right where they were, while other less expensive pieces nearby were removed instead.

Items collected at the scene, including handcuffs and duct tape that may have carried forensic evidence, were later reported lost during the investigation, and while leads over the years pointed in several directions, none led to the recovery of the artwork.

More than three decades later, not a single piece has been returned, and the empty frames still hang in the museum exactly where the paintings were taken.

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