The Dutchburn House

The Dutchburn House

Sometime after 11:30 p.m. on March 19th, 2004 in Montgomery, Vermont, the awful sound of a car crash resounded into the silent night.

An old weathered farmhouse stood on a curve on Vermont Route 118, abandoned since the 1990’s. The small home faced the roadway and stood before a large cornfield bordering the Trout River. The white paint which once covered the wooden exterior was blistered and faded. Plywood covered its windows and doors. On display on one of the boarded windows was a ‘No Trespassing’ sign.

A light green 1985 Oldsmobile Royale was traveling on Route 118 along the curve. For reasons one can only speculate, the driver went off the roadway in reverse and at an odd angle. After driving over some tall grass, the vehicle’s back bumper slammed into the side of the abandoned farmhouse. The car became lodged into the home’s foundation and was brought to a halt. A piece of plywood covering a boarded window was dislodged by the impact and landed on the vehicle’s trunk, revealing a white drawn curtain in the home’s interior. With the vehicle’s headlights still on and both the driver’s and passenger’s side doors left wide open, the driver disappeared into the freezing night.

It was the vehicle of local teenager Brianna Maitland, who had left behind all of her personal belongings. At first labeled a potential runaway without means for transportation or access to money, the girl has now been missing for 15 years. The police now believe Brianna fell into harm’s way that night. Brianna’s father thinks she was abducted out of her car after crashing into the abandoned farmhouse. The car was 1.4 miles from the Black Lantern Inn, Brianna’s place of employment. She was last seen pulling out of the Black Lantern parking lot at approximately 11:20 p.m. The abandoned farmhouse was along Brianna’s travel route home, and her personal belongings were strewn about the ground on the driver’s side of the car, including a broken necklace.

They say lightning never strikes twice, but the suspicious disappearance of Brianna Maitland was not the first time the old farmhouse saw an act of irrevocable violence.

In 1986, Montgomery farmers Myron (known as Mike, aged 75) and his brother Harry (aged 76) Dutchburn called this farmhouse home. They lived a simple, predictable life, waking at 4 a.m. each day to tend to cattle at their barn across the street. It was rare for them to travel further than St. Albans. They were humble men of habit. Many drivers had difficulty navigating the curve along 118 and would spin out and get stuck in the mud or snow. The brothers had lost count of how many drivers they’d rescued on their property.

January 31st was the last time they would try to help a stranded motorist.

At 2:00 a.m. a voice outside their residence woke them. “Harry, Harry,” a stranger called out. The stranger said he had run out of gas. The brothers yelled out that they had none. The stranger began pounding on the door.

Mike Dutchburn wearily crawled out of bed and headed downstairs toward the kitchen. As he approached, his front door was already being kicked in. A home invasion had begun.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Mike told the stranger. The intruder brandished what Mike thought were brass knuckles and punched the elderly man in the face. Mike put the intruder in a headlock, but was quickly overpowered when a second robber entered the home. Harry came downstairs and was bludgeoned with his thick maple cane he had used to herd cows. In the midst of the savagery, one of the intruders told the brothers, “I’m going to kill you”.

The intruders were apparently aware of the Dutchburn’s habit of carrying large sums of cash. The brothers put up a fight but were brutally wounded in the home invasion, which was over in minutes. The kitchen was turned over in the struggle and pooled with blood from the old mens’ head wounds. The robbers made off with about $6,000.00 from Harry’s shirt pocket. The men lay on the kitchen floor for over 3 hours, Harry unconscious and Mike frozen with fear. At dawn, Mike staggered out of the home and drove to a neighbors for help. Their facial injuries made them unrecognizable. Harry’s head required 10 stitches to close.

The men never recovered from their violent victimization. The old men were now plagued with insomnia and mistrust of others. They became easy to startle and withdrawn. Within a month they had plans to sell their 70 head of livestock and retire from dairy farming. Their outings were rare. Their home and Harry’s permanently damaged right eye were constant reminders of the beating. “They could have taken the money,” Mike later told a journalist. “There’s no sense in beating a person up”.

Vermont authorities caught the robbers, two men from Richford, after one made a purchase at Champlain Chevrolet in Enosburg with hundred-dollar bills with a strong barn odor. The Dutchburn brothers’ belongings, including their cash, carried the odor from their 20-hour workdays in the barn. Judge Frank Mahady rejected a proposed plea agreement of two years and eight months in jail for the robbers and sentenced Darrell L. Clark, aged 37, to five to 10 years in jail in July of 1987. His accomplice, Louis R. Gilbeau, aged 31, was sentenced to eight to 10 years in jail, with all but five suspended. Gilbeau died at age 56 in 2011.

The brothers stayed in their home for a few years, but eventually moved to medical and nursing facilities and are now both deceased. Mike and Harry passed away in 1991 and 1999, respectively. In 2016, a group of teenagers burned the Dutchburn house to the ground.

I imagine an alternate universe where Mike and Harry were never harmed, where their earnest habit of helping deserted motorists was not destroyed with their sense of trust for others. I imagine the old men in their warm beds, woken by the sound of a car crashing through their home, feeling their bedrooms shake from the impact. I see them peer out their bedroom windows and witness what no one else did. I see them wanting to help Brianna.

Special thanks to Lou Barry for providing newspaper archives on the Dutchburn case.