Maura Murray’s Disappearance
In February 2004, University of Massachusetts-Amherst nursing student Maura Murray left campus, crashed her car in New Hampshire and was never seen again. Her body has not been found, and there are no serious leads in her case.
“When I first heard about her case on YouTube, it was so creepy and unsettling,” Brieaddy says. “She crashes her car and then she's just gone forever. There's so many theories. They're saying she just ran off on her own and she's just gone out there, she wants to be left alone. I don't think so. There's a lot of aspects that I've always been fascinated by. People don't vanish. They're somewhere.”
Brieaddy notes that Murray’s sister, Julie, has been using TikTok to spread the word about Maura’s case. “I see how passionate she's and her dad [are]. I want them to know what happened to her so bad,” he says. "I've talked to a lot of family members over the past couple of years, and they always say there's that glimmer of hope until a bone is found. Even if it's a tiny piece of bone fragment, you always will have that. You never know.”
Angela Hammond’s Abduction
After leaving a barbecque in April 1991, 20-year-old Angela Hammond dropped off her fiancé, Rob Shafer, and stopped to call him from a payphone on her way home in Clinton, Mo.
“She's on the phone, a truck pulls up right next to where the phone booth is, and there's just this guy in there kind of being creepy,” Brieaddy says. “Angela is describing the guy to her boyfriend, and then the boyfriend hears these muffled sounds of a guy talking, and then Angela's like, ‘Do you need to use the phone?’ Then all of a sudden, according to the boyfriend, she just let out a blood curdling scream."
From there, Brieaddy explains that Hammond is “allegedly taken” by the driver of a green Ford pickup truck. “Her boyfriend gets into his car, he drives to where that payphone is, and he actually not only sees but hears Angela screaming in this vehicle as they drive by,” he continues. “And so the boyfriend flips a U-turn and tries to go after them, but then his car breaks down. Now she's just gone forever. No one has seen her since. It's horrifying to me”
Investigators eventually ruled Shafter out as a suspect, and although they received a new lead in 2023 in the form of an anonymous note, no one was ever convicted.
The Keddie Cabin Murders
Upon returning from a sleepover on April 12, 1981, 14-year-old Sheila Sharp discovered the dead bodies of her 36-year-old mom, Sue, her 15-year-old brother Johnny, 15, and Johnny's friend, 17-year-old Dana Wingate. All had been bound and suffered extreme violence.
“It was a really grotesque and bloody scene,” Brieaddy says.
Sheila's 12-year-old sister, Tina, was missing, but her younger brothers Greg, then 5, and Rick, then 10, were asleep and unharmed in an adjacent bedroom of the Keddie, Calif., cabin, along with a friend, Justin Eason. Tina’s skull was found in the woods 50 miles away three years later.
The Sharps' neighbors, Martin Smartt and John Boubede, were considered top suspects, and Martin’s estranged wife even received a correspondence in which he seemingly confessed to the murders. “But they've never been able to prove it,” Brieaddy says. “And the two suspects died before anyone ever got arrested. It's creepy because you don't know truly who did it, and you don't know why they did it. Those are the most terrifying ones.”
Stephanie Wasilishin’s Death
Brieaddy learned about the case of Stephanie Wasilishin through her daughter, Nikki, who was 10 at the time of Wasilishin’s death in Sedona, Ariz., in July 1993. Nikki now runs and TikTok page and podcast, called Papi Killed Mommy, devoted to getting justice for her mom. Nikki has a younger sister, Kristina, who was also present the night of their mom’s death.
“Essentially what happened was that Stephanie was on the phone with her ex-husband, who was the father of Nikki, and she was talking about leaving her boyfriend, Russell Peterson, to go back with her ex,” Brieaddy says. “They talked on the phone for about two hours and around 10:00 p.m., Nikki says ‘goodnight’ to her mom. A couple hours later, one of the kids hears a gunshot.”
At the time, Peterson claimed to authorities that Wasilishin shot at him but missed before he followed her into their bedroom where the fatal shot was fired, per Fox 10 Phoenix.
“On the 911 call, he says, ‘I may have shot her, or she may have shot herself.’ He's trying to make it sound like they got into a fight over with the gun and it just went off,” Brieaddy says. “Where she was shot would've been very difficult for her to have pulled the trigger. When Nikki and her sister were put into a cop car, the little sister kept telling Nikki, ‘Papi killed Mommy. Papi killed Mommy. Papi killed Mommy.’ She is literally saying that Russell, her dad, killed Mom. It sounds like she either witnessed it or she saw something that would make her say that.”
Although the coroner deemed Wasilishin’s death a homicide, “the Sedona police have never treated it that way,” Brieaddy says. “They just did not investigate it. Russell Peterson is still alive, and he has never been arrested. Now Nikki, who has the evidence documents, is now seemingly fighting on her own to get justice for her mom. She wants him arrested, but more importantly, she wants to make sure people know that her mom did not shoot herself.”
The Blind River Murders
In June 1991, elderly couple Gordon and Jackie McAllister drove their motor home into the isolated Blind River Rest Stop near Blind River, Ontario, with plans to spend the night until someone pretending to be a police officer showed up at their door in the early hours of the morning. “The second they open the door, he rushes in with two guns and points at both of them,” Brieaddy says. “He tells them, ‘First, I'm going to rob you and then I'm going to kill you.’ It's so creepy.”
After the couple handed over their money and jewelry, the perpetrator shot Jackie and she died instantly. He shot at Gordon too, who survived.
“When he does that, a third person drives into the rest stop—a totally random person, an innocent bystander named Brian Major,” Brieaddy continues. “He tried to get back into his car right away and [the shot him as well in the car, and he died. And the killer got away.”
Former police officer Ronald West, who’d been convicted of a separate double murder, was considered a suspect, but was never arrested. “The guy was wearing a wig, a very, very obvious blonde wig that just did not match him at all, and they found a wig in Ronald West's possession,” Brieaddy says. “That was a blonde wig, but that wasn't enough evidence to say he had anything to do with this. It's just terrifying. The random ones are always the scariest because you can't establish a motive or a connection to the victims. They were literally in the wrong place for the wrong time.”
