Hello all.
For some background I have been a lurker on Websleuths since hearing about it when The Killing Season came out in the fall of 2016. I am a life long resident of Long Island (specifically LI’s south shore), which has me located around 15-20min’s from LISK’s dumping ground. Additionally, I have been following this case since 2012-13, when I was a middle schooler. With that said, over the years many things in this case have troubled me. Obviously with this post being on the Maureen Brainard-Barnes page, I believe I have something to add to the discussion of her disappearance (of which I have never heard brought up before).
As many on here know, as per Melissa Cann (Maureen’s sister), the last known location of Maureen was in NYC’s Penn Station. This is where she allegedly told her sister that she would use the remaining money she had (after supposedly being robbed) to buy a train ticket home. I believe in either the most updated 48 hours episode or on the LISK podcast Cann mentioned that at the end of this call, Maureen said that she was going to go outside for a cigarette.
As I mentioned earlier, I am a life long resident of LI and thus have frequented the city via the LIRR into Penn Station more times than I can count. For those that may not know, Penn Station is a hub for the MTA’s LIRR, NJ Transit, and Amtrak. Additionally, Penn is a major station for many of the MTA’s subways as well as NJT’s path train. With that said, from Penn, the only way home to Groton CT for Maureen would have been to purchase an expensive Amtrak ticket. For someone who we have heard was robbed of her earnings from the weekend in the city, as well as someone who as a result was going to be evicted and loose custody of her child, an expensive Amtrak ticket would have been undesirable to say the least. That being said, my point is Maureen would have been logically looking for less expensive ways to get home to Groton. As I mentioned earlier, at the end of the Maureen’s call to her sister, she said that she had to go because she was going to go outside for a cigarette. From this and what I discussed earlier regarding looking for a cheaper alternative to get home, I have theorized and am suggesting that either before the break or when she went to take it, Maureen realized that she could go to Grand Central Station and take the MTA’s Metro North home towards Groton. Maureen would have done so by taking the metro north to New Haven, where she would have had to transfer to Amtrak’s Northeast Regional. This would have sufficed as a much cheaper alternative to the more expensive Amtrak ticket that Maureen would have had to have purchased, had she traveled home from Penn.
Taking all of this information into consideration, it is my theory that Maureen decided to leave Penn for Grand Central and along this journey, encountered LISK. I acknowledge that this theory can be easily disproved in many ways (i.e. if there is proof that Maureen bought an Amtrak ticket departing from Penn, cell phone data that the public is not privy to, etc). With all of this said, I am curious to hear anyone’s opinion on this theory.
