The Murder of Martha Brailsford (Massachusetts)

On a Friday afternoon in July of 1991, Martha Brailsford told friends she was going sailing.

In coastal Massachusetts at what is often the peak of summer heat and humidity, that wasn’t unusual. Martha knew the water, and in Salem Willows, boats were part of the everyday landscape. There was no reason to think a simple afternoon sail would become anything else.

But when Martha didn’t come home that night, the search for her would expose a man whose stories kept changing, a familiar coastline that suddenly felt unknowable, and a truth hidden somewhere beyond the shoreline.

Disappearance

On July 12, 1991, Salem Willows looked like the kind of place you might imagine when you think of a New England summer.

The neighborhood sits on a peninsula in Salem, Massachusetts, ensconced by briny Atlantic waters. There are old homes packed close together, views of the sea from roof decks and porches, the smell of salt air, the steady rhythm of boats moving in and out of the harbor, and the familiar summer noise of people walking to the beach, the pier, or the park. It’s a neighborhood where a quick sail from the pier wouldn’t have seemed unusual at all.

That afternoon, 37-year-old Martha C. Brailsford was seen near Salem Willows Pier, apparently preparing to board a white 28-foot sailboat. Early reports in the Boston Globe by John Laidler said she’d told friends near Juniper Beach that she was going sailing with a friend, and some witnesses said they saw her with a man near the boat.

Nothing about that scene, at least from the outside, looked alarming. Martha was comfortable on the water and on boats. Her husband, Brian Brailsford, worked as a skipper and captain for a Boston cruise company, and Martha’s own family described her as an experienced sailor and a good swimmer.

So if someone saw Martha stepping toward a sailboat that day, it may have looked exactly like what she said it was: your quintessential afternoon sail. But by that night, something was clearly wrong.

Martha wasn’t anywhere to be found when Brian came home from work around 9 p.m. that night. She hadn’t called or left a message, and as Brian looked around the house, the details didn’t fit with the idea that she’d simply gone out for the evening. The house looked as if Martha hadn’t been home for hours; even her artwork had been left outside.

Brian waited, but the longer the night went on, the harder it became to explain her absence away. At about 1 a.m. on Saturday, July 13, Brian called Salem police to report Martha missing. He was told to stay home, but Brian couldn’t just sit and wait. He started searching on his own.

Brian walked through the neighborhood by flashlight, looking for any sign of her. At dawn, he went out again. As he racked his brain for any idea as to where Martha might be, he remembered that she sometimes took early morning walks with their dog, Rudy, and sometimes she was joined by a man from the neighborhood, Thomas Maimoni. In fact, they’d just gone for a walk together the previous morning.

Thomas wasn’t home when Brian first checked at his condo, but his sailboat, named Counterpoint, was still in its slip at Palmer Cove Yacht Club. By the time Brian doubled back to Thomas’s apartment, Thomas was home, but he didn’t offer any helpful information. Thomas said they did go for a walk the morning before, but he hadn’t gone sailing at all and certainly not with Martha. Thomas insisted that he wouldn’t have gone out alone with her without inviting Brian along, too.

Then he told Brian he’d pray for Martha.

By that point, the search had spread across the places Martha knew best: the pier and the harbor, the beach, the streets where she walked her dog, and their close waterfront community. Salem police, local harbormasters, and a State Police helicopter were searching Salem Harbor for any sign of her. Residents even searched the water in their own boats while family and friends printed hundreds of flyers with Martha’s photo and distributed them through the neighborhood and to yacht clubs.

In those first days, people who knew Martha kept coming back to the same thing: this wasn’t like her. She wasn’t someone her family believed would vanish by choice. Just before she disappeared, Martha had been standing at the edge of a new chapter. According to Tom Farmer’s reporting for The Daily Item, she’d recently decided to work for herself as an interior designer, and relatives said she was happy and optimistic about that change. There was no reason to believe she’d go off on her own.

As part of the ongoing search and investigation, police followed up with Martha’s dog walking buddy, Thomas Maimoni, themselves. He echoed what he told Brian: He hadn’t seen Martha since early Friday morning. He said he hadn’t sailed with her, and he wouldn’t have gone out alone with her because he was married and it wouldn’t look good. 

But the next time police talked to him, that concerned-neighbor story started to unravel.

Feared Dead

Police had since learned from other witnesses that Martha was, in fact, seen getting on Thomas’s sailboat on the day she disappeared. When detectives spoke with Thomas again and pressed him with that detail, his story changed.

Now, Thomas said Martha had gotten onto his boat, but only briefly. According to this version, she was supposed to meet him on Counterpoint around 1 p.m. to talk about her résumé. Thomas said he brought the boat from Palmer Cove to Salem Willows Pier, but the pier was crowded and he couldn’t tie up so Martha just jumped aboard, and he motored the short distance to Winter Island, where he said she got off near one of her regular walking routes.

Police tried to check that account. One of the people they spoke with was a dentist who knew Martha. He had been at the Winter Island landing around the time Thomas claimed Martha got off the boat. The dentist said he was there from noon to 2 p.m., and he never saw her.

The next day, investigators brought Thomas in again. A state trooper was there this time, too. Thomas repeated the Winter Island story, but police told him they didn’t believe it.

That’s when his story changed again. This time, Thomas said Martha hadn’t gotten off at Winter Island after all. He said they’d gone sailing farther out, toward Gloucester. He said it was getting close to sunset and he was starting to turn back toward Salem when the headsail became fouled. According to Thomas, Martha tried to help but a rogue wave – or maybe two – hit the boat. He said her face struck the mast in the swell and she grabbed for the headsail, but couldn’t get purchase so she went overboard.

Thomas said he froze. He said he didn’t call the Coast Guard. He just marked a place on a chart where he claimed Martha had gone into the water, and he said he’d take police there.

The truth, or something adjacent to it, was trickling out of Thomas Maimoni slowly, and only with applied pressure. If his most recent telling was anchored in truth, Martha wasn’t just missing. By July 17th, police were publicly saying they believed she was dead.

Police and Coast Guard officials searched from Salem toward New Hampshire, looking for Martha or anything that might belong to her. But there was still no Martha. Not a single sign of her in the water.

Despite Thomas’s story of a rogue wave or two, investigators hadn’t ruled out foul play. But his newest account of their supposed afternoon sail stretched the timeline and the geography of Martha’s last known hours. If his story was true, Martha had been out on the water with Thomas for hours, farther from shore, with no one else there to say what happened.

Martha’s family and friends were no longer just waiting for her to walk through the door. They were waiting for the water to give them an answer.

Discovery

On the morning of Thursday, July 18th, 1991, lobsterfisherman “Hooper” Goodwin was hauling his traps off Marblehead, near Cat Island, now known as Children’s Island. It was the kind of ordinary, physical work that happens on the New England coast every day: moving through a line of gear, pulling traps from the water, checking the catch, resetting, moving on.

But as Hooper brought up one of his trap lines that morning, something broke the rhythm. An anchor was tangled in the gear. Trailing from that anchor was a rope, and the rope was tied to a body.

Hooper immediately contacted the harbor master after realizing what he had found.  After nearly a week of searching, the sea had returned Martha Brailsford.

Until then, Thomas Maimoni’s latest version of events had left a narrow opening for the possibility of a terrible boating accident and an unforgivable response afterward. But the way Martha was found made that account much harder to accept.

This wasn’t just a person who’d fallen overboard. She was nude and tangled in the lobster lines. A diver’s weight belt was around her body, and an anchor was tied by rope to her ankle or legs.

The medical picture was complicated. Martha had been in salt water for days, and the condition of her body limited what could be determined with any kind of certainty. At first, a medical examiner’s spokesperson said an autopsy showed Martha had drowned, though officials didn’t elaborate publicly on the finding.

However, court records describe injuries to her head and teeth, including damage to a molar, a loosened front tooth, and several impact injuries to her head.

The most serious head injury involved bleeding under the scalp and was likely inflicted shortly before death. The other head injuries involved less force. None of those injuries necessarily would have caused death on their own, but they could have hurt her, dazed her, or made it harder for her to survive whatever happened next.

By the evening of July 18th, police weren’t just looking for answers anymore. Salem Police Chief Robert St. Pierre announced that authorities had issued a murder warrant for Thomas J. Maimoni. He said they believed Thomas murdered Martha Brailsford, and now he was on the run.

Martha Brailsford’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.