SHORTLY before midnight struck to ring in 2021, Maya Millete was sitting around a campfire with her family, tearfully confessing her plans for the new year ahead: divorcing her husband Larry after more than 20 years.
Maya explained to her sister Maricris Drouaillet that the couple – who share three children – had been enduring a tumultuous time of late, and she could bear to be with him no longer.
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Maya warned Maricris, to her surprise, that the divorce was going to be “messy.”
The 39-year-old chillingly added: “If something happens to me, it’s going to be Larry.”
Within days, Maya would be reported missing by her older sister.
The last known sighting of Maya came on January 7, 2021, when the civilian contract specialist was seen on a neighbor’s surveillance camera arriving home from work in Chula Vista, California.
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Maricris called the police two days later to alert detectives to Maya’s disappearance.
When she failed to show up for her daughter’s birthday party the following day, Maricris was overcome with a grave feeling something terrible had happened to her beloved sibling.
All the while, a calm-seeming Larry offered her concerned family members a myriad of stories theorizing where she may have gone.
“She’s going to come home soon,” Maricris remembers Larry telling her.
But still, her panic persisted, and days of community searches in the Chula Vista area yielded little to no traces of Maya.
“My family had been trying to contact her [on Jan. 7, 2021] and she didn’t answer us,” remembered Maricris.
“The following day, my brother tried to reach her all day, and still nothing. We couldn’t find her anywhere and she hadn’t come home so that’s when we knew something was wrong.
“By the time we reported her missing, I couldn’t believe what was happening. Then when she missed her daughter’s birthday, that’s when the panic really hit us that something really, really bad had happened.
“It didn’t feel real. I was in La La Land and the world just shut down for us.
“Everything was turned completely upside down.”
A GRAVE FEELING
The days quickly turned into months without answers.
Larry was the last person to have seen and spoken to Maya but despite this, Maricris and her family continued to give him the “benefit of the doubt,” she said.
Maricris wasn’t concerned by Larry’s seeming lack of concern, she added. Her focus rested solely on finding her sister.
“I knew my sister would never miss one of her children’s birthdays. Family was everything to her, and she’d never do something like this, particularly without contacting us.
“This was not her, but Larry didn’t seem bothered at all,” she claimed.
“I didn’t think much of it and I wasn’t worried about Larry or what he was doing.
“I was just panicking and focusing on trying to find my sister, while all these possibilities were running through my mind of where she could be.
“We were busy out searching in the neighborhoods, in parks. Larry didn’t help us, but I wasn’t focused on him.”
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The Chula Vista Police Department carried out a search warrant on the Millet home on January 23 and seized an arsenal of guns belonging to Larry.
During their investigation, detectives found no evidence of Maya ever leaving the home after the footage captured of her returning home from work on January 7.
Surveillance footage captured later that night showed the Millete children playing outside in their backyard at around 10 pm.
During a subsequent court hearing, Chula Vista Police Detective Jesse Vicente testified that it seemed unusual for the children to be out at that time because it was late and cold.
Then at 5:59 am the following morning, Larry was seen on camera walking out of the home and backing up his car into the garage.
At 6:46 am he was seen leaving the home with one of his youngest children. He switched off his cell phone and didn’t return home until 6 pm that night.
According to Vicente, Larry would later tell police he’d backed up his car to load ice chests into it that he had packed for him and his son to go to the beach.
Larry confessed he fought with Maya on January 7, and after she went missing he told police his wife was going crazy and that he had been trying to take care of her, the cop added.
Larry denied any involvement in his wife’s disappearance, telling detectives she had simply run off and abandoned her family.
His theory never sat right with Maricris, who insists her sister would’ve never left her children of her own volition.
“That was a complete lie,” said Maricris.
“Her family means the world to her and her kids were her number one priority.
“She had tried to separate from Larry way before but decided to stay with him because of the children.”
WITCHCRAFT SHOCK
Larry was eventually arrested on October 19, 2021, more than nine months after Maya was reported missing.
Investigators believe Larry murdered Maya, however, her body has still not been found.
Larry continues to protest his innocence.
In a jailhouse interview with KNSD last year, when asked if he killed his wife, Larry insisted the police had it all wrong.
“I know I have, I haven’t done anything,” he said.
“I don’t even want to say anything. But the allegations are outrageous […] I just don’t want to go into detail, because then my words can be twisted.”
When asked if he believes she’s still alive, he added: “Yes ma’am. But I’m kind of the guy that’s like a pray for the best, prepare for the [worst].”
All cellphone and credit card activity ceased for Maya after January 7, 2021.
Maricris doesn’t believe her sister is alive but hopes answers about where she is and what happened to her will soon be forthcoming.
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Larry is due to go to trial in August.
One of the details that disturbed Maricris most during his pre-trial hearings last year was information concerning her brother-in-law and spellcasters.
In a last-ditch effort to prevent Maya from leaving him, prosecutors say Larry began purchasing spells online in the summer of 2020 to get her to fall back in love with him.
One such request from September of that year reads, “Please help me. I want her to fall madly in love with me again.”
But as issues in their marriage worsened, Larry’s spell requests grew more sinister, court documents state.
“How much would it cost for a spell to get my wife to change her mind from divorcing me?” Larry wrote to one spellcaster the night before Maya vanished.
The following morning, Larry wrote to another spellcaster, saying, “The divorce is going to happen whether I want it or not.”
In a different message, he wished for a spell to harm Maya.
“Please punish May and incapacitate her enough so she can’t leave the house. It’s time to take the gloves off,” he wrote.
Maricris said those messages left her and her family stunned.
“That was such a shock to me because I didn’t even know what this stuff was,” she said.
“I couldn’t believe he did that and that he was so desperate to go to that measure.
“We didn’t know he was into that [witchcraft].
“It was news to me. I didn’t even know these spellcaster people existed.”
Larry admitted turning to sorcery in an act of desperation in his interview with KNSD.
“Initially it was, um, I was going through the internet, trying to go in any route to try to save my marriage, and, you know, I bought books. Love languages. Uh, even went to therapy, went to the pastor,” he said.
“Um, and then, one day I was on the computer and say, ‘Hey, you know, there’s a spell for love, love spells,’ so, you know, I tried it out, you know. I’m, … I believed in it, you know, like, OK or, ‘Maybe I’ll try it out,’ and that’s when, you know, kind of started, but it was more about coping mechanism.”
RED FLAGS
Maya called two divorce attorneys on the afternoon of her disappearance.
During his preliminary hearing, Larry claimed to be none the wiser of Maya’s plans to divorce him.
But text messages he authored and the spell requests paint a different picture.
In one message between Larry and his boss on January 5, 2021, Larry wrote, “She’s asking for a divorce again.”
Then, on January 7, Larry wrote, “I’m about to lose it.”
Maricris also told The U.S. Sun that Larry came to her and other family members to try to get Maya to stay with him.
She shared, “It’s funny because I didn’t even know they were really having problems [for a long time] because they were very good at hiding things.
“When they were fighting or, say they had an argument at a family party, they would just walk off and separate from one another. They wouldn’t show us that they were arguing.”
“I didn’t know until Larry started talking to us and telling us their problems, but my sister was always very private and she didn’t want us to be involved in whatever issues they were having. She didn’t want to trouble our family with her own problems,” she said.
“Larry told us they were having issues and that my sister was thinking of divorcing him and that she wanted some space, that kind of thing. He wanted us to intervene and talk sense into her not to, to tell her she has a family and the kids and they shouldn’t separate.
“We gave him advice and told him what we think he should do but nothing beyond that. But that’s how we knew they were having problems.”
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A FAMILY’S NIGHTMARE
Maricris hasn’t given up hope of finding her sister.
She and members of the Find Maya Facebook page still hold virtual prayers for her return and conduct frequent searches in the hope the truth will soon prevail.
In the meantime, with three years having passed and very few answers found, Maricris said she is still living her worst nightmare.
Not a day goes by when she doesn’t think of her sister, she said.
The feelings of fear, pain, and worry remain as prevalent today as they were when she first reported her missing, Maricris added.
“At the beginning, I couldn’t even imagine the idea of somebody going through – having somebody missing in a family, you know?
“Since that first day it’s just been a nightmare and not knowing where your loved one is and still today it’s the same stress and worry. It’s a nightmare still and it’s unimaginable.
“The holidays are particularly difficult as we’ve tried to celebrate and put on a happy face for the kids,” she said.
“But while we are trying to be happy and merry, you can still see in everyone’s faces the sadness we have in our eyes that Maya is still missing and she isn’t with us.
“That’s almost how we feel every day, the pain of not knowing, and those feelings haven’t gotten easier at all. I don’t think we’re ever going to overcome it.
“We’re hoping for some kind of closure this year, with the trial, but there’s a long road ahead.”
Larry is due to face trial on August 27. His case has been pushed back numerous times, most recently due to his inability to pay private attorney fees.
Maya and Larry’s three children have been under the care of Larry’s parents since his arrest.
A custody trial is pending to determine whether they will stay with their grandparents, or move in with Maricris, who has requested custody.
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