Welcome to Mysteries of the Missing, a podcast and blog about missing person's cases. You can find my podcast, my blog, and my social media pages on my Linktree at: https://linktr.ee/MysteriesoftheMissing.
Keep in mind that I am only reporting the events of what have happened, per my research through various media outlets. I’m not trained in any way in true crime. Instead, I'm a published author who loves to blog. Also, I’m solely a human being that’s trying to do my part to get the message of the story of Maura Murray out there so that one day, hopefully, she may be found, and her case may be solved. Join me as I dive into the last day that people saw Maura and what happened after she was last seen.
"The year is 2004, 20 years ago. It was a Leap Year and was designated as the International Day of Rice by the United Nations and UNESCO named it "The International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition." Shrek 2, The Incredibles, Spider Man 2, and The Passion of the Christ were blockbuster movies that year. In the world of video games, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Halo 2 and Half Life 2 were released and made it big and Nintendo released Nintendo DS in America. The UAE began building the tallest structure in the world, the Burj Khalifa. Facebook (known as "The Facebook" then) was launched by Mark Zuckerberg, Saddam Hussein began his trial in his "crimes against humanity." The 2004 Summer Olympics were held in Athens, Greece. In baseball, The Boston Red Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals to win their sixth World Series and their first since 1918. George W. Bush was re-elected as President of the United States in November 2004. An unpiloted spacecraft known as Cassini landed on Saturn." (Wikipedia)
In 2004, I transferred from a community college to a university to continue my education, and that same year, Maura Murray went missing in Massachusetts.
Maura Murray, 2003
Maura Murray was born about a year before me, on May 4, 1982 in Hanson, Massachusetts. She was the fourth child of a total of five children in an Irish Catholic family. When her parents divorced in 1988, she lived with her mother for the most part.
After graduating from Whitman-Hanson Regional High School in 1999 (of which she was a star track athlete), Maura went on to the prestigious West Point Military Academy in West Point, New York. While there, she studied engineering for three semesters, but after her freshman year, she began studying nursing at The University of Massachusetts - Amherst.
Three months before she disappeared, in November 2003, Maura admitted to using a stolen credit card to buy food at restaurants. Where she got it, I don't know. The charge continued until December and would be dropped after good behavior after three months.
Side note: Personally speaking, if this was a person of color who had done this, I am willing to bet that they would have been in prison, but that's just my personal opinion. This is not me attacking Maura...God knows I did horrible things when I was a teenager, like sleeping around, drinking and defying my parents, wrecking cars while drunk, and the list goes on and on. Still, she was not a teenager. She was in her 20's by this time. People make mistakes, but this is a big mistake to be making -- it wasn't like she was just using the stolen credit card once. It had to be more than once for the authorities to take note. Now, I'm not slamming her character. We all have skeletons to deal with, whether we have them out in the open or not. However, I am mentioning this to say that this may be one theory as to why she disappeared. We will get into that more later, though.
While at The University of Massachusetts - Amherst, Maura was a campus security guard. On February 5, 2004, Maura received a call from her sister, Kathleen, while at work that disturbed her so much that her supervisor said she burst into tears, was zoned out, and they had to walk her back to her dorm shortly after 1 a.m. Apparently, Kathleen was an alcoholic who got released from a rehab and into the care of her fiance, who then took her to get alcohol from a liquor store, which then erupted into an argument between Kathleen and her fiance. Kathleen had disclosed all of this on the phone with Maura, and it upset her.
Two days later, on February 7, 2004, Maura's father, Fred, came to her college to take her car shopping and to dinner. Maura dropped her dad at his hotel then borrowed his car, a Toyota Carolla, to go to a dorm party later that evening. She stayed there from 10:30 pm until 2:30 a.m. On the way back to her father's hotel, Maura struck a guardrail on Route 9 in Hadley, Massachusetts, causing $10,000 worth of damage. Now, as someone who has gotten in multiple car accidents when I was younger, I know that that amount of damage is not small. A police officer that responded to the scene did not report if he did a field sobriety test or not, so there is no documentation on that, but he did write an accident report. Fortunately, Maura made it to her dad's hotel safely and stayed there until the next morning. Maura used her dad's phone to call her boyfriend at around 4:49 a.m on February 8, 2004. That's pretty early - I hope he was awake, but I'm assuming that Maura was upset from the car accident and wanted some consolation.
The next morning, on Sunday, February 8, 2004, thankfully, Fred found out that his car insurance would cover the damage to his car. He rented a car, dropped his daughter off at her dorm. The last time Fred spoke with Maura was at 11:30 p.m. when he reminded her to get accident reports from the Registry of Motor Vehicles. They set a date to talk on Monday, February 9 at night, to go over the accident reports and file an insurance claim together on the phone.
After 12 a.m. on Monday, February 9, Maura searched for directions on MapQuest to the Berkshires, a set of hills in western Massachusetts, as well as Burlington, Vermont. Later that day, she made a vast amount of calls.
At 1:00 p.m. on Monday, February 9, Maura emailed her boyfriend to tell him she loved him. Then, she contacted a condominium in Burlington to inquire about renting from them. Her family had vacationed there in the past, so the place was familiar to her. A fellow nursing student spoke with Maura shortly after this at 1:13 p.m, but the reason is not known to this day. Then, at 1:24 p.m, Maura emailed her supervisor of the nursing school faculty to say that she would be out of town for a week due to "a death in the family" and that she would contact them when she returned. (FYI: Her family stated later that there was no death in the family.) At 2:05 until 2:10 p.m., Maura contacted a number that provides booking information for hotels in Stowe, Vermont. Thirteen minutes later, at 2:18 p.m, Maura made a one minute phone call to her boyfriend, promising she would speak with him later.
At around 3:30 p.m, Maura drove off campus in her 1996 Saturn sedan, in the middle of a snowstorm, of which classes at her college campus had been canceled. What was in her car? Toiletries, clothing, college textbooks, and her birth control pills. Ten minutes later, at 3:40 p.m, Maura withdrew $280 from an ATM. That's not a small amount of money for a college student. She used $40 of that money to buy alcohol from a nearby liquor store, and she picked up accident reports from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles sometime that day. When she went to the liquor store and the ATM, she was alone -- authorities know this because of camera footage.
Between 4 and 5 pm, Maura left Amherst, presumably via Interstate 91 North. At around 4:37 p.m, she checked her voicemail on her phone, and that's the last time her phone was used.
It would be at least over 2 hours before Maura or her car was spotted later. At 7:27 pm, a woman in Woodsville, New Hampshire heard a loud thump outside her house. She looked outside and noticed a car against the snowbank on Route 112, and the appearance of a red light coming from the car. The woman assumed it was a man smoking a cigarette but later recanted that notion and said it could have been a light from a cell phone. A school bus driver was passing by and stopped by the car; he stated that he encountered a woman walking around the outside of the vehicle. The school bus driver offered to call police but the woman pleaded with him not to (his words: "pleaded"), and she insisted that she had already called AAA. Despite Maura's request for the police not to be called, the man called them later at his home at 7:43 p.m, because he knew that area did not have cell service.
Another local woman said she was driving by that area at 7:37 p.m, and she came across a police SUV on the side of the road, facing a black car. When she pulled over, she did not see anyone in or outside either car, so she went home. Interestingly enough, the police's log states that they arrived 9 minutes later, which contradicts with this woman's time frame recollection.
According to the police, at 7:45 p.m, they came upon Maura's car. It had impacted with a tree nearby, imploding the airbags and cracking the windshield on the driver's side. No one was found in or outside the car. Inside the car, an empty box of wine was found and red stains that appeared to be wine stains were found. Driving directions to Burlington, CD's, makeup, jewelry, blank accident report forms, gloves, and a AAA card issued to Maura were found, as well as Maura's favorite stuffed animal and a book called Not Without Peril (which is about climbing the White Mountains in New Hampshire). Maura's debit and credit cards and her cell phone were missing, and have never been found since she went missing. In addition, some of the purchased alcohol was missing.
Shortly after Maura went missing, at around 8-9 p.m, a local contractor driving home from Franconia reported seeing someone moving quickly and eastbound on Route 112 about 4-5 miles east of where Maura's car was. That person was wearing jeans, a dark coat, and a light-colored hood. When reviewing his work records three months later (in May 2004), he realized that this was the same night that Maura went missing, so he reported it to police then. Three months later.
Both the police officer and the school bus driver drove around to look for Maura, but she couldn't be found. At around 8 p.m, EMS and a fire truck arrived to clear the scene, and by 8:45 p.m, Maura's car was towed to a local garage. What's odd to me is that a rag belonging to Maura's roadside emergency kit was found stuffed into the motor pipe of her car. Why would that happen?
Maura was reported as missing at 12 p.m. the next day, February 10, 2004. A "BOLO" (or Be on the Lookout) was issued shortly after that. Fred did not know of his daughter's disappearance until Kathleen called him at 5:00 p.m, then he contacted the Haverhill Police Department. They told Maura's dad that they would start a search for Maura if she was not found safe by the next morning, February 11, 2004.
Guys...the police were not doing their jobs...again. Again!!!!!!!!! If that was me, I would be on them to start the search ASAP. The first 48 hours is SO CRUCIAL in finding a missing person.
Maura's dad arrived in Haverhill before dawn on February 11, 2004. The Murray's and the Haverhill Police Department began searching for Maura and dogs tracked her scent to about 100 yards east of her vehicle, but the scent stopped there. This leads police to believe she got into a car there.
Maura's boyfriend came to Haverhill with his parents at 5:00 p.m, and he was questioned with his parents present. On the way to Haverhill by flight, her boyfriend received a voicemail on his turned-off cellphone that he indicated sounded like Maura sobbing. I don't know why, but the call was traced to a calling card issued by the American Red Cross. Strange.
At 7:00 p.m, the police stated that they thought that Maura had disappeared on her own volition or had committed suicide. Her family maintained she would not do that.
On February 12, a press conference was held by Maura's parents and her boyfriend in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, and on February 13, it was released. On February 13, 2004, at 3:05 p.m, the police stated that Maura was "possibly suicidal" and had been "intoxicated at the crash." The bus driver reported that she did not seem impaired, though.
A week after her disappearance, Maura's dad and boyfriend were interviewed by American Morning on CNN, and the family extended their search into Vermont. Surprise surprise, the New Hampshire Police did not issue a BOLO to the Vermont Police, and the family was stuck doing their own leg work.
On February 19, the FBI joined the case (just ten days after Maura went missing). A second ground and air search took place, with helicopters and thermal imaging, but nothing turned up.
Just one month after Maura went missing, Brianna Maitland went missing in Montgomery, Vermont, just 66 miles of Maura's last sighting in Woodville, New Hampshire. State police have stated there are no connections between the two cases, but this is interesting to me. Police also dismissed the idea of a serial killer being involved in Maura's case.
Five months after Maura went missing, in July 2004, police conducted a fourth search, but nothing turned up.
In late 2004, a man's theory that his brother had killed Maura was debunked. Fred Murray kept pursuing the truth, going on The Montel Williams Show, and holding a vigil on the one year anniversary of Maura's disappearance in the very place she was last scene in her car. Fred even filed a lawsuit against several law enforcement agencies so that he could see the files on his daughter's disappearance.
"The New Hampshire League of Investigators, ten retired police officers and detectives, and the Molly Bish Foundation started working on the case in 2006. Tom Shamshak, a former police chief and a member of the Licensed Private Detectives Association of Massachusetts, said, 'It appears...that this is something beyond a mere missing persons case. Something ominous could have happened here.' The Arkansas group Let's Bring Them Home offered a $75,000 reward in 2007 for information that could solve her disappearance." (Wikipedia)
Two more searches were conducted near the area where Maura went missing, in 2006, and in 2008, but nothing came up.
Ten years later, in 2014, then fifteen years later, in 2019, Fred Murray stated that he believed that his daughter had been abducted and murdered.
In 2021, the property owner where a memorial tree for Maura was last seen cut down the tree. What a horrible choice, in my opinion, but maybe they were tired of people coming by there. In response, Maura's family filed to have a New Hampshire historical marker placed there, but they were denied.
That same year, in November 2021, bone fragments found on Loon Mountain in Lincoln, New Hampshire (just 25 miles east of Maura's crash site) were tested. Maura's family had vacationed there before, so she knew the area. It seemed like there was a turn around in the case, but that was wrong. The bones turned out to not belong to Maura.
At first, police treated the case as a "voluntary disappearance," since Maura had plans to travel, and there was no evidence of foul play. Five years after she went missing, the New Hampshire Cold Case Division took Maura's case, and they have been treating it as a "foul play situation" since.
Finally, in February 2024, on the 20th anniversary of Maura's disappearance, an age-progression photo of Maura was released by New Hampshire Police.
Maura's case has been all over the media: From the tv show Disappeared to 20/20 to Nancy Grace to several well-known magazines and newspapers, Maura has been discussed. Author and journalist James Renner wrote about his experience with chronicling Maura's case in the book True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray. James believes that Maura disappeared on her own volition, due to her credit card theft, or that she was murdered by someone she knew. Maura's father doesn't believe James' rendition of events, though: he maintains that his daughter was abducted by someone and is dead.
Maura's sister has a new podcast out, called Media Pressure, in which she discusses her sister's case in length. There's also a well-known podcast diving in deep into Maura's case called Missing Maura Murray.
Wow...this is a lot, right? I have some theories on what happened to Maura:
I personally believe that Maura was drunk on the night she crashed the car, so she wasn't thinking straight. Maura may have gotten out of the car then decided to hitch hike, was picked up by someone she didn't know, then sexually assaulted and murdered. That's my take on her case.
What do you think happened to Maura? Let me know by reaching out to me at @Mysteriesofthemissing on Facebook, Instagram, or Tiktok, or you may email me at mysteriesofthemissing2023@gmail.com.
At the time of her disappearance, Maura was 5'7", between 120-125 pounds, had light brown hair and blue/green eyes. She had dimples on both cheeks and crowns and/or fillings on some of her teeth. She was wearing a dark jacket and jeans.
Anyone with information about Maura Murray is asked to call the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit at (603) 271-2663 or email them at ColdCaseUnit@dos.nh.gov.
Maura, if you're out there, if you ran away, I think your family would love it if you just connected with them. After all this time, you are forgiven. Obviously, you were loved: your family is concerned for you. However, if you met foul play, I hope whomever hurt you is brought to justice.
This has been another episode of Mysteries of the Missing. Until next time, stay safe...
Maura Murray, age progressed to about age 42 (2024)
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