The Disappearance of Maura Murray
Maura Murray was a 21-year-old nursing student, completing her junior year at the University of Massachusetts Amherst at the time of her disappearance. On Monday, February 9, after midnight, Murray used her computer to search MapQuest for directions to the Berkshires and Burlington, Vermont. That same day, the first reported contact that Murray had with anyone was with her boyfriend, at 1:00pm. She emailed him: "I love you more stud. I got your messages, but honestly, I didn't feel like talking too much of anyone, I promise to call today though. love you, Maura." She also made a phone call inquiring about renting a condominium at the same Bartlett, New Hampshire, condo association that her family had vacationed with in the past. Telephone records indicate that the call lasted about three minutes. The owner did not rent the condo to Murray. Murray called a fellow nursing student for reasons unknown, at 1:13pm.
On February 9, at 1:24pm, Murray emailed a work supervisor of the nursing school faculty stating that she would be out of town for a week due to a death in her family. However, according to her family, they did not have a death in the family at that time. At 2:05 pm, Murray called a number which provides recorded information about booking hotels in Stowe, Vermont and the call lasted about five minutes. At 2:18 pm, she telephoned her boyfriend and left a voice message promising him they would talk later. This call ended after only one minute.
In her car, Murray had packed clothing, toiletries, and college textbooks. When her room was later searched, campus police discovered that most of her belongings had been packed in boxes and the art had been removed from the walls. It's not clear whether Murray packed them that day, but police at the time said she had packed between Sunday night and Monday morning.
On top of the boxes was a printed email to Murray's boyfriend indicating that their was trouble in their relationship. Around 3:30 pm, she drove off the campus in her black 1996 Saturn sedan. Classes at the university had been canceled that day due to a snowstorm.
At 3:40pm, Murray withdrew $280 from an ATM and closed-circuit footage showed that she was alone. Murray then purchased about $40 of alcoholic beverages from a nearby liquor store. At some point in the day, she also picked up accident-report forms from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles.
Murray left Amherst between 4 and 5pm, presumably along interstate 91 north. She called to check her voicemail at 4:37 pm, the last recorded use of her cell phone. To date there has been no indication that she informed anyone of her destination, or any evidence that she had even chosen one.
After 7:00pm, a Woodsville, New Hampshire resident heard a loud thump outside her house. Through her window, she saw a car up against the snowbank along Route 112, also known as Wild Ammonoosuc Road. The car pointed west on the eastbound side of the road. The woman reported the car accident to the Grafton County Sherriff's Department at 7:27pm. According to the 911 call log, the woman had claimed to see a man smoking a cigarette inside the car but she later set the record straight and said that she had not seen a man smoking a cigarette but rather what appeared to be a red light glowing from inside the car, potentially from a cell phone.
A passing motorist, a school bus driver who lived nearby, stopped at the scene. They claimed to have seen the car, as well as a young woman walking around the vehicle. The motorist noticed that the woman was not bleeding or visibly injured, but appeared to be cold ad shivering. he had offered to call for help but she asked him not to call the police, assuring him that she had already called AAA, but AAA has no record of any such call. The motorist continued home and called the police, knowing that there was no cellular reception in the area. His call was received by the Sheriff's Department at 7:43 pm. He was not able to see Murray's car when he made the call but he did notice several cars pass the road before police arrived to the scene. Another local resident driving home from work claimed to have passed the scene around 7:37pm, and saw a police SUV parked face to face with Murray's car. She pulled over briefly but did not see anyone inside or outside of the car, then deciding to continue home. However, this witness's statement contradicts the official police log, which has Haverhill police arriving nine minutes later. When the police arrived at the scene, at 7:46pm, the woman driver had disappeared. Both inside and outside the car, an officer discovered what appeared to be red wine stains. Inside the car there was an empty beer bottle, a damaged box of Franzia wine, AAA card issued to Murray, blank accident report forms, compact discs, gloves, makeup, diamond jewelry, Murray's favorite stuffed animal, driving directions to Burlington, Vermont, and Not Without Peril, a book about climbing in the White Mountains. Missing items included Murray's credit and debit cards, and cell phone, none of which have been found since her disappearance. Police were able to trace the vehicle to Murray, and initially treated her as a missing person, with the belief that she may have voluntarily disappeared. This speculation was based on her apparent travel preparations and no obvious evidence of foul play. In 2009, Murray's case was given to the New Hampshire cold case division, and authorities are handling it as a "suspicious" missing persons case.
Sometime between 8:00 and 8:30pm, a contractor returning home from Franconia, saw a young woman, on foot, moving quickly eastbound on Route 112 about 4 to 5 miles east of where Murray's vehicle was discovered. He also noticed that the woman was wearing jeans, a dark coat, and a light-colored hood. He did not report this to police immediately due to his own confusion regarding the dates, barely discovering three months later that he had spotted this person on the same night that Murray had disappeared.
The responding officer and the bus driver drove around the area searching for Murray. Just before 8:00 pm, EMS and a fire truck arrived to clear the scene. By 8:49 pm, the car had been towed to a local garage, and at about 9:30 pm, the responding officer left. A rag believed to have been part of Murray's emergency roadside kit was discovered stuffed into the Saturn's muffler pipe. Authorities would refer to Murray as simply "missing" at 12 pm the next day, almost 24 hours after the last confirmed sighting of her.
At 12:36 pm the following day, February 10, a "Be on the Lookout" report for Murray was issued. She was reported as wearing a dark coat, jeans, and a black backpack. A voicemail was left on Fred Murray's home answering machine at 3:20 pm stating that her car had been found abandoned. He was working out of state and did not receive this call. At 5:00 pm, Murray's older sister contacted her father to make him aware of the situation. He then contacted the Haverhill Police Department and was told that, if Murray was not reported safe by the following morning, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department would start a search. At 5:17 pm, Murray was first referred to as "missing" by the Haverhill police.
On February 11, Murray's father arrived before dawn in Haverhill. At 8:00 am, New Hampshire Fish and Game, the Murrays, and others began to search. A police dog tracked the scent from one of Murray's gloves 100 yards east from where the vehicle had been discovered, but lost the scent. This suggested to police she'd left the area in another car. At 5:00 pm, Murray's boyfriend and his parents arrived in Haverhill. He was interrogated in private, and then was joined by his parents for questioning. At 7:00 pm, the police said they believed Murray came to the area either to run away or attempt suicide but her family believed that this was unlikely.
Murray's boyfriend had turned off his cell phone during his flight to Haverhill. At some point, he had received a voicemail that he believed to be the sound of Murray sobbing. The call was traced to a calling card issued to the American Red Cross.
On February 12, Murray's father and her boyfriend held an evening press conference in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, and the next day the first press coverage was published. At 3:05 pm, the police reported Murray might be headed to the Kancamagus Highway area, and she was "listed as endangered and possibly suicidal". The police report also stated Murray was intoxicated at the crash site, although the bus driver had said she did not appear impaired. The Haverhill police chief said that, "Our concern is that she's upset or suicidal."
A week after Murray's disappearance, her father and boyfriend were interviewed by CNN's American Morning. Murray's family expanded their search into Vermont, dismayed that authorities there hadn't been informed of her disappearance.
Although missing person cases are normally handled by local and state police, the FBI joined the investigation ten days after she disappeared. The FBI interviewed family from Massachusetts and the Haverhill police chief announced that the search was now nationwide. Ten days after her disappearance, New Hampshire Fish and Game conducted a second ground and air search, using a helicopter with a thermal imaging camera, cadaver dogs, and tracking dogs. Murray's older sister discovered a ripped white pair of women's underwear lying in the snow on a secluded trail near French Pond Road on February 26, but DNA tests found that the underwear didn't belong to Murray.
The police returned the items found in Murray's car to her family, at the end of February. On March 2, the family checked out of their motel, exhausted from the search. Fred Murray returned nearly every weekend to continue searching. In April, Haverhill Police informed him of complaints of trespassing on private property.
The March 2004 disappearance of Brianna Maitland in Montgomery, Vermont, 66 miles away from Murray's last sighting in Woodsville, drew comparisons from media and law enforcement due to the similarities in disappearances. However, state police have stated there are no links between the two cases.
In April and again in June, New Hampshire and Vermont police dismissed any connection between Murray's case and Maitland's. In a press release, they stated they believed that "Maura was headed for an unknown destination and may have accepted a ride in order to continue to that location," adding that they had discovered no evidence that a crime had been committed. They dismissed the possibility that a serial killer was involved.
On July 1, the police retrieved the items found in Murray's vehicle from her family for forensic analysis. On July 13, a one-mile radius search was performed by nearly 100 searchers, including state troopers, rescue personnel, and volunteers. This was the fourth search around the crash area and the first search performed without snow on the ground. Authorities were most interested in locating the black backpack Murray had in her possession but not found in her car. Police stated the search discovered "nothing conclusive".
In late 2004, a man allegedly gave Murray's father a rusty, stained knife that belonged to the man's brother, who had a criminal past and lived less than a mile from where the car was discovered. His brother and his brother's girlfriend were said to have acted strangely after the disappearance, and the man's brother claimed he believed the knife had been used to kill Murray. Several days after the knife was given to Murray's father, the man's brother allegedly scrapped his Volvo. Family members of the man who turned in the knife claimed he had made up the story in order to obtain reward money in the investigation, and that he had a history of drug use.
In 2005, Fred Murray petitioned New Hampshire Governor, Craig Benson for assistance in the search and appeared on The Montel Williams Show in November of 2004 to publicize the case. On February 9, 2005, the first anniversary of Murray's disappearance, a service was held where the car was found, and her father met briefly with New Hampshire Governor, John Lynch.
In late 2005, Fred Murray filed suit against several law enforcement agencies, with the aim of seeing files on the case. On November 1, 2005, a user named "Tom Davies" logged into a message board called "Not Without Peril", which was dedicated to discussion of Murray's disappearance, and claimed to have seen a black backpack behind a restroom at Pemigewasset Overlook, around 30 miles east of Woodsville on Route 112. Murray had owned a black backpack. Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin stated that law enforcement "was aware of the backpack," but did not disclose whether it had been taken for forensic testing.
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.
In October 2006, volunteers led a two-day search within a few miles of where Murray's car was found. In the closet of an A-frame house approximately 1 mile from the crash site, cadaver dogs allegedly went "bonkers", possibly identifying the presence of human remains. The house had formerly been the residence of the man implicated by his brother, who had given Fred Murray the rusty knife in 2004. A sample of carpet from the home was sent to the New Hampshire State Police, but the results were never released to the public. In July 2008, volunteers led another two-day search through wooded areas in Haverhill. The group consisted of dog teams and licensed private investigators.
Murray's case was one of many cited by proponents of a statewide cold case unit for New Hampshire in 2009. Her case was subsequently added to the newly established cold case unit later that year. In 2010, Fred Murray publicly criticized the police investigation for treating the disappearance as a missing persons case and not a criminal matter, and called on the FBI to join the investigation. Jeffery Strelzin said in February 2009 that the investigation was still active: "We don't know if Maura is a victim, but the state is treating it as a potential homicide. It may be a missing-persons case, but it's being handled as a criminal investigation."
In 2014, on the tenth anniversary of Murray's disappearance, Strelzin stated that "We haven't had any credible sightings of Maura since the night she disappeared." In an article published in the New York Daily News on the tenth anniversary of his daughter's disappearance, it was reported that Fred Murray believed she was dead and had been abducted the night of her disappearance.
On February 9, 2017, the thirteenth anniversary of Murray's disappearance, Strelzin wrote in an email to The Boston Globe: "It's still an open case with periods of activity and at times it goes dormant. There are no new updates to share at this time."
In February 2019, the fifteenth anniversary of Murray's disappearance, Fred Murray reiterated his belief that his daughter was dead, as well as his suspicions about the nearby house that cadaver dogs responded to, stating, "That's my daughter, I do believe." In early April, excavation was done within the basement of the house. Fred Murray had previously wanted to search the home, but the owners did not cooperate. Following sale of the property, its new owners allowed several searches of the property since February. The excavation conducted in early April found "absolutely nothing, other than what appears to be a piece of pottery or old piping."
In early 2021, the tree at the site where Murray was last seen—which had been marked with a blue ribbon as a memorial—was cut down by the property owner. Shortly thereafter, a request from Murray's family to have a New Hampshire historical marker placed at the site, which had been submitted in late 2020, was turned down by the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources.
On September 14, 2021, New Hampshire State Police announced that bone fragments had been found on Loon, Mountain in Lincoln, New Hampshire, approximately 25 miles east of the site of Murray's crash. Murray had been to the mountain before and had knowledge of the area, according to her sister. The bone fragments were described as "pretty small," and it was expected to take at least two months to determine if they were the remains of Murray or not. In November, it was announced that the remains did not belong to Murray.
In January 2022, FBI issued a national alert in Murray's case and created a Violent Criminal Apprehension Profile, allowing multiple law enforcement agencies to share information regarding her case. In July 2022, law enforcement in New Hampshire initiated a search in the towns of Landaff and Easton.
It's important to note that before Murray had disappeared, she had showed some rather irregular behavior. In November 2003, three months before her disappearance, Murray admitted to using a stolen credit card to order food from several restaurants, including one in Hadley, Massachusetts. The charge was continued in December, and dismissed after three months' of good behavior.
On the evening of February 5, 2004, while she was on duty at her campus-security job, Murray spoke on the phone with her older sister, Kathleen. They discussed Kathleen's relationship problems with her fiancé. Around 10:30 p.m., while still on her shift, Murray reportedly broke down in tears. When her supervisor arrived at her desk, Murray was "just completely zoned out. No reaction at all. She was unresponsive." The supervisor escorted Murray back to her dorm room around 1:20 am. When asked what was wrong, Murray said two words: "My sister." The contents of this call remained unknown until October 2017, when Kathleen publicly explained the conversation: Kathleen, a recovering alcoholic, had been discharged from a rehabilitation clinic that evening, and on the way home, her fiancé took her to a liquor store, which caused an emotional breakdown.
On Saturday, February 7, Murray's father Fred arrived in Amherst. He told investigators he and Murray went car-shopping that afternoon, and later went to dinner with a friend of his daughter. Murray dropped her father off at his motel room and, borrowed his Toyota Corolla, and returned to campus to attend a dorm party. She arrived at 10:30 pm. At 2:30 am on Sunday, February 8, she left the party. At 3:30 am, en route to her father's motel, she struck a guardrail on Route 9 in Hadley, causing nearly $10,000 worth of damage to her father's car. The responding officer wrote an accident report, but there is no documentation of field sobriety tests being conducted. Murray was driven to her father's motel and stayed in his room the rest of the morning. At 4:49 am, there was a cell phone call placed to her boyfriend from Fred's phone. The participants and content of the phone call are not known.
Later Sunday morning, Fred Murray had learned that the damage done to his vehicle would be covered by his auto insurance. He rented a car, dropped Murray off at the university, and departed for Connecticut. At 11:30 that night, Fred called his daughter to remind her to obtain accident forms from the Registry of Motor Vehicles. They agreed to talk again Monday night to discuss the forms and fill out the insurance claim via phone.
Maura Murray has never been found.
