Maura Murray is an American woman who disappeared on the evening of February 9, 2004, after a car crash on Route 112 near Haverhill, New Hampshire. Her whereabouts remain unknown. She 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 1:24 pm, Murray emailed a work supervisor of the nursing school faculty that she would be out of town for a week due to a death in her family; according to her family, there had not been a death. In her car, Murray packed clothing, toiletries, college textbooks, and birth control pills. When her room was searched later, campus police discovered most of her belongings packed in boxes and the art removed from the walls. It is not clear whether Murray packed them that day, but police at the time asserted she had packed between Sunday night and Monday morning.
At 3:40 pm, Murray withdrew $280 from an ATM. CCTV showed she was alone. At a nearby liquor store, Murray purchased about $40 worth of alcoholic beverages. Security footage again shows she was alone when she made that purchase. Murray then left Amherst between 4 and 5pm. She called to check her voice mail at 4:37 pm, the last recorded use of her cell phone. To date there is no indication she had informed anyone of her destination, or any evidence that she had chosen one.
Some time after 7:00 pm, a Woodsville, New Hampshire, resident heard a loud thump outside her house. Through her window she could see a car up against the snowbank along Route 112. The car pointed west on the eastbound side of the road. She telephoned the Grafton County Sheriff's Department at 7:27 pm to report the accident. At about the same time, another neighbour saw the car as well as someone walking around the vehicle. She witnessed a third neighbour pull up alongside the vehicle.
That neighbour, a school bus driver returning home, noticed the young woman was not bleeding or visibly injured, but cold and shivering. He offered to telephone for help. She asked him not to call the police (one police report says "pleaded") and assured him she'd already called AAA (AAA has no record of any such call). Knowing there was no cellular reception in the area, the bus driver continued home and called the police. His call was received by the Sheriff's Department at 7:43 pm.
Another local resident driving home from work claims she passed by the scene around 7:37 pm, and saw a police SUV parked face-to-face with Murray's car. She pulled over briefly and did not see anyone inside or outside the cars, and decided to continue home. This witness's claim contradicts the official police log, which has Haverhill police arriving nine minutes later.
According to the official police log, at 7:46 pm, a Haverhill police officer arrived at the scene. No one was inside or around the car. The car had impacted the tree on the driver's side of the vehicle, severely damaging the left headlight and pushing the car's radiator into the fan, rendering it inoperable. The car's windshield was cracked on the driver's side, and both airbags had deployed. The car was locked.
Inside and outside the car, he discovered red stains that looked to be red wine. Inside the car, the officer found an empty beer bottle and a damaged box of Franzia wine on the rear seat. In addition, he found a AAA card issued to Murray; blank accident-report forms; gloves, compact discs, makeup, diamond jewellery; driving directions to Burlington, Vermont; Murray's favourite stuffed animal, and Not Without Peril, a book about mountain climbing in the White Mountains. Missing were Murray's debit card, credit cards, and cell phone, none of which has been located or used since her disappearance. The police later reported some of the bottles of purchased liquor were also missing.
Between 8:00 to 8:30 pm, a contractor returning home saw a young person moving quickly on foot eastbound on Route 112 about 4 to 5 miles (6 to 8 km) east of where Murray's vehicle was discovered. He noted that the young person was wearing jeans, a dark coat, and a light-coloured hood. He did not report it to police immediately due to his own confusion of dates, only discovering three months later (when reviewing his work records) that he had spotted the young person the same night Murray disappeared. 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. Murray's Father 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 at 8:00am, 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 7:00 pm, the police said they believed Murray came to the area either to run away or commit suicide; her family believed this was unlikely. Murray's boyfriend had turned off his cell phone during his flight to Haverhill. At some point, he received a voicemail that he believed was the sound of Murray sobbing. The call was traced to a calling card issued to the American Red Cross.
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, tracking dogs and cadaver dogs.
The March 2004 disappearance of Briana Maitland in Montgomery, Vermont 110 km 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 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.
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 1.6 km 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 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. In early April, excavation was done within the basement of the house. Following sale of the property, the 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."
To this day there hasn’t be any credible sightings of Maura since the night she disappeared
Comments