What Happened to Maura Murray?  

Missing Poster

Julie Murray, Maura’s older sister

CHAPTER ONE: The Basics

Maura Murray was a 21 year old star athlete and bright student, who got her life in order, bought some alcohol, got in her janky car and began driving north on February 9, 2004. Everything and everyone important to Maura was south. The only thing north was an old vacation spot she used to frequent with her family. So the assumption is that she was heading there.

Lara: You will hear the word “assumption” a lot in the course of this case.

Maura’s own car was not in the best shape, so she had borrowed her dad’s car the week before while he was in town. She was driving to a party when she struck a guardrail. The car was fairly new and the damage was $10,000 in repairs. So Maura was back to driving her Saturn on the night she disappeared despite a known cylinder misfire. It would have been chugging and skipping along as she drove, according to a mechanic in the Oxygen documentary. 

Maura at the ATM machine.

Julie, Fred & Maura Murray

The Oxygen documentary is thorough, 6 episodes long!

Maura’s father being angry at her for wrecking his car was just one thing Maura was dealing with at the time. She had also discovered her fiance Bill Rausch (L: let’s call him “Billy.” I just like it better) that Billy had cheated on her. The couple, as reported by family and friends, had been very close and Maura was described as “devastated” by the news. (More on this douche canoe later. It gets real weird.)

Katie: What a freaking rat, but also, who needs a fiance at 21? Live your life, Maura! Anyway, I can definitely see THIS being a catalyst to run away for a while. Maybe she figured by the end of the week after having this time alone, I’ll be able to deal with everything happening around me.

Lara: You’re right, at 21, finding out the person you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with was cheating? I mean, I was married at 20.

Three months before that, Maura had stolen credit cards and then ordered food with them. She was caught, although the charges were later dismissed. She reportedly was ashamed and embarrassed about that, but it was three months earlier than her disappearance and it seems like maybe that shouldn’t be weighing so much on her mind anymore. Especially since the charges were dropped. 

L: Personally, I can’t see how this was a factor in her stress level. I could see if court was pending, and she faced jail time or huge fines, but it was all over with by the time she left, with no ding to her record.  

K: This is really strange to me and seems out of character for Maura…she has a job at school…why would she even do this? This could be additional insight into things going wrong even earlier leading up to her disappearance. Or maybe she just did a dumb 21-year-old thing. 

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So the night Maura left, she could have been worried about her father and the expensive repairs to his car. That her fiance was cheating on her. That something was up with her sister. Those are her current, primary issues. Again, some stories will try to drag in that she left West Point early and transferred to UMass to study nursing, which seems weird and therefore must have been a factor. But again, that had been months ago. 

Lara: I can’t imagine still dwelling on that. More than likely, her cheating fiance was uppermost on her mind followed by her family issues. And maybe her wreck of a car that was barely functioning, although her father said they had been car shopping for her. So that seemed taken care of. 

K: I read on multiple sources that her sister was a recovering alcoholic and she had recently gotten out of rehab. Her sister’s fiance promptly took her to the liquor store. WHY?? Who is that asshat? But the night Kathleen called her, it was to tell Maura that she had basically relapsed right away. I could see this being devastating to Maura, we don’t know what their family went through with that whole part of their lives. Maybe it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Maura? She packed some of her things for this mystery trip but also, much of her room at school was packed. Maybe she felt she needed to be home with family, support her sister, contemplate her own asshat fiance, etc. and she could not focus on school? She would go away for the week and come back ready to face everything? 

L: Yes, I heard her sister Kathleen describe that situation herself on the Oxygen documentary. They also said, for some reason, they didn’t know if Maura had just gotten to school and hadn’t finished unpacking, or if she was packing up. This happened in February! There should have been no boxing or un-boxing!  I’ll see if I can find anything else about this…

Anyhoozle: Maura ended up crashing into a snowbank on an almost 90 degree turn on Route 112 in New Hampshire.

Maura was going around a curve that turned to the left fairly sharply. She ended up on the far side of the curve in the right lane but facing traffic. She had turned, from the looks of it, too early and too hard, crossing the lane of opposing traffic, hitting the snowbank or a tree on the left, right at the curve in the road, bouncing off and sliding back across the lane of opposing traffic while spinning and coming to a rest facing the wrong way but back in the lane she started in. Make sense?  {see diagram!}

While still in the car, a local approached in his bus, just off his shift and heading home. He stops and asks Maura if she needs help. She declines and says she has called triple A. The local finds this odd as he knows first hand that there is no cell reception up where they are so he knows she couldn’t have called anyone. 

Lara: This guy has a creeper vibe in the video I watched. I’m sorry, but he does. And he was driving a bus! Women are taught NOT to take (large, weird) rides from strangers when stranded on the side of the road! This witness died in 2006? So we’re just stuck with his testimony. But I can’t blame her for saying no and lying to the guy. Classic woman behavior code for: No thank you, you give me the creeps! But also, tuck this little interaction away for later. To me, it impacts one of the theories.

Katie: Exactly, he must have given her creeper vibes. Ugh poor Maura was probably like FML. This is the worst. 

He drives home where he tells his wife about the scene and calls 911. Another neighbor along the road has also called 911. Between the time the first 911 call is placed and the time the police get there is a 19 minute window. In that time, Maura disappears. Just vanishes. She’s out in the middle of nowhere, houses are all spread out, there’s no cell service, no sidewalks, no street lights. There is snow and forest. Where did she go? 

K: Why is everyone calling 911 and no one is seeing if the driver is okay? Did they hear the crash, call 911 and then just walked away from their windows? In an area with no cell service, THIS has to be the most interesting thing happening, for sure. No one saw a young woman get out? Did they see the bus and just think, oh it’s all good…the bus has arrived?? 

L: This only gets weirder when you hear more about the police investigation and how uncooperative they are, for the most part. But there’s evidence that they were watching, for sure! 

Okay, we gotta pause here because we need to list the questions we have so far: 

1. Why did she lie about a death in the family (which no one would question her on) and what did she plan to do that she needed or wanted a whole week off alone? 
2. Why didn’t she tell anyone at all where she was going? Not even for safety’s sake! Did she feel safe where she was going? Or did she just really not want anyone to know what she was doing? 
3. What was so urgent that she needed to drive an unsafe car for hours into New Hampshire?
4. Why did she complete all her assignments and responsibly make sure that everyone who would be expecting her that week would know that she would be out of town? 
5. Why did she clear out her bank account? 
6. Okay fine: why did she buy so much alcohol? 
7. Why did she refuse assistance from the local person driving by? 
8. Why did none of the neighbors come out to see if she needed help, and instead  just called 911? 
9. Why do all of the neighbors claim they have nothing to report, they witnessed nothing? (yet they heard the crash and looked out their windows, so clearly they can hear things from the road and they can see things and they’re nosy.) Is it just that they don’t want to be involved? Or something more…nefarious? 

Now, there is a reason this post is called The Basics: this is the bare bones story that was originally released. There is so.much.more to tell, tons of new info, the story gets fleshed out, it’s a load of information, we promise!

So next up:

CHAPTER TWO: The police investigations. And: Theories abound! 

Thanks for reading!

xo,

Lara & Kate