Name: Maura Murray
Age: 21 years old
Last seen: February 9, 2004
Location: Haverhill, New Hampshire
Status: Still Missing
Disappeared: Season 1 Episode 6 “Miles to Nowhere”
Case Information
21 year old Maura Murray was last seen in Haverhill, New Hampshire on February 9, 2004. She disappeared in the wilderness after crashing her car into pine trees along a pitch black stretch of a rural road.
Background
Maura Murray was born on May 4, 1982, in Hanson, Massachusetts, to parents Laurie and Frederick Murray. She was the youngest of four siblings and grew up in Hanson, a small suburb of southeast Massachusetts.
Murray graduated from Whitman-Hanson Regional High School, where she was a member of the track team and played competitive basketball. In 1998, she participated in the U.S. National Scholastic Outdoor Championships in the two mile category.
After graduation, Murray was accepted into the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. She studied chemical engineering for three semesters before realizing the Army wasn’t for her.
Murray transferred to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst into a nursing program. She was also working part-time at a local art gallery and had a job on campus.
Murray was in a relationship with boyfriend William Rausch, an Army lieutenant stationed in Fort Still, Oklahoma.
On the evening of February 5, 2004, Murray received a phone call at her job that disturbed her to the point that she was unable to work. She was escorted back to her dormitory room by a supervisor.
On the afternoon of February 7, 2004, Murray went car shopping with her father who was visiting, and later had dinner with a friend of hers. Afterward, she borrowed her father’s new Toyota Corolla and attended a campus party with her friend.
On February 8, 2004, Murray got into a small car accident in Hadley at 3:30 am, while she was on her way from the campus to her father’s hotel. She crashed the vehicle into some guardrails, causing $10,000 worth of damage.
Disappearance
On February 9, 2004, Murray withdrew $280 from her bank account at an off-campus ATM. She stopped at a liquor store around 3:40 pm and purchased $40 worth of alcoholic beverages.
By 4:30 pm Murray had departed Amherst and drove her black 1996 Saturn sedan north toward New Hampshire. She did not tell anyone about her plans or where she was heading.
Between 7:00 and 7:30 pm, Murray was involved in a one-car accident on Route 112 in the White Mountains hamlet of Haverhill, New Hampshire. She apparently lost control of her vehicle and crashed her car on a sharp turn on Wild Ammonoosuc Road.
The vehicle slammed into a snowbank and struck a tree. The front of the car was pushed in and not in a drivable condition. Murray appeared to have cracked her head on the windshield, and she may have been driving under the influence.
When a school bus driver stopped by and offered help, Murray waved him along and said AAA had been summoned. The bus driver, who lived nearby, drove off but called the police anyway.
About ten minutes later, a Haverhill police cruiser arrived at the scene but Murray was nowhere to be seen, leaving her car behind. Murray never returned home and has not been heard from since.
Investigation
Inside Murray’s car police found most of her belongings, including an open bottle of alcohol, a stuffed monkey her boyfriend gave her, and clothing in a suitcase in the back of her car.
Her credit cards and cellphone, which were missing from the vehicle, have had no activity since she disappeared.
Authorities found no indications of a struggle or foul play at the scene. There were no footprints in the snow around her car, and searches in the area for clues turned up nothing. A tracker dog lost her scent within a hundred feet of the accident scene.
Before she left her University of Massachusetts’s dormitory room, Murray had packed up all her belongings into boxes, seemingly in a move to leave altogether. A personal note was left behind to her boyfriend.
On her personal computer, police found browsing history for MapQuest’s directions to the Berkshires and hotels in Burlington, Vermont. They checked those locations for any signs of her, but turned up no clues as to Maura Murray’s whereabouts.
Murray also sent an email to a professor saying she would be absent from class all week. She said she needed to head back to Hanson because of a death in the family, which was later proved to be untrue.
The destination of her trip that day was uncertain, either heading west on Route 112 toward Vermont or east into New Hampshire. Murray and her father were avid runners; they regularly hiked and camped in New Hampshire.
In September of 2021 police announced that human bone fragments were found in the Loon Mountain area of Lincoln, New Hampshire. The fragments were located about 25 miles from Haverhill, close to where Maura Murray was last seen.
Maura’s family was notified of the discovery, and are anxiously awaiting the results.
In November 2021 it was announced that the bone fragments found in the area of Loon are not those of Maura Murray.
The New Hampshire State Police announced that the fragments aren’t tied to any active missing person’s cases, and are likely historic in nature. Based on radiocarbon dating the fragments are likely from someone who died between 1774 and 1942.
Whereabouts
Police found no evidence, means or motive for foul play in Maura Murray’s disappearance. Her family believes that Maura Murray was abducted and murdered by someone who picked her up.
An application from her family to have a historical marker placed alongside the highway where she was last seen was turned down by the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources in 2021.
The circumstances of Maura Murray’s disappearance remain unclear, and her case is currently classified as missing. Her case remains unsolved.
Appearance
Physical Description:
Caucasian female born on May 4, 1982. She has light brown hair, brown eyes, stands 5’7 tall and weighs 120 pounds.
Clothing and accessories:
She was last seen wearing jeans and a dark-colored coat.
Investigating Agency
If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Maura Murray please contact the University of Massachusetts Police (413) 545-2121, New Hampshire State Police at (603) 846-3333 or Haverhill Police Department at (603) 787-2222.
Resources & Further Information
Disappearance of Maura Murray – Wikipedia
Maura Murray Missing – Family Blog
News & Media Links
A family waits and wonders: What happened to Maura? – The Patriot Ledger 02/04
A student vanishes, and questions mount – Boston Globe 02/04
Footprints in the snow – Boston Globe 02/04
Where could Maura be? – Boston Globe 03/04
Videos & Flyers
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