My opinions only, no facts here:
To keep this thread inspired, I will repost a series of discussions I presented on this case awhile back. These posts been very slightly modified for clarity:
Part 1: There is a "fight or flight" aspect to everybody's personality. It takes a certain event or a chain of successive events for this happen. After Maura wrecked her father's car, something snapped. Something driven by guilt over the accident and a thousand, nay a million snippets of prior history that define one's individual and fascinating personality. Maura decided to go on a road trip for soul-searching and with the childish thought in the back of her mind that she would rent a room up north and call her father and have him come up and visit with her near the old location where they used to go when she was a little girl. Maura is not a party animal, but bought some alcohol and was sipping it as she went. That is only natural (in spite of open container laws), because she
was stressed and just wishing to stay calm. Unfortunately, she was not 100% sober when she rounded the bend on Wild Ammonoosuc Road in wintery conditions, and she slid off. Now, she is really feeling frantic- what if the cops come and arrest her for DUI? She is wrestling with feelings of guilt, remorse, and confusion (even though in reality she has done nothing wrong). She was offered help by a bus driver, but refused it. She walked 100 yards to the junction with Bradley Hill Road at about 1 Wild Ammonoosuc Road. That is where she disappeared. That is where the dog tracked her. That is where the scent ended. Prior to this event, everything that happened was "white noise" and unrelated.
Part 2: As I stated previously, I believe that the crime started at Bradley Hill Road at about 1 Wild Ammonoosuc Road. I am aware of the rag or whatever stuffed in the tailpipe of Mauras car. I acknowledge it could have been sabotage by another or even a suicide attempt, but this detail somehow seems
so irreverent that is has to be overlooked for now. But if someone were to argue that all of the white noise in the case ended when the car slid off the road and the initial crime occurred right there, I would not vehemently argue against them. But I still believe that Maura walked the 100 yards from the car wreck to Bradley Hill Road at about 1 Wild Ammonoosuc Road by herself. The people who permanently lived around the location of Mauras disappearance all seem to be respectable and decent. Some of them have subsequently been hounded and I cannot blame them if they are tired of talking. The officers who stopped by the accident scene early on (but Maura was already gone), also appear to be stalwart individuals who acted professionally. I suggest the sleuth look a wee bit beyond the presently-known names for a suspect.
I usually list a calculation of the odds of certain outcomes in an unsolved criminal case. This shows the readers where my mind is at and what my biases are. So here goes:
Maura was abducted by someone who was a sometimes-resident of the area- 3 out of 7.
Maura was abducted by someone who was a permanent resident of the area- 2 out of 7.
Maura was abducted by someone randomly passing through- 1 out of 7.
Maura wandered into the woods and died in a non-criminal manner- 0.5 out of 7.
Maura went on a marathon run down the road to places unknown- 0.5 out of 7.
Part 3: following my two previous posts on the Maura Murray case, I want to list the strategies that I have used in the Holly Bobo, Jamison family, Maura Murray, and McStay family cases (and some others):
1) look up ALL of the people named in the case (witnesses, people you suspect, officials, etc.) who are interesting to you- on the internet. Use Google advanced search and put keep adding currently-relevant words in the without any of these words box until you can read about the person PRIOR to the case. In the Maura Murray case, simply typing the word Maura in the unwanted words box will significantly reduce the number of hits, although this can also cause you to lose a few relevant hits. As soon as a new sensational crime is reported, all of the associated players show up on thousands or hundreds of thousands of hits related to the current case. This is internet white noise, and prevents you from getting hits about the persons past prior to the case.
2) if all of the people named in the case check out OK (no prison time, arrest warrants, UFO abductions etc.), then look at their immediate relatives using Google advanced search in the same reverse manner. Parents have sons and daughters and sons and daughters have parents. There are brothers and sisters and uncles. It is a package deal.
3) to better laser-in-on an individual person of interest, pay close attention to which of the main players is telling the least-believable story. Whose fish gets longer every time they tell the story, and whose fish stays the same length? Silence by itself does not prove anything. People who are even incidentally involved in high-profile cases are being hounded constantly and oft-times get tired of talking to the press. Pay attention to those who offer up words and shrug about the silent ones. There is little you can do about silence. So what might constitute a non-believable story? Three things stand out for me: the story changes significantly over time, the story-tellers memory gets more accurate with time, or their story is widely-rejected by other major NAMED players in the case.
As others have noted on websleuths, I rarely use a suspect's name. But I give tips so others can have the satisfation of finding their own names. In the best (and worst) case scenario, Maura may be a mile or less from where she disappeared.
Something that police should ask when they go door-to-door in the neighborhood after a crime: do you have any relatives visiting your house or lodging out back? The person who answers the door is not the entire picture.
I am not being provocative, I am being practical. There are three categories in a neighborhood: permanent, sometimes, and transient. The permanent are more likely to be solid and uninvolved. The transient have less to lose and are
most likely to be involved. But the ones in the middle are sometimes overlooked.