NH NH - Maura Murray, 21, Haverhill, 9 Feb 2004 #15

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minazoe said:
sadly even in our society, saying someone might be pregnant ( out of wedlock, horrors, shudder..) or that some one was sexually assaulted, holds some degree of unspoken blame on the victim. So talking about these matters is deemed "disrespectful" to the victim.

it's not.

we need to get over this. it's not a disrespect to the young woman.
that said I personally think anything is possible. we all know Maura was upset and something was motivating
her actions.

there is no evidence of a pregnancy...but I will say this.

way too many pregnant women are murdered by their baby's fathers, so I think this is something LE looks into right away. But really , unless she told someone, we might never know.

mOO
Click to expand...

Yeah maybe 40 or 50 years ago saying things like that brought with it a sense of blame towards the lady but definitely not into today's culture. I think we all know at least a couple people who have kids out wedlock and they aren't looked at any differently than anyone else.

We live in a culture where we can find dates at a click of a button and probably many of us have had/do have our own escapades. Saying Maura was likely sexually active and potentially was pregnant isn't deamonizing her in anyway it is just stating what many people who are in the circles she was in tend to be like and what there was a pretty good chance she was like.

Even a lot of very successful doctors probably had sex like crazy when they were in school.
 
minazoe said:
overall in society as a whole here and globally, women still do not have the same autonomy as men.

mOO
Click to expand...

Perhaps but it is getting a lot better. Women dating younger men has become a lot more common and she generally isn't getting involved with him because she wants to get serious.
 
Happy New Year everyone. Hope everyone is safe and sound. I was traveling over the holidays and it was snowing in the area I was at and while on the highway my car slid onto the side of the road. Accepting help from the people that stopped was the first reaction for me to do (for me though all the help I needed was a little pushing to where my car could gain some traction again). Just another thing that was perplexing about the decisions Maura made that night. Refusing help from the known person that stopped.
 
Hi.
Glad you’re okay after car incident! I was thinking that maybe while you and I would accept help from passers by, Maura might have reason not to. Since we don’t really know all the details, we’ve all just been scratching our heads and trying to figure out what we think happened 16 years ago..it’s easy to get lost thinking about behaviors or actions (Maura’s) and how Y must have happened, because X does (or doesn’t)make sense. The decisions that a sober, sane, logical mind would make don’t necessarily apply to a mind in distress. Whether the distress is biological, situational, or from alcohol (or combination) we can’t apply secondhand logical thinking to a potentially drunk or concussed person. Have y’all dealt with or been a drunk person? Lol, admittedly I’ve been both and sometimes the things that happen and get done just don’t make sense. I also don’t think Maura would intentionally go into the woods to hide, long term, with no supplies in middle of winter. It just doesn’t make sense for a smart, capable girl to wander far into the snowy woods to curl up and die (or commit suicide.) It also doesn’t make sense that she’d turn down help from a bus driver, only to get in the next passing car who may, in the coincidence of all coincidences be a serial killer or opportunistic murderer. It doesn’t make sense to go to random nearby house seeking help and roll the dice that they too would call the cops, if you’re just trying to avoid the cops and potential DUI.
But you can’t apply logical thinking to an impaired person.
I don’t mean this to sound judgey or condescending in any way. I base ^^ on my own experiences: when I was 18 I was drinking with some friends that lived in my neighborhood and I had a bit too much to drink. A buddy walked me home and went as far as the end of my driveway and we said goodbye, because my front door was just yards away. I have a very vague recollection of the parting, but the next thing I remember is coming to in my directly across the street neighbor’s front yard, stuck, my hair tangled in a mini-tree that was directly across street from my front door. I have literally no idea how I came to be there, how I was so close to my house and yet didn’t make it inside, how I got so turned around in an area I was very familiar with, how I got stuck to a tree, or why I made any decision that led me there. Luckily for me, it’s just a funny little story and it didn’t somehow tragically turn out different. I know obviously circumstances aren’t the same but my (long winded) point is that just because something does or doesn’t make sense to us 16 years later, I don’t think we can apply our beliefs of what we would do or what would be the most logical move for her to make to her situation. Clearly she was in distress, for whatever reason, and people just don’t make clearly thought out rational decisions when they’re like that. Unfortunately, because of this, I genuinely think every scenario is still on the table.
 
I have been following this case for a long time, but I don't think I have posted in this thread before... so I'm not sure if anyone has asked this question, but has anyone thought about whether Maura uttering "My sister" when she was upset could have been something she purposely threw in there in the lead up to saying there has been a death (or emergency) in the family? Just like someone might if they were planning to call in sick for work tomorrow, so they start coughing a bit at work the day before? When they call in sick the next day, their boss's reaction might be "ah yeah, they did seem a little under the weather come to think of it".
We already know that there wasn't really any issue with her sister of the magnitude that would warrant Maura being unable to function at work... but for some reason she uttered this anyway.
I don't necessarily believe this is what happened, but for argument's sake... if there were a runaway plan that included buying time before anyone comes looking, the plan could have been so well executed that it ran like this: 1. convincingly fall apart at work 2. despondently make reference to a family member while avoiding being specific (and achieve this by acting too emotional and dysfunctional in the moment to be capable of giving specific details) 3. put word out there that there has been a death/emergency in the family.
This could very well slow down the UMass community's reaction time for organising a search while they compare notes and put together the fact that she was distressed about news of her sister, right before the "death in the family" news. The subsequent car accident then being a massive spanner in the works, as it would attract attention to Maura that she had gone to so much effort deflect.
 
I think ive read just about every possible scenario under the sun in Maura Murrays last day known to be alive, but i have yet to see anyone introduce what seems to me most probable and most "normal" occurrence of events ..

So... Maura was a 21yr old nursing student, and i know personally nursing can be a pretty stressful and demanding field to study. She lived on campus and had a boyfriend.... also somewhere it states that she had been involved with some minor legal trouble i believe involving a stolen credit card in the past. With that being said... alot of people question why she emailed her university and told them that she had a death in the family and needed to be excused for the next week... maybe this isnt as common as i once thought, but especially in a nursing program, theres only a very select few reasons that you could be excused for missing 1 week of classes... the easiest reason to give that didnt involve a doctors note etc, would be to say you had a death in the family.... as far as where she was going or why, IMO i think LE knows more than what they've said about her planned destination especially because they had complete access to her phone and her laptop... or maybe Maura really didnt know, she just literally wanted to get away and figured she would figure it out along the way...
Also IMO i dont think Maruas disappearace and Brianna Maitlands disappearance have any connection to one another whatsoever... Briannas disappearance was most likely related to drugs and probably was attacked while driving her car.... Mauras accident seems much more "average" she was said to have been intoxicated, so its not too far out of the question to conclude that she miscalculated the turn and crashed the car... Considering she already had prior issues with the law, she probably knew adding a DUI to the list would absolutely make her ineligible to take her state nursing exams or practice as a nurse.. So it makes sense that she begged the bus driver not to call the police, and then probably panicked. again IMO, especially because all of the search and rescue efforts turned up empty... Maura probably started walking away from the scene and was offered a ride by a passer by and in an intoxicated, panicked state of mind, she probably accepted the ride and from that point there's a million different possibilities...
 
Ck45202 said:
I think ive read just about every possible scenario under the sun in Maura Murrays last day known to be alive, but i have yet to see anyone introduce what seems to me most probable and most "normal" occurrence of events ..

So... Maura was a 21yr old nursing student, and i know personally nursing can be a pretty stressful and demanding field to study. She lived on campus and had a boyfriend.... also somewhere it states that she had been involved with some minor legal trouble i believe involving a stolen credit card in the past. With that being said... alot of people question why she emailed her university and told them that she had a death in the family and needed to be excused for the next week... maybe this isnt as common as i once thought, but especially in a nursing program, theres only a very select few reasons that you could be excused for missing 1 week of classes... the easiest reason to give that didnt involve a doctors note etc, would be to say you had a death in the family.... as far as where she was going or why, IMO i think LE knows more than what they've said about her planned destination especially because they had complete access to her phone and her laptop... or maybe Maura really didnt know, she just literally wanted to get away and figured she would figure it out along the way...
Also IMO i dont think Maruas disappearace and Brianna Maitlands disappearance have any connection to one another whatsoever... Briannas disappearance was most likely related to drugs and probably was attacked while driving her car.... Mauras accident seems much more "average" she was said to have been intoxicated, so its not too far out of the question to conclude that she miscalculated the turn and crashed the car... Considering she already had prior issues with the law, she probably knew adding a DUI to the list would absolutely make her ineligible to take her state nursing exams or practice as a nurse.. So it makes sense that she begged the bus driver not to call the police, and then probably panicked. again IMO, especially because all of the search and rescue efforts turned up empty... Maura probably started walking away from the scene and was offered a ride by a passer by and in an intoxicated, panicked state of mind, she probably accepted the ride and from that point there's a million different possibilities...
Click to expand...

Yeah the most probable is simply that she was intoxicated and didn't want to get caught while drinking and driving and so she ran. Where she went to or how far she got is a total mystery. But her reasoning for leaving the car is pretty easily explained if you look into her background at all.

For all we know she could have died three states away from where the wreck was. And that is really the reason why this has turned into such a mystery because nobody has any idea where to look.
 
KnoxGirl103 said:
Hi.
Glad you’re okay after car incident! I was thinking that maybe while you and I would accept help from passers by, Maura might have reason not to. Since we don’t really know all the details, we’ve all just been scratching our heads and trying to figure out what we think happened 16 years ago..it’s easy to get lost thinking about behaviors or actions (Maura’s) and how Y must have happened, because X does (or doesn’t)make sense. The decisions that a sober, sane, logical mind would make don’t necessarily apply to a mind in distress. Whether the distress is biological, situational, or from alcohol (or combination) we can’t apply secondhand logical thinking to a potentially drunk or concussed person. Have y’all dealt with or been a drunk person? Lol, admittedly I’ve been both and sometimes the things that happen and get done just don’t make sense. I also don’t think Maura would intentionally go into the woods to hide, long term, with no supplies in middle of winter. It just doesn’t make sense for a smart, capable girl to wander far into the snowy woods to curl up and die (or commit suicide.) It also doesn’t make sense that she’d turn down help from a bus driver, only to get in the next passing car who may, in the coincidence of all coincidences be a serial killer or opportunistic murderer. It doesn’t make sense to go to random nearby house seeking help and roll the dice that they too would call the cops, if you’re just trying to avoid the cops and potential DUI.
But you can’t apply logical thinking to an impaired person.
I don’t mean this to sound judgey or condescending in any way. I base ^^ on my own experiences: when I was 18 I was drinking with some friends that lived in my neighborhood and I had a bit too much to drink. A buddy walked me home and went as far as the end of my driveway and we said goodbye, because my front door was just yards away. I have a very vague recollection of the parting, but the next thing I remember is coming to in my directly across the street neighbor’s front yard, stuck, my hair tangled in a mini-tree that was directly across street from my front door. I have literally no idea how I came to be there, how I was so close to my house and yet didn’t make it inside, how I got so turned around in an area I was very familiar with, how I got stuck to a tree, or why I made any decision that led me there. Luckily for me, it’s just a funny little story and it didn’t somehow tragically turn out different. I know obviously circumstances aren’t the same but my (long winded) point is that just because something does or doesn’t make sense to us 16 years later, I don’t think we can apply our beliefs of what we would do or what would be the most logical move for her to make to her situation. Clearly she was in distress, for whatever reason, and people just don’t make clearly thought out rational decisions when they’re like that. Unfortunately, because of this, I genuinely think every scenario is still on the table.
Click to expand...

Amen! Thank you for sharing. What a great reminder that anything is possible. Sometimes the more we overthink, try to rationalize and justify something, the farther from the truth we end up.
 
Ck45202 said:
I think ive read just about every possible scenario under the sun in Maura Murrays last day known to be alive, but i have yet to see anyone introduce what seems to me most probable and most "normal" occurrence of events ..

So... Maura was a 21yr old nursing student, and i know personally nursing can be a pretty stressful and demanding field to study. She lived on campus and had a boyfriend.... also somewhere it states that she had been involved with some minor legal trouble i believe involving a stolen credit card in the past. With that being said... alot of people question why she emailed her university and told them that she had a death in the family and needed to be excused for the next week... maybe this isnt as common as i once thought, but especially in a nursing program, theres only a very select few reasons that you could be excused for missing 1 week of classes... the easiest reason to give that didnt involve a doctors note etc, would be to say you had a death in the family.... as far as where she was going or why, IMO i think LE knows more than what they've said about her planned destination especially because they had complete access to her phone and her laptop... or maybe Maura really didnt know, she just literally wanted to get away and figured she would figure it out along the way...
Also IMO i dont think Maruas disappearace and Brianna Maitlands disappearance have any connection to one another whatsoever... Briannas disappearance was most likely related to drugs and probably was attacked while driving her car.... Mauras accident seems much more "average" she was said to have been intoxicated, so its not too far out of the question to conclude that she miscalculated the turn and crashed the car... Considering she already had prior issues with the law, she probably knew adding a DUI to the list would absolutely make her ineligible to take her state nursing exams or practice as a nurse.. So it makes sense that she begged the bus driver not to call the police, and then probably panicked. again IMO, especially because all of the search and rescue efforts turned up empty... Maura probably started walking away from the scene and was offered a ride by a passer by and in an intoxicated, panicked state of mind, she probably accepted the ride and from that point there's a million different possibilities...
Click to expand...

I mean yeah, that's the most plausible scenario IF this was a one-off thing. But it wasn't. This young lady was deeply troubled in the week before her disappearance. There were a series of other events, including other accidents, crying spells, and other behavior was uncharacteristic, according to those who knew her. So while your scenario is possible, I don't think it's the most plausible because it ignores the fact that something - whether related or not to the disappearance itself - was going on in her life. Whether that was a mental health crisis, fear of something, or who knows what, there was something that triggered her to leave and that something is likely to have at least played a role in her disappearance.
 
BeginnerSleuther said:
I mean yeah, that's the most plausible scenario IF this was a one-off thing. But it wasn't. This young lady was deeply troubled in the week before her disappearance. There were a series of other events, including other accidents, crying spells, and other behavior was uncharacteristic, according to those who knew her. So while your scenario is possible, I don't think it's the most plausible because it ignores the fact that something - whether related or not to the disappearance itself - was going on in her life. Whether that was a mental health crisis, fear of something, or who knows what, there was something that triggered her to leave and that something is likely to have at least played a role in her disappearance.
Click to expand...

I agree, and I'm still particularly interested in Maura's behaviour at work on the night that she was too upset to see out her shift. I've read/listened to/watched everything that I can find about that night, including an interview with the supervisor. I feel that most discussions about it are affected by the tendency to gloss over certain details when referring to Maura's actions (in that same way that the credit card fraud gets played down all the time). No one wants to speak ill of a missing person, who very well could be the victim of a heinous crime.
According to her supervisor, Maura became so disconnected with her environment that she was unable to pack up her own belongings to leave work, or even swipe her ID card to get into her dorm building... but then did have the ability to think on her feet when she said she'd be fine because she has a roommate (which she did not). That's a swift change of gears that I wouldn't expect possible from someone who couldn't function at all prior to making that statement. The words "my sister" seem to be a smokescreen... to conceal what, we don't know, but the call with her sister did not cause such a dysfunctional state.
The fact that Maura was rendered incapable of simple motor tasks, or even acknowledging most of what was being said to her, while at the same time the only two things she did communicate involved deceit (which takes always a bit of thought)... doesn't gel. I think it's possible that Maura was behaving the way she thought would be consistent with getting devastating news about a sibling... like one would if they got a call informing them that their sister had been in an accident and was not expected to make it. When you consider the order of events, that shift could very well have been the prelude to the line about a death in the family.
 
Feb 8 2021
New Hampshire unsolved case file: Where is Maura Murray?
''NORTH HAVERHILL, N.H. —
Massachusetts college student Maura Murray drove to New Hampshire on Feb. 9, 2004, crashed her car and disappeared.
11953470-11953470.jpg

-- Missing since Feb. 9, 2004
-- Age at time of disappearance: 21
-- Height: 5'7"
-- Weight: Approximately 120 pounds
-- Hair: Brown
-- Eyes: Blue
-- Last seen wearing: Dark jacket, jeans
-- Case status: Missing person (disappearance considered suspicious)

Murray's vehicle was involved in a single-car crash on Route 112 in North Haverhill.

Police received two calls from two residents reporting a car off the road. The first call came at 7:27 p.m. A local bus driver later told investigators he saw a woman standing outside the black Saturn.

maura-murray-2-1518113996.jpg

An officer arrived at 7:46 p.m. and found the car locked with nobody around.

''Officials with the New Hampshire Attorney General's office have said not all adult missing persons cases are concerning, but given the circumstances, this one is very concerning, and that's why there has been an ongoing criminal investigation.''
 
HAVERHILL, N.H. — The disappearance of UMass Amherst student Maura Murray from a rural New Hampshire road 17 years ago is one of the most haunting cases I have ever covered.

The last known sighting of Maura Murray took place at about 7:30 p.m. on February 9, 2004. That’s when a school bus driver who lived on Route 112 in Haverhill, N.H. saw Maura’s crashed car, ran outside and offered the stranded Maura help.

The bus driver told police that Maura waved him off, saying she had already called AAA. The bus driver went home and called police. Fifteen minutes later police found Maura’s car all locked up and facing the opposite way she had been driving. Maura was gone.

More at Missing UMass Amherst student Maura Murray now missing for 17 years
 
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