NH NH - Maura Murray, 21, Haverhill, 9 Feb 2004 - #12

[Lolacat]

Seems like someone on a French dating app was (or is) using Maura's photograph in their profile. If you do a reverse image search of Maura in the search engine "Tineye" this result comes up:

http://www.meetcrunch.com/profil/Lakme

Age is listed as 44 (!) and according to google translate the blurb says this:

"not very accustomed . I do not really know how this works.
Sorry.
Shy and I learn to use meet crunch"

Weird- why on earth would you use a missing woman's photo on a dating app?

 

[colette]

Seems like someone on a French dating app was (or is) using Maura's photograph in their profile. If you do a reverse image search of Maura in the search engine "Tineye" this result comes up:

http://www.meetcrunch.com/profil/Lakme

Age is listed as 44 (!) and according to google translate the blurb says this:

"not very accustomed . I do not really know how this works.
Sorry.
Shy and I learn to use meet crunch"

Weird- why on earth would you use a missing woman's photo on a dating app?

Either someone is using her picture to catfish and scam men or the site is trying to make it appear to have more women signed up than they actually have.

 

[Reno]

I've long thought that if Maura perished that night, then this is likely what happened. She fled the scene because she was drunk and as her past would show, Maura must have been terrified about getting into trouble again. Let's say she jogged a ways up the road and when she was out of sight of homes, she hid behind a tree.

I like this angle, along with @gnomony and @lawstudent's posts on the topic. One of the things that's bothered me over reviewing ~20 pages of posts is the assumption, sometimes present, that her only option was to shoot straight off into the woods.

On the contrary, I think she would have surely started with the road. If she headed east, W.A.R. seems to get even MORE rural pretty quick, and considering all the comments about light levels and the time of year, it wouldn't have been that hard to skirt oncoming vehicles, should they have come. She would have headlights and noise to warn her. A driver - concentrating on a dark two-lane and not expecting to see her - wouldn't have seen a pedestrian, if she tried to evade them.

I really wonder about the river - it's clearly visible from the road in numerous pictures. And there's something that looks like a hairpin turn right near where road and river begin to parallel. The significance being...even in pitch black, it's mere feet from the road in places. And had she got there, it's not the same as the woods - potentially traversable...and potentially hazardous.

 

[BillNH]

That could be correct, but that doesn't pass the smell test as far as I am concerned.

Maura is the person that went missing, Maura's cell phone (and where it pings) is what investigators are going to be interested in.

It is known that Maura turned her phone on briefly the afternoon she went missing (when she checked for messages) at that very second, her cell phone should've sent off a ping to some tower.

I would think police would be very interested in that piece of information.

If Maura had her phone on her entire trip, then the public (IMO) would already be informed by now of her complete movements.

Onto other topics:


So much lately being discussed is just plain wrong (especially this latest podcast).

They paint Maura's mother as someone who didn't have anything to do with finding her daughter, yet there was an article that came out (2 page article) specifically dealing with her and her frustration about the investigation and how she was attempting to arrange to have two co-workers drive her to the accident site so she could work on the case herself.

Also about the dorm party:

Both Sara Alfieri and Kate Markopoulos have talked to the media in the days/weeks after Maura went missing. Neither gal has been silent about that get-together.

They are both being portrayed as some suspicious characters who are holding back information and that doesn't match up with reality.

At no point (other than apparently with James Renner) does this Saturday night party ever be described as some wall-to-wall standing room party.

In every account I have seen, the party has been described as a couple of friends hanging out in Sara's dorm room.

Sara was passed out hours before Maura even left the get-together and Kate likely doesn't recall names because THESE WEREN'T HER FRIENDS, the get-together was at Sara's dorm, Maura's work associate.

Kate was Maura's friend through track and sports and IMO, was just tagging along that night.

BBM

Really? You are assuming that a trained investigator does not know how to fill out an affidavit to get a warrant for the information he was told was available for the asking to the point of even getting the state wrong?

Your smell test smells funny..

 

[BillNH]

I like this angle, along with @gnomony and @lawstudent's posts on the topic. One of the things that's bothered me over reviewing ~20 pages of posts is the assumption, sometimes present, that her only option was to shoot straight off into the woods.

On the contrary, I think she would have surely started with the road. If she headed east, W.A.R. seems to get even MORE rural pretty quick, and considering all the comments about light levels and the time of year, it wouldn't have been that hard to skirt oncoming vehicles, should they have come. She would have headlights and noise to warn her. A driver - concentrating on a dark two-lane and not expecting to see her - wouldn't have seen a pedestrian, if she tried to evade them.

I really wonder about the river - it's clearly visible from the road in numerous pictures. And there's something that looks like a hairpin turn right near where road and river begin to parallel. The significance being...even in pitch black, it's mere feet from the road in places. And had she got there, it's not the same as the woods - potentially traversable...and potentially hazardous.

If she traveled the river, those prints would have been very clearly visible to the air searchers a few days later. This river is very shallow, easily less than a foot deep in most places in summer. Even though the riverbed can be wide in some places the actual flow of water is normally just a fraction of the width of the bed. It is full of small to medium, very round, river rocks with the occasional huge boulder or larger round rock scattered about. She probably would have found it less easy to walk through as the snow would have been much deeper out in the open than it would through the wooded areas, and again, had she traveled this way the prints would have been discovered from the air very easily. It is extremely unlikely that she tried to walk on the river and fell through and drowned as i have seen suggested. I do not think there is any place on this river for miles in either direction that would have been possible. It is just too shallow for it to be considered. If she happened to break through the ice somewhere she would have at most twisted or broken something but would not have dropped out of sight, she would have only dropped a foot or so. Occasionally in the spring when the ice breaks the volume of water and ice that flows is tremendous, but it is not a yearly event and it depends on how quickly the area warms in the spring. It was way too early for this when she disappeared but if for some reason her body was somewhere along the river, it would have swept it away if and when it did happen in the spring.

 

[scoops]

BBM

Really? You are assuming that a trained investigator does not know how to fill out an affidavit to get a warrant for the information he was told was available for the asking to the point of even getting the state wrong?

Your smell test smells funny..

Yep.

This came out in 2004 as a matter of fact, a basic how to for dummies guide on how to properly ask for cell phone information when filling out an affidavit request.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=..._Rbg6td0HFfkRI-T6yb67A&bvm=bv.103073922,d.cWw

If you look just one or two pages into this handbook, you will see that in Big bold letters, the handbook pleads with officers not to refer to them as Sprint Corporate Security when filling out requests.

And yet, LT. Landry when he filled out his request concerning Maura, referred to the agency as Sprint Corporate Security.

So yes, I think he could've easily not known what he was asking for.

 

[scoops]

Off topic a bit, but in case anyone wants to know what Billy Rausch has been up to, here is a pretty recent bio: (Scroll down to the bottom after opening the link).

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/human-rights-summit-bios

 

[U2forever]

Nash,


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[gnomony]

MM disappeared on Feb. 9. I can't find info on when the ice went out that year, but the tremendous annual ice flow apparently usually takes place in late February or early March -- two to four weeks later. (The volume is less on some years.)

In 2010, the ice apparently went out in February (see photo caption, page 12, in this document: http://extension.unh.edu/resources/files/Resource002148_Rep3167.pdf)

In 2011, the flow was captured on video, dated March 7: [video=youtube;EsS5b5qOjFQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsS5b5qOjFQ"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsS5b5qOjFQ[/video]

 

[Caffeine]

Chances are in February, the ice is still pretty solid.

I don't necessarily think she ended up in water for that reason. If she did, I doubt it was by her misadventure.

 

[gnomony]

Not enough water to drown in, and probably plenty of ice, but stepping in a hole could result in a broken ankle. The significance of the ice flow is it's potential to obliterate any evidence in it's path.

 

[bragi]

They had several above-freezing days before the 8th (see attachment). However they also had nearly 9 inches of snow in the area, so I'm not sure what condition that leaves the river in.

I do think it's still entirely possible to step on a weak spot and fall into the river, especially if you're drunk. Perfectly healthy people who know better have even fallen victim to this.

 

[bragi]

This is intriguing information, BillNH, but it's too much guesswork. We could discover the actual condition of the river that day and know for sure.

 

[bragi]

American Whitewater rates the section of the Wild Ammonoosuc River ending exactly at Route 112 class III ("difficult").

I think it's possible there are times when this part of the river isn't immediately life threatening, but we certainly can't rule it out as a source of danger.

Source: http://www.riverfacts.com/rivers/11934.html

 

[BillNH]

They had several above-freezing days before the 8th (see attachment). However they also had nearly 9 inches of snow in the area, so I'm not sure what condition that leaves the river in.

I do think it's still entirely possible to step on a weak spot and fall into the river, especially if you're drunk. Perfectly healthy people who know better have even fallen victim to this.

View attachment 81967

Sure its all possible. I was pointing out that its not likely, which I still believe. And you do realize that the source of the abundance of water that adds to the annual flow is not from local air temperature changes, right? The extra water, that causes the buildup, the ice jam and then the release of ice is caused by melting snow in the mountains, miles away. And while this flow may happen in February, it is certainly a rare occasion to have it happen in the beginning of February. And, the force and power of this flow doesn't obliterate so much as moves a body or any evidence. My point being, that while it is nothing conclusive, it is very unlikely Maura stepped onto a bit of thin ice and disappeared under the surface of the ice and was carried away from the area. Additionally with no evidence of footprints over the snow covered river seen from the air, I dont think the river as an escape route for Maura is much to consider.

 

[Reno]

While the responses about MM NOT making a move to the river make a lot of sense to me, I'm intrigued by that video of the Ammonoosuc from @gnomony. It's compelling as a theory for disrupting evidence, just a few weeks after the disappearance, as @BillNH explained.

But I can't think of a plausible theory to explain away the 'lack of footprints' issue that would have shown up in the weeks prior to that occurrence in aerial searches.

 

[xjd]

hello all! long time lurker, first time poster (i think). i've poked around quite a bit but have not found the answer to this question: do we know who it was that found Petrit Vasi? or who reported it? i know many have dismissed any connection Maura might have to this incident, but i wonder if her &/or her car were involved, if it was reported by a friend of Maura's. like maybe they accidentally hit him, but didn't stop to help, but called it in later? just wondering. thanks to all the die-hard experts out there who know this case inside and out!

 

[Reno]

hello all! long time lurker, first time poster (i think). i've poked around quite a bit but have not found the answer to this question: do we know who it was that found Petrit Vasi? or who reported it? i know many have dismissed any connection Maura might have to this incident, but i wonder if her &/or her car were involved, if it was reported by a friend of Maura's. like maybe they accidentally hit him, but didn't stop to help, but called it in later? just wondering. thanks to all the die-hard experts out there who know this case inside and out!

@xjd - I don't qualify as a expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I can point you to one! @scoops covers some facts about your thought on this thread, Page 35, Post 525. The comment is that there are some timeline problems with that scenario:

But the facts are Petrit Vasi was found hit at 12:20 a.m., Maura became upset somewhere around 12:30-12:45 a.m. Maura also was on her cell phone at 12:07 a.m. to 12:14 a.m. (likely time-frame that Vasi was actually hit).

BBM

Independent of the factual/inferential problem with timing, that section of the thread also talks through theories about how a hypothetical hit and run could have affected her state of mind and behavior on February 5-6, which you may find interesting if you haven't checked those posts out recently.

 

[scoops]

Just a FYI:

It looks like I will be back for Round 2 on Lance and Tim's Maura Murray is Missing podcast for this upcoming Thursday's episode.

We discuss Maura's time at West Point, the Saturday night dorm party, the Red Truck among several other topics.

For anyone interested and with good eyes, I am posting some pictures that were taken of Maura's West Point class, following them through their entire West Point stay.

See if you can spot Maura in any of the Plebe (Freshmen) year and early Yuckling/Yearling (Sophomore) year photos. Granted her class size was probably around 1,000.

http://www.west-point.org/family/mem2004/index.html


I don't believe Maura was kicked out of West Point.

She attended the school for an entire semester after the alleged makeup theft which took place in the summer between her freshman and sophomore year. There are pictures of the cadets at Fort Knox which happened in late July of 2001. This is when the theft took place while Maura was at Fort Knox participating in the summer Combat field training

Maura left West Point at the end of the Fall 2001 semester, leaving for a full-ride athletic scholarship At UMASS.

According to family sources, Maura had been planning on leaving West Point since her first semester, but wanted to make sure she found a college nearby that would offer her a full-ride scholarship before she made her move. She missed the deadline to get her application in (at UMASS) right around the same time the theft took place.

 

[JamesRenner]

Good find, Clint. And I enjoy hearing you on the program. A few things to clear up, here, though. I don't think anybody is saying she was kicked out of West Point, literally. But the make-up theft from Fort Knox and the other troubles in the dorm were leading to serious repercussions at the school and it's quite clear to me that she was certainly invited to leave.

Also, she was not running the year she disappeared. Would she still have been enjoying the full-ride benefits?

Finally, these photos further show a woman trained in survival by the US military. Do you really still believe she sat down in the White Mountains and slipped quietly into the good night? If she wanted to kill herself, there were faster ways to do it than Franzia and cold. This further suggests to me she had the means to make it out there and stay hidden.