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In February 2004, Maura Murray was a 21-year-old nursing student attending the University of Massachusetts when she packed up some of her things, left campus without telling anyone & seemingly vanished into thin air in New Hampshire hours later.
Maura was born on May 4, 1982 in Brockton, Massachusetts to parents Fred & Laurie Murray who went on to divorce when she was six. She grew up in Hanson, a suburb of Boston, along the South Shore of Massachusetts, alongside her two brothers & two sisters; one of her brothers from her mom’s new marriage. Both Laurie & Fred worked in the medical field, Laurie as a nurse & Fred as a medical technician.
From the get-go Maura excelled in school as well as within athletics & she was involved in most any sport you could imagine, including basketball which allowed her to travel throughout New England as a teen. She was also an active member within her community, known for her kindness & her gorgeous smile with her signature dimples. Despite her impressive achievements, Maura was always humble, kind, never showy, but always fast & quick-witted.
Maura was also highly competitive in cross country, finishing in the top tier of runners in the state & broke long-standing school records, following in her father’s footsteps as Fred ran in nine Boston Marathons. On top of her athletic achievements, she graduated at the top of her class at Whitman-Hanson Regional High School & basically had her pick of colleges both academically & athletically. She made the decision to accept a congressional nomination from the late Senator Edward Kennedy & joined her sister, Julie at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
It was no surprise that Maura excelled within her rigorous military & academic program at West Point where she participated on both the track & cross country teams. However, it was during her second year that she made the decision to break away from the military & transition as a junior to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst & follow in her mom’s footsteps by pursuing a nursing degree.
Now in 2025, for more than two decades, Maura’s family have questions that will likely never be answered. On Monday, February 9, 2004, for unseen reasons, Maura packed her bags, withdrew most of the money in her account & purchased alcohol before she climbed into her worn 1996 black Saturn sedan & drove away from campus.
Hours later, a New Hampshire resident dialed 911 to report a single-car accident on the side of a rural road in Haverhill, New Hampshire. Maura had been the driver of this car & when approached by a neighbor, she denied needing any help. It was only minutes later that police responded to the scene & there was absolutely no trace of Maura. It’s unclear if she wandered into the nearby woods or was picked up by a passerby, but regardless, she has never been seen since.
Since her sister’s disappearance, Julie, who is 2 ½ years older than Maura, has since come out with a podcast, Media Pressure, with episode one released on February 5, 2024. In creating the podcast, it was her goal to tell her sister’s real story which she feels might be far different from the sensationalized version that’s been presented by the media. It’s also her goal to honor Maura & potentially find resolution as she has no doubt someone out there knows what happened to her.
Julie looks back on Christmas break 2003, what became the last moments she spent with her sister, catching up after she’d been gone for a year-long tour to South Korea as an Army lieutenant. It was only one month later when her sister vanished into thin air; something that changed the Murray’s lives forever.
Julie recalls the moment her world shifted forever when her phone rang in the early evening of Tuesday, February 10, 2004. This was the moment she learned that her family was looking for her sister; they were calling around to see if anyone had heard from Maura. However, Julie hadn’t talked to her sister since Saturday afternoon, three days earlier. Julie was told that her sister’s car had been found abandoned a little over two hours north of campus in New Hampshire, something that made absolutely no sense to her or anyone else since Maura should have been on campus for her classes.
The Murray family later learned details to put the confusing pieces of the puzzle together as to what Maura’s last movements were on the last day anyone saw her, Monday, February 9, 2004. They came to find that she electronically submitted her nursing homework assignment & searched up maternity terms at 3:32 am, words associated with her assignment. She then looked up directions to Burlington, Vermont as well as Bartlett, New Hampshire, locations that are 2 ½ hours from one another. She finished her computer work at about 4 am & presumably went to bed, something that wasn’t unusual for Maura since she was a night owl.
In the afternoon, she made two phone calls, one to a ski resort in Vermont & another to a condo owner in Barlett, New Hampshire, a location their family had previously stayed. During these calls, she made no reservations. When the Murray family eventually spoke with the woman from New Hampshire, she didn’t recall the details of their conversation as so much time had passed, a time when they realized that investigators had never contacted her despite the fact that she was one of the last people who spoke with Maura.
Maura then sent an e-mail to her boyfriend Bill Rausch; she said she loved him & she’d call him later because she wasn’t up for talking at the time.
At 1:24 pm, she sent an e-mail to her professors indicating that there had been a death in the family despite the fact that this was not true & that she’d be out for a few days. She played phone tag with Bill, but they never got through to one another. At 3 pm she returned some neatly folded clothes that she borrowed from a fellow nursing school student, leaving them in front of her dorm room door since her friend was sleeping. Afterwards, she packed up some of her belongings including toiletries, birth control, text books & several days worth of clothing.
At 3:15 pm, Maura was seen on CCTV footage alone at an ATM withdrawing $280, leaving just under $20 in her account. Her hair was tied up in her signature bun, she wore white jacket, jeans, black shoes, a silver necklace & a serious look on her face.
Based on a receipt that was eventually found in her car, she purchased $40 worth of alcohol at a liquor store at 3:43 pm. She bought the items for her favorite drink, a black Russian, including Baileys, Kaulua & vodka, as well as a six pack of malt beverages. The receipt proved she’d also recycled 79 cans for $3.95.
Inside her car were also forms she’d picked up from either from the DMV or the police department for an accident she had in her dad’s car two days earlier. From there she would have headed north in her 1996 black Saturn, leaving campus somewhere between 4-5 pm.
At 4:37 pm, she checked her voicemail for the last time, this being the last activity ever logged to her cell phone. Hours later, a woman named Faith Westman heard a loud thud outside her home on Route 112, also known as Wild Ammonoosuc Road at 7:27 pm. Her property in Haverhill, New Hampshire sat at a spot on the road with a sharp bend, a location a little over two hours north of campus. At the time, the roads were dry but the night was very dark & the bend in the road was known to be problematic.
When she looked out her window, Faith saw a car off the side of the road facing the wrong direction & she called 911 to report the accident. She also noticed a man smoking a cigarette nearby & told the dispatcher that she wasn’t sure if anyone was hurt since she was calling from inside & hadn’t gone out to investigate.
Minutes later, a neighbor of Faith’s, a local bus driver named Butch Atwood, approached the scene. He later told investigators that he spoke with the female driver through his open bus door & she told him she didn’t need any help since she’d already called AAA roadside assistance.
Butch was confused by what the young woman told him since he was fully aware of the fact that there was absolutely no cell phone service at that location & she wouldn’t have been able to call AAA. He invited her to wait for assistance to arrive at his house only yards up the road, but the woman declined. Once home, he placed the second 911 call about the accident, which came through at 7:43 pm.
Since it was a cold February night in the low 20s℉ (-6℃), Butch indicated that the woman was shivering & shaken up as he spoke with her, but there were no visible injuries to her body. He said she was young & had her hair down, something that was absolutely not characteristic of Maura, who never wore her hair down.
According to Maura’s family, there are a couple of versions of events as to Butch Atwood’s interaction with Maura; in one, he spoke with her through the open bus door, in another he shined a light into her car & saw no blood, but noticed she was cold & shivering. He also said she was in the car while in another version, she was outside the car standing in between the car & the snow bank.
Despite the fact that Butch said that Maura didn’t appear to be intoxicated, later publications wrote that a witness noticed that Maura appeared to be altered by alcohol despite the fact that Butch was the only known person to have interacted with her during this time.
Authorities later determined that Maura’s car was still drivable after the crash so it’s not clear why she didn’t just drive away.
When Haverhill police officer Cecil Smith arrived 3 minutes later, right around 7:46 pm, Maura’s car was locked & abandoned. There was a rag in the tailpipe, the airbags had deployed & the driver’s side windshield was cracked while the bumper & hood were damaged. In regards to the rag in the tailpipe, her dad had previously advised her to do this to avoid being ticketed by police for excessive smoke coming from her tailpipe before she could get the car replaced. In the days before the crash, Fred had been helping his daughter shop for a new car & had advised her not to drive the car at all until he could help her find a new one.
Officer Smith noted a box of wine sitting behind the driver’s seat with red liquid splattered on the driver’s side door as well as the roof & took photos to document the scene. There was also a Coke bottle in the car that appeared to have red liquid inside with an alcohol smell, presumably red wine. There were no footprints in the snow to indicate which direction the young woman had gone in the three minutes between when she interacted with Butch & when Smith arrived.
Officer Smith went to the Westman home & asked, where’s the girl? Since Faith & her husband hadn’t gone outside & had only seen a man nearby smoking, they knew nothing about a girl or where she’d gone so he moved on to Butch Atwood’s house since he’d also dialed 911.
Hearing from Officer Smith that the driver of the car was gone, Butch went out in his own car in hopes of finding her. Any searches for Maura that night were done in a westerly direction & for whatever reason, no one searched east, the direction she’d been traveling when she crashed. In the meantime EMS arrived at the scene, but were quickly dismissed since the driver was gone & there was no one to medically tend to.
In the meantime, a witness, Karen McNamara, was coming home from work when she was passed by the same police SUV with its lights on twice as she drove. The SUV in question was marked 001 & normally driven by the Chief of Police, Jeff Williams.
As she came up to the curve where Maura’s car had crashed, she noted that the SUV came upon a dark sedan off the side of the road & parked nose to nose with the car. Karen called her family when she was within cell phone range at Beaver Pond at 7:52 pm, about fifteen minutes away from the accident site, meaning, she would have passed Maura’s car somewhere between 7:33 & 7:37 pm.
Maura’s family later found this account extremely odd as the first responding officer, Cecil Smith, arrived at the scene at approximately 7:46 pm in response to Butch’s call at 7:43 pm. This meant that Karen witnessed a different police responder arriving nine minutes earlier than Smith would have. She didn’t recall seeing the Saturn’s hazard lights on as she passed & didn’t see any people.
When Karen saw images of Maura on the news, she contacted the police, who were dismissive of her version of events since she reported specifically seeing a police SUV marked 001 at the scene of Maura’s accident & Jeff Williams, the usual driver of that SUV, was not on duty that night. She was told that Cecil Smith was driving 001 that night, however, when he pulled someone over earlier that evening, the driver later came forward & indicated that Smith had been driving a sedan when he was pulled over. Also, at the same time Smith was writing this particular ticket, SUV 001 was being pulled out of a snowbank on the other side of town. It later emerged that Jeff Williams was driving the SUV when it entered the snowbank. This has been another layer of confusion in Maura’s case.
Incidentally, Jeff Williams was arrested for DWI & evasion by Cecil Smith years later.
The Woodsville Fire Department arrived on scene at 7:57 pm with eight additional people responding which made it a total of ten responders. Searches were conducted in the immediate area & no footprints were noted in the more than two feet of snow that blanketed the ground. The group left the scene a little less than an hour later.
Maura’s family is left to wonder where she was heading that day & why, what happened to her; these are questions that have haunted them for the past 21 years. Their minds whir with possibilities. Had she run away? Was she trying to get away for a few days to clear her head of something?
Because the window of time in which she vanished was so narrow, it only makes the case that much more incredible. She initially refused help at the scene, so was she taken in the few minutes between Butch walking away & Officer Smith arriving? Or had she hit her head during the crash, gotten confused & wandered into the woods where she succumbed to hypothermia? If so, why have her remains & her belongings never been found?
Julie doesn’t feel that her sister would have voluntarily disappeared based on a few facts in this case. First, she took the time & effort to submit her completed school assignments earlier that day as well as the fact that she had been calling around to potentially book a place to stay. She theorizes that Maura likely just wanted to get away for a few days. Also the fact that she’d taken the time to pick up the necessary forms about her father’s car. In addition to those forms, she had paperwork to reinstate her suspended license after she’d been pulled over for excessive speeding.
The following morning after Maura vanished, a judge issued a warrant to have her abandoned car searched after it had been towed to a personal garage of tow operator Mike Lavoy. Seven items in the car had Maura’s name on it yet her family wasn’t contacted until early evening on Tuesday, six hours later.
There was also a handwritten name & phone number in the car & 19 years later, Julie was stunned to learn that investigators had never reached out to this person. The family of this person owned a condo in Loon Mountain in Lincoln, New Hampshire which was 25 miles east from where Maura’s car crashed & in the direction she was traveling.
Maura’s family was utterly terrified & baffled by what could have happened to her. When the family spoke with Cecil Smith, he explained how he found Maura’s car, by this time, 24 hours had gone by. Smith seemed irritated by their questioning so they went up the chain of command to get more information. When Fred arrived in New Hampshire at dawn on February 11, about a day & a half after Maura vanished, he realized that there was no search happening for his daughter so he drove to the location where she lost control of her car.
It wasn’t until 36 hours after she disappeared, at the ongoing pleading of Fred, a search for Maura finally began. Scent dogs tracked Maura’s scent up the road using a glove she’d recently been given for Christmas, something she may not have even worn, until they lost track of her scent in the middle of the road. But because so much time had passed, her scent would have been greatly diminished if not gone.
The Murray family gathered in New Hampshire, searching for Maura, while her mom, Laurie, remained in a state of panic as she held vigil at home in Massachusetts with a broken ankle, hoping & praying that her daughter would call or come back to the family home.
Maura’s boyfriend Bill was an Army lieutenant stationed in Oklahoma in Fort Sill at the time of her disappearance & flew out to help with the search. While he was at the airport, he missed a call to his cell phone & when he later checked his messages, he heard whimpering & sobbing & believed this was left by Maura. Investigators traced the call to a Red Cross calling card.
Days went by without any sign of Maura as the family’s questions only grew. When they spoke with people from campus, they learned that she suffered an emotional breakdown on the Thursday night before she vanished while she was working her shift at the dorm’s security desk. When she became visibly upset, her supervisor walked her back to her dorm & as they walked, Maura continuously sobbed, my sister. Hours earlier, she’d spoken with her older sister, Kathleen, about relapsing after she had been in a rehab clinic. Maura learned when her fiance picked her up, he took her directly to a liquor store, something that was highly upsetting to her.
She’d also spoken to Bill that night, but the details of their conversation are unclear. Maura’s supervisor offered to come inside her dorm room to keep her company, but she declined, telling her that she would be with her roommate, something that wasn’t actually true since she lived by herself at the time.
According to Julie, Maura had been struggling with an eating disorder & late that same night, she made a phone call to a local pizza place & Julie is convinced she binged that night, something she often did when she felt out of control.
The following day, Friday, February 6, classes were cancelled due to snowfall. On Saturday, two days before Maura vanished, Fred visited his daughter & she never mentioned anything about her emotional breakdown on Thursday. They were out looking for cars because Fred wanted to be sure she had a safer car for when she started traveling for her clinical nursing rotations. They stopped off for dinner & drinks, exhausted from car shopping & then she purchased a box of wine, the wine that was later found in the backseat of her abandoned car. Maura & her friend dropped Fred off at his motel & they drove back to campus in his Toyota Corolla.
Later that night, she attended a small dorm party hosted by her friend, Sara Alfieri, that included about 7-8 people. However, when Maura’s family later spoke with Sara after Maura had gone missing, she told them that she was asleep for the majority of the party & was unable to offer them any details. They’ve tried to contact her throughout the years, but have never heard back from her.
Maura left the party alone & drove Fred’s new car back to his motel rather than walking the short distance back to her own dorm after a night of drinking. In the process, she ended up crashing head-on into a guardrail at 3:30 am, badly damaging the car. When police arrived, they didn’t cite her, administer a field sobriety test or offer her medical assistance. It’s unclear if she injured her head in the crash.
Later that Sunday morning, Fred picked up a rental car & drove Maura back to the dorms before he made the drive back to Connecticut where he was working. During this time, he reassured her that despite the extensive damage to the Corolla which amounted to $10k, insurance would cover the damages. Regardless, she remained extremely upset with herself, quietly sobbing as she climbed out of the car. According to her family, Maura was often her own worst critic. As she walked toward her dorm, this ended up being the last time Fred ever saw his daughter.
Maura had only been back on campus from winter break for twelve days when she vanished. At the time, she was in the process of settling into a single dorm in Kennedy Hall, something she was exceptionally grateful for after previously dealing with a challenging roommate. Maura was more of an introvert & truly cherished her quiet downtime. Many of her classmates indicated that they weren’t very close with her since she tended to be quiet & reserved & most indicated they knew her only well enough to say a simple hello.
When Maura’s mom & brother visited her just prior to her disappearance, they spent the day with her & went up to see her new dorm room while she was still in the process of unpacking. Amidst her classes, she was also busy working in a dorm security job as well as at an art gallery. Julie indicated that there’s been a lot of speculation in her sister’s case as to whether or not Maura packed up her room before she vanished.
Tucked away inside a box, there was a printed email that Bill sent Maura two years earlier where he apologized for his infidelity early on in their relationship. Yet police reports indicated that the letter was sitting out, on top of a box; some believe this was likely to support the theory that Maura took her own life.
Police reports indicate that Maura’s car struck a tree although a private vehicle reconstructionist believed that the damage to the front driver’s side of the car was not consistent with this. The hood was pushed back & buckled in the middle which caused the radiator to bend. Based on the damage, this proved that the car was moving meaning the damage didn’t happen while she was stopped.
A random Chrysler part was found in Maura’s car & it can be noted that a suspicious person who was seen driving a white Jeep Grand Cherokee seven miles from Maura’s accident site fled the scene when police arrived. Chrysler manufactures Jeep & white scuff marks were seen on the Saturn’s back bumper.
In episode 7 of Julie’s podcast, she discusses a man renting a house about a mile away from Maura’s accident site that could potentially be linked to her disappearance. She indicated that the man’s brother gave Fred a knife that he found in his brother’s glove compartment in late 2004. It was said to be rusted & stained with a reddish-brown color that resembled blood. The knife was eventually turned over to the police, but it’s unclear if a connection was made to Maura’s case. The man who handed the knife over has since died while the suspected man’s home was searched years later & Maura’s remains were not located after an area under the basement was searched.
Maura’s brothers believe that after she crashed her car she was met with foul play, likely picked up by someone since she had a trusting, naive way & was likely looking for help. However, she had turned down help offered according to Butch Atwood. Julie believes this also to be true since her sister’s remains have never been found which would be expected had she wandered into the woods & died from exposure. Julie does not believe that her sister intentionally vanished or harmed herself.
Because wine stained the interior of Maura’s car & was inside an open Coke bottle in her car, it suggests she may have been intoxicated & fled the scene to avoid being charged with a DUI. Maura had been struggling emotionally, battling an eating disorder as well as turbulence in her long-distance relationship with her boyfriend & she’d been known to suffer from serious bouts of depression.
Based on the fact that there have been no signs of life from Maura over the course of more than two decades, her family do sadly believe her to be deceased. Her remains nor her black sports backpack, cellphone, wallet, keys & two bottles of missing liquor, that were not located in the car, have ever been found.
If you have any information about Maura Murray’s disappearance, please call the New Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit at 603-223-3648.
References:
- Maura Murray
- Apple Podcasts: Media Pressure
- People: It’s been 20 years since Maura Murray vanished. Will her sister’s new podcast help find her?
- The U.S. Sun: Mystery still surrounds ‘bloodied’ knife given to missing student Maura Murray’s dad by man who said brother killed her
- People: Maura Murray vanished without a trace after a car crash in 2004. Revisiting her disappearance 21 years later & what her family thinks really happened
- Evaporate: The way things used to be
