Ep. 6: Heebus Jeebus: The Disappearance of Maura Murray

Speaker A: Hello. Hey, I'm Emma.
Shannon: I'm Shannon.
Speaker A: Who are you?
Speaker B: I'm having a great time.
Speaker A: I'm Shannon, and this is this podcast doesn't exist.
Speaker B: Take two or three, depending on where I put anything. Yes.
Speaker A: Uh if you'd like to play bingo with this episode, go to our link tree in our Instagram bio and click on it. It will generate you a new bingo card every time.
Speaker B: Yes. And then you can play the fun.
Speaker A: Game that I've been playing since the.
Speaker B: Start of this, which is, am I organically funny or am I just trying to add in references that will be on the bingo card?
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Speaker B: I'm not reading the game.
Speaker A: No, Rigging. Uh no, not intentionally. Okay.
Speaker B: But I did listen to our first two episodes and then create the bingo card.
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Speaker A: Uh so, yeah, what are we learning about today? Today, my friend, you all need to buckle in for this one because this is going to be a lot quick. I know last week was a lot. This is also a lot. And it is the missing person's case of Mara Murray. Do you know anything about this?
Speaker B: The name sounds familiar.
Speaker A: It should. But in a pretty famous case, we'll.
Speaker B: See if we have any light bulb moments.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker B: The podcast.
Speaker A: All right. So on February 9, 2004, police were called to the scene of an accident off the side of Route 112 near Woodsville, New Hampshire, where a witness had claimed to see a young woman with her car waiting for assistance. When the police arrived, there was no one with the car. This young woman, Mara Murray, has been missing ever since.
Speaker B: I feel like.
Speaker A: Yes. Do you know it? I think I've read a couple, like, medium articles because back like a year.
Speaker B: Ago when we first started talking about having this podcast, but I was procrastinating and didn't have my life together. Emma mentioned that she wanted to do this, and I was like, who's that? And I went and I read some articles. But this will be a fun probably not fun. It'll probably be terrible, sad, but it'll be a refresher.
Speaker A: Yes. So just upfront there is a lot of information in this and not a lot of, like, expounding upon the theories. So there are theories and we'll get into them. But the majority of this is going to be all of the information about this case. So let's just back up a little and let's talk about Mara and the days before she disappeared. So Mara Murray was a 21 year old nursing student who was attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2004. So Massachusetts Amherst is where Jeffrey went to school. Jeffrey, our previous roommate. He used to live in the basement.
Speaker B: Thanks for the podcast, Futon. Jeffrey.
Speaker A: Yeah, Ashley.
Speaker B: Yes, it's true.
Speaker A: Like, you're here with us. It's also where my high school best friend went to College. All right, so she transferred to University of Massachusetts Amherst after her freshman year um from the US Military Academy, where she had studied chemical engineering for three semesters.
Speaker B: Wow.
Speaker A: So she's a Smartie, her dad.
Speaker B: Wait, she left the military to go to you? Okay.
Speaker A: Got it. Her dad was a medical technician and her mom was a nurse, so it kind of made sense that she had an act for science. This was already, like, in her zeitgeist. She knew the world, and I think she was really interested in it. She was from Hansen, Massachusetts, where most of her family still lived. She had three um older siblings, two older sisters and one older brother and a younger brother. And although her parents were divorced, she was really close to both of them. Uh she lived primarily with her mom, but she was pretty close with her dad. Her dad traveled a lot for work, so uh it made sense that she didn't live with him. But they all were still fairly friendly. Like, they all were very much family.
Speaker B: That's nice.
Speaker A: Yeah. She was really competitive and had been in multiple sports in high school, including track and cross country. She won a lot um of awards for that, so she was really good at running. She did that competitively consistently throughout her school career. And um so that's where she did it for the uh West Point for US Military Academy, too. So there's a couple of pictures of her pretty uh close to the lead of these uh runs in her military track outfit. Track kit. I don't do sports.
Speaker B: Neither do I. I just run away from my problem.
Speaker A: Yeah. According to her friends and family, she was bubbly, kind a straight A student, and pretty wellrounded. So they were kind of all surprised when things got a little weird. Uh in November of 2003, three months before her disappearance, Mara was caught using a stolen credit card to buy food from multiple restaurants, including one in a town nearby her University called Hadley. The total uh amount of these charges was $79.02. So not necessarily a huge amount of money, but enough to be like, what are you doing?
Speaker B: Yeah. What's up?
Speaker A: Yeah. The charges themselves of, like, stealing a credit card were continued, meaning that they were postponed until December. And the result of that was that these charges would be dismissed after three months of good behavior. So basically, she wasn't allowed to get in any more trouble with the law for another three months. Mhm there's clarification question. Yes.
Speaker B: Based on her name and the fact that it's New Hampshire, I'm assuming she's a white lady.
Speaker A: Yeah. So she's from Massachusetts. She's from an Irish Catholic family. She is very white. Got it. Got lightish Brown hair. She's like white chubby cheeks like perfect dimples. She's very pretty, tall and um lanky, but I think it was her brother that said she was at home in either her track kit or a prom dress. Like, she was that kind of person who was quintessentially beautiful. But yes, um the answer is yes, she is white. Got you.
Speaker B: I was just asking because Mario, like, certain demographics would not receive the same generosity from the police.
Speaker A: Well, maybe, yes, the police are a little interesting on this to begin with, so we'll go into that. Okay, so there's no real explanation for why she did this, why she stole these credit cards, but it seemed like a minor act of rebellion rather than a cry for help. More of just, can I get away with this kind of thing? Because there was no real reason for her to do it. Like, all through her K Twelve education, she was, like, gifted, put together, and really wouldn't.
Speaker B: Maybe she got to College and was.
Speaker A: Like, I'm going to be that maybe we don't really know. On mhm the evening of February 5, 2004, Mara was at her campus security job when her older sister Kathleen called her. They spoke for a while, and around 10:30 p.m.. After hanging up, Mara uh reportedly broke down in tears. When her supervisor arrived at her desk, Mara was apparently, quote, just completely zoned out. No reaction at all. She was unresponsive. So obviously, this phone call triggered something for her. We didn't know what the call was about until October 2017, when Kathleen herself said that the call was regarding her own struggles with alcoholism. Kathleen was in recovery in 2004 when she was released from a rehab facility. That evening, she spoke with her sister on the way home, though, Kathleen's fiance had them stop at a liquor store, which caused Kathleen to have an emotional breakdown. And she called Mara to tell her what happened and to basically, during her breakdown, have someone talk her down because obviously, her fiance was not trash. Yeah, I'm not sure if they're married. I don't know how that turned out anyway. So the supervisor escorted Mara back to her dorm around 100 and 20:00 A.m., which is around the end of her shift. But when he asked what was wrong, all she said was, quote, My sister. So obviously she's feeling a lot of feelings about what happened to her sister, which makes me think she's a good person. Like, she's worried about her family. Saturday, February 7, Mara's father, Fred Murray, arrived in Amherst to help her find a car. Amherst is where the University is. Her own car was on its last legs, like, she could still drive it and all, but it was a little shaky. So she wanted a new car. Her dad, Fred had $4,000 in cash with him if they found a new car when they were going around, like, for a down payment, they went car mhm shopping that afternoon, not finding one to buy just yet, but they kind of picked out the ones that they liked and then they both went to dinner with one of Mara's friends. They went to a brew pub in town. Fred and Mara went back to the motel Fred was staying at, and Mara went back to campus in Fred's Toyota Corolla to attend a party. She arrived at the party around 10:30 P.m., according to her friends Kate Markopolis and Sarah Alfieri. These friends uh were interviewed by police uh later on to be like, did you notice anything weird about her? Anything like that? And both of them were like, no, we were at a party. She was acting normalish, like we were all drinking and having fun. Like this wasn't something of sitting down and talking to her one on one. Around 02:30 A.m., February 8, Mara left the party from campus, and at around 03:30 A.m. A full hour later, while on her way to her father's motel, Mara crashed his car into a guardrail near Hadley, which caused nearly nearly $10,000 in damage. The officer who responded wrote up an accident report, but no sobriety tests were conducted, according to his report, which is a little unusual for something happening at 03:30 A.m.. Like a crash happening at 03:30 A.m., but it didn't happen. The officer took Mara to her father's motel, where she spent the rest of the night. At 04:49 A.m., Mara made a call from her father's cell phone to her boyfriend, William Rouse, whom she had met at the Academy. There's uh no report as to what was said or even if he was the one who picked up. But they'd been dating for a while, and reportedly their um relationship was pretty good. He was living in Texas at the time because he had finished at the Academy, and that's where his station was, so they were in contact um constantly, so that comes into play later. Later Saturday morning, Fred learned that his insurance would cover the damage so long as the report was correctly made. Fred dropped Mara off back at campus and then headed for Connecticut, which is where he was working as a nuclear Med tech for a hospital. So not necessarily where he lived, like where his actual home was, but that's where his job was currently, so that's where he was staying at 1130. That night, Fred called Mara to remind her that she needed to get accident report forms from the Registry of Motor Vehicles, which is just the Department of Motor Vehicles in Massachusetts. Not sure why it's different, but they made a plan to talk the following night Monday to fill out the insurance claim and all the forms. It was after midnight on February 9 when Mara used MapQuest. Dude, do you remember MapQuest?
Speaker B: You better take that exit, otherwise you are screwed.
Speaker A: You've got no hope of getting to wherever you better use multiple Uturns to.
Speaker B: Get back to where you were. Good luck.
Speaker A: I remember because I was fairly young using Macquest because I wasn't even driving at this point when Macquest was still a thing, but I remember printing it out for my mom in order to get to someone's slumber party or something. I was feeling all uh kinds of in charge of like, I can do this. And so I'm trying to give directions to her from the Map quest. I'm like just reading the little bullet points we got there eventually, but it's because my mom actually knew what she was doing. But I'm like, I don't know how to drive. No, I'm like, maybe twelve. It was a lot. So, yes, she used MapQuest. She got directions to the um Berkshires up in Northern Massachusetts, New Hampshire uh area, and to Burlington, Vermont, which is opposite direction, kind of. Okay, so it's Massachusetts. Rather than going up, it was more of going further uh west towards Burlington, like middle of Vermont. Got you. Okay. The first contact anyone had with Mara on this Monday was at 01:00 P.m. When her boyfriend received an email that read, quote, I love you more study. I got your messages, but honestly, I didn't feel like talking too much of anyone. I promised to call today, though. Love you, Mara. Which is interesting because first of all, she didn't use her own phone to call him the night before, which I'm not sure um what the reasoning is for that she used her dad's phone and then obviously her boyfriend had been calling her, trying to get her to answer him, and was leaving messages to ask you. Ok, like what happened? I'm sure she told him about the crash that had happened, mhm but um sent him an email instead of calling him, knowing that he would probably pick up if she called him. She also made a call to a condo in Bartlett, New Hampshire, making an inquiry into renting a place her family had rented there before when she was a kid, but the owner didn't rent the condo to her. At 01:13 P.m., Mara called a fellow nursing student, but we're not sure why. At 01:24 P.m., Mara emailed the supervisor of the nursing school faculty to say that she would be out of town for a week due to death in the family, and she said she would contact them upon her return. There was no death in the family, so she just straight up lied. And now we know she's expecting to be gone for a week. She's planning to leave, I feel like.
Speaker B: Yeah, that's one of the few excuses where people will kind of take it at face value and leave you alone.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: They want to ask questions, right. Versus if you say that you're ill, maybe you need a doctor's note or something.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Uh yeah.
Speaker A: It's like the one thing that no one's going to ask you any questions about. There's going to be like, oh, okay. Well, we're so sorry.
Speaker B: Let me know if you need anything.
Speaker A: Yeah. So at 200 and 05:00 P.m., Mara called a number that provides info about booking hotels in Stove, Vermont. The call lasted five minutes. Meaning she listened to the recording for that long. So it kind of sounds like she's looking for something, or at least like writing stuff down of like, maybe this place. Maybe this place, maybe this place. At 218, she called her boyfriend and left a message promising him they would talk later. At 330, Mara drove off campus in her black Saturn sedan. The car that she's trying to get replaced.
Speaker B: Man. A Saturn.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: They don't make those anymore.
Speaker A: They don't? I don't think so.
Speaker B: Because I believe my cousin Dana had a Saturn, and I think they maybe don't make them anymore.
Speaker A: Oh, goodness. There's an old car.
Speaker B: Because this is 2004.
Speaker A: Mhm yeah.
Speaker B: Got you.
Speaker A: So it's already an old car then, which is just crazy to think about. It's not all that long ago. So a key point to know is that this uh is February, and classes on campus for this particular Monday had been canceled due to a snowstorm in the area. So she's driving this car that she's planning to replace in a snowstorm.
Speaker B: A snowstorm that's bad enough that uh Massachusetts said no, we're not going to.
Speaker A: Uh today, and she's driving further north. So things are happening and we don't know what they are. So at 340, Mara withdrew $280 from an ATM. This was most of her bank account at this point. Like, she just basically emptied her bank account. She went to a nearby liquor store where she bought about $40 worth of alcohol, including Bailey's Kalua vodka and a box of Franzia red wine.
Speaker B: Francis, this is sad, but that order is the most College order. Yeah, I guess we don't know what brand vodka, but please tell me it was like brunettes or something. Something terrible. I mean, $40, $40 in 2004. Yeah.
Speaker A: I don't know what the calculation, the.
Speaker B: Alcohol uh inflation is like.
Speaker A: No. Okay, so she's got this all in her car. Security footage shows that she was alone at some point during this day. She also picked up the accident report forms from the Registry of Motor Vehicles. So she had every intention of filling these out. She left Amherst between four and five, most likely via Interstate 91 north. She called to check her voicemail at 437, which is the last recorded time she ever used her cell phone. There is no information or indication that she had chosen a destination or that she had told anyone where she was intending to go. So scary.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: You'd think especially with a snowstorm, you have decided to grab alcohol and drive to a different state.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: And it's a Monday, and you're expecting school. You've already told people you expect to be gone for a week. Yeah.
Speaker B: What's up?
Speaker A: Don't know. So at seven uh 20 07:00 P.m., a resident of Woodsville, New Hampshire, made a call to the Grafton County Sheriff's Department to report an accident outside her house up against a snowbank along Route 112. The road was called Wild Emma Nusic Road. Just all kinds of vowels in that Emma Newsick road, she had heard a loud thump and could see the car through her window. The um car was pointing the wrong way on the road, like the wrong way on the wrong side, and it was a sharp turn that obviously hadn't been made. Well, according to the 911 call, um she claimed to see a man smoking a cigarette inside the car, but later she said she had not seen anyone smoking. Rather had seen what she thought was a red light glowing from inside the car. So like what she thought was like the end of a cigarette. But it could have been a cell phone. It could have been anything that was creating a red light. So that was just her initial guess when she said this. Another neighbor saw the car at the same time and reported seeing someone walking around the vehicle and the lights on. She also saw a third neighbor pull up alongside the vehicle. The neighbor who stopped Butch Atwood was a school bus driver returning home when he noticed a young woman not bleeding or visibly injured, but cold, shivering, and obviously in shock. He offered to telephone for help, but she asked him not to call the police and told him she'd already called AAA, but there's no record of such a call being placed and we know that she hadn't used her cell phone since 437 and never dead again. Butch knew that there was no cell reception in the area and after she turned down an offer of being driven to his home, which you could see from where the car was to call for help to get mhm warm, to uh sit down, he returned home and called the Sheriff's Department at 743.
Speaker B: Good job, Bud.
Speaker A: Yeah, so three people now have called the police Department to report this happening.
Speaker B: I got to move to New Hampshire.
Speaker A: I know people care about each other.
Speaker B: But I hate the snow, so never mind.
Speaker A: He was unable to see her car from uh his home from where he was calling, but he noticed several cars um pass on the road before police arrived. So obviously other people have passed by. There was a report made by another local resident that she had pulled over at the scene around 737, which is about ten minutes before or not ten minutes, but like a few minutes before the call that would made seeing uh a police SUV uh parked nose to nose with Morris car. When she didn't see anyone in or outside of the car, she decided to continue home. But this is contradictory to the official police report which has the police arriving nine minutes later. So my guess is that maybe, like her car clock was off or she just guessed at the time. But in any case, according to the report, this can't be corroborated. The Haver Hill police arrived at 07:46 p.m. And saw no one inside or around the car. The car had obviously hit a tree on the driver's side front light, damaging the left headlight and pushing the radiator into the fan, making it inoperable. So things are crunched. The windshield was cracked on the driver's side and both airbags had deployed. The car itself was locked on arrival, which is weird. Now, I mhm was also a little weirded out by both Airbags having been deployed, but from what I could gather, both of your Airbags deploy, regardless of whether or not they can tell that someone is in the past competitor, especially now. Like for a 1996 um Saturn, I have no clue. I tried my best to find any kind of information, but really it only led me to the Wikipedia article about what an Airbag is.
Speaker B: That makes sense to me, though, that.
Speaker A: If the car detects enough damage to.
Speaker B: The front portion of the vehicle that it would deploy both, even if.
Speaker A: Exactly.
Speaker B: Not like it's a weighted sensor.
Speaker A: Exactly. It is also interesting to note um that Mara was not visibly injured. Airbags when they deploy are extremely powerful.
Speaker B: Yeah, they mess you up.
Speaker A: Yeah. And if she hit a tree hard uh enough to get her fan to hit her radiator and crack her windshield, I don't know how she wasn't bleeding. Okay, I have questions, uh but I'm.
Speaker B: Sure we didn't get there, so I'm just going to wait.
Speaker A: Okay, hold on to them, though, because I might not answer them. They're not specific questions, it's just general confusion. How?
Speaker B: Why?
Speaker A: Okay, so there were red stains inside and outside the car, but they looked to be red wine, and there was a busted box of Francis on the back seat and red stains all over on a ceiling on the floor. So obviously when she hit this tree, this box of Francis just busted open. So that's the explanation for the red stains. I don't know if they tested that, but that's the explanation for the red stains. Yeah.
Speaker B: That just makes it more confusing. If we were violent enough to fling the box of wine so that it.
Speaker A: Rips the plastic bag inside.
Speaker B: But she's fine.
Speaker A: Or maybe it was already open.
Speaker B: Yeah, maybe she was getting a little sip. Sip on the road.
Speaker A: Maybe.
Speaker B: Maybe that's why. Okay, yeah.
Speaker A: So there was also in the car an empty beer bottle, but she didn't buy beer at the liquor store, so I don't actually know if you can buy uh beer at liquor stores anyway. In some case, she had beer. Whether or not she drank it that night is another question. Aaaa card issued tomorrow. Blank accident report forms, gloves that were brand new CDs, make up jewelry, driving directions to Burlington, Vermont, Mara's favorite stuffed animal, and a book called Not Without Peril, which is about mountain climbing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, which are nowhere close to Burlington. So odd. She also had packed herself a bag mhm with clothing, toiletries, College textbooks, and birth control. So she had all of her stuff not found on the scene. Where her debit card, her uh credit cards, her cell phone, and some bottles of liquor she had purchased that afternoon. I have heard no mention of whether or not the keys were there. My guess is that she had her keys because the car was locked. Right. But I couldn't find anywhere where the keys were. Right. They also couldn't find a black backpack um that they assumed that she had with her because she used it as her purse and it wasn't in her dorm room. It wasn't with anything in the stuff in uh the car. So their assumption is that she had it with her. And that's um where her debit card, all of her stuff. There was also a rag stuffed into the muffler pipe of the car, which Fred says was something he had advised Mara to do so she wouldn't get pulled over for excessive emissions, which was a main reason that they were getting rid of the car. I have had a car that needed to have its whole emissions stuff replaced underneath, all the guts underneath replaced because my emissions were too high. I feel like stuffing a rag in your muffler pipe isn't going to help that it's actually going to make things maybe worse. I'm not sure. I don't know how cars work in that capacity, but for some reason, this tidbit of information gives me the Hebrewees so much so that it's only one hebajib, and I would prefer to call it a hebris Jebus. Sorry. It is so distinctly like.
Speaker B: It's so odd. Yeah.
Speaker A: It's so distinctly weird to me, and I don't uh know why it freaks me out, but it does.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker A: It's also weird that your dad would tell you, hey, just go ahead and stuff something in your muffler that might make your car that already kind of doesn't work that we're getting rid of. I don't know.
Speaker B: I, too, have very little familiarity with the mechanics of motor vehicles, but I feel like it stresses me out because when people are trying to commit suicide, they run their car in a garage.
Speaker A: And close the door muffler and pick.
Speaker B: Up, like, carbon monoxide poisoning. So then I have no idea if that's directly. I don't know, but that's just what it reminds me of. Are you driving emissions into your passengers, like, into the vehicle? Is that affecting, especially if you're driving every day. Is it affecting you over time? Yeah, or something?
Speaker A: I don't know, but it does. It gives me the heaps.
Speaker B: Singular Hebrew Singers Jebus.
Speaker A: Singular Hebrews Jebus just shiver up the spine.
Speaker B: Is that the title of this episode?
Speaker A: Sure. So the responding officer and Butch Atwood. So the guy that stopped. Yeah, he's a really uh good guy. This haunted him for a very long time, which I'm sure because he was the last person to ever see her alive.
Speaker B: That's true.
Speaker A: Or at least confirmed to ever see her alive. So um I'm sure it um really nags at him. So the surrounding officer in Butchatwood drove around the area searching for Mara. Just before eight, a fire truck and EMS came to clear the scene. So, like, say, nothing else to do here. And by 850, the car had been towed to a local shop. Um around 930, the responding officer left without having found anything else. So there are no footsteps like footprints. This is fresh snow, too. There was just a snowstorm. The car itself had skidded into a snowbank after it hit the tree. So snow is everywhere. There should be at least some evidence of footprints going in some direction, but they couldn't find anything in particular that led them anywhere, which is just disappointing and very annoying, I'm sure. Between eight to 830, a contractor reported that on his way home, he had seen a young person moving quickly eastbound on um 112 around four to 5 miles east from where Mars car was found. He said that they were wearing jeans, a dark coat with a light colored hood. He didn't realize that the sighting was the same night as Mars disappearance until three months later, when he was reviewing his work records, which I mean, I guess if you're doing this all the time, like, if you're driving all the time, you don't really think about when something happens. You just write it down and you'll look at it later. But it's an odd thing to see on the side of a road after a snowstorm in February of somebody walking along the side of the road. Right.
Speaker B: Especially in jeans. If it were a local person, I feel like maybe they would be better equipped for snow.
Speaker A: Yes, if they're just out for a.
Speaker B: Little hike, I don't know or whatever.
Speaker A: Uh I don't know. But according to reports, when her dorm room was searched, there were packed boxes everywhere and art taken off the walls. Some say that this is an indication she had intended to leave completely. Uh fred, her father, and others say that over the Christmas holiday, the school was washing carpets in the dorms and asked students to box things up, which would explain why she still had items in boxes. Uh but it was February and she hadn't needed to take her art down. So I wonder if it was like if she did have to take her art or if she did have to pack up her boxes. Maybe she was like, well, maybe I'll redecorate and took everything down so that she could pack everything away and start new, like start fresh. And I don't want to say, well, it was February. She should have unpacked things um by now, because maybe you are too busy with College that you're like. I have a bed to sleep in, I have Forks out so I can eat my food, and that's all I need. So it's a very weird tidbit of information to be like, her boxes were packed and the potential for her leaving school was um there. But there's also a potential explanation to that.
Speaker B: Does she have a roommate? Do we know if she did?
Speaker A: I couldn't find who it was or if they had any information.
Speaker B: Got you.
Speaker A: A Bolo was issued after this was labeled a missing case. So be on the lookout with a description uh of her, some pictures and um what she was wearing that night, which was jeans and uh a black coat and the black backpack that um she used as her purse. The police left a message uh on Fred Murray's home answering machine at 320 because he was listed on the car as well, because she's only 21. Remember to say that the car had been found abandoned, but he was not home at the time because of his current job in Connecticut. So he didn't receive this message. At 05:00, Maura's older sister called her dad with the news, and Fred then called the Haver Hill police and was told that if Mara was not reported safe by the following morning, February 11, they would start a search, which, as a parent, I would be like, no, no, you start a search now. Start a search now. I can understand maybe the light would be detrimental, but you can at least call into the woods to be like, is anybody here?
Speaker B: Well, especially if they I mean, I guess the local police wouldn't have known that she went to the liquor store and that she had liquor, potentially with her, it's gone from the car. But even alcohol aside, if you have someone who is in shock from a motor vehicle accent, who walks away and you have had a snowstorm and they get disoriented and trip and fall.
Speaker A: Yeah. Roll down an embankment.
Speaker B: Sorry.
Speaker A: Two days is not going to not good news. Yeah.
Speaker B: But I presume that's not what happened because I feel like this wouldn't be unsolved. So I'm going to be quiet and.
Speaker A: Let you tell me it's okay. I don't mind the interruptions.
Speaker B: Interjections show excitement. Emotion. Mostly emotion on this podcast. Not as much excitement.
Speaker A: Also, that's a musical, so you can knock that off of your bingo list.
Speaker B: You're welcome.
Speaker A: Fred arrived before dawn on February 11 in Haver um Hill. So he drove all the way up.
Speaker B: There from Connecticut to it's the morning of the 11th. Let's go. Yeah.
Speaker A: And at 08:00, a.m. New Hampshire fishing game, which we're conducting the search. So they're like the National Park Service kind of um Ranger, people who know the land. Uh so this group, the Murray's and others, including locals, um began the search for Mara. A police dog tracked the scent picked up from Mara's new pair of gloves 100 yards east from where the vehicle had been abandoned, but lost the scent. The police assumed that this meant that she had left in another car. So maybe one of the cars that drove by that would have seen. Fred is angry about this and has expressed his anger about this because he claims they chose a new pair of gloves for the scent and not her running shoes, which were in her bag or anything that had her scent heavy on them, like you could have used anything in the bag that she had packed for herself. And they decided on the new pair of gloves that was in the car at the time.
Speaker UNK: Odd.
Speaker A: Um don't really know the reasoning for that. At 05:00 P.m., Mara's boyfriend William and his parents arrived in Habershill. He was interrogated in private and then joined by his parents for questioning. Um his parents are very close to Mara and her family. Like they loved Mara and William had been dating for a while, so uh this was just completely devastating to both families in a sense that they both felt like they had lost a daughter. So he William had turned his cell phone off during his flight from Texas to Haber Hill. At some point during the flight, he received a voicemail that he believed was the sound of Mara sobbing. They traced the call to a calling card issued by the Red Cross. Mara had received similar calling cards as a gift from Sharon, Billy's mother, around Thanksgiving. So these are like prepaid phone cards. Anyone remembers those? I remember them remember getting them for Christmas. A couple. I think it must have been high school or something, like not all that long ago. At 07:00 p.m. That day, the police said that they believed Mara mhm to either have come to the area to run away or commit suicide, but her family didn't believe either of these to be likely. First of all, if you're going to run away, why not take the bag you packed with you? Right. And maybe your jewelry or CDs. What are you doing leaving your car?
Speaker UNK: Right.
Speaker A: Maybe wait until the person at least because she knew at least one person was going to call at some point. Although she didn't want to, I could assume that she wanted somebody to try and get help for her. I don't know. It wasn't in her state of mind. A Press conference was held on February 12 by Fred and William in Bethlehem, New Hampshire. And the following day, the first press coverage was published. And this has been called the first crime mystery of the social media age because it occurred days after the launch of Facebook.
Speaker B: This was also in Massachusetts.
Speaker A: Yes. So it's just like this case became so widespread and was kind of the dawning of the Internet sleuths that we know today of, like, gathering information from all corners of the Internet. Mara's family expanded the search to Vermont and were annoyed when they learned that the police there had not been informed of her disappearance. Now have a Hill is very close to the border of New Hampshire and Vermont, like, very close. So it is very weird that they didn't inform anyone over the border. Hey, we're looking for this person, but.
Speaker B: This is very standard for the time, right? Like, nobody wants to cooperate. No one wants to play nice. No one wants to share information.
Speaker A: I'm not sure what their thought process was, though, because aren't you hoping that maybe someone sees her somewhere else? Like, if you're going to conduct your.
Speaker B: Investigation, if you look at the Golden State Killer, all of his crimes took a really long time to be connected to a single perpetrator because the Visalia Ransacker and somebody over the Department didn't talk to each other.
Speaker A: But my uh hope is that between the now being the early two thousand s, I would have hoped that somebody would have changed something about that.
Speaker B: That's true. My brain keeps thinking we're in the 90s because of her car.
Speaker A: Yes, it is 2004.
Speaker B: So disregard.
Speaker A: No, I mean, I wouldn't disregard it at all, actually, because I don't know what the procedures are for these police departments, because these are also police departments.
Speaker B: Of local spaces, local towns.
Speaker A: I don't know if they're thinking that far of like, put the word out so that everyone within a three state radius knows. Maybe they're just trying to figure out where she is. They have no footsteps. They have no car trace. The narrative that they've landed upon, though.
Speaker B: Is kind of a victim blaming sort of mindset that she was trying to run away um and not be found or to kill herself and not be discovered.
Speaker A: And I'm sure the fact that she's 21 has something to do with that.
Speaker B: Too, because she colors their interpretation of things.
Speaker A: She's not a kid. They can't go and do this whole big search and grab them and bring them back like you're going to be safe, we promise. Because that little kid running away mentality, they still have Guardians that are in charge of them. Once you hit 18, you are the Guardian of yourself. And if you choose to run away and this is in a couple of missing persons cases that the assumption is that maybe they have been found, but police are not obligated to tell the families because the person themselves might have told the police.
Speaker B: Don't tell them where I am or even younger children. I mean, hopefully this happens less nowadays than it did back in the but if a 15 year old is missing, they make the families wait a certain amount of time because they might just be a teenage runaway. Yeah, okay. That's not an excuse.
Speaker A: No, it's not. It really isn't. Or they're just a runaway. They'll come back is not an excuse because in the midst of running away, what if they broke their leg, jumping down from something because they're reckless and get stuck somewhere and can't come back? There's a lot of that that makes me nervous about having children in the future. I can't keep tabs on them all the time because I don't want to because they're people. But I also want to to make sure that they don't die. There's just so much. But I Luckily don't have to worry about that. For a very long time. Back to the story. Although most missing person cases are normally handled by local and state police, the FBI arrived on the investigation ten days after she vanished. At the same time, the New Hampshire Fish and Game conducted a second search using a helicopter thermal imaging camera, tracking dogs and cadaver dogs uh pulling in all the guns, the big guns, the small guns, all the guns are out. So the fact that the FBI, after ten days, is involved is interesting. But then I thought about it a little bit more of like, well, if she went over the border, then it has to be FBI jurisdiction, right?
Speaker B: Or if someone across the border abducted her, took her, then it crosses state line.
Speaker A: Exactly. So by March 2, the family checked out at their motel. Fred Murray returned almost every weekend to keep searching. I know, it's so sad to think about, and he was driving up from Massachusetts or Connecticut or wherever his jobs were at the time. More searches were conducted later in the year with no snow on the ground, but revealed nothing conclusive. So even though, like, the snow might be obstructing something, we'll wait until it goes away didn't necessarily help.
Speaker UNK: Yeah.
Speaker A: The police have said that there is no evidence of a crime being committed, though up until today, it remains an open case. And in 2009, lead prosecutor in the investigation, Jeffrey Steelvin, said that it may be a missing person's case, but it's being handled as a criminal investigation, which I feel like is the most appropriate response. When you don't have a body, when you don't know what happened to in a missing person's case, or at least there's no clear indication, because this is just um all kinds of, like, crazy potentials. Um mara has been missing now for 16 years with no real movement made in the case. So just sad. Some follow up weirdness. That's my mhm title for this next section.
Speaker B: All right.
Speaker A: In late 2004, the same year that she disappeared, a weird man, which I couldn't find his name, so I've labeled him Weird man.
Speaker B: Shout out to you.
Speaker A: Weird man gave Fred a rusty stained knife that he said belonged to his brother. This man's brother had a criminal past and lived less than a mile from where the car was abandoned. The brother and his girlfriend were allegedly acting strange in the days after Mara went missing. And the weird man claimed that he believed the knife to have been used to kill Mara. Yeah.
Speaker B: So you give it to the dad.
Speaker A: And not the police supposedly murdered girl.
Speaker B: Okay. You're mentally stableman.
Speaker A: Yeah. Days after the knife was given to Fred, who promptly gave it to the police. Okay, good job, Fred. Who would want to keep a bloody knife that could have potentially killed my kid? Great.
Speaker B: Is it bloody and rusty or.
Speaker A: Yes? No, it's both. Oh, great. Okay, so just a disgusting knife. Well, it's stained. It's not bloody. It's stained. But still, days after the knife was given to Fred, the brother apparently scrapped his car. But other family members of the weird guy claimed he made the story up in order to get reward money in the investigation and that he had a history of drug use and drug abuse. So the potential is that the reason he gave it to Fred was so that Fred would give him the money.
Speaker B: But it's just that's just sad.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker B: Don't prey upon sad people.
Speaker A: Yeah. Uh there was a black backpack found uh behind the bathroom facilities at the Pemaga Wasset Overlook, which was 30 miles away from where Mara was last seen a year after she disappeared. The backpack was still there in late 2005 when a discovery thread user. So, like, the investigation threads that popped up after her disappearance of, like, here are the possible clues in order to find her, went to go see if he could spot it and reported that he found it and it was empty um and got in contact with the police, telling them where to find it. So he didn't have a camera with him, so he couldn't take pictures. He did open it up to see if there was anything inside, and there was nothing in it. It was frozen solid, apparently because it was late 2005. The police said later that they were aware of the backpack, but nothing was disclosed on whether they um did any testing or did anything with it at all. Okay, so just another weird little piece follow up. Weirdness. This is why this is labeled this way. In October of 2006, another search was conducted within a couple of miles of the crash site. Over the course of two days in a closet of a home approximately 1 mile from where the car was left, cadaver dogs allegedly went, quote, bonkers, which meant they picked up a scent of human decay. Uh the house previously belonged to the man initially implicated by his brother, who had given the knife to Fred.
Speaker B: Oh, okay.
Speaker A: A carpet sample was taken from the closet, but the results were never released, and nothing conclusive was ever found from this search. Yeah. In February of 2019. So fairly recently.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker A: Which was 15 years after Mara's been gone, Fred said that he believed his daughter was dead and that the cadaver dogs picked up the scent of her body. Back in 2006, the house was sold to a new, more cooperative owner. So the owners previous to this, but after the initial search of the house weren't very cooperative, didn't want the police.
Speaker B: In mhm the house belonged uh to.
Speaker A: The nice guy's brother and then was sold to somebody else who cooperated with the police.
Speaker B: And they took the carpet sample and then cooperative people. New people.
Speaker A: And so in early April of 2019, these new owners allowed the investigation to proceed on the property, and an excavation was conducted of the basement. But they found absolutely nothing, except for quote, a piece of pottery or old piping. So there's no evidence of a body being there, which doesn't necessarily indicate to me that she wasn't potentially killed there. If she was killed or abducted by this man, maybe she just wasn't buried there.
Speaker B: They didn't search the property.
Speaker A: They only looked in the basement. Mhm so far as I could tell, they conducted a search of just the house.
Speaker B: I guess the dogs would have given alerted something uh in the initial search.
Speaker A: If it were outdoors. That's my sense, but I don't know. All right, so here are theories, okay? One, she was suicidal, but everyone in her family and all of her friends say that this is both an odd way to try to kill yourself and that it is so unlike Mara, Fred, his exwife, and Mara's mother, Lori and William's mother, Sharon are all very vocally critical of the official investigation. As using this as a point of this is what happened. They say she was not suicidal. It makes no sense at all to assume that she was. Based on the evidence, Fred and Sharon remain. So they remain critical, though, sadly, Laurie, her mom passed away from cancer in 2009. Or maybe she doesn't know the answer. She might know the answer now and be at peace knowing the answer. Because I feel like the main takeaway from this for me is the fact of not knowing as a parent or like a pseudo parent, someone who is.
Speaker B: Yeah, I don't believe in closure. I don't think it exists. Whether it's like a romantic relationship, a terrible event that happens, um I don't think it really exists. But at least if the snow had melted and they had found a body, it would be terrible. But at least you would know. Because when you don't know, even if all the evidence is pointing towards. Yeah, she's probably no longer living. The irrational part of your brain is still clinging to that tiny bit of hope.
Speaker A: Absolutely.
Speaker B: Well, they don't know exactly. And then you just go through that your whole life.
Speaker A: I can't imagine that being hard. It also doesn't make sense that she was suicidal if she packed a bag and her birth control. And though the alcohol may be an indicator of a possible issue, it doesn't explain a suicidal tendency specifically for this period of time. So she's looking at all these different places to potentially go and travel. She's trying to find somewhere to stay. She's mhm trying to pack for a week with her College textbooks, fully intending to do her homework. It's odd. Another theory is that she was in shock after the accident and died in the woods beyond the road. Though no footprints were found from the elements. Shock makes sense. Death from the elements doesn't necessarily make sense because her body was never found and neither were any of her things, though the searches that they conducted often didn't extend too far beyond a few miles radius. And they didn't go too far deep into the woods. So that to me is like you didn't do your job well enough.
Speaker UNK: Yeah.
Speaker A: So I don't know. Number three, she was running away, which is the one that most people cling to because it means that she's still alive and well. Most everyone close to her says that it doesn't make sense for her to run away. But the signs of her packing not telling anyone where she was going and the like, packing up her dorm room as well make this a possibility. But then where would she go? She had a map to Burlington in her car, but she had a book about uh the White Mountains. She had uh researched all these different places in Stove, Vermont. Like, there's too many different potential destinations. I'm not quite sure where her brain was in terms of where she's going to go.
Speaker B: The part of me that wants to believe in positive outcomes uh is, here's my theory. She was like Carmen San Diego. Um she was by and she was leaving misleading clues so that nobody would know how to find her and be purposely confusing, confusing, confusing to purposely confuse everyone. And she's off on a beach somewhere right now, having retired from her career. I don't uh know. But she can't contact her family because then that'll put them at risk.
Speaker A: I would like to assume that that is the case. That would be her and Tupac are sitting on a beach in Cuba. He's making sounds for SoundCloud, and she's just enjoying emojito. Yeah, I'm into that.
Speaker B: Yes, please.
Speaker A: So she had gotten into trouble with the credit card stuff. She had crashed her dad's car, and February was still within the time frame of her needing uh to stay out of trouble unless she wanted to be charged with the crime and go to jail. So maybe the party and her recent crash made her worry that if the police were called, she would have to serve time well.
Speaker B: And if she was drinking the boxed wine in the car or mhm even.
Speaker A: Had it open, there was that others have suggested that she may have been leaving to meet someone or to run away to have a baby. There was a big thing about her being pregnant and worried about having a baby while in College. And so running away to have the baby. Pregnant people don't need birth control. But neither of these seem to make any sense, as no one uh has come forward. Uh and she brought her birth control with her. If you are pregnant or if you assume that you are pregnant and you know you're going to keep the baby enough to run away somewhere, like, why would you bring your birth control with you? Why wouldn't you just leave? That where it was.
Speaker UNK: Yeah.
Speaker A: So she also turned in all of her homework for that week before leaving and told her supervisors that she would be coming back by the end of the week.
Speaker UNK: Right.
Speaker A: So that doesn't make sense. Some believe that her father knows a lot more than he is letting on, since he has been angry throughout this whole investigation, which I think rightly, because the police haven't really helped anything too much, it seems. And he dislikes anyone trying to ask him questions for publications about his daughter's days leading up to the disappearance. Because he's questioned constantly about this. And he said, I have put out all the information. I know all of the things I believe. You know all of the information. You don't need anything else from me. Please stop bothering me about this. I am looking for her constantly. He, however, says that he believes that she was taken and killed and is now um gone. She would have had no reason to run away.
Speaker UNK: Um.
Speaker A: There'S absolutely mhm no reason I can think of that she would run away. But most people think he knows more than what he's saying because he had $4,000 in his pocket and he let her drive his car. All this kind of stuff, I'm like it's a dad. He's trying to um help his daughter find another car, knows that a cash down payment, especially in 2004, is helpful. Come on. And there have been multiple but unsubstantiated sightings in Vermont and Canada of Maura, but very much unsubstantiated. Um so the last theory is the saddest one, and that it is um that she was picked up and killed. Mhm and it's not necessarily a specific serial killer that did this, but rather just an opportunity. One who saw a girl all alone in the middle of nowhere, it seems. But uh this doesn't necessarily make too much sense to me because the people who lived across the street from this crash were probably looking out their window, trying to make sure that this person that they could see was okay. I'm not quite sure how long they looked out the window or anything like that, but if it were in front of my house, I'd be sitting there mhm until the police came, at least to be like, what happened? I'm nosey. So I want to make sure that what's happening. I can ascertain what's happening, but no one else. Since there's no trace of her, there can be no reason to assume this. But it may be the reasoning why the house nearby flagged for human decomp.
Speaker B: You know, what makes that so extra sad to me is that our buddy Butch, the slow bus driver, offered to take her back to his house to be warm. And as a young woman alone, she probably was like, stranger danger. You're not taking me to a second location, which I'm sure is what both of us would do if we were in some sort of.
Speaker A: I don't.
Speaker B: But if she was taken and murdered, she was trying to avoid something like that, maybe by not going with him. And then who knows what happened to her?
Speaker A: It was seven minutes which saw her, asked if she was okay, asked if she wanted to come back so she could be warm and call for help, even if it wasn't the police. I'm sure if she had taken him up on his offer, I'm not faulting her for not because truly, I probably would do the same thing as, like, no, man, I'm good. But if she had gone with him, she could have called her dad or one of her sisters or even her mom or grandparents have been like, hey, this happened. Can you get someone to come and pick me up rather than having to actually call the police or AAA or just like you call a tow truck all that. But I can completely understand not going to a second location with someone you don't know in the middle of the.
Speaker B: Right, because she is like, seven, but still, it's winter, basically still, and she's not from the area. It would be one thing if it's.
Speaker A: Your hometown and, you know, the bus.
Speaker B: Driver and not saying that person totally safe 100% of the time, but at least you have a degree of familiarity.
Speaker A: Yeah. And just the amount of time between Butch leaving her and the police arriving seven minutes. It took her seven minutes to disappear. It might have taken her, like, 3 seconds to disappear, but it's like there's a span of time that we can calculate, and it's just so sad that seven minutes completely makes her vanish. So mhm this is my theory. Okay. You've expressed your theory.
Speaker B: I think maybe because they didn't do a super extensive search of the woods. My mind thinks that that's the most likely one.
Speaker A: Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker B: It's sad and unfortunate if people didn't. I just feel like you read sad and unfortunate articles about um Midwestern teenagers or College kids who go to a party and they drink and they try to walk home and they trip into a snowbank and freeze to death.
Speaker A: Yeah. Or, like, get up, get disoriented because everything's white and they've just hit their head and then just disappear into the snow and die. So my theory is that I believe that her sister Kathleen knows more than she's letting on or was the intended person to stay with Mara at any of these locations. The reason I think this is that I think Mara may have been arranging a space for her sister to have another rehab because of her fiance being a total jerk and bringing her to a liquor store and making her go into a huge emotional breakdown, potentially going into a relapse like all of that. And I think Maura may have been trying to establish somewhere that at least for a week, she could stay with her sister and help her get back to where she was in rehabilitation and know that she's going to be okay. This is somewhere like Bartlett. The condo place was somewhere that her and her family had visited before, so that was a familiar place to her. Like, if she could find a place for her and her sister to stay for a little while. She brought alcohol, maybe to be like, you can't have this is all that kind of stuff. I'm not sure why. Maybe that's a little weird to me. Maybe for herself to be like, I.
Speaker B: Got to get through this.
Speaker A: I don't know. But I think when she crashed, she was completely scared by it of if the police are called, they're going to see the empty beer bottle. They're going to see the alcohol in my back seat regardless of whether or not she actually drank from any of it that night. And they're going to assume that I am driving drunk and that's why I crashed. I am going to grab my bag with my credit card and my ID and I'm going to walk my car so that if anyone does call the police, which is possible because I just met this guy who said he'd call the police for me. And I told him, no, I'm going to grab my bag and go into the woods and wait until the police are gone and the car is like towed or something. And then I'll come out and go knock on that guy's door and call someone to come and pick me up. That's what I think her brain where her brain was. But I think I agree with you that the potential for her just becoming too exposed to the elements, especially in a space she doesn't know if she goes into the woods deep enough and knowing that someone is looking for her when that police officer comes and when Atkinson comes back to know that they're searching for her. So she goes deeper and deeper into the woods no. And then gets exposed to the elements and can't find her way back because she's disoriented in a woods she doesn't know and passes away. That's what I think the potential is, which is so sad. What I really wish happened was that she got picked up by some nice trucker who was like, where can I take you? And she went all the way up to Canada, the land of the beautiful, and met a Mounty. And it's like, sorry, William, I love you, but found new side. I'm starting a life with a mountain with the gigantic things and a huge hat, and she's living happily ever after in Newfoundland. I would really love that. Yeah.
Speaker B: I feel like that's what we're going to do every episode. We're like, let's imagine the Hallmark movie ending seriously, but also the investigation Discovery ending seriously.
Speaker A: So if you want to learn more about this and I'm not one to usually quote my sources because I put them in the show notes anyway. But I think that the sources for this are fairly interesting as well as important. So there is still a site for Mara run by uh her family. It's called the Maramarie Missing Site, and it's still active. You can go to Maramariemissing.org. And there's uh places on there where you can see uh pictures of her beautiful little face, pictures of her and her family, the press releases that they've had about this case, any information you might have, um you can give to them, as um well as go through the Haber Hill Police Department if you do have info and you've been holding it back all this time. Um moving on. Of course, our mother site, Wikipedia, was my starting point for this. But it led me to a Billy Jensen article from 2014 about Internet sleuthing in this case, which is if you haven't listened to the murder squad with Billy Jensen and Paul Holes is brilliant. They do mostly uh cold cases um in an effort to get people to participate in Internet sleuthing in a um good way, but also to try and figure out what are the best ways that we can help the police departments who are trying to um investigate and figure out these cases.
Speaker B: They're also legitimate investigators.
Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
Speaker B: No.
Speaker A: They do their research wholeheartedly and very well. And it's all very good. And Paul Holes, of course, is a retired police officer, police Detective. And Billy Jensen is a true crime reporter. Like, they know their stuff. But uh reading I haven't ever read anything by um Billy Jensen. And so reading this article, it was beautifully crafted. He's a wonderful writer and it's obvious that he feels very strongly about this kind of stuff. And even then, it was 2014, so it was ten years after um Mara went missing and he was talking about internet fluting and how it all started. So that's what he does. That is his thing. So it was uh very interesting to read that. There's also a book called True Crime Addict on Google Books that I read the first 26 pages of because it's um oddly expensive. But this is also the um book that Fred Murray, he and the author got into a um huge fight about this because Fred was so upset with the way that this man was investigating this case and truly just wanted to be left alone from this guy. And he was relentless. The first 26 pages. Um i will say the writing is a little interesting. It seems very elaborate. Since I have not read the whole thing. I cannot give a full review, but it um had enough information in it for me to include it in this uh because it did reveal at least when it came to the boyfriend of like, this is when he came. This is where they met. This is all that I didn't get a lot of that from other sources. So that was helpful. And if you want to listen to another podcast about this particular case, there is a podcast called True Crime Garage. They are awesome. They are also very good at their research. Uh and they did a two parter on this. All of their library is on Stitcher. So the last 30 weeks, last 30 episodes or something are on Apple podcasts. But this is from about a year ago. So you'll find them on Stitcher. It's all free. All their library on Stitcher is free, so you'll be able to find it there. But they're also just very good researchers. They do their job really well. And they're the reason why the um rag and the tailpipe gives me the singular Hebrews Jebus because I was listening to it with Theo one night. We were doing a puzzle because that's the kind of old people we are. And we were listening to this podcast and I had to stop with the puzzle and just sit there and listen because there were just shivers going up and down my spine of them telling this story. I'm not quite sure why this gives me so many hibajibis and even that one singular Hebrews Jebus. I'm just going to keep um saying it. I'm serious when I say it, though, that it truly does. But yeah. So those are my sources. Feel free to go and check them out. They will be linked in the show notes. I have a couple of pictures here that um will be up on Instagram of Sweetmora. There is also a picture of where the car was found and the car itself and its damage not uh on the site, because obviously you'll see the picture, there's no snow, but it's to where it was towed. And they took some pictures of it then. But yeah. So um this is a sad case and it's still unsolved um and she's currently gone to the wind. You okay, Shannon? Very sad. I feel like I talked about this on an earlier episode, but I am.
Speaker B: Someone who likes answers in a definitive sense, which means I've really just set myself up for disappointment by doing this podcast.
Speaker A: Seriously.
Speaker B: But yeah. No.
Speaker A: Shout out to Mara, say Hi to Tupac for us.
Speaker B: Seriously.
Speaker A: Higher. Uh or if you're up in Canada with your Mount, your husband. Hope you're doing well.
Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. Wow. Thank you for sharing those sources with us.
Speaker A: You're welcome.
Speaker B: I would say you are also well researched.
Speaker A: Thank you. Uh i appreciate that.
Speaker B: Under sell yourself.
Speaker A: Thank you. I think there's so much to this case. It is just dense with information and like, timeline and all of that that I think it's easy to get lost in it. And I felt that when I was researching this is just getting lost in the tiny little tangents. But there's a lot of meat to it. There's a lot to it. So I'm happy I did it. It's one of the cases that drew me to all of this. So, yeah, everybody call your mom, seriously.
Speaker B: Or your dad or tell your friends when you're going on a road trip, please be safe.
Speaker A: I've got to go on a road trip this weekend to get my tooth taken out by the bone Shaman.
Speaker B: The Bone Shaman.
Speaker A: My own father, the Bone Shaman. He's licensed and certified, and he's not.
Speaker B: Yet just in the backyard. Step onto the deck.
Speaker A: Yeah. No, I mean, he's good at his job well enough that I fully trust him. He's my father, but I don't like surgery. So it will be an interesting weekend. But the hubby is coming with. He'll have to do his data processing there, which will be interesting.
Speaker B: Not something about data. It travels.
Speaker A: Yeah. It's easily accessible. Before we go, I didn't ask you last night was Halloween. Y'all. How was your Halloween?
Speaker B: It was fine. I was at work at the bookstore. I gave out candy to, like, three small children just because there weren't that many. But that was fun. It was a full moon. Looked very spooky this year. And last year, Halloween has not been that significant as its own individual holiday because we don't really get trick or treaters on our street. We don't have a street light, and there um aren't that many houses. It's not so much.
Speaker A: Oh, happy Halloween.
Speaker B: It's more. Oh, God, um it's Nanorimo Eve. Nano. Are you doing it, too?
Speaker A: National Novel Rating month. I am going to do portions of Just Say yes. You're doing it. Yeah.
Speaker B: You got it on tape. By the time you all hear this, we'll be like, halfway through.
Speaker A: More than halfway through. Yeah. Because I started it last year and I didn't really want to finish. I didn't obviously finish mine.
Speaker B: Whatever.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Anyway, if you want to see photos.
Speaker A: From today's episode, you want to see the car.
Speaker B: You want to see the spooky looking woods?
Speaker A: No, thank you. Uh sorry, New Hampshire, but hard pass. You can find us on Instagram at.
Speaker B: This podcast doesn't exist. No apostrophe. And you can also find our Link tree bio. Uh our Link tree link in our bio.
Speaker A: So many words where you can find us on all the listening platforms, uh.
Speaker B: Even though obviously you've already found us on one of those.
Speaker A: But then you can share it to the friend who has an Android on Google podcast. Yes.
Speaker B: Uh there you go. Shout out to Shelby and you can find our bingo card there as well. Please take a screenshot and share it on Instagram. We'd love to see it. We'd love to see uh how it's going.
Speaker A: And if you end up winning a bingo for an episode, make sure you send it to us because we want to shout you out and say thank you for uh listening, first of all. But also Congratulations for winning. And it's just an easy, fun thing to do while you listen. If you're not doing laundry like I usually do when I'm doing pockets or.
Speaker B: Driving or driving, please don't bingo and drive.
Speaker A: Yes, Amen. All right. And if you have any stories you want to tell us, any theories about what possibly could have happened tomorrow or what her thought process was, you can email us at this podcast doesn't exist@gmail.com. No. Apostrophe. And we'd love to hear from you. Um truly. Our inbox is currently empty. Can you spell it?
Speaker B: Yes. It doesn't have to be specifically related.
Speaker A: To this episode we will accept feedback suggestions, serious stories. Also I had this thought the other.
Speaker B: Day if there are any conspiracy theories or weird things that you believed as a child that you did not learn where false until later in life, we'd.
Speaker A: Love to hear those too. We just come be our friend. We'd love to include you. And speaking of inclusion, please share the podcast with a friend.
Speaker B: If you think they would enjoy it, they would enjoy hanging out with us.
Speaker A: We would love to have them. And while you're at it, please subscribe and review. Yeah, give us a nice little five stars. Please. If you don't want to give us five stars you can go ahead and not rate review but instead send us an email as to what we could do possibly do better in your eyes or your ears. So all that to say thank you for listening and remember this podcast doesn't exist.

Sources: 
-Billy Jensen writing in 2014 about internet sleuthing in the case: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/01/28/maura-murray/4/
-Our mother source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Maura_Murray
- The Maura Murray Missing site, still active: https://www.mauramurraymissing.org/about.html
-True Crime Addict on Google Books: https://www.google.com/books/edition/True_Crime_Addict/Vd7aCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
-True Crime Garage, on Stitcher