Maura Murray

Maura Murray’s disappearance has to be one of the strangest and down right chilling missing persons cases to this day.

Some of you may have heard of her and the bizarre circumstances that led up to her disappearance. As of today this missing persons case is trending in the true crime community all over again. If you don’t know of this case then you must be wondering what it is about this 2004 case that continues to haunt people. Then follow me and I’ll tell you…

Maura was a star athlete when she graduated high school. She was from Massachusetts and she dominated in track and loved to run. She would go on to be accepted to the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY. It’s here where she studied Chemical Engineering for 3 semesters. Yes, a smart cookie indeed… She also met her boyfriend here.

However, Maura would not stay in West Point. She stole $5.00 worth of makeup and this resulted in an honor code violation. She would return to Mass and attend the University of Massachusetts Amherst to study nursing. Maura was smart and enjoyed physical activity, but the all American good girl started veering down a bizarre path. Just 3 months prior to her disappearance she admitted to using a stolen credit card to order food from multiple restaurants. Ultimately the charge against her was dropped for good behavior. Many people believed that this was so out of the ordinary for someone like Maura… but maybe no one really knew Maura at all.

Maura and her boyfriend Billy Rausch held a long distance relationship as she left the academy to pursue her new found desire to become a nurse. The two were constantly in contact, someone would probably say that they had too much contact. Maura and Billy made sure to spend a lot of time during the holidays together because it would become difficult to make trips to see each other. They enjoyed the holidays and left one another to return to their education.

Once they got back to their schools things would take a turn for Maura. It seemed that Maura wasn’t exactly who her loved ones thought she was. They say actions speak louder than words. As we can see Maura stole makeup and had used stolen credit cards. She may have been a well rounded student, a great child, a wonderful friend, and a supporting girlfriend, but clearly there was a side to Maura that didn’t quite fit the molds her loved ones had created for her, something was off.

Maura had a job at school, she would sign students in and out to her dorm building. This was to provide safety and a record of who had been in and out of the building. On one of the evening shifts she had been acting bizarre. She had been on a phone call with her sister and she became extremely upset. Allegedly the phone call had been about her sister leaving her husband.

(BTW) during the night of this phone call her father had been staying at a hotel nearby Maura’s school. He went to visit her one weekend to help her buy a new car. The one she had been driving was crapping out and probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer. During his stay he allowed Maura to use his brand new car. It was the night of February 7th 2004, Maura left work very upset and decided to go to a party nearby to get her mind off of things. She ended up crashing the brand new car and caused 8,000 dollars worth of damage. Of course this made her extremely upset, flustered, and angry with herself.

Her dad reassured Maura that his insurance would cover the cost of damage. He rented a car, dropped her off at her dorm, and drove to Connecticut where he worked.

After she got back to her dorm Maura spent some time going through her voicemails. As far as we know she spent most of the day hanging out in her dorm room. By 11:30pm Maura’s dad Fred called her and told her to get the accident reports from the registry, she said okay and they agreed to talk more about it the next day, which was Monday February 9th 2004.

Soon after, Maura would disappear.

After Maura got off the phone with her dad, she did research on New Hampshire, and continued this into the late hours of the night into the early hours of the morning. She looked at directions to New Hampshire, and also looked up information about the Berkshires, which is a rural region in the mountains of Massachusetts.

Maura finally goes to sleep and wakes up in the morning to continue looking up details about New Hampshire. It’s Monday February 9th and she called a condominium that her and her family were familiar with. However, no condo was ever rented, despite her 3 minute call with the location. Maura’s behavior becomes increasingly odd. She emails her boyfriend Billy around noon. She tells him that she hasn’t felt like talking to anyone but she would call him later in the day.

Around 2:15 that afternoon Maura made a brief call to her boyfriend. It wasn’t really about anything important, it was just them checking in on one another. By 4pm Maura emails her boss and teachers saying she will be away for several days due to a loss in her family. However, there was no death in her family.

Maura sets out to the Berkshire mountains. She tells no one. At first this wouldn’t seem so weird. Maura and her father routinely went hiking. Perhaps a mountain escape is what she needed. After all this spring semester seemed to start out with some stressors and difficulties for Maura.

Maura packed all of her belongings and textbooks into boxes, she removed her posters from her dorm room walls. It had seemed like she planned to leave for more than just a couple of days. But why? Yes there was the fact that her sister was divorcing her husband, yes she crashed her father’s brand new car, but 1. why would her sister’s divorce cause her to be so upset that she would abandon school? and 2. insurance covered the costs of the damaged vehicle, and her father didn’t seem to be completely angry with her, he expressed that it would be okay, so why would this cause her to drop everything and leave? Maura had amazing grades, and she was on athletic teams, perhaps that accompanied with these stressors caused her to feel overwhelmed, and she felt she needed a break. Even still, packing up all of her belongings and removing her posters seemed to be a little much. It was as if she was moving out entirely.

Around 3:30pm Maura left and drove out of her school’s parking lot. She was heading to New Hampshire in her crappy, soon to break down, 4 door sedan. At 3:40pm she withdrew $200.00 which left her account almost empty. She stopped at a local liquor store and bought $40.00 worth of liquor.

At 7pm something bone chilling occurs. Maura was driving along route 112 when she crashed into a snow bank. A nearby resident heard and saw the crash and quickly called the nearby sheriff’s office. Another resident saw someone walk around the crashed vehicle. The a passing bus driver stopped at the scene, he later identified her as Maura Murray. She was shook up but not injured. She was cold and shivering, she asked him not to call the police as she had already phoned AAA, which is an association that provides roadside assistance and a plethora of other benefits. However, there would be no record that Maura ever called AAA.

The bus driver lived right down the road and told her she could wait at his house until help arrived. She seemed spooked and refused, she decided to stay in her car. He went home and called the police. They arrived within 10 minutes, the officer approached the crashed vehicle, and Maura was gone. Within 10 minutes she vanished into the snow.

Upon further investigation of the vehicle the officer realized that there were red wine stains on the seat. The bus driver said she didn’t seem to be intoxicated. Maura’s credit card, debit card, some of the liquor bottles, and cellphone were all missing from the vehicle. None of which have ever been located or used.

The following day a missing persons report was filed for Maura. Her father drove to the scene and he along with police began to search for her. Dogs were used but the scent was ultimately lost. Maura’s boyfriend took a flight to help in the search. When he landed he had a voicemail. He listened to it and the hair on his neck stood up. It was a woman sobbing and he believed it to be Muara. Police traced the call, the call came from a prepaid phone card from AT&T. Her mother said that she had bought Maura 2 prepaid phone cards and had given them to her after Thanksgiving break. After futher investigation police found the call came from American Red Cross and deemed the call unrelated to Maura. The family did not believe that. Why would the Red Cross call Billy? And why would someone from there call him crying?

The day Maura went missing dogs were used to track Maura’s scent. The dogs tracked her scent to the front of Butch Atwood’s property, and then the scent disappeared beyond the front yard. But how could this be? Butch said Maura refused to come with him and she stayed in her car? Police searched Butch’s property and no signs of Maura were ever found.

The investigation continued and Bus logs and snow tracks were followed. They searched extensively and policed ended the search by February 21st, 2004. They believed Maura had left on her own accord and there were no signs of foul play.

Maura’s family continued having press conferences. Thermal energy was used to search for Maura. This continued for 12 months and there was never any sign of Maura. Of course police would continue to receive leads but they would always bring them to dead ends.

In 2007 $75,000.00 was offered up as a reward to anyone who could bring information as to what happened to Maura. Eerily in 2012 a creepy YouTuber named Dirtbag112 uploaded a video titled Happy Anniversary. He is a creepy older man with white hair, he’s balding, and has glasses. It looked like he was filming from a brick cellar, and it was just a video of him laughing, it’s very unsettling. Some people believed it was about Maura because it was uploaded on February 8th the last day Maura had been seen by friends, and Maura vanished on route 112, and he had 112 in his username. Maura’s father believed that this could be a link to people or the person who had taken Maura. However, the police and family dismissed this and believed it to be some sick internet troll making a cruel joke.

In 2019 Fred Murray publicly stated that he believed Maura was dead. However, in recent years the Murray family and authorities continue to receive some leads. Fred and an organization dedicated to finding Maura, received permission from a resident who lived near the crash site. The home was previously owned by people who would never answer the door when Fred would come knocking. Someone submitted a tip to Fred and told him to check the home, and the original owners were not about it. Finally in 2020, when new people moved in, they were able to search the basement. Local police joined in and brought cadaver dogs, they picked up a scent underneath the basement floor….

They brought in a 2nd dog and it picked up the scent in the same spot. Police said that when the initial search for Maura began they checked this location and nothing useful was ever found. Fred doesn’t believe this. He wants the police to dig up the basement but they have not. Could it be that Maura was picked up by a local, killed, and buried in their basement?

We may never know what happened to Maura, but there are theories. To this day Maura’s family still follows every tip. It’s been 17 years and they feel that they have spent more time without Maura than with her, and that is a devastating feeling. The cold case unit claims they have never stopped investigating and her case remains open to this day.

So what could have happened to Maura?

Some of the true crime community believes that she was put into human trafficking. They believe that she was randomly picked up by a predator and was then sold. However, there was a 10 minute window of time for this to have happened. I guess it’s not impossible, but how unlikely?

Some people believe that the local police had something to do with it. The department is believed to be incompetent and is believed to have botched the case though a series of miscommunication. The police chief also had a reputation of driving around drunk, so how reliable could this chief be? For others, they believe that someone in the department knows what happened to Maura and for reasons unknown have kept it tight lipped or they are protecting someone. As of this past February some of the people in the town, and some people who are close to the case, have petitioned for law enforcement to release several photos of Maura’s car that have not been made visible to the public.

The chief of police was named Cecil Smith, he actually committed suicide back in 2018. He was automatically deemed suspicious for being the first responder to Maura’s crash. Perhaps he committed suicide out of guilt for something he did to her or for something he knows about her disappearance, or perhaps it was the intense Maura fandom that continued to drag his name through the mud. Smith was known to be a good man and many people never believed him to be guilty of anything, he simply responded to a call about a car crash and since then has been propelled into false accusations. A podcaster named Erinn Larkin mentioned Cecil many times saying he knew more than he let on. Larkin also had a guest on her show who said Rick Forcier did it. Erinn was then sued for defamation of character. Rick was a New Hampshire state trooper who had a troubled past.

Was it Maura’s boyfriend?

Could Maura have been cheating on her boyfriend? Could it be that she was going to meet this other person and Billy found out? Well this would mean he would have had to hire someone to kidnap her and kill her. He has a stone cold Alibi and he was at West Point when all of this transpired. So what is the likelihood of this??

Could it have been her acquaintances from UMass?

Perhaps Maura was driving in tandem with friends and something went wrong. They picked her up after she crashed and somewhere along the way she died and they covered it up. Then they went back to UMass, boxed all of her stuff up and said they had no idea what happened.

Was this whole thing staged?

Something I didn’t mention was that the night Maura’s sister had called her and told her she was divorcing her husband, some peculiar things had taken place. Maura apparently left her job post to grab coffee and food. Between midnight and 1am Maura was not at her job desk. During this time a car had hit a student crossing the street. The student was hit by a driver and the driver did not stop. The student died from his injuries. Between 1am and 1:30am Maura returned to her desk in hysterics. She had a full blown mental breakdown and could not work. She ended her shift early saying it was due to family problems (allegedly the phone call she had with her sister). Her supervisor walked her back to her dorm. That same evening she got into the accident with her father’s car. Could it be that she went to grab coffee in her dad’s car and she hit the student with her dad’s car and killed him. This may have been what made her hysterical and she blamed it on her sister’s divorce. She then could have used her father’s car to go to a party to get her mind off of things and then maybe crashed the car due to her head being clouded from hitting someone and fleeing the scene? If this is the case she probably was terrified that she would go to jail and her whole life would be ruined. She had theft under her belt, she may have killed someone, she crashed her father’s car, who knows if she was drinking and driving, she could have been terrified that law enforcement would figure all of this out, so she decided to disappear.

Maybe crashing her father’s car was on purpose. Perhaps that was to cover up the fact that she struck and killed a student.

According to her family Fred and Maura’s father daughter relationship had a lot of problems. He was always critical of her, not to mention he had a history of domestic violence. Maybe she told her dad what really happened and he was like “listen you have to disappear.” Then you have the fact that Maura’s relationship with Billy was coming to a horrible end. Her sister said Maura had been seeing someone else. Perhaps disappearing seemed to be her only option. Maybe she wanted a new life and she decided to run away and re-write everything. Maybe her family knows this and they have been keeping the façade all of this time. Or maybe she never told her dad what really happened because she didn’t want to be even more of a disappointment so she decided to vanish.

Maybe she was going to meet someone in New Hampshire who would help her disappear. Maybe once she crashed into the snow bank she called that person and they picked her up and gave her a new identity and she disappeared into a new life.

I don’t think we will ever know what truly happened after Maura’s car crashed into the snowy bank in New Hampshire. I don’t know that we are ever supposed to know. I truly believe in the simplest explanations, and I think she wanted a new start and she wanted to evade any jail time. In my opinion the name Maura Murray is dead, but she is some where, and she is still alive.

If you are interested in reading a good book about Maura check out this link:

Leave me a comment and lmk what you think happened to Maura Murray. Also, lmk if you think I should do a podcast episode on Maura’s case!