July 2, 2025 • 55 mins
We’re throwing it back to our interview with Julie Murray this week in anticipation of our trip to Boston for the 2025 True Crime Podcast Festival.
Julie’s sister, Maura Murray, disappeared in Haverhill, New Hampshire on February 9, 2004, and her family has been searching for answers for over 20 years.
Julie has dedicated her life to advocating for Maura and other families in similar situations. She shared what it was like growing up with Maura and what her life was like leading up to that fateful night.
Come back next week for Part 2 and hear more from Julie about the mishandling of Maura’s case and the misconceptions and rumors that have plagued the Murrays for decades.
Find out more about Maura Murray’s case by visiting: mauramurraymissing.org
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Edited by - djaudio22@gmail.com
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Julie’s sister, Maura Murray, disappeared in Haverhill, New Hampshire on February 9, 2004, and her family has been searching for answers for over 20 years.
Julie has dedicated her life to advocating for Maura and other families in similar situations. She shared what it was like growing up with Maura and what her life was like leading up to that fateful night.
Come back next week for Part 2 and hear more from Julie about the mishandling of Maura’s case and the misconceptions and rumors that have plagued the Murrays for decades.
Find out more about Maura Murray’s case by visiting: mauramurraymissing.org
📢 Follow & Subscribe:
Subscribe on Patreon: www.patreon.com/weirdtruecrime
Website: www.weirdtruecrime.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/weirdtruecrime
TikTok: www.tiktok.com/weirdtruecrime
YouTube: www.youtube.com/@weirdtruecrime
Email: weirdtruecrime@gmail.com
Edited by - djaudio22@gmail.com
Leave us a review and share your thoughts — it helps so much!
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/weird-true-crime--5679751/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi friends. We're deep into summer, trying to entertain board
kids and avoid the ridiculous Texas heat.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're all so busy getting ready for the True Crime
Podcast Festival that's just weeks away. Come see us July
eighteenth through twentieth on Boston's North Shore. You can buy
tickets at Truecrimepodcastfestival dot com and use our code Weird
twenty for twenty percent off your tickets. Don't worry, we'll
(00:31):
put all the info in.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
The show notes.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Send us a DM and let us know if you're coming.
We can't wait to see you. And because this is
one of the only ethical true crime conventions out there,
we thought it was a great time to replay our
two part interview with Julie Murray.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Julia's sister Mara went missing on February ninth, two thousand
and four, in New Hampshire. Her family is still searching
for answers over twenty years later.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Mora's case has held the spotlight for years, but gained
new interest with Julie's podcast, Media Pressure, that was released
in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Julie got candid with us about the media's influence on
her sister's case and how a lack of empathy and
assumptions hurt the investigation. Listen to part one this week
and come back next week for part two. You don't
want to.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Miss it, please consider leaving us a five star rating
and review wherever you're listening. Yes, we ask every time,
but it really does help us get discovered by the
podcast apps and grow. We're just two moms with the
passion for sharing the important and you know, sometimes ridiculous stories,
and can't do it without your support.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Until next time, stay safe.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And make good choices.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Bye bye, Fire Eyes Media. On the afternoon February ninth,
two thousand and four, Maura Murray hastily packed her backpack
in her dorm at the University of Massachusetts and made
a couple of pit stops before heading north in her Rundown, Saturn.
(02:11):
At seven twenty seven pm, a resident of Hayrol, New
Hampshire called the local police to report a car accident.
A few minutes later, a school bus driver stopped to
talk to the young woman who was inside or beside
the car, an auved or help. The woman refused, stating
that she had already called triple A. The bus driver
(02:33):
knew this couldn't be true because of the lack of
cell service in the area, so he also called the
police when he arrived home. By the time the first
officer arrived on the scene at seven forty six pm,
Mora's black Saturn sat abandoned and Mara was never seen again.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
It has been almost twenty years since Maura disappeared on
that cold night in Haverol. In that time, multiple documentary
books and podcasts have been made that discuss the theories
and speculations surrounding her disappearance. While it's human nature to
question different aspects of cases like this one and play
(03:13):
armchair detective, Mora's family has faced unnecessary finger pointing, personal
attacks and disgusting accusations about their involvement in Mara's disappearance.
We had the chance to talk with Julie Murray, Moraa's
older sister, about her childhood with Maura, the circumstances around
(03:33):
her disappearance, and the misinformation and mishandling of her case.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Julie's continued advocacy for Maura also led her to found
her Engage with Empathy campaign and the New Hampshire Unsolved
Murdered and Missing Coalition with other victims, families and survivors.
Thank you, Julie for talking with us and trusting us
to tell Maura's story in an honest way.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
And I'm Amber and this is.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The true story of the life and disappearance of Maura Murray.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Maura Murray was born on May fourth, nineteen eighty two,
to Fred and Lourie Murray. She was the youngest daughter
and had three older siblings, Fred Junior, Kathleen, and Julie.
The kids were surprised with another sibling several years later,
when Curtis was born. The family lived in Hanson, Massachusetts,
a small town between the much larger cities of Boston
(04:46):
and Plymouth. During our interview, Julie joked that they measure
town size by the number of Dunkin Donuts there are.
She said, when they were younger, the town only had
one Dunkin Donuts, but now there are two, so obviously
it's hit the big time. In the South, you to
equate that to whether or not the town had a
(05:06):
dairy queen. The Southern listeners definitely know what I'm talking about.
Being in a small town and a working class family,
the kids spend a lot of time outdoors, creating their
own entertainment.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
They frequently traveled to the White Mountains in New Hampshire,
where they would hike, run, and enjoy nature. The kids
spent the majority of their time trying out different sports
and focusing on schoolwork, two subjects in which Maura thrived.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Julie told us that.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
There was a lot of healthy competition between her and Maura,
and that she missed the frequent smack talk and the
sisterly love that Maura provided. Here's Julie talking about their
family dynamics and a pretty funny story about an argument
she and Maura got into as kids.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
It was great to be an older sister to her
because she was so smart, and she was able to
help me as their older so her in school work,
which is amazing. But she also really pushed me in
sports and especially on the track. So Mare and I
grew up playing all kinds of sports, but we were
(06:12):
just drawn to cross country and track and I would
run a race and then Mara would come up behind
me and run it faster, and so we just kind
of pushed each other in that competitive way. But at
the end of the day, we were each other's number
one fans, so I always rooted for Maura and she
(06:34):
always rooted for me, and they'd be all the smack
talking between but at the end of the day, you know,
she was my best friend and I miss her terribly.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Mean, I kind of Amber and I have siblings with
are much different ages than us, so we kind of
grew up as only children in a weird way. But
we have a lot of friends that have siblings, so
it's always curious to me to see they're either really
close or they're not at all. And so it's good
that you had that friendly competition. Did you ever, I mean,
(07:07):
did you ever genuinely get mad at each other or
was it ever like really frustrating having her like beating
you with these races and stuff, or did you just
use that as motivation to like kick her butt the
next time.
Speaker 5 (07:18):
Oh yeah, I mean we were very angry at each
other a lot of times. I remember when we were
playing basketball we had we lived on a dead end
street and culled the sack and at the end of
the street there was a basketball hoop and I remember
playing one on one and just having fierce battles to
(07:39):
where it ended like her throwing the ball at me
and running back to the house and then me chasing.
You know, it just just typical kid stuff. And then
you know when you're mad at each other and you
like do like this sort of silent treatment thing and
they're like, do you want ice cream?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, it was just typical. That's what we did.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
As Julie mentioned, Mara was a runner. Mara was such
a good runner that she consistently finished in the top
tier of runners in the state of Massachusetts and broke
several long standing school records. In her sophomore year of
high school, she was selected as a Boston Globe All
Scholastic and cross Country and qualified for the US National
(08:31):
Scholastic Outdoor Championships, where she finished thirty third in the country.
While she was busy breaking records and going to cross
country championships, she was also top of her class and
won the silver medal in the National Latin Exam. The
girl was a badass. Julie told us that one of
(08:51):
their favorite things to do together was long distance running.
Maura was the perfect running partner. Those long runs can
get lonely, probably boring, and having a good running partner
is crucial.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
The sisters would talk for hours while running endless miles,
the chats varying from random topics to deep conversations about
life and everything in between. Julie told us she's had
other running partners over the years, at West Point and
while in the military, but none of them were as
great as Mara. There have been comments made about the
(09:26):
Murray kids living in a strict household with parents who
pushed too hard and expected too much. When asked about this,
Julie made it clear that this couldn't be further from
the truth.
Speaker 5 (09:39):
Oh, my dad was the most supportive dad that you
could ask for. And what people don't understand is that
long distance runners, like the way that Mura and I were,
you can't force somebody to do that. You either inherently
(09:59):
have desire to want to run an insane amount of
miles and you get pleasure out of that, or you don't.
It's not like you can force someone to get up
on a Sunday morning and run six miles for the
fun of it. So he would actually try to pull
us back a little bit. I remember after several races
(10:23):
where I didn't do as well as I thought, I
would come back home and I'd do this three mile course.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
It was just a circular.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
Loop around the house just to kind of get away
and kind of clear my mind. And he would always
discourage that because it wasn't the best thing to do.
I mean, I just ran a raise. Of course I
didn't do as well as I wanted to, but you know,
in my mind, I thought that would be a good
thing to do, but he always discouraged that. And you know,
(10:57):
my dad was He sacrificed so much for us, getting
out of work and making sure to be at every
single one of our races and being so supportive. And
you know, it just boggles my mind that people said that,
say that he forced us to run. It's like, you
don't force runners to run. We're gonna run no matter what,
(11:21):
you know. And my dad was a marathon or he
ran I think nine marathons in his lifetime, and so
we grew up watching him and he was our inspiration.
And that's I think kind of where more and I
got our passion for running was from him.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So yeah, I mean, he was the best dad you
could ask for.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I could imagine being frustrated with yourself in that moment
and be like, well, I'm just going to make myself
run more almost as a punishment, and having your parent
be like, give yourself a break and you need that.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
I mean I've heard of story is where people go
and they're competitive in sports and their parents just aren't
able to ever be there. But my dad was always
there and that means so much. And thinking back now
as an adult and thinking, you know, if I had
to be at all these races and all these kids,
(12:19):
I don't know if I'd be able to do it
and also take care of my own workout regiment, which
which he did, so he you know, would either get
up early or go at lunchtime. But my dad was
you know, getting his miles in as well.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
And also our mother. You know a lot of people
don't talk about our mother. Our mother passed in two
thousand and nine on Morris birthday.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
But you know, she was.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
Fun and outgoing and always wanted to just you know,
laugh and have a good time. And she would always
make fun of me for being so seriousious all the time.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
And she would.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Say, you know, why are you going to bed so early, Julie.
This is my mother saying this to me. So we
had a good balance of parents where my mom recognized
the fact that I.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Was super serious and needed to.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
Kind of, you know, have a belly laugh every now
and then. She she helped She helped me with that.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
So yeah, oh my gosh, that's did it? Did it work?
Did it help or did it frustrate you?
Speaker 5 (13:36):
Well, you know, I'm so stubborn that I was like, no,
you don't understand. I need eight and a half hours sleep.
And this is me in high school saying this. And
you know, maa, MAA kind of took a little bit
more after my mother where you know, she got it.
She knew that it was important to have balance and
(13:57):
you know that and that carried through through college into
West Point.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Why I loved it and more, didn't you know?
Speaker 5 (14:05):
I was different in my structure, And you know it
was evident even in high school when I'm telling my
mother that I cannot stay up past nine o'clock, Like
it's bizarre that a high schooler.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Would say that to their mother, But yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
When families dedicate their lives to advocating for their loved ones,
they spend most of their time discussing the details of
the case, the timelines, the evidence, and picking apart every
little aspect. During interviews or their own investigation. It can
be hard to find the time to reflect and remember
the life you shared with someone. This is why we
(14:43):
like to ask families what their favorite, mundane, everyday memories are.
Julie shared that this question was an emotional one for her,
but she loved that it gave her a chance to
reflect on experiences she shared with Maura and think about
the times in her life when she wished her sister
could be there.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
You know, I really miss, obviously holidays with Mara because
you know, our parents were divorced when Maria was six
and I was eight.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
I could be off the with the timeline, but.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
It was always great because maaw even though it was
kind of sad that we were separated, we had to
split our time. Maura would always come up with some
jokes and it would make everybody laugh and we could
just laugh together about you know, my mom's cooking or
my grandmother's wrapping paper job, or you know, just little
(15:42):
tiny little things like that that I just miss. And
you know, as I've carried on with my life without Maura,
you know, and watching my parents get old and making
you know, ridiculous statements and my dad telling this same
story to us to me for the three hundredth time.
(16:05):
I know that I could always lean on mar to
make fun of him, and I just miss that I
don't have her to back me up when I make
fun of him, because the smack talk goes between siblings
and parent daughter in relationships.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
So it's just that's what we do.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
And that's our way to show others that we love them.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
So I miss that. I miss.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Being able to have a sounding board for, you know,
vulnerable things that I want to share with somebody, somebody,
somebody that I can trust, because throughout this process, trust
has become a casualty, you know, and it's hard to
trust people as you know, as freely as I did
(16:55):
before I have all this tragedy and morbid stuff happened
to me. So I miss having her as a sounding
board and someone to gossip with, you know, and things
like that.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I it must be so lonely being in the position
you are in when you do have so many people
that just want to talk about you and your family
or say things that are untrue, or use you for
their own advantage in a lot of ways, and it
(17:35):
must be, Yeah, it must be really hard not to
have anyone around really that you can really confide in
or talk to.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
Yeah, you know, Mar's case is so big that people
treat it and treat her and treat my family as
if we're public property and as if we owe people
something and answers. And you know, I'm pretty open and
vulnerable and share a lot, but there are some things
(18:05):
that I don't share. And there are a few precious
memories and precious pictures and things that I haven't made public.
And I shouldn't have to. I shouldn't have to defend
myself for why I'm not, you know, sharing everything. I
think I've shared enough, and you're right, you know, people
(18:26):
have taken advantage of that in our vulnerability. Thank you
for sharing that.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
It makes me.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
It makes me sad to know that that question upset
you the way that it did. But I to your point,
I do think it's important because as a family member
who spends most of their time advocating for their loved one,
you get so caught in the day to day of
just trying to sift through new leads and all of
(18:54):
the information and answer emails and have these conversations and
everything else that I'm sure that that time that you
spent together gets away from you after a while, and
so I think it's good to bring it back and
really focus on who who Mara was and who she
was to you, and those little things that you know
really made her Maura. So thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
Yeah, of course, And I don't think upset is the
right word. I wasn't upset. I was just reflecting and
I don't allow myself the time and space to do
that as often as I like, So I actually appreciate
that you asked me that, So thank you.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I never like making anybody cry, though, so whether it's
like good or bad, I'm still like, Oh, I didn't
want to make you, you know, sorry, but crying is
not always a bad thing.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
No, But I kept my composure for this, so I
got my cry out of the way, although I told
everyone that I did it. But that's fine.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
We don't have to keep that part in if you don't.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
If you want to, Oh, no, I think it's I
love that part. I think that's there's value in that.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
After high school, Julie attended the United States Military Academy
at West Point in New York. West Point is one
of the most highly acclaimed service academies in the country.
Julie thrived there and absolutely loved the discipline, structure, and
physicality that the school demanded. Being two and a half
(20:29):
years older than Maura, Julie would send letters back home
telling Maura all about how wonderful it was and how
much she would love it too. However, Maura and Julie
may have been similar in a lot of ways, but
they were also very different. The aspects of West Point
that Julie appreciated did not vibe with Mora how she
(20:49):
hoped it would.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
When I was at the academy, I would write back Tomara,
who was a high schooler, and tell her how much
that she would love it. And you know, when she
went through the college application process, she had recruiting letters
from Harvard, from Yale, from Brown. She had her pick
(21:12):
of any service academy, and she applied to one one school,
one school only, and that.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Was West Point.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
And that was because I had built it up and
it sort of convinced her that she would love it.
And so she joins me at West Point and she
doesn't love it. And you know, she wasn't alone in
that regard, because there's a lot of high overachieving type kids,
(21:44):
type A personalities that are very successful and academics and
athletics and leadership and their community, but just aren't cut
out for the military. And I think that's kind of
where Mara fell in that spectrum when she was more
of a nurturing type person and wanted to give back
(22:06):
in a different way. And so she eventually followed in
our mother's footsteps and pursued nursing, which was.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
What she was suited for.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Besides not loving the structure and rigor that came with
attending a school like West Point, Maura also found herself
in a little bit of trouble after she stole about
five bucks worth of makeup from Fort Knox. Many people
have speculated on why Maura made this choice, but the
truth is we don't know. When Julie asked Maura for
(22:40):
an explanation, she really didn't have one. What we do
know is that part of the cadet honor code is
to not lie, cheat, or steal, so Mara's choice landed
her in some hot water with the Honor Board. The
Honor Board is a group of cadets who listened to
the facts and evidence and determine a punishment. It's basically
(23:01):
a trial by a group of your peers and as
a West Point tradition, Julie shared that she had several
friends who did much worse than steal makeup and faced
the honor board who did not get kicked out of
the school. In another interview, she mentioned the punishment usually
involved a marching for hours in an uncomfortable uniform or
things of that nature. At the end of the day,
(23:24):
these are still young kids who are going to make mistakes,
and they aren't going to be expelled for such behavior.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Maura did go through the honor board process, but before
her punishment had been adjudicated, she decided to leave West Point.
She left, she was not kicked out. There were several
factors that led her to make this decision. As we said,
Maura didn't love the intense discipline and structure that came
(23:51):
with attending West Point. It takes a certain kind of
person like Julie to thrive in that environment. Was also
at a crossroads. She was reaching the two year mark
at West Point, which is when cadets have to take
the Oath of Affirmation to serve five years of active
duty and then three more years of on call duty
(24:13):
in the ready reserves, not to mention nine to eleven
had just happened. We're going to war, and she was
being asked to pledge eight more years of her life
to the military when she was already unhappy being at
West Point, So she chose to leave before she was
given her punishment. Honestly, why go through the punishment if
(24:36):
you know you don't want to be.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
There anyway exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
We were curious to know what would have happened if
Mara had taken the oath of Affirmation and then decided
to leave. Julie explained there are two options. A person
can either pay back the amount of the first two
and a half years of schooling, or you can join
the army at the lowest rank and work through what
they would have owed. Neither one of the options is great,
(25:01):
so it's good that cadets are given two years to
decide if they want to commit. As we discussed, Mara
realized this was not the path for her and enrolled
in the nursing program at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
Once at UMass, Mara seemed much happier, but did have
some personal struggles. Julie spoke about Mara's mindset and what
(25:23):
she was going through during this time.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
She seems so much happier. You know, she could sleep
in every now and then, which is something forbidden at
West Point. I mean, you have to be up bedmade,
sink clean, all your books lined up perfectly, shoes shined, uniform,
pristine by five point thirty am. So it's not the
(25:48):
typical college experience. And then you know, then you have
to march to breakfast because all cadets march to breakfast,
and you eat your breakfast and you cannot skip class,
you cannot sleep in. There's it's just there's a whole
nother world. And you know, I say this all the time.
(26:11):
It's just not everyone is cut out for that. And
so I would talk Tomara mostly through AOL instant messenger,
which is kind of dates me, but back in the.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Day we are the same era.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
So okay, okay, you get it, you get it. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:33):
Yeah, And she, you know, she seemed to be doing
well and she was closer to home, and she seemed happy.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Do you feel like she was open about what she
was going through or do you think there were some
things that she was keeping to herself.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
Yeah, she tried to keep stuff to herself, but with me,
I wasn't the one because we were so close. So
whenever I noticed something, I would call her on it
and she would be grudgingly tell me what was happening.
And you know, there's probably things she didn't tell me,
(27:10):
but there's a lot of things, you know, as an
older sister, you notice, and so I would ask her
about certain things, you know, and give her advice and
things like that. So she did have some struggles with
disordered eating, which obviously she wasn't going to share with me,
(27:33):
but I found out, and you know, we had long
conversations about that, and she was embarrassed and ashamed about it.
As you know, anyone who's been through it knows it's
not an easy thing to go through, but it is
something that's very prevalent at schools like West Point and
(27:54):
other service academies, especially and with athletes, female athletes. So
you know, we discussed that a lot, and she tried
to deny it, you know at first, which you're not
going to be able to get away with that with me,
And that goes back to the bonds that we built
growing up. You know, I'm her oldest sister. She can
(28:15):
tell other people, you know whatever, but she knew she
wasn't getting away with that with me, and the parat
irritated her a little bit. But at the end of
the day, I know that she appreciated it, and she
knew that I loved her and cared about her and
just wanted the best for her.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Did she take your advice to heart or was she
one to just be like, yeah, yeah, okay, I hear you.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Yeah, mar looked up to me. She definitely looked up
to me, and that's part of why she followed me
to West Point and things like that. And I yeah,
she definitely took what I said to heart, and she
did seek help and try to get better.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Well. Ura may have had a better life balance at UMass,
her struggles with disordered eating led her to make more
questionable decisions. She was caught using someone else's credit card
to buy a large amount of food in the middle
of the night. Maura was put on three months probation
for good behavior. We asked Julie for more details about this,
(29:22):
and she's pretty sure that was through Amherst Police Department,
but she's not one hundred percent certain. Julie didn't know
about Mara using someone else's credit card until after she
went missing, and she was still on probation at the
time of her disappearance. When talking about Mara's choice to
do this and if it was possible that she didn't
(29:43):
want her parents to notice the spending or question her
about it, Julie mentioned that the kids never asked for
money or racked up their parents' credit cards because they
already spent so much on them for their various sports
and other activities. They were very aware of what their
parents proves them and didn't want to burden them financially.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
Even as kids, we wouldn't even ask for anything special.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
You know.
Speaker 5 (30:09):
I remember when the Champion sweatshirts came out and everyone
had the Champion sweatshirts, and of course more and I
wanted the Champion sweatshirts, but we're like, that's way too expensive.
We don't want to burden our family with that. So
we would never ask our parents for money, because, you know,
my dad and my mom was spending so much on
(30:30):
all of our sports, and you know, we were on
traveling basketball teams, so that came a travel costs and
hotels and uniforms and entry fees, so we would never
want to burden them financially. And that's part of the
reason why when Maura got in an accent with my
dad's car, she was so upset. You know, that was
(30:53):
her being just so upset at herself because she felt
like she was financially putting a burden on my dad,
when at the end of the day it ended up
being nothing because insurance would cover it. But yeah, I mean,
if you think about the credit card stuff at UMass
(31:14):
and you look at it through the lens of somebody
that's young and struggling, just looking at the time frame
of when the purchases happened kind of puts you into
Mars's state of minds.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
You know, who's.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
Ordering food at three am? Somebody that is ashamed and
embarrassed about what they're doing and doesn't feel good about it.
And you know, you notice that, and you can see
that when you look at other people with disordered eating,
where there's this trend to do it late at night,
(31:51):
and that goes into the shame and the embarrassment aspect.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Of course, she.
Speaker 5 (31:57):
Knew and you know, I'm not condoning that she used
somebody else's credit card.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
That was wrong.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
She knew that was wrong, that was not okay, But
it's just another data point and where she was mentally
at that time. If she had asked anybody in our family, hey,
can you give me twenty bucks so I can get food,
absolutely any of us would double that, but she would
(32:26):
never want to ask us, so.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
She just didn't.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
She try to figure it out on her own, which
is really sad, you know, and you think back to it.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
She needed help, She needed help.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
On the night of Thursday, February fifth, two thousand and four,
Maura was doing her work study at one of the
UMass dorms where she checked student IDs. This was a
great way for her to earn a little money but
still have time to study since it was later at
night and there was a much foot traffic. Mara was
in a very competitive nursing program on the Dean's list,
(33:01):
so having ample study time was a must. Around ten PM,
her oldest sister, Kathleen called her. Kathleen struggled with addiction
and had just gotten out of rehab that day. She
called Maura to vent about the disappointment she was feeling
in herself because her then fiance picked her up from
the rehab facility and took her straight to a liquor store.
(33:24):
Needless to say, the Murray family were not fans of
this guy, and expressed to Kathleen on multiple occasions that
she could do so much better, but the truth can
be hard to see when you're in the middle of it,
and as a lot of.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Us know, during their conversation, Maura didn't have much of
a reaction other than reassurance and showing support for Kathleen.
She didn't seem overly upset or angry during the phone call.
A little while later, Maura's long distance boyfriend, Bill, who
was stationed at Fortsville, Oklahoma, called her. According to Bill,
(34:00):
it was a standard conversation and nothing really stood out
or seemed out of the ordinary. More time goes by
and Maura suddenly becomes so upset that she can't function.
Her supervisor escorts her back to her room, and when
asked what's wrong, the only thing Marris says is my sister,
My sister. This event was the first big red flag
(34:23):
that something more was going on. Here's Julie talking about
Mara's emotional state that night and the events that took
place over the next couple of days.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
We still really don't know what it was that upset
Maura to that extent. Was it a call from Kathleen
several hours earlier, I don't know. You know, I know
that Mara would have tried to hold space for Kathleen
in that time where Kathleen was sharing, Hey, you know
(34:56):
this horrible thing happened. I've already relapsed and I'm dating
this piece of crap guy. I don't believe that Maura
would have broken down kind of during that conversation because
I know that Mara was empathetic enough to know that
she needed to be strong for Kathleen because obviously she's
(35:17):
sharing something like that.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
So I don't know.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
I don't really know exactly what caused her to be
that upset. So that was the first major red flag,
and that was Thursday, and she disappeared on Monday. So
Thursday goes into Friday. Friday, there's a big snowstorm at UMass.
Classes are canceled, not a whole lot happening on Friday.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
I know that.
Speaker 5 (35:46):
Mar didn't mention it to me through phone call or
chat or whatever. I was back from South Korea at
the time. I was in North Carolina. So then Saturday
comes and my dad realizes Marinie's new car because her
car was smoking and running on three cylinders, and he
(36:10):
told her, do not drive this car. I'm coming up
and we're going to get a new car. And when
I say new, I mean used, but for a college kid,
that means now. So Mara had been calling around to
different numbers on classified ads in the newspaper, and it's
on her phone records and it shows that she was
(36:30):
actively trying to find a car from her winter break
up until that time, and obviously she didn't find anything.
So my dad came up to your mask. They go
car shopping. Mara calls me at three twenty one pm,
I think it is three thirty seven something like that,
and tells me about the cars that they looked at,
(36:52):
and I'm like, this is great whatever.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
You know.
Speaker 5 (36:55):
I don't really remember the specifics of the phone call,
but that would be the last time I would ever
talk to my sister. So then they don't end up
buying car. They narrow it down to like three and
they thought at that time they had the whole next
day to continue to car shop, or if they didn't
(37:17):
find anything, the next weekend whatever. So Mar's friend Kate
was coming home from a track meet and said, hey,
do you want to hang out? Mar said, yeah, we're
at this.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Brewery.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
Do you want to come and get dinner and drinks
with my dad? My dad's in town, which was something
that was typical because whenever my dad was around, we
would invite everyone we knew to go out because he
would always pay for it, and as college kids, that
was perfect. So they do that, and then I think
(37:52):
it was Kate, or maybe it was Mara gets a
call from another friend named Sarah, and Sarah said, Hey,
we're having a little we'll get together at the dorm later.
You guys do want to come, and so Kate and
Mara like, yeah, absolutely. So they dropped my dad off
at the motel that he was staying at and they
(38:14):
but before that, they went to a liquor store and
Mara got this box wine which will be important later,
so that she gets this box wine. And they dropped
my dad off at the motel and then for some reason,
they decided to take my dad's new car, his Corolla
(38:34):
that he had just purchased.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
To the dorm. I think it's because.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
She wanted to have access to the car in the
morning so that she didn't have to ask him to
come pick her up.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Or I don't know.
Speaker 5 (38:46):
I don't really know the rationale. But they take the car. Yeah,
take the car, go to the dorm party. Dorm party
is kind of shrouded in mystery because nobody knows zactly
what happened or who is there, and the friend that
hosted it, Sarah, hasn't been very forthcoming with providing information
(39:09):
about what happened. So around two thirty am, Kate decides
to leave, and so does Mara around the same time,
and instead of going up to her dorm room, mar
decides to take the Corolla back to my dad's motel.
(39:29):
But when she does that, she crashes about a mile
off campus head on at a tea intersection into a
guardrail and causes thousands of dollars worth of damage to
my dad's new car. So this is Saturday night, so
a tow truck comes, the police come. What's interesting is
(39:54):
they don't cite her for duy, They don't do any
medical evaluation on her or whatsoever, and she just basically
gets into the toe operator's vehicle and drives back to
the motel. And the car was taken to this repair
shop that was right beside the motel. So obviously Mare
(40:18):
was so upset with herself because she caused all this
damage and burden on my dad, and she was crying
and was upset, and my dad finally figures out that
insurance would cover it. There was some loophole where insurance
would cover it, and he was like.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Mar don't worry about it. Insurance will cover it.
Speaker 5 (40:40):
What I need you to do is get these accident
forms tomorrow, which would be Monday, so that we can
make sure everything's straight.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
And she agrees to do that.
Speaker 5 (40:51):
And so now we're when Sunday, my dad drops Mare
off at the dorm. That would be the last time
he ever saw her, and she was crying when he
last saw her, which is heartbreaking. That image is heartbreaking
to think about. She does call him on Sunday night,
(41:14):
calls my dad and they talk about again, Hey, you
need to get these accident forms. So then Monday comes
along and that's the day where she disappeared.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Fred never figured out why Maura drove back to his
motel instead of going upstairs to her dorm room after
leaving the party on Saturday night. One interesting tidbit of
information that Julie shared with us is that Mara's accident
didn't occur until about an hour after she and her
friend Kate left the party between two and two thirty am.
(41:47):
Kate has been very open with the Murrays about the
events that took place that night, but she doesn't know
why Maura didn't go upstairs to her room or if
something happened after she last saw her. The girl who
threw the party has been left cooperative about sharing details
of what went on that night. What we do know
is that it doesn't take an hour to drive from
the dorm to the motel. Mora was known to drive
(42:10):
insanely fast, but speed wasn't listed as a factor on
the accident report. The report said she was inattentive and
slid on debris on the road.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
That was it.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
No speed or intoxication was involved.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Mara had left her phone in her dorm room and
didn't have a key to Fred's motel room, so after
the tow truck driver dropped her off, she had to
call or buzz someone to come let her into Fred's
room or call his room so he could come get her.
This is one of those motels where the office manager
either lives on site or nearby, so she had to
(42:45):
wait a while before getting a response. She eventually gets
to Fred's motel room, where she borrows his phone to
call her boyfriend Bill. Bill said she was crying and
upset about the accident and probably trying to figure out
how to tell Fred that she had wrecked his car.
Mid morning, she tells her dad what happened. There are
(43:05):
a lot of people who have made assumptions about how
Fred handled the news, and honestly, I think most people
would expect yelling in this type of situation, but that
wasn't Fred's style.
Speaker 5 (43:19):
People say my dad screamed at her, which is so
funny to me because I've never heard my dad scream
at us. Ever, that is not the way that he
responded to anything that we did, you know, and a
lot of times we wished he would have screamed at
us because it would have made us feel better, but
(43:40):
he just kind of matter of fact, like, here's what
we need to do.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
You know, you screw it up, blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 5 (43:47):
So the people that say my dad screamed at Maura
are making it up.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Fred and Maurra talked one more time on Sunday night
about the accident form she needed to pick up the
next day. She was a night so it wasn't unusual
for her to do homework late into the night and
early morning. Maura had a nursing school assignment to look
up pregnancy terms, and she and a group of other
students split up the terms so they didn't each have
(44:13):
to do all of it. She submitted her assignment at
three point thirty two am on Monday, February ninth, the
day she disappeared. To Julie, this is a data point
that Maura wasn't planning to disappear, because if that were
the case, why would she take the time to complete
her homework. This is a fair point. If you weren't
(44:33):
planning to return to school, you wouldn't be worried about
a bad grade. After this, Mara starts making some interesting
searches on her computer. Here's Julie explaining what Maura searched
for and the rest of her actions that day.
Speaker 5 (44:49):
Then she does a number of internet searches for the
Berkshears and Burlington, Vermont, kind of in the general air. Yeah,
Now I pose the question to law enforcement, did she
look up the Burkshears in Massachusetts or the Burkshears in Vermont,
(45:11):
because there's multiple Berkshears and they're different locations. So when
people say the Berkshires, as a Massachusetts resident or some
of the group MASSA chooses, I'm thinking western mass but
it could also mean some place completely different, but law
enforcement couldn't pinpoint that for me. So anyway, she's looking
(45:33):
at directions somewhere else, and then she gets some sleep,
and then there's no activity until mid morning on Monday,
February ninth, and that's when she picks up some more
Internet searches, and now she's looking at condos and things
(45:54):
like that. So she eventually calls a condo owner at
a place in Bartlett, New Hampshire, which is a complex
that my family had stayed at before, but we didn't
rent out that particular unit. She doesn't secure a reservation.
Then she emails her professors. And this might be a
(46:16):
little bit out of order, but these are the main
bullet points of what she did that day. She emails
her professors saying that there's a death in the family
and that she needed some time away from school. And
in my mind, that's just a typical college aids excuse
to where somebody's not going to ask additional questions. It's
(46:37):
kind of like a free pass, like no one's going
to say tell me more about that. They're just going
to be super supportive.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
There was no death in the family.
Speaker 5 (46:48):
And then she calls a information line called one eight
hundred Ghosts Dowe and Stowe is a ski resort in
the Burlington, Vermont area. She doesn't end up booking a reservation.
It was just a information line that discussed ski conditions,
weather conditions, things like that, so she never spoke to
(47:09):
a human, so again doesn't book a reservation. But here
you have Mara calling Bartlett, New Hampshire and Burlington, Vermont,
which are very different geographic areas, and it takes about
two hours to drive from Bartlett to Burlington. So what
this indicates to me is she didn't really have a
(47:32):
clear plan on what the hell her plan was other
than I want to go north.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Mara then plays phone tag with Bill, but they don't connect.
She sends him an email saying she loves him but
doesn't really feel like talking at the moment and she'll
call him later, but they never talk. She then goes
to an ATM and withdraws two hundred and eighty dollars
from her account, leaving just under twenty dollars in the bank.
(48:01):
People who follow Mara's case get stuck on this amount,
but honestly it makes perfect sense. Overdraftees come into consideration here,
and to me, this is another data point that Maura
wasn't planning to disappear. She had no intention of returning.
Would she really be worried about overdrafting her account? Probably not.
(48:23):
After getting the cash, she heads to a liquor store
and buys forty dollars worth of alcohol, which included a
bottle of kalua and vodka. This may seem like a
lot of alcohol for one person, but Mara's favorite drink
was a black Russian, which is a mix of kalua
and vodka, and those ingredients have to be purchased in
(48:44):
large quantities. This is coming from someone whose drink of
choice in college was a white Russian, so it doesn't
seem strange to me at all that she would purchase
large bottles to use over a long period of time.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Not only does Mara make a purchase at the liquor store,
She also returns seventy nine cans to recycle in exchange
for three ninety five. We know this because of the
receipt found in her abandoned car. This is yet another
data point to show that she was not trying to disappear.
In Julie's words, if Mara's plan was to say screw
(49:18):
it all and disappear, why would she take the time
to recycle. It just doesn't make sense. Once she leaves
the liquor stores, she gets the accident form she promised
to get her Fred, which were also found in her car.
The plan was to speak with Fred on Monday night
so he could help her fill out the forms. Here
is another example showing that Mora was running important errands
(49:40):
and making future plans, which doesn't make sense if she
had no intention of being around for those events. At
four thirty seven pm, Mara uses her cell phone to
check her voicemail. This would be her last known cell
activity ever. Almost three hours later, Maura is seen in Haveral,
New Hampshire.
Speaker 5 (50:00):
There's several hours where there's no nothing, no activity at all,
and then at seven twenty seven pm, a woman named
Faith Westman looks out her window and here's this loud
thud and notices a black saturn on the side of
the road and the opposite lane facing the wrong direction,
(50:22):
so she's in the eastbound lane facing westbound, if that
makes sense, And she calls nine on one, and that
was the last time that we've ever heard from.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
After Faith Westman called nine to one one. A bus
driver and resident of the area, Butch Atwood, sees Maura
on the side of the road and stops to ask
if she needs help. This is somewhere between seven twenty
seven and seven thirty three pm. When Butch asks Mara
if she'd like him to call for help, she tells
(51:01):
him that she has already called Triple A and has
got it under control. Butch doesn't believe this, though, because
there's no cell phone service in the area and there
still isn't to this day, so when he returns to
his home about one hundred meters from Mara's car, he
calls nine to one one on his home phone at
seven point forty two pm. We asked Julie her thoughts
(51:24):
on whether or not Mara really had tried to call
for help when Butch came by. Maura's cell records don't
show any activity during this time period, so we know
she didn't talk to anyone on the phone.
Speaker 5 (51:37):
Perhaps she was planning to call and said I've already
called Triple A, thinking in her mind, I'm about to
call Triple A once you get out of my face.
Speaker 3 (51:48):
And then and then at that moment.
Speaker 5 (51:52):
She realizes, Oh, no, I don't have any communication. I'm
in a bad situation. I should have accepted that help.
I'll accept help from the next person that isn't this
big bus driver guy that may have creeped her out.
So I'm thinking that maybe she hadn't formulated her plan
(52:15):
and was just trying to get him away before she
knew that there was no cell phone service. So at
some point Mara realizes there's no service here. I'm in
a whole lot more of a vulnerable position than I,
you know, originally thought when this bus drivers asking me
(52:36):
for help, that's just me thinking and as knowing Mara
and knowing how I would have reacted, I would have
been all set, I'm good to go. I got Triple A,
and then thinking oh, I'm going to call, and then realize, oh,
I don't have a signal. I'm not saying that's one
hundred percent when happen. Obviously I wasn't there. I don't know,
(52:58):
but it is possible, and I could definitely see Maura saying,
don't worry about it. I don't want to burden you,
because that's how she was.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Maura's hesitation to accept help from Butch makes complete sense.
He was a large man in height and size, and
here she is a woman alone on the side of
the road, not knowing if he can be trusted. A
lot of us would probably do the same thing in
her situation. Butch's story about what happened that night also
(53:30):
changed several times. First he was sitting in the bus,
then he was standing outside of the bus talking to
Mora from the other side of the car. However, Julie
made a good point about witnesses not being infallible. We
don't know why he changed his story or if there
was any motive behind it, but humans don't have the
best memory, and there's a reason why witness statements don't
(53:53):
hold as much weight as say, physical or DNA evidence.
He also agreed to take two tests and failed the
first one. But as we know, polygraph tests aren't admissible
in court, and we're talking about an older gentleman who
is not in the best health, strapped to a light
detector and questioned about a missing woman. That's bound to
(54:15):
make anyone's heart race a little too fast.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Julie doesn't know if Butch's house was ever searched. If
it was, law enforcement didn't share that with her, but
she did share that he lived with his common law
wife Barbara and his mother at the time of morris disappearance,
and they were both home at the time. The chance
of Butch having something to do with morris disappearance is
honestly very low, but what we do know is that
(54:41):
he was the last person to see her. Getting back
to the events of that night, we have two calls
to nine to one one Faith Westmans at seven twenty
seven pm and Butch Atwood's at seven forty two pm
according to official records. Cecil Smith, an officer with the
hay Le Police Department, arrives on the scene at seven
(55:03):
forty six pm and finds the black Saturn allegedly locked,
but Mora is nowhere.
Speaker 4 (55:09):
To be found.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
In next week's episode, we will continue our conversation with
Julie and break down the poor investigation, missteps and misinformation
surrounding Morris's disappearance. We will also talk about what it's
like to live with a missing family member, Julie's Engage
with Empathy campaign, and the twenty year Vigil for Mora.
(55:32):
Until next time, stay safe.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
And make a choices.
Speaker 4 (55:37):
Bye bye,
Hi friends. We're deep into summer, trying to entertain board
kids and avoid the ridiculous Texas heat.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're all so busy getting ready for the True Crime
Podcast Festival that's just weeks away. Come see us July
eighteenth through twentieth on Boston's North Shore. You can buy
tickets at Truecrimepodcastfestival dot com and use our code Weird
twenty for twenty percent off your tickets. Don't worry, we'll
(00:31):
put all the info in.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
The show notes.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Send us a DM and let us know if you're coming.
We can't wait to see you. And because this is
one of the only ethical true crime conventions out there,
we thought it was a great time to replay our
two part interview with Julie Murray.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Julia's sister Mara went missing on February ninth, two thousand
and four, in New Hampshire. Her family is still searching
for answers over twenty years later.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Mora's case has held the spotlight for years, but gained
new interest with Julie's podcast, Media Pressure, that was released
in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Julie got candid with us about the media's influence on
her sister's case and how a lack of empathy and
assumptions hurt the investigation. Listen to part one this week
and come back next week for part two. You don't
want to.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Miss it, please consider leaving us a five star rating
and review wherever you're listening. Yes, we ask every time,
but it really does help us get discovered by the
podcast apps and grow. We're just two moms with the
passion for sharing the important and you know, sometimes ridiculous stories,
and can't do it without your support.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Until next time, stay safe.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And make good choices.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Bye bye, Fire Eyes Media. On the afternoon February ninth,
two thousand and four, Maura Murray hastily packed her backpack
in her dorm at the University of Massachusetts and made
a couple of pit stops before heading north in her Rundown, Saturn.
(02:11):
At seven twenty seven pm, a resident of Hayrol, New
Hampshire called the local police to report a car accident.
A few minutes later, a school bus driver stopped to
talk to the young woman who was inside or beside
the car, an auved or help. The woman refused, stating
that she had already called triple A. The bus driver
(02:33):
knew this couldn't be true because of the lack of
cell service in the area, so he also called the
police when he arrived home. By the time the first
officer arrived on the scene at seven forty six pm,
Mora's black Saturn sat abandoned and Mara was never seen again.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
It has been almost twenty years since Maura disappeared on
that cold night in Haverol. In that time, multiple documentary
books and podcasts have been made that discuss the theories
and speculations surrounding her disappearance. While it's human nature to
question different aspects of cases like this one and play
(03:13):
armchair detective, Mora's family has faced unnecessary finger pointing, personal
attacks and disgusting accusations about their involvement in Mara's disappearance.
We had the chance to talk with Julie Murray, Moraa's
older sister, about her childhood with Maura, the circumstances around
(03:33):
her disappearance, and the misinformation and mishandling of her case.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Julie's continued advocacy for Maura also led her to found
her Engage with Empathy campaign and the New Hampshire Unsolved
Murdered and Missing Coalition with other victims, families and survivors.
Thank you, Julie for talking with us and trusting us
to tell Maura's story in an honest way.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
And I'm Amber and this is.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The true story of the life and disappearance of Maura Murray.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Maura Murray was born on May fourth, nineteen eighty two,
to Fred and Lourie Murray. She was the youngest daughter
and had three older siblings, Fred Junior, Kathleen, and Julie.
The kids were surprised with another sibling several years later,
when Curtis was born. The family lived in Hanson, Massachusetts,
a small town between the much larger cities of Boston
(04:46):
and Plymouth. During our interview, Julie joked that they measure
town size by the number of Dunkin Donuts there are.
She said, when they were younger, the town only had
one Dunkin Donuts, but now there are two, so obviously
it's hit the big time. In the South, you to
equate that to whether or not the town had a
(05:06):
dairy queen. The Southern listeners definitely know what I'm talking about.
Being in a small town and a working class family,
the kids spend a lot of time outdoors, creating their
own entertainment.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
They frequently traveled to the White Mountains in New Hampshire,
where they would hike, run, and enjoy nature. The kids
spent the majority of their time trying out different sports
and focusing on schoolwork, two subjects in which Maura thrived.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Julie told us that.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
There was a lot of healthy competition between her and Maura,
and that she missed the frequent smack talk and the
sisterly love that Maura provided. Here's Julie talking about their
family dynamics and a pretty funny story about an argument
she and Maura got into as kids.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
It was great to be an older sister to her
because she was so smart, and she was able to
help me as their older so her in school work,
which is amazing. But she also really pushed me in
sports and especially on the track. So Mare and I
grew up playing all kinds of sports, but we were
(06:12):
just drawn to cross country and track and I would
run a race and then Mara would come up behind
me and run it faster, and so we just kind
of pushed each other in that competitive way. But at
the end of the day, we were each other's number
one fans, so I always rooted for Maura and she
(06:34):
always rooted for me, and they'd be all the smack
talking between but at the end of the day, you know,
she was my best friend and I miss her terribly.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Mean, I kind of Amber and I have siblings with
are much different ages than us, so we kind of
grew up as only children in a weird way. But
we have a lot of friends that have siblings, so
it's always curious to me to see they're either really
close or they're not at all. And so it's good
that you had that friendly competition. Did you ever, I mean,
(07:07):
did you ever genuinely get mad at each other or
was it ever like really frustrating having her like beating
you with these races and stuff, or did you just
use that as motivation to like kick her butt the
next time.
Speaker 5 (07:18):
Oh yeah, I mean we were very angry at each
other a lot of times. I remember when we were
playing basketball we had we lived on a dead end
street and culled the sack and at the end of
the street there was a basketball hoop and I remember
playing one on one and just having fierce battles to
(07:39):
where it ended like her throwing the ball at me
and running back to the house and then me chasing.
You know, it just just typical kid stuff. And then
you know when you're mad at each other and you
like do like this sort of silent treatment thing and
they're like, do you want ice cream?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, it was just typical. That's what we did.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
As Julie mentioned, Mara was a runner. Mara was such
a good runner that she consistently finished in the top
tier of runners in the state of Massachusetts and broke
several long standing school records. In her sophomore year of
high school, she was selected as a Boston Globe All
Scholastic and cross Country and qualified for the US National
(08:31):
Scholastic Outdoor Championships, where she finished thirty third in the country.
While she was busy breaking records and going to cross
country championships, she was also top of her class and
won the silver medal in the National Latin Exam. The
girl was a badass. Julie told us that one of
(08:51):
their favorite things to do together was long distance running.
Maura was the perfect running partner. Those long runs can
get lonely, probably boring, and having a good running partner
is crucial.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
The sisters would talk for hours while running endless miles,
the chats varying from random topics to deep conversations about
life and everything in between. Julie told us she's had
other running partners over the years, at West Point and
while in the military, but none of them were as
great as Mara. There have been comments made about the
(09:26):
Murray kids living in a strict household with parents who
pushed too hard and expected too much. When asked about this,
Julie made it clear that this couldn't be further from
the truth.
Speaker 5 (09:39):
Oh, my dad was the most supportive dad that you
could ask for. And what people don't understand is that
long distance runners, like the way that Mura and I were,
you can't force somebody to do that. You either inherently
(09:59):
have desire to want to run an insane amount of
miles and you get pleasure out of that, or you don't.
It's not like you can force someone to get up
on a Sunday morning and run six miles for the
fun of it. So he would actually try to pull
us back a little bit. I remember after several races
(10:23):
where I didn't do as well as I thought, I
would come back home and I'd do this three mile course.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
It was just a circular.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
Loop around the house just to kind of get away
and kind of clear my mind. And he would always
discourage that because it wasn't the best thing to do.
I mean, I just ran a raise. Of course I
didn't do as well as I wanted to, but you know,
in my mind, I thought that would be a good
thing to do, but he always discouraged that. And you know,
(10:57):
my dad was He sacrificed so much for us, getting
out of work and making sure to be at every
single one of our races and being so supportive. And
you know, it just boggles my mind that people said that,
say that he forced us to run. It's like, you
don't force runners to run. We're gonna run no matter what,
(11:21):
you know. And my dad was a marathon or he
ran I think nine marathons in his lifetime, and so
we grew up watching him and he was our inspiration.
And that's I think kind of where more and I
got our passion for running was from him.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So yeah, I mean, he was the best dad you
could ask for.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I could imagine being frustrated with yourself in that moment
and be like, well, I'm just going to make myself
run more almost as a punishment, and having your parent
be like, give yourself a break and you need that.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
I mean I've heard of story is where people go
and they're competitive in sports and their parents just aren't
able to ever be there. But my dad was always
there and that means so much. And thinking back now
as an adult and thinking, you know, if I had
to be at all these races and all these kids,
(12:19):
I don't know if I'd be able to do it
and also take care of my own workout regiment, which
which he did, so he you know, would either get
up early or go at lunchtime. But my dad was
you know, getting his miles in as well.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
And also our mother. You know a lot of people
don't talk about our mother. Our mother passed in two
thousand and nine on Morris birthday.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
But you know, she was.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
Fun and outgoing and always wanted to just you know,
laugh and have a good time. And she would always
make fun of me for being so seriousious all the time.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
And she would.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Say, you know, why are you going to bed so early, Julie.
This is my mother saying this to me. So we
had a good balance of parents where my mom recognized
the fact that I.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Was super serious and needed to.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
Kind of, you know, have a belly laugh every now
and then. She she helped She helped me with that.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
So yeah, oh my gosh, that's did it? Did it work?
Did it help or did it frustrate you?
Speaker 5 (13:36):
Well, you know, I'm so stubborn that I was like, no,
you don't understand. I need eight and a half hours sleep.
And this is me in high school saying this. And
you know, maa, MAA kind of took a little bit
more after my mother where you know, she got it.
She knew that it was important to have balance and
(13:57):
you know that and that carried through through college into
West Point.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Why I loved it and more, didn't you know?
Speaker 5 (14:05):
I was different in my structure, And you know it
was evident even in high school when I'm telling my
mother that I cannot stay up past nine o'clock, Like
it's bizarre that a high schooler.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Would say that to their mother, But yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
When families dedicate their lives to advocating for their loved ones,
they spend most of their time discussing the details of
the case, the timelines, the evidence, and picking apart every
little aspect. During interviews or their own investigation. It can
be hard to find the time to reflect and remember
the life you shared with someone. This is why we
(14:43):
like to ask families what their favorite, mundane, everyday memories are.
Julie shared that this question was an emotional one for her,
but she loved that it gave her a chance to
reflect on experiences she shared with Maura and think about
the times in her life when she wished her sister
could be there.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
You know, I really miss, obviously holidays with Mara because
you know, our parents were divorced when Maria was six
and I was eight.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
I could be off the with the timeline, but.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
It was always great because maaw even though it was
kind of sad that we were separated, we had to
split our time. Maura would always come up with some
jokes and it would make everybody laugh and we could
just laugh together about you know, my mom's cooking or
my grandmother's wrapping paper job, or you know, just little
(15:42):
tiny little things like that that I just miss. And
you know, as I've carried on with my life without Maura,
you know, and watching my parents get old and making
you know, ridiculous statements and my dad telling this same
story to us to me for the three hundredth time.
(16:05):
I know that I could always lean on mar to
make fun of him, and I just miss that I
don't have her to back me up when I make
fun of him, because the smack talk goes between siblings
and parent daughter in relationships.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
So it's just that's what we do.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
And that's our way to show others that we love them.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
So I miss that. I miss.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Being able to have a sounding board for, you know,
vulnerable things that I want to share with somebody, somebody,
somebody that I can trust, because throughout this process, trust
has become a casualty, you know, and it's hard to
trust people as you know, as freely as I did
(16:55):
before I have all this tragedy and morbid stuff happened
to me. So I miss having her as a sounding
board and someone to gossip with, you know, and things
like that.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I it must be so lonely being in the position
you are in when you do have so many people
that just want to talk about you and your family
or say things that are untrue, or use you for
their own advantage in a lot of ways, and it
(17:35):
must be, Yeah, it must be really hard not to
have anyone around really that you can really confide in
or talk to.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
Yeah, you know, Mar's case is so big that people
treat it and treat her and treat my family as
if we're public property and as if we owe people
something and answers. And you know, I'm pretty open and
vulnerable and share a lot, but there are some things
(18:05):
that I don't share. And there are a few precious
memories and precious pictures and things that I haven't made public.
And I shouldn't have to. I shouldn't have to defend
myself for why I'm not, you know, sharing everything. I
think I've shared enough, and you're right, you know, people
(18:26):
have taken advantage of that in our vulnerability. Thank you
for sharing that.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
It makes me.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
It makes me sad to know that that question upset
you the way that it did. But I to your point,
I do think it's important because as a family member
who spends most of their time advocating for their loved one,
you get so caught in the day to day of
just trying to sift through new leads and all of
(18:54):
the information and answer emails and have these conversations and
everything else that I'm sure that that time that you
spent together gets away from you after a while, and
so I think it's good to bring it back and
really focus on who who Mara was and who she
was to you, and those little things that you know
really made her Maura. So thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
Yeah, of course, And I don't think upset is the
right word. I wasn't upset. I was just reflecting and
I don't allow myself the time and space to do
that as often as I like, So I actually appreciate
that you asked me that, So thank you.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I never like making anybody cry, though, so whether it's
like good or bad, I'm still like, Oh, I didn't
want to make you, you know, sorry, but crying is
not always a bad thing.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
No, But I kept my composure for this, so I
got my cry out of the way, although I told
everyone that I did it. But that's fine.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
We don't have to keep that part in if you don't.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
If you want to, Oh, no, I think it's I
love that part. I think that's there's value in that.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
After high school, Julie attended the United States Military Academy
at West Point in New York. West Point is one
of the most highly acclaimed service academies in the country.
Julie thrived there and absolutely loved the discipline, structure, and
physicality that the school demanded. Being two and a half
(20:29):
years older than Maura, Julie would send letters back home
telling Maura all about how wonderful it was and how
much she would love it too. However, Maura and Julie
may have been similar in a lot of ways, but
they were also very different. The aspects of West Point
that Julie appreciated did not vibe with Mora how she
(20:49):
hoped it would.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
When I was at the academy, I would write back Tomara,
who was a high schooler, and tell her how much
that she would love it. And you know, when she
went through the college application process, she had recruiting letters
from Harvard, from Yale, from Brown. She had her pick
(21:12):
of any service academy, and she applied to one one school,
one school only, and that.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Was West Point.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
And that was because I had built it up and
it sort of convinced her that she would love it.
And so she joins me at West Point and she
doesn't love it. And you know, she wasn't alone in
that regard, because there's a lot of high overachieving type kids,
(21:44):
type A personalities that are very successful and academics and
athletics and leadership and their community, but just aren't cut
out for the military. And I think that's kind of
where Mara fell in that spectrum when she was more
of a nurturing type person and wanted to give back
(22:06):
in a different way. And so she eventually followed in
our mother's footsteps and pursued nursing, which was.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
What she was suited for.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Besides not loving the structure and rigor that came with
attending a school like West Point, Maura also found herself
in a little bit of trouble after she stole about
five bucks worth of makeup from Fort Knox. Many people
have speculated on why Maura made this choice, but the
truth is we don't know. When Julie asked Maura for
(22:40):
an explanation, she really didn't have one. What we do
know is that part of the cadet honor code is
to not lie, cheat, or steal, so Mara's choice landed
her in some hot water with the Honor Board. The
Honor Board is a group of cadets who listened to
the facts and evidence and determine a punishment. It's basically
(23:01):
a trial by a group of your peers and as
a West Point tradition, Julie shared that she had several
friends who did much worse than steal makeup and faced
the honor board who did not get kicked out of
the school. In another interview, she mentioned the punishment usually
involved a marching for hours in an uncomfortable uniform or
things of that nature. At the end of the day,
(23:24):
these are still young kids who are going to make mistakes,
and they aren't going to be expelled for such behavior.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Maura did go through the honor board process, but before
her punishment had been adjudicated, she decided to leave West Point.
She left, she was not kicked out. There were several
factors that led her to make this decision. As we said,
Maura didn't love the intense discipline and structure that came
(23:51):
with attending West Point. It takes a certain kind of
person like Julie to thrive in that environment. Was also
at a crossroads. She was reaching the two year mark
at West Point, which is when cadets have to take
the Oath of Affirmation to serve five years of active
duty and then three more years of on call duty
(24:13):
in the ready reserves, not to mention nine to eleven
had just happened. We're going to war, and she was
being asked to pledge eight more years of her life
to the military when she was already unhappy being at
West Point, So she chose to leave before she was
given her punishment. Honestly, why go through the punishment if
(24:36):
you know you don't want to be.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
There anyway exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
We were curious to know what would have happened if
Mara had taken the oath of Affirmation and then decided
to leave. Julie explained there are two options. A person
can either pay back the amount of the first two
and a half years of schooling, or you can join
the army at the lowest rank and work through what
they would have owed. Neither one of the options is great,
(25:01):
so it's good that cadets are given two years to
decide if they want to commit. As we discussed, Mara
realized this was not the path for her and enrolled
in the nursing program at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
Once at UMass, Mara seemed much happier, but did have
some personal struggles. Julie spoke about Mara's mindset and what
(25:23):
she was going through during this time.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
She seems so much happier. You know, she could sleep
in every now and then, which is something forbidden at
West Point. I mean, you have to be up bedmade,
sink clean, all your books lined up perfectly, shoes shined, uniform,
pristine by five point thirty am. So it's not the
(25:48):
typical college experience. And then you know, then you have
to march to breakfast because all cadets march to breakfast,
and you eat your breakfast and you cannot skip class,
you cannot sleep in. There's it's just there's a whole
nother world. And you know, I say this all the time.
(26:11):
It's just not everyone is cut out for that. And
so I would talk Tomara mostly through AOL instant messenger,
which is kind of dates me, but back in the.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Day we are the same era.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
So okay, okay, you get it, you get it. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:33):
Yeah, And she, you know, she seemed to be doing
well and she was closer to home, and she seemed happy.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Do you feel like she was open about what she
was going through or do you think there were some
things that she was keeping to herself.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
Yeah, she tried to keep stuff to herself, but with me,
I wasn't the one because we were so close. So
whenever I noticed something, I would call her on it
and she would be grudgingly tell me what was happening.
And you know, there's probably things she didn't tell me,
(27:10):
but there's a lot of things, you know, as an
older sister, you notice, and so I would ask her
about certain things, you know, and give her advice and
things like that. So she did have some struggles with
disordered eating, which obviously she wasn't going to share with me,
(27:33):
but I found out, and you know, we had long
conversations about that, and she was embarrassed and ashamed about it.
As you know, anyone who's been through it knows it's
not an easy thing to go through, but it is
something that's very prevalent at schools like West Point and
(27:54):
other service academies, especially and with athletes, female athletes. So
you know, we discussed that a lot, and she tried
to deny it, you know at first, which you're not
going to be able to get away with that with me,
And that goes back to the bonds that we built
growing up. You know, I'm her oldest sister. She can
(28:15):
tell other people, you know whatever, but she knew she
wasn't getting away with that with me, and the parat
irritated her a little bit. But at the end of
the day, I know that she appreciated it, and she
knew that I loved her and cared about her and
just wanted the best for her.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Did she take your advice to heart or was she
one to just be like, yeah, yeah, okay, I hear you.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Yeah, mar looked up to me. She definitely looked up
to me, and that's part of why she followed me
to West Point and things like that. And I yeah,
she definitely took what I said to heart, and she
did seek help and try to get better.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Well. Ura may have had a better life balance at UMass,
her struggles with disordered eating led her to make more
questionable decisions. She was caught using someone else's credit card
to buy a large amount of food in the middle
of the night. Maura was put on three months probation
for good behavior. We asked Julie for more details about this,
(29:22):
and she's pretty sure that was through Amherst Police Department,
but she's not one hundred percent certain. Julie didn't know
about Mara using someone else's credit card until after she
went missing, and she was still on probation at the
time of her disappearance. When talking about Mara's choice to
do this and if it was possible that she didn't
(29:43):
want her parents to notice the spending or question her
about it, Julie mentioned that the kids never asked for
money or racked up their parents' credit cards because they
already spent so much on them for their various sports
and other activities. They were very aware of what their
parents proves them and didn't want to burden them financially.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
Even as kids, we wouldn't even ask for anything special.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
You know.
Speaker 5 (30:09):
I remember when the Champion sweatshirts came out and everyone
had the Champion sweatshirts, and of course more and I
wanted the Champion sweatshirts, but we're like, that's way too expensive.
We don't want to burden our family with that. So
we would never ask our parents for money, because, you know,
my dad and my mom was spending so much on
(30:30):
all of our sports, and you know, we were on
traveling basketball teams, so that came a travel costs and
hotels and uniforms and entry fees, so we would never
want to burden them financially. And that's part of the
reason why when Maura got in an accent with my
dad's car, she was so upset. You know, that was
(30:53):
her being just so upset at herself because she felt
like she was financially putting a burden on my dad,
when at the end of the day it ended up
being nothing because insurance would cover it. But yeah, I mean,
if you think about the credit card stuff at UMass
(31:14):
and you look at it through the lens of somebody
that's young and struggling, just looking at the time frame
of when the purchases happened kind of puts you into
Mars's state of minds.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
You know, who's.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
Ordering food at three am? Somebody that is ashamed and
embarrassed about what they're doing and doesn't feel good about it.
And you know, you notice that, and you can see
that when you look at other people with disordered eating,
where there's this trend to do it late at night,
(31:51):
and that goes into the shame and the embarrassment aspect.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Of course, she.
Speaker 5 (31:57):
Knew and you know, I'm not condoning that she used
somebody else's credit card.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
That was wrong.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
She knew that was wrong, that was not okay, But
it's just another data point and where she was mentally
at that time. If she had asked anybody in our family, hey,
can you give me twenty bucks so I can get food,
absolutely any of us would double that, but she would
(32:26):
never want to ask us, so.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
She just didn't.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
She try to figure it out on her own, which
is really sad, you know, and you think back to it.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
She needed help, She needed help.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
On the night of Thursday, February fifth, two thousand and four,
Maura was doing her work study at one of the
UMass dorms where she checked student IDs. This was a
great way for her to earn a little money but
still have time to study since it was later at
night and there was a much foot traffic. Mara was
in a very competitive nursing program on the Dean's list,
(33:01):
so having ample study time was a must. Around ten PM,
her oldest sister, Kathleen called her. Kathleen struggled with addiction
and had just gotten out of rehab that day. She
called Maura to vent about the disappointment she was feeling
in herself because her then fiance picked her up from
the rehab facility and took her straight to a liquor store.
(33:24):
Needless to say, the Murray family were not fans of
this guy, and expressed to Kathleen on multiple occasions that
she could do so much better, but the truth can
be hard to see when you're in the middle of it,
and as a lot of.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Us know, during their conversation, Maura didn't have much of
a reaction other than reassurance and showing support for Kathleen.
She didn't seem overly upset or angry during the phone call.
A little while later, Maura's long distance boyfriend, Bill, who
was stationed at Fortsville, Oklahoma, called her. According to Bill,
(34:00):
it was a standard conversation and nothing really stood out
or seemed out of the ordinary. More time goes by
and Maura suddenly becomes so upset that she can't function.
Her supervisor escorts her back to her room, and when
asked what's wrong, the only thing Marris says is my sister,
My sister. This event was the first big red flag
(34:23):
that something more was going on. Here's Julie talking about
Mara's emotional state that night and the events that took
place over the next couple of days.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
We still really don't know what it was that upset
Maura to that extent. Was it a call from Kathleen
several hours earlier, I don't know. You know, I know
that Mara would have tried to hold space for Kathleen
in that time where Kathleen was sharing, Hey, you know
(34:56):
this horrible thing happened. I've already relapsed and I'm dating
this piece of crap guy. I don't believe that Maura
would have broken down kind of during that conversation because
I know that Mara was empathetic enough to know that
she needed to be strong for Kathleen because obviously she's
(35:17):
sharing something like that.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
So I don't know.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
I don't really know exactly what caused her to be
that upset. So that was the first major red flag,
and that was Thursday, and she disappeared on Monday. So
Thursday goes into Friday. Friday, there's a big snowstorm at UMass.
Classes are canceled, not a whole lot happening on Friday.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
I know that.
Speaker 5 (35:46):
Mar didn't mention it to me through phone call or
chat or whatever. I was back from South Korea at
the time. I was in North Carolina. So then Saturday
comes and my dad realizes Marinie's new car because her
car was smoking and running on three cylinders, and he
(36:10):
told her, do not drive this car. I'm coming up
and we're going to get a new car. And when
I say new, I mean used, but for a college kid,
that means now. So Mara had been calling around to
different numbers on classified ads in the newspaper, and it's
on her phone records and it shows that she was
(36:30):
actively trying to find a car from her winter break
up until that time, and obviously she didn't find anything.
So my dad came up to your mask. They go
car shopping. Mara calls me at three twenty one pm,
I think it is three thirty seven something like that,
and tells me about the cars that they looked at,
(36:52):
and I'm like, this is great whatever.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
You know.
Speaker 5 (36:55):
I don't really remember the specifics of the phone call,
but that would be the last time I would ever
talk to my sister. So then they don't end up
buying car. They narrow it down to like three and
they thought at that time they had the whole next
day to continue to car shop, or if they didn't
(37:17):
find anything, the next weekend whatever. So Mar's friend Kate
was coming home from a track meet and said, hey,
do you want to hang out? Mar said, yeah, we're
at this.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Brewery.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
Do you want to come and get dinner and drinks
with my dad? My dad's in town, which was something
that was typical because whenever my dad was around, we
would invite everyone we knew to go out because he
would always pay for it, and as college kids, that
was perfect. So they do that, and then I think
(37:52):
it was Kate, or maybe it was Mara gets a
call from another friend named Sarah, and Sarah said, Hey,
we're having a little we'll get together at the dorm later.
You guys do want to come, and so Kate and
Mara like, yeah, absolutely. So they dropped my dad off
at the motel that he was staying at and they
(38:14):
but before that, they went to a liquor store and
Mara got this box wine which will be important later,
so that she gets this box wine. And they dropped
my dad off at the motel and then for some reason,
they decided to take my dad's new car, his Corolla
(38:34):
that he had just purchased.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
To the dorm. I think it's because.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
She wanted to have access to the car in the
morning so that she didn't have to ask him to
come pick her up.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Or I don't know.
Speaker 5 (38:46):
I don't really know the rationale. But they take the car. Yeah,
take the car, go to the dorm party. Dorm party
is kind of shrouded in mystery because nobody knows zactly
what happened or who is there, and the friend that
hosted it, Sarah, hasn't been very forthcoming with providing information
(39:09):
about what happened. So around two thirty am, Kate decides
to leave, and so does Mara around the same time,
and instead of going up to her dorm room, mar
decides to take the Corolla back to my dad's motel.
(39:29):
But when she does that, she crashes about a mile
off campus head on at a tea intersection into a
guardrail and causes thousands of dollars worth of damage to
my dad's new car. So this is Saturday night, so
a tow truck comes, the police come. What's interesting is
(39:54):
they don't cite her for duy, They don't do any
medical evaluation on her or whatsoever, and she just basically
gets into the toe operator's vehicle and drives back to
the motel. And the car was taken to this repair
shop that was right beside the motel. So obviously Mare
(40:18):
was so upset with herself because she caused all this
damage and burden on my dad, and she was crying
and was upset, and my dad finally figures out that
insurance would cover it. There was some loophole where insurance
would cover it, and he was like.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Mar don't worry about it. Insurance will cover it.
Speaker 5 (40:40):
What I need you to do is get these accident
forms tomorrow, which would be Monday, so that we can
make sure everything's straight.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
And she agrees to do that.
Speaker 5 (40:51):
And so now we're when Sunday, my dad drops Mare
off at the dorm. That would be the last time
he ever saw her, and she was crying when he
last saw her, which is heartbreaking. That image is heartbreaking
to think about. She does call him on Sunday night,
(41:14):
calls my dad and they talk about again, Hey, you
need to get these accident forms. So then Monday comes
along and that's the day where she disappeared.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Fred never figured out why Maura drove back to his
motel instead of going upstairs to her dorm room after
leaving the party on Saturday night. One interesting tidbit of
information that Julie shared with us is that Mara's accident
didn't occur until about an hour after she and her
friend Kate left the party between two and two thirty am.
(41:47):
Kate has been very open with the Murrays about the
events that took place that night, but she doesn't know
why Maura didn't go upstairs to her room or if
something happened after she last saw her. The girl who
threw the party has been left cooperative about sharing details
of what went on that night. What we do know
is that it doesn't take an hour to drive from
the dorm to the motel. Mora was known to drive
(42:10):
insanely fast, but speed wasn't listed as a factor on
the accident report. The report said she was inattentive and
slid on debris on the road.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
That was it.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
No speed or intoxication was involved.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Mara had left her phone in her dorm room and
didn't have a key to Fred's motel room, so after
the tow truck driver dropped her off, she had to
call or buzz someone to come let her into Fred's
room or call his room so he could come get her.
This is one of those motels where the office manager
either lives on site or nearby, so she had to
(42:45):
wait a while before getting a response. She eventually gets
to Fred's motel room, where she borrows his phone to
call her boyfriend Bill. Bill said she was crying and
upset about the accident and probably trying to figure out
how to tell Fred that she had wrecked his car.
Mid morning, she tells her dad what happened. There are
(43:05):
a lot of people who have made assumptions about how
Fred handled the news, and honestly, I think most people
would expect yelling in this type of situation, but that
wasn't Fred's style.
Speaker 5 (43:19):
People say my dad screamed at her, which is so
funny to me because I've never heard my dad scream
at us. Ever, that is not the way that he
responded to anything that we did, you know, and a
lot of times we wished he would have screamed at
us because it would have made us feel better, but
(43:40):
he just kind of matter of fact, like, here's what
we need to do.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
You know, you screw it up, blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 5 (43:47):
So the people that say my dad screamed at Maura
are making it up.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Fred and Maurra talked one more time on Sunday night
about the accident form she needed to pick up the
next day. She was a night so it wasn't unusual
for her to do homework late into the night and
early morning. Maura had a nursing school assignment to look
up pregnancy terms, and she and a group of other
students split up the terms so they didn't each have
(44:13):
to do all of it. She submitted her assignment at
three point thirty two am on Monday, February ninth, the
day she disappeared. To Julie, this is a data point
that Maura wasn't planning to disappear, because if that were
the case, why would she take the time to complete
her homework. This is a fair point. If you weren't
(44:33):
planning to return to school, you wouldn't be worried about
a bad grade. After this, Mara starts making some interesting
searches on her computer. Here's Julie explaining what Maura searched
for and the rest of her actions that day.
Speaker 5 (44:49):
Then she does a number of internet searches for the
Berkshears and Burlington, Vermont, kind of in the general air. Yeah,
Now I pose the question to law enforcement, did she
look up the Burkshears in Massachusetts or the Burkshears in Vermont,
(45:11):
because there's multiple Berkshears and they're different locations. So when
people say the Berkshires, as a Massachusetts resident or some
of the group MASSA chooses, I'm thinking western mass but
it could also mean some place completely different, but law
enforcement couldn't pinpoint that for me. So anyway, she's looking
(45:33):
at directions somewhere else, and then she gets some sleep,
and then there's no activity until mid morning on Monday,
February ninth, and that's when she picks up some more
Internet searches, and now she's looking at condos and things
(45:54):
like that. So she eventually calls a condo owner at
a place in Bartlett, New Hampshire, which is a complex
that my family had stayed at before, but we didn't
rent out that particular unit. She doesn't secure a reservation.
Then she emails her professors. And this might be a
(46:16):
little bit out of order, but these are the main
bullet points of what she did that day. She emails
her professors saying that there's a death in the family
and that she needed some time away from school. And
in my mind, that's just a typical college aids excuse
to where somebody's not going to ask additional questions. It's
(46:37):
kind of like a free pass, like no one's going
to say tell me more about that. They're just going
to be super supportive.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
There was no death in the family.
Speaker 5 (46:48):
And then she calls a information line called one eight
hundred Ghosts Dowe and Stowe is a ski resort in
the Burlington, Vermont area. She doesn't end up booking a reservation.
It was just a information line that discussed ski conditions,
weather conditions, things like that, so she never spoke to
(47:09):
a human, so again doesn't book a reservation. But here
you have Mara calling Bartlett, New Hampshire and Burlington, Vermont,
which are very different geographic areas, and it takes about
two hours to drive from Bartlett to Burlington. So what
this indicates to me is she didn't really have a
(47:32):
clear plan on what the hell her plan was other
than I want to go north.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Mara then plays phone tag with Bill, but they don't connect.
She sends him an email saying she loves him but
doesn't really feel like talking at the moment and she'll
call him later, but they never talk. She then goes
to an ATM and withdraws two hundred and eighty dollars
from her account, leaving just under twenty dollars in the bank.
(48:01):
People who follow Mara's case get stuck on this amount,
but honestly it makes perfect sense. Overdraftees come into consideration here,
and to me, this is another data point that Maura
wasn't planning to disappear. She had no intention of returning.
Would she really be worried about overdrafting her account? Probably not.
(48:23):
After getting the cash, she heads to a liquor store
and buys forty dollars worth of alcohol, which included a
bottle of kalua and vodka. This may seem like a
lot of alcohol for one person, but Mara's favorite drink
was a black Russian, which is a mix of kalua
and vodka, and those ingredients have to be purchased in
(48:44):
large quantities. This is coming from someone whose drink of
choice in college was a white Russian, so it doesn't
seem strange to me at all that she would purchase
large bottles to use over a long period of time.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Not only does Mara make a purchase at the liquor store,
She also returns seventy nine cans to recycle in exchange
for three ninety five. We know this because of the
receipt found in her abandoned car. This is yet another
data point to show that she was not trying to disappear.
In Julie's words, if Mara's plan was to say screw
(49:18):
it all and disappear, why would she take the time
to recycle. It just doesn't make sense. Once she leaves
the liquor stores, she gets the accident form she promised
to get her Fred, which were also found in her car.
The plan was to speak with Fred on Monday night
so he could help her fill out the forms. Here
is another example showing that Mora was running important errands
(49:40):
and making future plans, which doesn't make sense if she
had no intention of being around for those events. At
four thirty seven pm, Mara uses her cell phone to
check her voicemail. This would be her last known cell
activity ever. Almost three hours later, Maura is seen in Haveral,
New Hampshire.
Speaker 5 (50:00):
There's several hours where there's no nothing, no activity at all,
and then at seven twenty seven pm, a woman named
Faith Westman looks out her window and here's this loud
thud and notices a black saturn on the side of
the road and the opposite lane facing the wrong direction,
(50:22):
so she's in the eastbound lane facing westbound, if that
makes sense, And she calls nine on one, and that
was the last time that we've ever heard from.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
After Faith Westman called nine to one one. A bus
driver and resident of the area, Butch Atwood, sees Maura
on the side of the road and stops to ask
if she needs help. This is somewhere between seven twenty
seven and seven thirty three pm. When Butch asks Mara
if she'd like him to call for help, she tells
(51:01):
him that she has already called Triple A and has
got it under control. Butch doesn't believe this, though, because
there's no cell phone service in the area and there
still isn't to this day, so when he returns to
his home about one hundred meters from Mara's car, he
calls nine to one one on his home phone at
seven point forty two pm. We asked Julie her thoughts
(51:24):
on whether or not Mara really had tried to call
for help when Butch came by. Maura's cell records don't
show any activity during this time period, so we know
she didn't talk to anyone on the phone.
Speaker 5 (51:37):
Perhaps she was planning to call and said I've already
called Triple A, thinking in her mind, I'm about to
call Triple A once you get out of my face.
Speaker 3 (51:48):
And then and then at that moment.
Speaker 5 (51:52):
She realizes, Oh, no, I don't have any communication. I'm
in a bad situation. I should have accepted that help.
I'll accept help from the next person that isn't this
big bus driver guy that may have creeped her out.
So I'm thinking that maybe she hadn't formulated her plan
(52:15):
and was just trying to get him away before she
knew that there was no cell phone service. So at
some point Mara realizes there's no service here. I'm in
a whole lot more of a vulnerable position than I,
you know, originally thought when this bus drivers asking me
(52:36):
for help, that's just me thinking and as knowing Mara
and knowing how I would have reacted, I would have
been all set, I'm good to go. I got Triple A,
and then thinking oh, I'm going to call, and then realize, oh,
I don't have a signal. I'm not saying that's one
hundred percent when happen. Obviously I wasn't there. I don't know,
(52:58):
but it is possible, and I could definitely see Maura saying,
don't worry about it. I don't want to burden you,
because that's how she was.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Maura's hesitation to accept help from Butch makes complete sense.
He was a large man in height and size, and
here she is a woman alone on the side of
the road, not knowing if he can be trusted. A
lot of us would probably do the same thing in
her situation. Butch's story about what happened that night also
(53:30):
changed several times. First he was sitting in the bus,
then he was standing outside of the bus talking to
Mora from the other side of the car. However, Julie
made a good point about witnesses not being infallible. We
don't know why he changed his story or if there
was any motive behind it, but humans don't have the
best memory, and there's a reason why witness statements don't
(53:53):
hold as much weight as say, physical or DNA evidence.
He also agreed to take two tests and failed the
first one. But as we know, polygraph tests aren't admissible
in court, and we're talking about an older gentleman who
is not in the best health, strapped to a light
detector and questioned about a missing woman. That's bound to
(54:15):
make anyone's heart race a little too fast.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Julie doesn't know if Butch's house was ever searched. If
it was, law enforcement didn't share that with her, but
she did share that he lived with his common law
wife Barbara and his mother at the time of morris disappearance,
and they were both home at the time. The chance
of Butch having something to do with morris disappearance is
honestly very low, but what we do know is that
(54:41):
he was the last person to see her. Getting back
to the events of that night, we have two calls
to nine to one one Faith Westmans at seven twenty
seven pm and Butch Atwood's at seven forty two pm
according to official records. Cecil Smith, an officer with the
hay Le Police Department, arrives on the scene at seven
(55:03):
forty six pm and finds the black Saturn allegedly locked,
but Mora is nowhere.
Speaker 4 (55:09):
To be found.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
In next week's episode, we will continue our conversation with
Julie and break down the poor investigation, missteps and misinformation
surrounding Morris's disappearance. We will also talk about what it's
like to live with a missing family member, Julie's Engage
with Empathy campaign, and the twenty year Vigil for Mora.
(55:32):
Until next time, stay safe.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
And make a choices.
Speaker 4 (55:37):
Bye bye,
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