Maura Murray Missing: Student Wrecks On Icy Road & Disappears (Photos)
Posted on November 25, 2008
Maura Murray has been missing now for more than four years. Her father, Fred Murray often walks the road where his daughter disappeared. Read more on Maura Murray and see the Nancy Grace video of Maura’s story below.
Maura Murray, a 21-year-old nursing student vanished without a trace on a snowy night in February 2004. Murray’s last known location was driving from Massachusetts through New Hampshire in her black 1996 Saturn.
Her car was found abandoned, with its front end crashed against a tree. The car must have slid off the road at the curve and hit the tree.
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A little bit after her minor car accident, a bus driver stopped to offer help but Murray said no.
Ten minutes later, police arrived. Inside the crumpled Saturn, they found some of Murray’s belongings — school books, running gear, snack foods and alcohol — police won’t say what kind. But Murray was gone, along with her car keys and a backpack she always carried.
Her fiance, William Rausch, and her father, Fred Murray could not find a reason for her to want to run away.
Maura Murray had just gotten engaged to Rausch, her college sweetheart and an Army lieutenant stationed in Oklahoma. They planned to marry after she graduated from nursing school in June. She’d found a nursing job in Oklahoma. Murray had so much to look forward to in her future.
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“She was in good spirits and had no worries or reason to run away from her life,” Fred Murray said.
Investigators initially operated under the theory that the dean’s list student was troubled and had decided to escape from the demands of her life for a while. As a result, they did not immediately begin to look for her.
The search did not begin until 39 hours after her crashed car was found. When it finally got under way, helicopters, search dogs and ground teams covered the area near where Murray’s car was found.
The dogs picked up her scent for about 100 yards, leading investigators along the road to an area between two homes. There, the dogs lost the trail.
Murray’s credit cards and cell phone have not registered any activity since the night she disappeared, February 9, 2004.
Tom Shamshak, a private investigator hired by the Murray family to continue the search, said police and volunteers looked for her for two days.
“No footprints were even found in the snow,” he said. “Luckily there hadn’t been any fresh snowfall in those two days.”
Shamshak has concluded that only two scenarios could explain what happened to Murray. Either she was picked up by someone driving on the road, or she walked to a nearby house to ask for help.
Police say they did not treat Murray’s case as an abduction because they saw no signs of a struggle at the scene.
Before she left campus, police learned, Murray had e-mailed her professors and informed them she’d be absent for a few days because of a death in the family. Murray’s family and friends said no one in the family had died.
Police also noted that Murray had enough food and other items in her car to suggest she might be taking a short getaway vacation.
Murray is described as 5 feet 7 inches tall, 120 pounds, with brown hair and blue-green eyes. She was last seen wearing a dark coat and jeans and carrying a black backpack and Samsung cell phone.
A $40,000 reward is being offered for any information leading to her whereabouts or the arrest of the person responsible for her disappearance. The tip line is 603-271-2663, New Hampshire State.
Maura Murray CNN Nancy Grace Missing video:
3 comments
There is a long list of these strange and bizarre student disappearances. Each is slightly different throwing authorities investigating them off. Remember Brian Shaffer, Michael Negrete, Joshua Guimond, or Justin Gains. Nothing has been heard from any of them since they walked away. Ahmad Arain, Matthew Wilson, and Hannah Upp, high school teacher/grad student, disappeared and were recovered in altered mental states. Upp was rescued while attempting suicide.
I began investigating them when my wife had a psychotic break in the payroll office of the University of Alabama thirty days after her office was changed eliminating Cubicle Level Protection. The cubicle was created to deal with the vision startle reflex and stop mental breakdowns in offices by 1968.
All the missing students were high achievers and heavy computer users. The disappearance happens after a time when there would have been intense study. Three were computer science majors. Those returning with altered mental states suggest that Subliminal Distraction is the cause of these events. They are accidentally creating the “special circumstances” of those 1960’s office workstation design problem.
The roads are pretty bad in america, folks!!
hay this is debra im in the 9th grade and i read this book about liz.
we had alway wonderd what happend to her sister. and now i know.
i feel so bad fore her.
im glad i found out what happend.
i will pray for her.
god bless!!!