News

NE Unsolved: Maura Murray

SPECIAL REPORT -- Feb. 9, 2004 was the last time anyone has seen UMass Amherst nursing student Maura Murray.
 
At about 7:30 p.m. on that day, Maura Murray got into a single-car accident in Haverhill, N.H.
 
A school bus driver saw Maura and offered help. Maura refused, and the bus driver drove away.
 
Roughly 10 minutes after the crash, first responders arrived, but Maura Murray was already gone.
 
New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Strelzin told FOX 25's Bob Ward this week that in the decade since the crash, there has not been a single credible sighting of Maura Murray.
 
Yet the question persists: Where is Maura Murray?
 
Ward recently spoke to Fred Murray, Maura's dad. He is still looking for his daughter. Murray has been very critical of the official search for Maura Murray and he is still asking the FBI to bring its expertise to the investigation.
 
For Fred Murray, and his family, there is one fact that has not changed in ten years: he still has no idea what happened to Maura. Is she alive? Is she dead? Was Maura kidnapped? Did she take her own life? Ten years' worth of questions, and Fred Murray is no closer to the truth than he was the moment he discovered Maura was missing.
 
Another question central to the case: What was Maura doing in New Hampshire?
 
Just before her N.H. car accident, Maura Murray was involved in another accident using her father's car. At UMass, Maura sent out emails, saying due to a death in the family, she would be out of school. There was no death in Maura's family.
 
No one knows exactly where Maura Murray intended to travel when she left UMass, but Fred Murray thinks it was the Bartlett, N.H. area, a place the Murray family spent considerable time over the years. Phone records and web searches seem to back that up. On her way to New Hampshire, Maura stopped at an ATM and a liquor store.
 
What does it all mean?
 
Fred Murray believes Maura was upset over the car accident, and simply wanted to get away from UMass for a few days. Whatever plans Maura was putting into place on February 9, Fred Murray believes, were derailed when she crashed her car on Route 112 in Haverhill, N.H.

Fred Murray fears his daughter was abducted.
 
The Maura Murray case is attracting much attention in both new and traditional media. There are websites and message boards devoted to Maura's activities before and after the crash. New facts, theories, and sometimes rumors, are constantly uncovered and debated online, keeping Maura's case alive well beyond New Hampshire.
 
For this NE Unsolved report, Ward did not focusing on the theories. Instead, he went back to the basic facts of the case in the hopes that someone who saw, witnessed, or heard something might finally come forward and end this decade old mystery.
 
If you know anything about what happened to Maura Murray, please call NH State Police at 1-800-525-5555.