Unsolved: Maura Murray

0:00Hi everyone, it's Vanessa Richardson. Before today's episode, I want to tell you about another Crime House show, Murder True Crime Stories. Join Carter Roy every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday as he explores history's most notorious murders like you've never heard before. Follow Murder True Crime Stories, available wherever you listen to podcasts. This is Crime House. February 9, 2004, a crashed car on a snow-covered New Hampshire road, no footprints, no witnesses, no trace. Twenty-one-year-old Mora Murray walked away from that scene and was never seen again. The internet went into overdrive, investigators chased lead after lead, and still two decades on, nobody's been able to say what really happened that night.

1:03Welcome to Crime House 24-7, I'm Vanessa Richardson. Twice a day every day we bring you the best, most timely and gripping cases from across the entire Crime House network, all in one place, right here. And every Tuesday is unsolved Tuesdays, where I bring you two cases that have yet to be cracked and still haunt us today. Today we're revisiting the disappearance of Mora Murray, the first of two cold cases we've got for you today, and this case is moving again. New theories have surfaced in recent months, and investigators have reportedly zeroed in on a potential suspect who was never on the original radar. Someone who could change everything we thought we knew about that night on Route 112. The Mora Murray file is still open, and it may be closer to answers than it has ever been. This community exists because of listeners like you. Want even more? Join Crime House Plus for every episode of Crime House 24-7, Add Free.

2:03Not only that, but you'll get complete access to an exclusive limited series every month, and early Add Free access to all Crime House shows and bonus episodes. Go to CrimeHousePlus.com, or on Apple Podcasts, tap Try Free at the top of the Crime House 24-7 page. Now Morgan Absher and Kaylyn Moore lay out the evidence, dig into the clues that never added up and break down the brand new lead that has the true crime world talking. Just a quick content warning for this episode today. We talk about eating disorders, self-harm, and SA. So listen with care. First case to go viral on social media, which at the time of Mora's disappearance, I think Facebook was like four, five days old. Days old. Days old. Yeah, it was a brand new social media tool. It was really like the first social media tool. And it wasn't until a little bit later that our case started going viral on Facebook,

3:04because that's just not what people were using Facebook for at first. No, it was like dating and seeing who the cool kids in your college were. Yeah. I got Facebook when I was in middle school. That was probably a little young, and I still miss the MySpace page of being able to pick my song. Yeah. I think in the context, like there was no Instagram, there was no Twitter, there was none of these other things. And you're from the East Coast. Did you hear anything about this case? No, not really when it was happening. I'm trying to remember like this case is very steeped in New England. Even my mom works at Bradley International Airport, and like the family was talking about flying in and out of that airport. And I'm like, oh my god, my mom was probably there as the family was going to the crime scene to try to look for their daughter. So, but I don't remember anything specific about it at the time. When it was happening. It's really just picked up steam, I think, in the last couple of years. Yeah. Family is really being great advocates. Yeah. I'm trying to get this case out there and known. Yeah. And so it's because of that that we're talking about it today. Yeah.

4:04And I definitely want to shout out Julie Murray, who is more a sister, who really is leading the charge at keeping her name in the papers, doing the podcast that she did about the case and just really trying to get word out there. Because she still thinks that this case can be solved. So let's see if we can. And with that, let's get into it. Also just a quick reminder, if you're watching this on YouTube, you're going to see some images, videos that'll help you kind of visualize the case. And if you're listening, you can find those same assets on our social media that's at Clues Podcasts on Instagram. All right. Our story starts at 7.30 p.m. on February 9th, 2004. A school bus driver in Heyberl, New Hampshire spots a black Saturn, facing west and the east bound lane of Route 112. It looks like the Saturn must have either hit a tree or a snowbank. The airbags are deployed. The headlights are off. But the bus driver sees a young woman behind the wheel and pulls over to help. He says he's done for the day so he can give her a ride to his house just about 100 yards away. There she can use his phone to get help, but the woman declines this offer.

5:05She says that she's already called AAA. But the bus driver isn't so sure that she's necessarily telling the truth. He knows that there's not really a cell phone service in the area, but he doesn't really want to pry. She seems to maybe have it figured out so he leaves. But he can't stop thinking about the woman or the interaction they had. When he gets home, it's around 7.42 p.m. and he decides he's just going to call 911. He describes the driver as, quote, shaken up no blood that I can see. And he says that she, quote, hit a pine tree. At 7.46 p.m., the first officer arrives at the scene. The car is there, but the driver is gone. And there is no trace of her anywhere. And I'm talking about not even footprints in the snow. None of the people in the nearby houses saw her leave the scene. And nobody noticed a vehicle that could have picked her up either. It appears as though the woman who they're going to later learn is 21 year old Mara

6:05Marie has vanished without a trace. In order to understand this disappearance a little bit more, let's rewind a little bit and get to know Mara more as a person. She was born in Brockton, Massachusetts on May 4, 1982. She's the fourth of five children born to her parents, Fred and Laurie. Laurie worked as a nurse and Fred was a medical technician, but the couple divorced in 1988 when Laura was just six, though they seemed to have co-parented very well. It was in charge of getting the kids from their many, many after school sports. Athleticism really ran in this family. Both Mara and her sister Julie, who was two years older, who we talked about earlier, they competed successfully in cross country and track during high school. Mara made it all the way to the cross country nationals as a sophomore, finishing in 33rd in the country, which is so impressive. The country. The whole country. That's insane. She also played on the varsity basketball team as well. But none of that made her academics fall by the wayside. She scored in the 95th percentile of her SATs, meaning that she could basically attend

7:09almost any university she wanted, especially if she got a scholarship to run cross country while she was there, which Mara was going to need to help fund her education. The Ivy League's all through their doors open for her, even Harvard was recruiting Mara, but it seems like she had other plans for herself. She had her heart set on joining her older sister Julie at West Point, the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. So 18 year old Mara started there in the fall of 2000, which Julie talks about this too when both of them started at West Point. The military academy was pre 9-11 and the 9-11 happened while they were there. So they went from kids being like, I'm just going to go to this military academy. It's really interesting. I'm going to learn military stuff too. Oh my God, we are training for an active war that's unfolding. It's like a very intense time to be at the school. And while she's there, she's also majoring in chemical engineering, which is again, like a stressful major to have. Julie absolutely loved West Point.

8:10She loved being in the military in general. Everything she told Mara about her experience was very positive. And plus, tuition was free if you got accepted as a cadet, as long as you agreed to serve in the US military after graduation. After hearing all of the glowing reviews, Mara was all in. But once she arrived on campus though, she started having some doubts about West Point as a school. All of the new cadets at West Point began their journey with this thing called beast barracks. It's a physically and mentally exhausting six week program. It's kind of like a boot camp. Yeah, basic training almost. Yeah, yeah. It involves camping in the field. There's weapons training, marching, running, and also a lot of being yelled at, basically from sound up to sundown. This tends to eliminate some of the thinner skin cadets really quickly. Mara ended up surviving beast barracks though, although the regular West Point schedule was also very grueling. Your days would start at six in the morning. They would end sometimes as late as three in the morning.

9:13Every cadets room was subject to inspection every morning, meaning your room had to always be perfectly clean with the door open, bedside. I know that we have listeners who probably have served in the military and they're like, yeah, this is just what we do. And I'm listening to this schedule being like this would break me in like five minutes. I wouldn't make it out of beast barracks. Like I would be done. Three hours of sleep, I would be so toast. Having to have my room clean, I'd crash out. Yeah, exactly. No, they'd get rid of me. I'd be flunked. It's not for the faint of heart. There's definitely people who can keep up with this type of schedule. There's also at this school, it seemed like there was hazing coming from upper classmen. Julie was not as bothered by this, but Mara was really struggling with this. At one point during her schooling there, Julie talks about Mara developing an eating disorder. It's something, you know, doctors today talk about it being associated with perfectionism. Julie, when she talks about West Point, says that a bunch of the kids at West Point actually struggled with eating disorders while she was there. You know, while all of the control is being taken out of your life, it was like a control

10:16thing that some of the students felt like they could hold on to. So interesting. And there's also this constant pressure to be perfect there. And so she said it was just kind of like ripe for it. The strain of this stressful life was also kind of showing itself in other areas too. In August of 2001, Mara stole a lip gloss from the post exchange. It's kind of like a convenience store that was on campus. And that happened at Fort Knox while she was training there. She pretty quickly got caught by an employee. She immediately admitted to doing it, but she couldn't necessarily explain why she had done it. And under West Point's cadet honor code, Mara had to go through an honor hearing for this shoplifting. Though it's been reported that Mara faced possible expulsion from West Point for the offense. Her sister Julie said that that wasn't true. Ultimately, Mara did get to stay. And then it was really a month after that that like 9-11 happened. So she already had all of this stress on her life in general. And then like I was saying, the academy became so much more real because you were now graduating

11:16into an active war. And that was really starting to weigh on Mara, it seems. And on January 2nd of 2002, Mara withdraws from the academy. She transferred to the University of Massachusetts, a three hours drive away in Amherst where she received a full scholarship to run track. Now when Mara transferred, she took a couple of things with her from West Point, her academic credits transferred over things like her habit of cleaning her room to military standards. Also it seems like she took her eating disorder with her and also her boyfriend. She's dating this guy named Bill Roush who was a West Point cadet in Julie's class. So he was two years ahead of Mara. They met through Julie shortly after Mara started at West Point in 2000 and by the fall of 2001, the two were a couple. After Bill's graduation in the spring of 2002, he was stationed at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. That was like 1700 miles away. And partly because of her relationship with Bill, Mara decided to study nursing, just like her mom had done.

12:18She knew that nurses could find work almost anywhere in the world. So in theory, if Mara and Bill stayed together, she would be able to follow him to wherever he was stationed. And by the time Mara transferred to UMass, they had been together for about six months. So it was still early on in their relationship and the future was pretty uncertain. They ended up breaking up and they got back together at some point. And eventually Mara started looking into nursing careers near Bill's duty station in Oklahoma. And meanwhile, at UMass, she was making the deans list every semester. She was competing in track meets. She worked two jobs on campus as a security receptionist and as an art gallery employee. For time though, the stress really started getting tomorrow, it seemed. And we know that because other people started noticing that in her. Yeah. And I mean, think about it. Two jobs, track star, deans list. How are you not cracking under that pressure? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, there's just a lot of stress on her at school and at home, which we're going to

13:19get into. But there were like quirky things she would do. One person remembered that she refused to use this year bathroom and her dorm. She would instead go upstairs to a private restroom in the Smokers lounge. She also was seen bringing a water bottle in with her and then spending a long time inside the bathroom and she would flush the toilet repeatedly before emerging. Her friends wondered if this was part of her eating disorder that she had suffered from at West Point, just moving over to UMass. And then in the fall of 2003, Mara started taking impulsive risks just like she did back at West Point when she was accused of shoplifting, which brings us to our first clue. Mara's legal issues. One that stemmed from just a strange pattern of behavior leading up to her disappearance. It kind of started with a speeding ticket on July 27, 2003, before starting her senior year. Mara was pulled over in New Hampshire, going 99 in a 65 mile-power zone.

14:21She was driving her dad's car and it seemed to be during a summer trip to Bartlett, New Hampshire in the White Mountains. And her boyfriend, Bill and her dad, Fred, were actually in the car with her. This ticket, I think probably because of how much over she was going, actually ended up causing her license to get suspended in New Hampshire. And so while this suspension was only 430 days, it also meant that she had to go back to New Hampshire to then get her license reinstated there after that period had passed. And it was annoying, but it wasn't the end of the world. So Mara bounced back pretty quickly. She tackled her first clinical rotations, like a total pro that fall semester. She appeared to be doing well and in a good mental space. And on October 13, 2003, she actually sent her mom a super sweet birthday postcard full of her appreciation for all of her mom's work as a nurse. And we actually have a quote from that card.

15:24Quote, I can finally appreciate what you mean by being on your feet all day. I finally get it. I see how nurses interact with patients and I can totally picture you doing a much better job in making a patient's day, getting them laughing or dancing, whatever. It means more to me now after I've tried it myself. End quote. But then just a week later on October 20, Mara seemingly took another really bizarre risk. She got caught using another student's credit card number over the phone to order a large amount of pizza for delivery. And so the owner of the credit card, when she saw these charges, was told that she had a file police report or else like she was going to be responsible for all of this pizza, regardless of if it was her or not. And so she filed charges. She had no idea that the thief was her fellow student, Mara, but police eventually tracked the culprit down and discovered it was Mara.

16:24And as soon as she was caught, again, she just confessed right away, same as with the lip gloss. She agreed to pay for the pizzas, which came out to be $79.2. And the charges were set to be dismissed in February 2004, as long as Mara stayed out of trouble. Family blood runs deep. It binds. But getting along is an easy when jealousy and hunger for power take over. Killer Kin from ID explores real cases about family members who turn against one another, unleashing betrayal and violence from the inside. Here investigators, experts and family members try to understand what actually happened and how kinship can unravel into terror. Does evil run in the family? Into Killer Kin wherever you get your podcasts. As Mara was trying to keep her head above water, there was a new problem that just got added to her plate. In January of 2004, Mara started having trouble with her 1996 black Saturn sedan.

17:28It was acting up during a visit to her dad, Fred, who was working in Connecticut at the time. And if you know anything about cars, apparently it had this blown gasket and was running on three cylinders instead of four, which I had no idea what that meant. But it meant that it was still drivable, but absolutely time for her to get a new car. And her dad knew that too. He, like, once he saw the car, he was like, you can't drive this. This is not safe for you anymore. I can envision it. I can feel it myself because I've had a car do this and it just like misfires. Like the engine just like feels off and like, you'll hit the gas, but it doesn't go right away at pop-up-puts and you feel the engine kind of jolting. Yeah. They were talking about like smoke coming out of the back to like through the exhaust pipe. It just was not in good shape anymore. Oh, it sounds similar to the car I drove in high school. Fred was a really good dad. He said he was going to come up to Massachusetts soon and he was going to help his daughter shop for a used car that was in better shape and drivable. He said he wanted to come the first weekend of February. But before he could get there, Mara had a very strange night at work, which brings us

18:31to our second clue. Mara's mysterious meltdown. On Thursday, February 5th, four days before she disappeared, Mara was working at her security receptionist job at Melville Hall, which was on campus at UMass. Her shift began around 7pm and was supposed to last until 145am. But this job had a lot of downtime. She basically just signed students in and out and would report anything suspicious that she noticed. And so she had a lot of time to do her homework or make phone calls to her boyfriend or family members. So during this time at around 7.17pm, she actually talked to her boyfriend bill for about 20 minutes. After that, she made three more calls to bill between 7.17 and 9.56pm. The longest one was only about six minutes. And at 10.10pm, she called her oldest sister, Kathleen. And they spoke for about 28 minutes. During this call, Mara and Kathleen spoke about Kathleen's recent relapse after leaving

19:34rehab for alcoholism. Did you read about how this relapse happened? No. Julie talks about this in an interview I saw. Kathleen was apparently in a rehab facility. And when she left her fiance or her boyfriend at the time picked her up and drove her straight to a liquor store. What? Immediately. Julie and the family think it was because he was a really bad guy and it was a control thing. He wanted to. He wanted to. She was drinking. Oh my God. But the second she left rehab, she relapsed. And so I can only imagine getting that phone call because that is so stressful to hear. I mean, that's absolutely horrible. Like, absolutely horrible. And I'm sure getting that call from her sister, maybe hearing more details about this, like that could have been very upsetting. And so after this call with Kathleen, Mara ends up calling Bill again from work at about 12 o' 7 a.m. and they chat for seven more minutes. But then around 1 a.m., Mara suddenly bursts into tears and you know, people at work don't know that she's been having these conversations.

20:36So another student who's concerned goes to Mara's boss Karen and is like, Hey, something's not right. Karen goes over and checks on Mara and starts asking like, Hey, is everything okay? And all Mara says to her is quote, my sister, when asked if there's a family emergency, she responds, quote, no, nothing to do with me. It's my sister's problem, not mine. So clearly, something's going on. There was some distressing thing on there. Maybe you know, she talked to her sister, Kathleen and then called Bill after for some support. Bill didn't really remember anything about the content of these calls after the fact. Nothing really stood out to him. And he said it was typical for them to talk on the phone several times a day. Like these short phone calls weren't anything unusual for them in their relationship. Yeah, I know there's been some stuff that's come up where like I know people that have looked into this case are a little confused because Mara heard about her sister then

21:37talked to Bill and then got upset afterwards. So some people wonder if like maybe the content of her conversation with Bill was the reason she was really upset. Clearly saying like my sister, I just seems like that was the thing she was upset about. I don't think there was anything on the call with Bill that made her upset. And Reddit does kind of go down rabbit holes on that where there like something bigger happened on that call. Yeah. Why doesn't he remember anything? And it's like, I don't know. I've had a bad day and I get home three hours later and something triggers me and I'm crying for the next 30 minutes. Like, yeah, our emotions are, it's challenging. So who's really to say? One of the people who actually thinks that there was maybe something else to the call is her sister, Julie. I think Julie mentioned thinking that there was a call that occurred that we don't know about that either happened on a dorm phone where there's no record of it. But maybe it was something that happened after learning about her sister, Kathleen, that triggered Mara to have this mental breakdown and that we just don't know exactly what that was. Yeah. I mean, there's that. And then there's also other rumors about Mara seeing another guy or maybe wanting to

22:38break up with Bill. Julie thinks that her sister would have been smart enough, that like she would have used a landline for any calls that she didn't want either Bill or her family to find out about. So you know, you can know someone through and through so well, but there's maybe there's always going to be things that you don't know 100%. Yeah. So if that is the case, she covered her tracks well enough that police couldn't find any other details either. So two days after that shift on Saturday, February 7th, Fred arrives to take his daughter car shopping. And after hours of searching, Mara takes her dad back to his motel and Hadley, Massachusetts, where they hang out for a little while before they go to dinner at the Amherst Brewing Company around 9 p.m. with Mara's friend Kate. Fred then drove Mara and Kate to the liquor store to purchase alcohol for a dorm party later that night. And to be clear, they actually were both of legal age so they didn't need Fred to buy the alcohol they just needed a ride. And then after that, Fred goes back to his motel and he lets Mara drive his Toyota Corolla

23:39to the party since her car is not working. The party wasn't exactly a rager. There's like some debate about this. I know there's maybe eight to 10 people packed into a dorm room. Some people after the fact called it a rager, but it seemed like it was just small, but the like space was also small. So it felt like it was bigger than it was. A rager's mindset. Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. According to some of the people that were there, Mara left sometime between 1.30 a.m. and 2.30 a.m. She was possibly in the company of one or more of the guys who were also at the party, but there are witness statements that conflict. And then on her way back to her dad's hotel to drop off his car, her night takes a turn for the worse, which brings us to our third clue, the car accident at 3.33 a.m. on Sunday, February 8th, a little less than 48 hours before Mara was last seen. Someone called the police department to report a car accident at the corner of North Maple Street and North Hadley Road in Amherst, Massachusetts.

24:43Mara was behind the wheel of her dad's practically brand new Toyota Corolla. She had driven through a guardrail doing about $10,000 worth of damage to the car. And Mara had left her cell phone at the dorm party, so she wasn't able to call for help when this accident happened. The officer who responded the call decided not to cite Mara for the crash and also didn't give her a sobriety test or breathalyzer. So we'll never know if she was intoxicated or not at the time of the accident. But another big uncertain question is how much time passed between Mara leaving the party and her accident. It was only about a 10 minute drive from the dorm party to her dad's hotel. So if she really left the party at 2.30, like the other party goers said, and crashed the car just before 3.30, people kind of wondered what she was doing in between. Like where did that missing hour go? One popular theory on Reddit is that she left the party with a guy and maybe went somewhere

25:45to hook up and then dropped him off before returning the car to her dad. Julie says her family doesn't know much about this night, so she doesn't want to rule any theories in or out, including this, you know, maybe hook up one. But one thing is for sure, when the tow truck came, Mara hitched a ride with it back to Fred's motel. She managed to get in her dad's hotel room, called Bill from his phone at 5.36am and then fell asleep until 10.30am Sunday morning, at which point she woke up and told her dad Fred about the accident. According to Fred, Mara was distraught after giving him the news. She was mumbling, quote, this is the worst and making whimpering sounds. Fred reassured her that the car would get fixed. Everything was going to be okay, but his words weren't really getting through to her. At the time, Fred figured that they would talk about it later after Mara had a chance

26:46to calm down. But that opportunity never came, because less than 48 hours later, Mara disappeared. On Sunday afternoon, February 8th, around 1.30pm, Fred dropped Mara off at her dorm room in a rental car. Mara may have worked a short shift in her art gallery jobs on day afternoon, although her boss couldn't really remember, but at around 8pm, she finally got her cell phone back from the friend that threw the party the night before, and that's where we get clue number four. Mara's phone and internet history. Fred called her at around 8.30pm or 9pm that night, but Mara missed the call and ended up returning it at around 11.26pm. Fred wanted to make sure that Mara had picked up the accident report. He needed it for some insurance forms, and she promised to do it the next day for him. She stayed up late that night, which was pretty normal for her, but shortly after midnight, she did something interesting. She searched MapQuest for directions to Burlington, Vermont, and the Berkshers, which is a mountain

27:51range in Western Massachusetts. Both are very popular vacation destinations, about three hours away from where she was going to school in Amherst. After sending some emails related to her coursework at around 3.32am, she searched MapQuest again for directions to Burlington, and also to Bartlett, New Hampshire, which is about a four hours drive away. And then she searched for hotels in Burlington. After that, she looked for information on something even more shocking to investigators. There was a search for the effects of alcohol on a fetus. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Mara was pregnant at this time. Yeah, Julie talks about this too, where this is something that Facebook and the internet really ran with at the time, because there were a couple of things that she had looked up regarding, unborn babies and fetuses and health of mothers during pregnancy. But she also was a nurse, and she literally had a test coming up that was like all about

28:55the effects of things on babies. Yeah, it was like, she had a clinical rotation in a maternity ward. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So Julie just thinks it had to do with the fact that that was what she was studying. Yeah, which could be very likely. It is also 3.32 a.m., but she was on the deans list. I mean, you can't rule anything out, really. I did my best studying at three in the morning, so I get that. I was a procrastinator. I was crash studying all night before exams and things. And at around four a.m., Mara's computer and cell phone activity take a break. So when investigators assumed she probably just went to sleep. By early afternoon, she was awake again and still had travel on her mind. At 12.55 p.m., she called a couple who owned a condo in Bartlett, New Hampshire, where Mara had stayed on a previous vacation. At 1 p.m., she emailed Bill, telling him she'd gotten his voice mails, but wasn't in the mood to talk and promise to call later. She even signed off with Love You and called Bill a stud in the email.

29:59So things were seemingly good. And then at around 1.24 p.m., she sent emails to several teachers and her boss at the art gallery, saying that she'd be away for a week due to a death in the family. And to be clear, that was a lie. Julie thinks Mara just wanted to take a break and was using that as an excuse, but it seems like Mara still didn't know where she was headed for that break. At 2.05 p.m., she called the Tourism Hotline in Stove Vermont. The system was out of order, so she couldn't talk to anyone or make a reservation, but she apparently did decide on a plan to go somewhere within the next hour because the next sighting we have of her is her seemingly making some big moves, which brings us to our fifth clue, the ATM photos. At 3.15 p.m., Mara withdrew $280 from an ATM in Hadley, Massachusetts, which is about five miles from campus. This was most of the money in her account.

31:03And several of these ATM surveillance photos from this stop have been released, and we're going to show them for you guys. It shows Mara wearing jeans, a light-colored jacket with a dark hood and a dark shirt. She's alone and seemingly has this somber expression. She spends less than a minute at the ATM leaving the lobby at 3.16 p.m. Unfortunately, the stills are black and white and pretty low quality, so it doesn't show many details of the parking lot, but we can be pretty sure that Mara drove her sat in there, however we don't know if anyone else was in the vehicle with her. What we do know was that she spent some of that cash a half hour later, which brings us to clue number six, a liquor store receipt. At 3.33 p.m., Mara checked out at a liquor store called Liquors 44 in Hadley. Her receipt shows that she bought about $40 worth of alcohol, Caluah, Vodka, Bailies,

32:03Smirnoff Ice. Those were the ingredients Mara liked to use in her favorite drink, a black Russian. Some reports say that Mara also bought a box of Franzea wine at this stop, because boxed wine was later found in her car. And all of this kind of together looks like a lot of alcohol for just one person to investigators. At some point in the afternoon, we think around 4 p.m., Mara picked up those accident forms from the Hadley, Massachusetts Police Department, and then she hit the road, headed in what seemed to be the direction of her favorite place of vacation, which was the white mountains in New Hampshire. Her New Hampshire driver's license still needed to be reinstated, and Mara had the forms that she needed with her in the car. She had to file the forms in person in New Hampshire and pay a fee, which could have been one of the reasons that she withdrew that $280 from her account. And then after that, around 4 to 37 p.m., Mara dialed her voicemail so that she could check

33:03her messages. At 5 p.m., someone called Mara's cell phone from within a 22 mile radius of London and dairy New Hampshire. Unfortunately, because she didn't answer this phone call, the number never appeared on her cell phone bill so we don't know exactly who placed this call. And after that, there's this blank spot in her timeline for about two and a half hours. The next time anyone is known to have spoken to Mara is when the bus driver saw her accident in behavioral New Hampshire 132 miles from her campus, which leads us to clue number 7, witness statements. Let's start with Faith Westman, who lived really close to the crash site and actually saw Mara before the bus driver did, but didn't interact with her. At 7.27 p.m., she called 911 to report a car had, quote, gone off the road outside of her home on Route 112. In a later interview, she said she initially heard a thud around 7 p.m. and saw a vehicle outside that looked like it had been traveling eastbound, struck a tree, and ended up on the

34:06road facing the opposite direction of traffic. She and her husband watched the vehicle for a while, saw the interior lights flicker on and off, and then at 7.27, Faith decided to call 911. By 7.29 p.m. an officer named Smith was dispatched to the accident and was at least 15 minutes away. While she was still on the phone with dispatch around 7.30 p.m., Faith saw a school bus arrive at the scene. She recognized this bus has one driven by her neighbors, the atwoods, and the driver that night was Butch atwood. He's the one that we talked about in the very beginning, who called 911 for Mara after they spoke. Again, Mara told Butch that she had called AAA, but her cell phone records didn't reflect that. Although attempted calls that didn't go through wouldn't show up on a phone bill, and as mentioned, Butch said there wasn't great service out there. So, maybe she did try to call, but it didn't register. Which is still interesting though, because you would think, like if she told him how

35:09I called AAA, but it didn't connect, you didn't get someone on the phone saying they would come help you. So you didn't really call AAA. You tried to call AAA, but there's not anyone coming to help you. Yeah, and I tried to put myself in that situation, and I probably wouldn't get in a bus with a stranger to go to their house to use their phone, but I fear stressed and not thinking it's just like it's so hard to put yourself in someone's shoes ever. So regardless, there's just no record of AAA being called. And at this time, the Westmans continued to watch Mara and saw what they described as quote, a flurry of activity at the rear of the car. Then they noticed a red light near Mara's face, which they kind of assumed it was maybe from her smoking a cigarette, but Mara wasn't a smoker. So the Westmans eventually came to the conclusion that the light must have come from her cell phone shining near her face. I'm just going to be honest with you guys.

36:10I'm kind of confused why Faith didn't go outside and just be like, hey girl, you need a blanket. After this, something really weird happens, which is clue number eight, which comes from another witness. Her name is out there online, but law enforcement hasn't confirmed it. So we're going to call her what the official sources call her, which is witness a at about 7.35 pm after butch left witness a saw a police SUV parked nose to nose with Mara's vehicle. However, official police records show the first officer on the scene was officer Smith, who arrived at 7.46 pm, which is actually 11 minutes later. Now a few things could be true here, either witness a got their timeline wrong, though other details suggest that's not very likely. Or there could be another officer who arrived at the scene earlier and didn't radio dispatch about their arrival on scene, you know, arriving to the accident.

37:11If so, it would be a little suspicious considering 7.35 is about the time Mara disappeared. The other more mundane possibility is that officer Smith arrived earlier than what was reflected on those official records, which would mean witness a actually just saw officer Smith. Hicks up to that theory doesn't explain how officer Smith made a 15 minute drive in bad weather only in six to 10 minutes, but it seems here we're getting all these eyewitnesses reports. They're all kind of contradicting each other a little bit and it's super unclear what's really going on. Yeah, it's just hard to keep track of the timeline, but I guess the theory becomes that maybe another police car got there earlier and was nose to nose with Mara's car at the time she disappeared. Yeah. And then by the time officer Smith got there, she was gone. Which that's happened to me. I've gotten an offender, a fender before and called an officer was driving by and just

38:14pulled over to assist. Yeah. That does happen. That's not super unusual if someone's just on their way and over here's a radio chatter and it's like, yeah, I'm there. I'm going to pop in. But timeline wise, Mara disappeared around this time. So it's just, yeah, what's going on? Well, there's someone at the scene when she doesn't be there, basically. Well, we know for sure that officer Smith was at the scene by 7.46 pm and by the time he gets there, Mara's gone, disappeared without a trace. And because they don't have a search warrant for the vehicle, they have to just go off of what they can see from the outside. So officer Smith goes up to the car. He starts looking around and that's when he notices the box of franzio wine on the seat, as well as red liquid, which is presumably wine, not blood on the ceiling and the driver's side door of the car. The windshield is cracked. Both of the airbags are deployed in the front seats and there's damage to the front driver's side of the vehicle. The hood has buckled upward from this.

39:16At 7.54 pm, officer Smith issued a bolo or a be on the lookout for a 5 foot 7 woman on foot, probably based on the bus driver's description of Mara. He also called for EMS and fire units to help out at the scene of the accident just in case Mara was nearby. But when EMS showed up, they noticed something pretty strange. Which is our 9th clue, a rag in the tailpipe. For a while, people thought maybe this was a sign Mara was trying to die by suicide by redirecting exhaust into the cabin of the car. But that was before other info started coming to light. Turns out Fred had actually advised Mara that if she absolutely had to drive her broken car, the Saturn, and if she was worried about getting a ticket for the smoke coming out of it, that she could try stuffing a rag in the tailpipe.

40:19Which I mentioned earlier in this episode, I don't know a ton about cars and how they work, but I'm curious if anyone watching this. Because my question with this would be, is there a chance that carbon monoxide was filling up the car as she was driving if she had something stuffed in the tailpipe? I would love some car enthusiasts mechanics, someone to chime in. My limited knowledge of cars, you don't shove stuff up the tailpipe regardless. I know a rag isn't super dense and it's somewhat permeable by the exhaust still. I mean, it could cause the car to backfire, put more strain on the engine, I would think. I don't know. It doesn't seem like sound advice regardless. Right. Again, I'm telling you guys, this sounds like my car drove in high school. My car had a busted o-ring in the engine, so it would leak oil and smoke. And people would roll down their windows at stoplights and be like, your car's on fire. I didn't know you could get a ticket for your car smoking a little. Yeah. How bad was this smoke then if they're worried about a ticket?

41:22I mean, it must have been bad. Yeah. Because her dad was worried about her getting pulled over by police. I'm pretty sure he told her you will get pulled over by the cops if you drive this car. But if you have to drive it for some reason, put a rag in the tailpipe so that it's not smoking so much. Yeah. And so all that being said, it's like she clearly was desperate to drive somewhere. And you know, there also could have been the worry about her suspended license in the back of her mind and afraid that smoke coming out of her tailpipe would somehow make the police more likely to ticket her and make it harder for her to get her license back. There's a lock going on here at the same time. You know, the accident from a couple nights before she didn't get written up. So getting in a car again, it's confusing. This is kind of a twisty case we're in right now. Yeah. No, I'm curious what people say about it because just even a preliminary looking this up. Yeah, go search. It says yes, blocking a tailpipe can cause exhaust gases, including carbon monoxide to build up.

42:22Depending on how blocked it is, it can cause the gas to leak back into the vehicle's cap in which can lead to serious poisoning even death. And a partial blockage can damage the exhaust system or engine. Yeah. I mean, when you have to think about two, all of the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, you can pass out, you can become dizzy, you can become disoriented. I mean, there's so many things I've had. Your decision making goes away. Yeah. Your ability to make decisions. I had a Reddit story on to how it takes where this guy thought his landlord was breaking in to his apartment and leaving him sticky notes, but it was actually him during carbon monoxide poisoning. Oh my gosh. It was insane. I'm thinking now, like this is just coming to me as we're recording you guys. It's snowy. She's maybe cold. She kept the car running. Exhaust is plugged with a rag. If it went back into the cabin, even if it was going into the cabin as she was driving and then crashes because of that, and then cars on maybe, like it's just, there's so many what-ifs here that make this all look so bad.

43:23No, it made me realize too, like when we cover ghost stories on her to its pounding, some people in the comments would be like, I wonder how many old-timey ghost stories are just people suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning and hallucinating things happening in their home. I literally got one of those detectors to take with me to hotels so I don't die in my sleep. I think that's smart. Yeah. That is very scary. It, people, it happens. So for the rest of that evening, police EMS and fire units continue to show up at the scene to look for the driver, but they find no sign of her and they find no evidence. That points to where she could have gone. There's not any tire tracks, there's not any footprints around leading off into the woods or anything. Yeah. They don't even really know who the driver is at that point. All they have is the bus drivers' description of her. But police aren't necessarily considering this a missing person's case just yet. Julie says the behavioral police thought that Mara was a quote DUI walk away at first, meaning someone who flees the scene of an accident to avoid getting a DUI. I mean, especially they saw the franzia spilled all over the car.

44:25There was other alcohol in the car. Also though, there's two feet of snow on the ground and the road was plowed. But if Mara did go off into the woods, she would have left footprints. There would have been, I mean, two feet of snow. There would have been your sink in indentations. Yeah. Even with snowshoes, you leave. So it would have been easy to head off in the direction she went if that was the case. That's what really gets me about this case. The lack of footprints. So she could have walked on the paved road, but she was still somewhat in the ditch it seems. Yeah. I know it's a really tricky one. What do you guys think about this? Is this like the part of this case that really just like, yeah, baffles you? All that the police really learned that night is that the car is registered to her dad, Fred. But when officers Smith tries calling Fred, he can't get through. And as we mentioned, without a warrant or really being able to reach the registered owner, they can't search Mora's locked car for any other evidence just yet. And it's not until the next morning when a judge signs a search warrant that the cops

45:28start digging through it. And this is when they figure out that Mora's the driver, not Fred, based on items that were in the car. And so let's kind of walk through what they find in this vehicle. There's the boxed wine. There's also an empty beer can. There's a Coke bottle with red liquid in it, which they assume is wine. There's Mora's AAA card kind of indicating that maybe she did try to call AAA. There's the accident reporting forms that Mora picked up for her dad, the driver's license reinstatement forms. They also find makeup. They find jewelry. They find CDs. They find a book about the nearby white mountains in New Hampshire and in Maine, which Mora vacationed to a lot over the years. They find printed driving directions to Burlington and Stovermont, birth control pills, and Tylenol P.M. There's also a stuffed monkey that she loved, a suitcase full of clothing, and some black leather gloves. It's also interesting what is not inside of the vehicle.

46:29Mora's purse, backpack, and cell phone are not found inside of the Saturn. Plus none of the hard alcohol that she had purchased was in there either, just the beer can and the wine. So I mean, we can assume that Mora took off carrying the Caluah Bailey's vodka and Smirnov ice. Did she leave the alcohol somewhere before the crash? We don't really know. Did she get nervous that she was going to be arrested for a DUI? So she took the alcohol and ran or what, you know, we really don't know what happened. We know that she made that purchase. Now law enforcement is also pretty interested in answering these questions as well, but there's still having a really hard time reaching her family, even 12 hours after her disappearance. So finally, in the late afternoon of February 10th, 2004, the police get a hold of Mora's sister, Kathleen, who gets a hold of Fred. We're not entirely sure why it takes so long for this to happen. The family really seems to blame the police for the lack of trying to get in touch with

47:32them, and they've been very transparent about that. Now the whole Murray family is slowly starting to get this terrible news. They beg the police to continue to look for Mora. Mora does mention that he is a fridge she might have been suicidal. And early on in the police search, the Murray's felt like the police weren't really taking this disappearance that seriously. New Hampshire's Fish and Game Department is a highly respected search and rescue agency, and they have a really, really high success rate in finding people, but they weren't even looped in on Mora's disappearance until 8.30 p.m. on Tuesday, the 10th. That's more than 24 hours after Mora disappeared. And remember, it was cold that night. The first 24 hours of someone disappearing are so important, and you're not even looping in all the people who need to be involved until after that. Yeah, especially given the fact that there were no footprints. So maybe if they would have gone out there, there would have been a cent trail at least. Yeah, which we'll get into the cent trail too. But the formal search for Mora didn't begin until the following morning, which was more

48:38than 36 hours after she vanished, which brings us to clue number 11. The cent trail. I know it's coming, guys. Yeah. On Wednesday, February 11th, law enforcement officers finally do their first real search for Mora in the area around the crash site. They bring in a helicopter and a bloodhound. The dog does pick up a cent from one of the gloves that was found in Mora's car, but unfortunately, the cent doesn't go very far just to the next intersection of Bradley Hill Road. Julie, her sister thinks that this is because Mora never even wore those gloves. So chances are her scent on them wasn't very strong. Or it could mean that the dog was on Mora's scent, but her scent actually stopped at that intersection, perhaps because she got into another vehicle. And unfortunately, this is like truly one of the most important things that we would need to know. And Julie is really sad that the police didn't give the dogs a stronger scent.

49:39Julie has gone on record saying like they would have given a shirt or just something of Mora's that she definitely wore and definitely carried her scent. Like the gloves were a recent gift from her boyfriend, I believe. So there wasn't a ton of evidence that she had really worn them that much. Even used them. Yeah. It's like they could have gotten access to something that would have been really good to give these dogs. Yeah. But they didn't ask for it. While the team was searching the crash site though, a group of officers from the UMass campus police did begin searching Mora's dorm room. And that's clue number 12 for us. They actually found that most of her room appeared to be packed. As if she was planning to leave kind of moving out of the dorm they were assuming. And while they were there, the UMass police also looked at Mora's computer activity under her student log in. They found some of her instant messages and saw one conversation where she mentioned her boyfriend, Bill, had cheated on her. I've seen in some sources that they've even mentioned that this was printed out. But family and investigators haven't really confirmed this.

50:41At first, this seemed like a possible motive for her disappearance until police learned it was likely an old message. One that was sent during a rough patch in their relationship almost two years earlier. And in some of those sources, I've seen like her sister has even said like they don't know if she was moving out or if she's just hadn't unpacked yet. Right. Right. There's not a lot that you can really gleam from this dorm room. Yeah, exactly. And the days that immediately followed Mora's vanishing, the searches continued, but not as many and definitely not with the level of resources that her family was hoping for. Her credit cards, bank account and cell phone were monitored by the police, but there was no recent activity. Within a couple of days, the Murray's started pushing for the FBI to actually take over the case. They wanted the investigation to be able to cross state lines. I mean, it's New England, which in general, all the states are very close to each other in New England. So just the chances that this crime had crossed state lines, there was like a potential for that.

51:42Yeah, especially given how many places she was searching. Yeah. Who knows? You know, or like you were saying to the sent trail stopped at a part of the road, what if someone did come by and pick her up? And that's exactly what the family was starting to fear that she had been abducted while walking alongside the road. Maybe she was taken out of state by someone. They were still hoping that there was going to be help from the feds, but the Murray family didn't want to waste any time so they conducted their own search efforts as well. Bill ends up flying in from Oklahoma, Julie postponed her military service in Iraq so that she could help search for Mora. And meanwhile, the case started taking off in the media, which is kind of what we talked about too earlier where Facebook was in its infancy. It started trending there. It started going wild in the media. There's national broadcasts that pick up Mora's story. And before long, her case is pretty much being investigated by everyone. Law enforcement, web sleuths alike. And one thing when we were looking up the web sleuthing of this was there were these

52:47things called Mara Murray celebrities that arose during the like early Facebook days. These were people who were so obsessed with the investigation that they became notable names in the true crime community for their search efforts and their digging and their sleuthing. Unfortunately, that didn't really help bring to light any new evidence or anything. The case began to stall, especially when police refused to fully cooperate with the family in the ways that the family thought would be helpful. So in 2005, which was a year after Mora disappeared, Fred Murray filed a lawsuit hoping to pressure authorities into releasing Mora's case file under FOIA, Freedom of Information Act. Fred wanted all of the information so that he could continue to investigate privately. And with the attention, he believed that the case deserved. The cops refused to hand over anything and the case ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court. And ultimately, the court ruled that it was okay to keep the record secret if they were quote, investigatory in nature and quote, releasing them could potentially disrupt ongoing law

53:52enforcement activities. This was something I looked into more of because FOIA is so temperamental. Yeah. You can't just file a FOIA act and get the records all the time. I spent like in unsolved cases. And unfortunately, there's so many workarounds that departments have in order to like not give the case files to family. And this is just one of those cases where they decided, no, we don't have to give you. There is no freedom of information here. Well, and it's interesting, right? Because what's to say there's a case where the family is a suspect and they file for all this information, essentially on themselves, to try to maybe cover things up. Now I don't think that's the case here. But I think to Fred's point, it's like, okay, well, like how long are you going to keep this? It's been a year. You're not doing anything. The case has gone cold. I know. Do I wait five more years? And then I can get information related to my daughter's disappearance. Fred has talked about that a lot too. Like he said in interviews, am I supposed to wait another 20 years before I can learn anything? Like how long am I supposed to wait? And it's not like he was looking to get the information.

54:55You know, we talked about it in Elizabeth's smart. Like the family took a lot of risks in putting information out there. That's not really what the Murray's were going to do. They weren't going to put more information out there. They were just looking to have their own investigators come look at this case. Yeah. And I guess like the investigators, like they should have at least then handed over things that they felt could be taken by Fred and used in a private investigation. Like give him something. I know. You know, her dad trying to get answers. Yeah. Well, today it's been 21 years without an arrest. Obviously there's been some false leads that have come forward and some dead ends. Police at one point even dug up an A-frame home that was about a mile from the crash site in Haverville, New Hampshire. After a man claimed that his brother who lived in the house might have done something tomorrow, but unfortunately the dig which took place in 2019 showed no signs of Mara. In 2021, there were more dashed hopes when human remains found in the white mountains were

55:56thought to be Mara's, but that turned out to be a false lead as well. In 2022, the authorities made another extensive search for Mara in the area near Landaf, New Hampshire. They brought in K-9 teams again. They didn't release any of the findings from that search, but there is one more new clue that might still be in play. This has never happened before. Five players, 26 cases each, one million dollars on the line for every player. On September 25th, Yamavarizor and Casino at Sandman Well makes history with deal or no deal live, hosted by me, Howie Mandel. Lane September for your chance to take the stage at Yamavar Theater and answer the ultimate question. Deal or no deal? Details at Yamavar.com must be 21. Please gamble responsibly. Yeah, which is clue number 14 for us. A surprise fingerprint match. So to kind of give you guys an idea how this happened, we need to give you some background

56:58info about someone whose name never came up at all in the original investigation, which is one of Mara's West Point classmates, a guy named Stefan Baldwin. He was arrested in 2020 for animal cruelty and financial crimes. The allegations against him for which he ended up being sentenced to more than 15 years in prison are pretty shocking. Stefan was a self-proclaimed dog whisperer who would take in dangerous animals and promise to heal them if people donated enough money. In some of those cases, he euthanized the dogs all while posting fake records to make it look like they were in loving homes. That's horrible. Pretty, pretty sick. So depraved. Now, Conroy says multiple women that were associated with Stefan ended up dead or missing. This is according to Conroy. As for what this has to do with Mara, well, when Stefan got arrested, he was fingerprinted.

58:01His prints were entered into the automated fingerprint identification system and they came back as a match for some of the unknown fingerprints that were found on a CD in Mara's car. Now, we don't know if there was a relationship between them, Reddit had a lot of speculations all over on this case. And maybe if Mara was seen someone else on the side, but that is all we know. Fingerprints on the CD. And we don't have any evidence that anyone else was in the car that night. No. Where the CD came from, was it picked up at a good will, but we really don't know. We just know fingerprints found on CD. Is it a coincidence? I don't know. What do you guys think? It's very weird, very weird for it to be a coincidence. I would say, but let me know what you guys think. But Stefan isn't the only man in Mara's life who might have a questionable history. Our 15th and final clue has to do with Bill who again was Mara's boyfriend when she vanished. True crime author James Renner published a 45 minute video of women in their own words,

59:05telling stories about Bill, who had allegedly abused them. One of the accusers even claimed that Bill grabbed her by the neck and told her, quote, I'm going to kill you like I killed Mara. She said this was in 2004, the same year as Mara's disappearance. And one of Bill's accusers went to the police about an incident in 2011, which she claimed when she worked with Bill. Because of it, Bill was charged with felony sexual abuse. In 2022, he did end up taking a plea deal and pleaded guilty to regular assault. Another accuser won a protection order against Bill in 2019 after a three day hearing in which she alleged some pretty serious physical abuse. As suspicious as this pattern might look, Bill does have an alibi for the time of Mara's disappearance. He was in Oklahoma where he was stationed and police did confirm this.

1:00:08And it should be mentioned that the Marie family does not support Renner or his vendetta against Bill specifically. Yeah. I was going to say I just searched him in the Mara Marie subreddit to see what they said. And apparently James Renner believes that Mara is still alive. And he has made some really wild, like unfounded claims about like her father having an inappropriate relationship with her, just things that do not feel like they're actually authentic to the case. So I understand how the family would be very skeptical of this person. Yeah. So is he, how does he have any info related to this case of her own dad couldn't even do a freedom of information act and get any information? Yeah. Like where is this coming from? Is it substantiated? A lot of people saying that they hope he gets hit with defamation for some of the things he said about the case. So yeah. Interesting. Just an interesting footnote as we're covering this section. Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, Bill even used to post on Reddit. You bring up Reddit.

1:01:09Bill went to Reddit talking about how much he loved Mara and he now has a website, a entire website about the case. He's done interviews really trying to keep up the interest and awareness about Mara and the fact that she is still missing the Reddit account bill used is inactive now. But there is an excerpt from an old comment of his quote, she would literally jump from a tree top into the Soko River one day. That's a great story by the way. And the next day be the most radiant woman at any formal event. She was one of a kind. Now we know that boyfriend's husband can say amazing kind things about people and still be the culprit. But again, you know, but it just doesn't feel like there was anyone in the car with her that night. So I don't know. It's so strange. I don't I mean, we could talk about some of the theories that people have some like both police and online.

1:02:09Yeah. The police really believe that she walked away into her own life. That really seemed to be the narrative that they were sharing with the family. And they went to this one book that she had in her car. So Mara loved the white mountains, which it was like the direction she was heading on the 172, whatever interstate she was on. And she had a book with her, Julie talks about this in her podcast. She had a book with her that like on one of the pages that was booked mark, there was one sentence that you could interpret in some ways as like a depressed person talking about ending their life. But it was like such a stretch, but the police really glommed on to that and they're like see, look, she must have taken her own life. But I ended up like it's fishing. I ended up asking my cousin, who's a cop. I was like, what are what is the police's responsibility if they do believe someone took their life? Because for me, if that were my family, I would be like, yeah, but can you still help me look like this person? Where is she?

1:03:10She could still be a like we don't know, even if that was her intention. Like there's a chance that she's still alive and we could go save her. And it just felt like the police kept kicking the can down the road and not really like engaging in the search very quickly. So yeah, it's just very frustrating. And in theory, the police are supposed to have a lot more responsibility even when they do think someone has taken their life. Well, and it's, you know, you can make an assumption as an investigator. You can have a hunch, but at the end of the day, you don't have a body. You don't have Mara. Right. So how are you just going to stop looking and be like, well, she must have wanted to disappear. I know. She must have, you know, Ben suicidal. You don't know. So until you have definitive proof, this is an open case and you work your ass out. So I'm just trying to figure it out, especially in those early hours. Yeah. Like the fact it took 36 somewhat hours to really get searches going and to use a, like, Steve glove in the car. A freezing weather. No one's going to last 36 hours in those temperatures to like the, there's like a lot

1:04:17of urgency that needed to happen in this case. I just didn't. Yeah. And I know Reddit is full of, you know, theories as well. A lot of them do think that she walked into the woods, didn't want to get, you know, in trouble for DUI. This was the second car accident in, you know, a days time basically. Yeah. And so a lot of people were like, she was probably scared. She was nervous. She had all that alcohol. Like, so she walked off into the woods. But again, there is no Mara. Like there wasn't extensive searches done with dogs in the way they should have been done to see how far she got on foot, which then leads a lot of people to believe. She didn't go anywhere on foot, right? She was picked up. Pick her up. Or if you believe that there was a cop car that parked and was like nose to nose with her car before the official cop car got there. I mean, there's so many missing people cases that do end up coming home. I mean, we covered one last week with Elizabeth Smart. Yeah. There's JC Dewgard where they're held captive for years and years.

1:05:19Like it, it's kind of crazy that investigators didn't seemingly do their job. As thoroughly as they should have. I know. Early on with this one, which there's my, there's my mark today. Yeah. A mark on the botch board. I do think the Murray family still goes to that area and conducts their own searches, just in hopes that they'll find something someday. Yeah. But it's, yeah, it's so heartbreaking. It is. And I mean, I looked at Julie's TikToks and, you know, she's still going over Google maps of like, this is the corner. This is where her car was found. And like, when I was envisioning car and like all of this, like I was envisioning, oh, it was way in the ditch. And it wasn't that far off the road. Like it would have been easy for her to get picked up by someone and take it. Like, so I don't know. I covered this case on Hearttheads pounding. Earlier this year, the case of Brandon Lawson. And he was someone who also made a really strange 911 call that people couldn't make sense

1:06:21of. Maybe chasing him parked his car on the side of a highway in Abelene, Texas and vanished without a trace. They did an extensive search in the sense that they had like planes and people looking on the ground, never found him. And then it was just citizens loose who stayed passionate about the case who eventually did find his remains about like 10 or 12 years later. I think last Christmas, they made a positive ID on the remains. Wow. And sometimes that's what it takes is just people who are willing to kind of go comb through the woods and do these searches. So I know her family is still out there looking. I hope there's other people that are out there still looking. We have some notes here too about advocacy that her family has taken part in. Moira's family has some specific initiatives that anyone who's very interested in this case that you can support. You can learn more on their official website, which is maramorymissing.org. But this is what they're asking people who care about Moira and her story to do. First engage with empathy. That's the biggest one that Julie says a lot. And practice care when you're talking about this case or with any case.

1:07:24And this is what Morgan and I try to do every time. So care means according to the family's website, centering the victims and those with the most at stake balancing public interest with potential harm, avoid harmful speculation. Ask if this content furthers the case or simply entertains. Research responsibly be critical and curious of content. The veracity of sourcing and do not accept subjective interpretations as indisputable fact. This helps eliminate the harmful proliferation of misinformation and as only one who listens to hard source pounding knows I am such a stickler about sources hugely, hugely important to me. Engage with empathy victims and families did not choose these tragic paths engaging them with a level of sensitivity is crucial in order to prevent exploitation and unfair public indictments of innocent people. Now that's stuff that we try to do with every episode and certainly in this one as well. Laura's family is also asking the public to support a permanent historical marker for

1:08:24Mora near the place where her car crashed. You can go tomorrow, Murray missing, or again, click on campaigns and then hashtag blue ribbon campaign to find out ways that you can help. And lastly, if you know anything about this case, you can contact the new Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit at coldcase unit at d os dot n h dot gov or call at 603 271 266 3. Now Julie, we've talked about this a little bit in this episode. Julie Murray has her own podcast on the case media pressure and she says that she's already gotten useful new tips from the public, just people that have listened to this show. Julie's active on TikTok too. She's under the handle at Mora Murray missing. So you can always reach out to her. She's so open to new information and she just also seems like a very kind person. So you can always reach out to her with anything that you might know. Fred and Julie are the last members of the immediate family left, but they're determined

1:09:24to find Mora while Fred who is now in his 80s is still here to witness the moment this mystery is finally solved. And on that note, let's move on to our missing person of the week. This is coming from an ABC news article, but California authorities are trying to track down a missing nine year old named Melody buzzard. She was last spotted in August of 2025 after the authorities initially said that she hadn't been seen since October of 2024. The search for Melody started this past August when a school official reported her having a prolonged absence, though there are reports that Melody had been homeschooled for quote, at least a couple of years. Yeah, but hasn't checked in with the district since October of last year. An article that just came out a few hours ago actually is reporting new information that her mother is being extremely uncooperative. And there are reports that they had recently taken a 1500 mile road trip with her quote,

1:10:31extremely mentally unstable mother. And as recent as October 7th, they were mysteriously driving as far as Nebraska in a rental car. So they are desperately looking for her at this point in time. They were spotted making several stops in the rented vehicle, which was a white Chevy Malibu along the way. And that's according to police. It also looks like her father is deceased. So I believe her mother's her only caretaker will include a picture of her on our socials. There's not an official description that police are going out with right now, but we can see from her photo that she is brown hair brown eyes long curly, big brown hair. They have said that the most recent photo of hers two years old. So she may look different at this point. Anyone with information can call the sheriff's department at 805 6814150 or you can submit a tip anonymously at 805 6814171 or sbsharef.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of Crime House 247.

1:11:34Be sure to check out our second episode on the vanishing of Judge Joseph Force Crater dropping later today. And to enhance your listening experience, join Crime House Plus and get every episode of Crime House 247 completely ad free. Along with early ad free access to all Crime House shows plus monthly bonus episodes. To join go to Crime House Plus dot com or if you listen on Apple podcasts, tap try free at the top of the Crime House 247 page. Today's episode is brought to you by Alma. I think a lot of people put off therapy not because they don't want help, but because finding the right therapist feels like such a process. I know I've experienced that digging through options, trying to understand insurance and not knowing if I'd actually click with someone almost simplifies all of that. They've built a network of over 26,000 therapists nationwide and you can browse their directory

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1:13:35A history channel original podcast brought to you by Rewind Studios. Adapted from the hit TV show, every episode dives into one of the world's greatest enigmas, the vanishings, the myths, the lost relics, and the unexplained. With contributions from top historians, authors, scientists, and researchers, we separate fact from folklore and evidence from rumor, from unsolved crimes to buried treasure, to the deaths and disappearances of famous figures. These are the stories we think we know, but dig beneath the legend and the truth gets far stranger. Follow history's greatest mysteries available now wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're looking for another show to check out, listen to Murder True Crime Stories, another show from Crime House I think you'll love. Join Carter Roy as he digs into history's most notorious murders like you've never heard before. Follow Murder True Crime Stories available wherever you listen to podcasts.