Onopgelost Mysterie: Maura Murray

Are you all ready for another unsolved little mystery on Thursday? Because this is another one that has the internet scratching its head. When I got a bit into true crime, this was one of the first cases I spent evenings reading about. Because is it really that mysterious? Or was it just bad luck and a strange coincidence? I'm still not sure. Alright, let's begin: the disappearance of Maura Murray.

Maura Murray was an American student living in Massachusetts who disappeared on February 9, 2004, in the woods of New Hampshire. That evening, shortly after half past seven, the police received a report of a one-car accident at the intersection of Wild Ammonoosuc Road and Bradley Hill. When the police arrived, less than ten minutes after the report, there was no trace of the passenger: Maura Murray.

If you look at the most obvious option of what happened, also known as Occam's Razor, then it's simple: Maura lost control of her steering wheel, crashed her car, fled from the police, and succumbed in the woods. The temperatures there are not very pleasant, so you don't have much chance of surviving in the wild.

But why would she flee? Well, the period before she disappeared was not going well for Maura Murray — and that's what makes all of this so mysterious. In November 2003, three months before her disappearance, she was arrested for using a stolen credit card. Maura was also drinking more (bottles of alcohol were found in her car), she wasn't feeling well, and she was under a lot of stress from her studies — she was studying to become a nurse.

Four days before her disappearance, on February 5, Maura spoke on the phone with her sister. They talked about her sister's fiancé problems, but not about Maura's issues. She was working a night shift, and a few hours later, Maura broke down in tears. Her boss then took her back to her room on campus, but Maura didn't say what had made her so sad.

Two days later on a Saturday, February 7, her father came by. They went looking for a new car and later went out to eat. Maura decided to go to a party and took the new car, a used Toyota Corolla, but hit the guardrail around half past three in the morning: the police arrived on the scene but did not conduct a breath test, even though Maura had likely been drinking.

And that's when things get really strange. Maura and her father discussed on Monday how they would handle the car and insurance, and afterward, Maura started looking up routes to The Berkshires and Burlington, Vermont, on her computer. She also called about options to rent a cabin in New Hampshire, one that her family had been to in the past — but she ultimately did not rent the cabin.

What Maura did do was email her supervisor to say that she would take a week off due to a family death (which was not true) and that she would let them know when she would return. She also called her boyfriend shortly after to say that she wanted to talk to him later: this was a phone call that lasted only a minute.

She packed her things, clothes, toothbrush, and textbooks and left. The police later discovered that she had packed almost all her belongings in her campus room into boxes, even the paintings on the wall. It is unclear whether she did this herself before her departure or if she simply never unpacked them.

Maura withdrew $280, then bought $40 worth of alcohol and drove towards New Hampshire. Security cameras show that she was alone both at the ATM and in the store.

And then she had a one-car accident, after which she was never seen again. Notably, her father was extremely uncooperative with the police, leading many to speculate that he knows more about her disappearance. But what could he know? Did they possibly discuss something that Monday that made Maura want to leave? And if so, what?

Because there was no death in her family, and she did not inform anyone about where she was going. Looking at what she had packed, it seems she intended to come back. Why would you take your textbooks if you were planning to end your life, for example?

Friends and family are convinced that she was abducted after that car accident. By a truck driver, for instance. But then someone must have seen something, right? Over the years, only one eyewitness has come forward, claiming to have seen her walking (about 6 to 7 kilometers from the accident site), half an hour after the police had been on the scene.

Well, there are many more details that make it all even more confusing and mysterious, but I'll spare you for now. If you want to read more about it, you can do so here. And what I think happened? Unfortunately, I lean towards the simplest option: she fled from her car after crashing it, because two days prior she had also been in a car accident (with alcohol) and that scared her of the consequences that would follow. That's why she fled into the woods and sadly succumbed there due to the harsh conditions and temperatures. And I fear we will never know for sure.