Missing Girls An Anthology of True Crime

MISSING GIRLS

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ANDREA TORRENCE

table of contents

MAURA MURRAY

BETHANY DECKER

MISSING JOYCE

FINDING JODI

PATRICIA MEEHAN

KELSIE SCHELLING

NATALEE HOLLOWAY

JENNIFER KESSE

TARA CALICO

Disappearance of Maura Murray

The case of Maura Murray’s disappearance is one that has left police and conspiracy theorists baffled for more than a decade. Her sudden disappearance is one that makes very little sense and the available information regarding who she is as a person and her motive behind her attempt to leave town prior to vanishing isn’t easy to wrap our brains around.

Maura has been missing since February 9, 2004. From the time of her disappearance, there have been no credible sightings of Maura. The last person to see her alive, a passing motorist, noticed her oddly calm demeanor following a car crash, but she was gone by the time the police arrived on the scene.

Her family is devastated that they haven’t gotten closure, but is also skeptical that she could still be alive. Laurie and Fred, Maura’s mother and father, have had nothing to add regarding their daughter’s disappearance, and have no idea what thought pushed her into taking some personal belongings, withdrawing over $200 in cash, and attempting to leave town under the guise of grieving over a death in the family.

To get an understanding of the case, it’s important to understand who Maura is, what she did and said in the days prior to her disappearance, and her strange behavior moments before vanishing into thin air.

Maura was born on May 4, 1982, in Hanson, Massachusetts. She is the third child of four (two older sisters, one younger brother) and had a normal upbringing as a child. Her parents divorced when she was 6 years old and she mainly stayed with her mother. She was a very athletic person during her high school years at Whitman-Hanson Regional High. After graduating from high school, she was accepted into the United States Military Academy in New York, where she took chemical engineering for three semesters. However, after her freshmen year at the academy, she was under threat of disciplinary action and expulsion. This prompted her to transfer to the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

For Maura, her sophomore and junior years at UMass were pretty much uneventful, except for her meeting with boyfriend and future-fiancé Bill Rausch. She was doing well academically and attracted very little attention for the wrong people.

To most people, Maura Murray was living the normal college school-girl life: lots of friends, getting good grades, going to parties, and even holding a steady job at her college. Her father told reporters that Maura was on the dean’s list, a list of high-achieving students who receive recognition for their college’s dean. Rausch’s mother, Sharon Rausch, spoke of being ecstatic at the news of her daughter’s engagement to her boyfriend and they were understandingly busy planning the wedding.

However, in November 2003, three months before her disappearance, things turned sour in Maura’s life as she admitted to using stolen credit cards to order food. However, her case was continued the following month, and was to be dismissed if she showed three months of good behavior. Unfortunately, she never got the chance to meet the three-month deadline.

Maura’s life turned from sour to extremely strange when on the evening of February 5, 2004, she was having a phone conversation with Kathleen, one of her old sisters, while on duty at her security guard job at her college. It was reported that the sisters mainly talked about their respective fiancés and whatever problems they were having. Something about the phone call made Maura appear physically upset and at around 10:30 PM she finally broke down in tears. When her supervisor went to see her at her desk, she appeared just completely zoned out. No reaction at all. She was unresponsive.

At around 1:30 AM on February 6, 2004, her supervisor ended her shift early and brought her back to her dorms. Her supervisor asked her what was wrong, but Maura seemed reluctant to answer. Finally she told her supervisor, My sister. Assuming the worst and not wanting to intrude on personal matters, her boss had no further line of questioning and left her at her dorm.

Only recently were the contents of the phone conversation between Maura and Kathleen disclosed to the public. Kathleen told reporters that they both talked of Kathleen recovering from her alcoholism. After being discharged from a rehabilitation clinic that evening the phone call was made, her fiancé took her directly to a liquor store. Kathleen recalled being upset that he was less understanding of her rocky situation, but soon become intoxicated along with him. This caused an emotional breakdown for Kathleen, and after telling her younger sister about it, Maura too seemed on the verge of breaking down herself. Before this information was disclosed, rumors speculated that Maura’s answer to her supervisor (My sister) was just a random string of words with little meaning, and in fact had more of a general family crisis.

On February 7, 2004, Fred Murray came to visit his daughter at Amherst, Massachusetts. His intention of coming to see his third daughter was to take her car-shopping that afternoon and have dinner together. After dining together, Maura took her father back to the motel where he was staying, and got permission to take her father’s car back to her university where she was supposed to attend a party. She took the Toyota Corolla and arrived at her dorms at 10:30 PM.

At 2:30 AM on February 8th, she left the party and started the trip back to her father’s motel where she was planning on spending the night. However, at 3:30 AM, en route to the motel, she struck a guardrail, causing almost $10,000 worth of damages to the car. The police were alerted of the accident and the responding officer filled and filed the accident report, but did not include any documentation regarding carrying out a field sobriety test on Maura. The officer took her to her father’s motel where she would remain until that afternoon.

That morning, Fred Murray discovered that the damages to his vehicle would be covered by his car insurance, so he rented a car and dropped Maura off at her college before making the trip to Connecticut. That night at 11:30 PM, he called Maura to remind her to get the accident report forms from the Registry of Motor Vehicles. They made plans to talk again via telephone the next day where he would instruct her on how to fill out the insurance claim form.

On Monday, February 9, 2004, the available information of Maura’s actions seemed out of character for the 21-year old nursing student. At around noon, using her PC, Maura searched MapQuest – a free mapping service available online – to look for directions to the Berkshires and Burlington, Vermont. It remains unclear why Maura looked up direction to the Berkshires, but she did make reservations at a hotel in Burlington.

At 1:00 PM that day, she made her contact with another person, her boyfriend, through email. In her email she wrote:

"I love you more stud. I got your messages, but honestly, I didn’t feel like talking to [sic] much to anyone, I promise to call today though."

It is also unclear what she messages she received and how Rausch sent messages to Maura. Her next conversation with another person was with a condominium owner in Bartlett, New Hampshire – the same condo association her family would frequently visit in the past. From her telephone records, we see that the phone conversation lasted around three minutes, and the owner ultimately did not end up renting out a condominium to Maura. After this, Maura called a classmate at her college, but the contents of their conversation are unknown.

At 1:24 PM, Maura emailed her work supervisor at the college and requested a full week of leave due to a supposed death in the family. Subsequent reports from her family found that her reasoning was falsified as there were no known deaths in either her mother or father’s respective families at the time. Maura promised to make contact with her supervisor by the time she got back. Remembering her uncontrollable sobbing several nights before, her supervisor granted her request for a one-week leave.

Maura’s phone records also show that she made contact with a hotel in Stowe, Vermont, regarding reservations of a hotel room. This is the second reservation she made that night after the one for a room in Burlington, Vermont. This phone call lasted around five minutes, and at 2:18 PM she called her boyfriend but reached his voicemail. She left a message, promising that they would speak again. This call lasted about one minute, and that was the last phone call she made that day.

Before taking off to wherever she wanted to go, she prepared for her trip by packing some clothes, toiletries, college books, and birth-control pills. Classes that day were cancelled following a snowstorm that struck the city, so at approximately 3:30 PM Maura made her way off campus in her black Saturn. After the police searched her room, they found that most of her personal belongings were stored in boxes and all of her art pieces were taken down from the walls. It’s unknown whether Maura packed the items that day, but police concluded that it was done between Sunday night and Monday morning. Maura left a printed message on top of the boxes which addressed her boyfriend and indicated troubles they were having in their relationship.

At 3:40 PM, her bank records show that Maura withdrew $280 for her account at an ATM, and CCTV shows that she entered and left the ATM alone. She made her way to a liquor store located nearby and purchased roughly $40 worth of alcoholic drinks. Visual records of the transaction also show that Maura was alone at the time of her purchase. She subsequently made her way to the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles and picked up the accident report forms as per her father’s request.

She then left Amherst – most likely through Interstate 91 north – and called her voicemail at 4:37 PM to check for messages. This was the last recorded instance where Maura is known to have used her cell phone. It is believed that she did not tell her travel plans to anybody and she did not let anyone know where she was headed. Even her father