Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore - MISSING: Maura Murray

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

In 2004, 21 year-old Maura Murray vanished after crashing her car on a rural New Hampshire road and was never seen again. Her disappearance became one of the internet’s first viral true-crime mysteries, spawning endless theories, false leads, and new suspects more than twenty years later. Morgan and Kaelyn follow the clues, from Maura’s life at West Point to the final moments before she vanished, to uncover what might have really happened on that cold February night. CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains mentions of disordered eating , self-harm, and SA. Please listen with care. Show Notes: allianceforeatingdisorders.com https://www.mauramurraymissing.org/Episode Sponsors:MasterClass always has great offers during the holidays, sometimes up to as much as 50% off. Head over to https://www.masterclass.com/CLUES for the current offer. The best way to cook just got better. Go to https://www.HelloFresh.com/CLUES10FM now to get 10 free meals and a free breakfast for life! One per box with active subscription. Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan. Go to https://www.Cymbiotika.com/CLUES for 20% off plus free shipping. Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t Miss out on all things Clues! YouTube: @CluesPod | @crimehousestudios Instagram: @cluespodcast | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia Clues is hosted by Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore  Instagram: @morgsyabsher | @itskaelynmoore TikTok: @twohottakes | @heartstartspounding To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Dr. Hrini-Bot, host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets uncomfortable, banished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, and events that science still can't fully explain. Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is Crime House. Today, we are going to talk about one of the first missing persons cases to go viral on social media back in 2004. More than 20 years later, there are more questions than answers about what happened to 21-year-old Mara Murray when she vanished from a road in New Hampshire in the middle of winter. New theories and clues about Mara's baffling disappearance are still emerging.

And there's even been a recent development that could point to a brand new suspect who wasn't on the original investigator's radar. Hi guys, and welcome back to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore some the key evidence behind the most gripping true crime cases. I'm Kayla Moore, and I'm going to be digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories, and the court files on these cases. And I'm your internet sleuth, Morgan Absher. I'm diving into Reddit forums and anything else I can find online to look at the threads that just don't add up.

At Crime House, we value your support. So please share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate review and follow clues to help others discover the show. For bonus episodes, early access, and ad-free listening, join our Crimehouse Plus community on Apple Podcasts. Let's get into this case and the clues that defined it. One of this week's partners is Peloton. There's a specific kind of joy and freedom that comes from a truly, great workout. That feeling where everything just clicks. Peloton is helping you unlock that feeling with the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ. It's cross-training reimagined.

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Facebook was like four, five 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 because 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 missed the MySpace page of being able to pick my song. But it is crazy to think in the context, like there was no Instagram, there wasn't 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 to get this case out there and known yeah and so it's because of that that we're we're talking about it today yeah and I definitely want to shout out Julie Murray who is Mara's 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 Podcast on Instagram. All right. Our story starts at 7.30 p.m. on February 9, 2004. A school bus driver in Havril, New Hampshire, spots a black Saturn facing west in the eastbound 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. She 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 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 lay to learn is 21-year-old Mara Murray 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 was the fourth of five children, born to her parents, Fred and Lori. Lori worked as a nurse and Fred was a medical technician,

but the couple divorced in 1988 when Mora was just six, though they seemed to have co-parented very well. Fred 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 almost 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, it 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, you know, like learn military stuff to, 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. Yeah. 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. She 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 U.S. 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 sunup to sundown. This tends to eliminate some of the thinner skin.

cadets really quickly. Mara ended up surviving these 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. Every cadet's room was subject to inspection every morning, meaning your room had to always be perfectly clean with the door open, beds made. I know that like 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. Nope, they'd get rid of me. I'd be flunked. This is not for the faint of heart. There's definitely people who can keep up with this type of schedule.

But 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 more 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 thing 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 Marrower. Mora 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 into an active war. And that was really starting to weigh on Mora, it seems. And on January 2nd of 2002, Mora 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 Mora 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 was 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 1,700 miles away. And partly because of her relationship with Bill, Mara decided to study nursing, just like her mom had done. She 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. Over time, though, the stress really started getting Tamara, 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, Dean's 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 get into. But there were like quirky things she would do. One person remembered that she refused to use the sheer bathroom in 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 you know 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's 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 per hour zone. She 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 for 30 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 so,

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. quote, 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 20th, Mara seemingly took another really bizarre risk. She got caught. You

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 to file a 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 described discovered it was Mara. And 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.

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It 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. Once he saw the car, he was like, you can't drive this. This is not safe for your drive 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 pup-a-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, that 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 to 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 7 p.m. and was supposed to last until 1.45 a.m. 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, you know, make phone calls to her boyfriend or family members. So during this time at around 7.17 p.m., she actually talked to her boyfriend Bill for about 20 minutes. After that, she made three more calls to Bill between 717 and 9.56 p.m. The longest one was only about 6 minutes. And at 10.10 p.m., 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 rehab 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 fiancé or her boyfriend at the time picked her up and drove her straight to a liquor store.

What? Immediately. And Julie and the family think it was because he was a really bad guy and it was a control thing. Like he could only control her if 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 may be 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 12.7 a.m. And they chat for seven more minutes. But then around 1 a.m., Mara. Mara suddenly bursts into tears.

And, you know, people at work don't know that she's been having these conversations. So 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. Like, 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 talked 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. But she was clearly saying, like, my sister, it 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 they're, 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. 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 break 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 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 in 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 Marr drive his Toyota Corolla to 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 ten 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 ranger'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 worst. 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. Mara 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 to 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 Fred's motel. So if she really left the party at 2.30, like the other partygoers said, and crashed the car just before 3.30, people kind of wonder 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 to 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 5.36 a.m. and then fell asleep until 10.30 a.m. 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 to calm down. but that opportunity never came because less than 48 hours later, Mara disappeared. On Sunday afternoon, February 8th, around 1.30 p.m., Fred dropped Mara off at her dorm room in a rental car.

Mara may have worked a short shift in her art gallery job Sunday afternoon, although her boss couldn't really remember. But at around 8 p.m., she finally got her cell phone back from the friend that threw the party the night before, and that's where we get clued. number four, Mara's phone and internet history. Fred called her at around 8.30 or 9 p.m. that night, but Mara missed the call and ended up returning it at around 11.26 p.m. 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 Berkshires, which is a mountain range 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 3.32 a.m., 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 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 the 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 Dean's list. Like you, 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 4 a.m., Mara's computer and cell phone activity take a break. So 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 Ham. where Mara had stayed on a previous vacation. At 1 p.m., she emailed Bill, telling him she'd gotten his voicemails but wasn't in the mood to talk and promised to call later. She even signed off with Love You and called Bill a stud in the email. So 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 would 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 205 p.m., she called the tourism hotline in Stowe, 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 citing 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. And 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 Saturn 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 333 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, Kalua, vodka, Baileys, Smyrnaf 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 Francia 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.

her favorite place to 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 her messages. At 5 p.m., someone called Mara's cell phone from within a 22-mile radius of Londonderry, 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 Haverill, New Hampshire, 132 miles from her campus. Which leads us to clue number seven. 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 road 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 727, 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 as 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 But 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, you know, 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, oh, I 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 triple it.

Like, you tried to call AAA, but, like, there's not anyone coming to help you. Yeah. And I, like, I try to put myself in that situation. And, like, I probably wouldn't get in a bus with a stranger to go to their house to use their phone. But, you know, if you're stressed and not thinking. It's just like, it's so hard to put yourself in someone's shoes ever. So regardless, like, there's just, there's 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 Concord. that the light must have come from her cell phone shining near her face. I'm just going to be honest, you guys, I'm kind of confused why Faith didn't go outside and just like, hey, girl, you need a blanket. But 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 p.m. 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 p.m., 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? If so, it would be a little suspicious, considering

735 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. except that theory doesn't explain how Officer Smith made a 15-minute drive in bad weather only in six to ten 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 early.

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 in a fender bender before and called and an officer was driving by and just pulled over to assist. Yeah. Like that does happen. That's not super unusual if someone's just on their way and overhears radio chatter.

And it's like, eh, I'm there. I'm going to pop in. But timeline-wise, Mara disappeared around this time. So it's just what's going on? Was there someone at the scene when she disappeared, basically? Well, we know for sure that Officer Smith was at the scene by 7.46 p.m. 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 Francia 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. At 7.54 p.m., Officer Smith issued a Bolo or a be on the lookout for a 5'7 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. Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break.

But not just any break. This is a refreshing break with Snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic real facts, so let's take a minute to go over some of my favorites. Snapple Real Fact, 964. It is illegal in the United Kingdom to handle salmon. in suspicious circumstances. Snapple Real Fact 1013.

It is illegal to sing off-key in North Carolina. Snapple Real Fact 233. Americans consume 150 million hot dogs on July 4th. Snapple Real Fact 705. Every ton of recycled paper saves about 17 trees. So grab a Snapple, take a second, and enjoy the moment. Because let's be honest, this might be the most refreshing part of your day. Snapple.

Make your break more interesting. All right, now let's get back to clues. This episode is brought to you by Instacart. I have a four-month-old at home, which means I don't leave the house unless I absolutely have to. Going to the grocery store is a really big deal for me these days, which is why I love Instacart so much. I hate grocery shopping. I always forget things. I get overwhelmed.

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The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states. Which is our ninth 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.

It 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. Which 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. I mean, my limited knowledge of cars, like, you don't shove stuff up the tailpipe regardless. Like, I know a rag isn't super dense and it's somewhat permeable by the exhaust still. But, like, 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. list. And again, I'm telling you guys, like, this sounds like my car. I drove in high school. Like, 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. So, I mean, how bad was this smoke then? If they're worried about a ticket. Like, I mean, it must have been bad. Yeah. Yeah. 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 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 lot 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, Google search. It says, yes, blocking a tailpipe can cause exhaust gases, including carbon monoxide to build up. Depending on how blocked it is, it can cause the gas to leak back into the vehicle's cabin, which can lead to serious poisoning, even death. Even a partial blockage can damage the exhaust system or engine. Yeah, I mean, when you have to think about, too, 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. Your decision making goes away.

Yeah. Your ability to make decisions. I had a Reddit story onto a 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. So I'm like, 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. No, it made me realize, too, like when we cover ghost stories on heartards pounding, some people in the comments will 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. 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 tired tracks. there's not any footprints around leading off into the woods or anything.

They don't even really know who the driver is at that point. All they have is the bus driver's description of her. But police aren't necessarily considering this a missing person's case just yet. Julie says the Haverill police thought that Mara was a, quote, DUI walkaway at first, meeting 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. there 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 major indentations in the snow. Even with snow shoes, you leave. So it would have, in theory, 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. I guess 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 baffles you? All that the police really learned that night is that the car is registered to her dad, Fred. But when Officer 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 start digging through it. And this is when they figure out that Mara'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 Mara's AAA card kind of indicating that maybe she did try to call AAA.

There's the accident reporting forms that Mara 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 Mara vacationed to a lot over the years. They find printed driving directions to Burlington and Stowe, Vermont, birth control pills, and Tylenolp. There's also a stuffed monkey that she loved, a suitcase full of clothing, and some block.

leather gloves. It's also interesting what is not inside of the vehicle. Mara'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 Mara took off carrying the Kalua Bailey's vodka and Smiranoff 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. But we know that she made that purchase. Now, law enforcement is also pretty interested in answering these questions as well.

But they're still having a really hard time reaching her family, even 12 hours after her disappearance. So finally, in the late afternoon of February 10, 2004, the police get a hold of Mara'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 them. 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 Mara. Fred does mention that he is afraid 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 Mara's disappearance until 8.30 p.m. on Tuesday the tent. That's more than 24 hours after Mara disappeared. And remember, it was cold that night. Like 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 got out there, there would have been a scent trail at least. Yeah, which we'll get into the scent trail too. But, you know, the formal search for Mara didn't begin until the following morning, which was more than 36 hours after she vanished. Which brings us to clue number 11. The scent trail. I know it was coming, guys.

Yeah. On Wednesday, February 11th, law enforcement. officers finally do their first real search for Mara in the area around the crash site. They bring in a helicopter and a bloodhound. The dog does pick up a scent from one of the gloves that was found in Mara's car, but unfortunately the scent doesn't go very far, just to the next intersection of Bradley Hill Road. Julie, her sister, thinks that this is because Mara 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 Mara'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. Julie has gone on record saying, like, they would have given a shirt or just something of Mara's that she definitely wore and definitely carried her scent. Like the gloves were. recent gift from her boyfriend, I believe. So there wasn't a ton of evidence that she had really warned them that much. Even used them. Yeah. So 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

Mara'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 Mara's computer activity under her student login. 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. At 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 just hadn't unpacked yet. Right, right. So there's not a lot that you can really gleam from this dorm room. Yeah, exactly. And the days that immediately followed Mara's vanishing, the search is 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. especially given how many places she was searching. Yeah. Who knows, you know? Or like you were saying, too, the scent 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 starts going wild in the media. There's national broadcasts that pick up Mara'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 things called Mara Murray celebrities that arose during the 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 and the ways that the family thought would be helpful.

So in 2005, which was a year after Mara disappeared, Fred Murray filed a lawsuit hoping to pressure authorities into releasing Mara'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 enforcement 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, like in unsolved cases. And unfortunately, there's so many workarounds that don't. 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 about 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. You know, we talked about in Elizabeth Smart, like the family took a lot of risks and putting information out there. That's not really what the Murrays 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 they used in a private investigation. Like, give him something.

I know. This is, 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 to Mara. 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 thought to be Maras, 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 Landaff, New Hampshire. They brought in K-9 teams again, but they didn't release any of the findings from that search. But there is one more new clue that might still be in play. 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 info 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 Stephanie.

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 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. His 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 has 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, we don't know where the CD came from. Yeah, you know, was it picked up at a Goodwill bin? Like, we really don't know. We just know fingerprints found on CD. Yeah.

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 telling 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 happened 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. And it should be mentioned that the Murray family does not support Renner or his vendetta against Bill specifically. Yeah, I was going to say, I just searched him in the Mara Murray 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. And I mean, who is he? How does he have any info related to this case if 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 interesting. Just an interesting footnote as we're covering this section. Absolutely. And, you know, Bill even used to post on Reddit. You bring up Reddit. Like, Bill 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 treetop into the Saco 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 No. 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. Yeah. The police really believed that she walked away and took her own life. That really seemed to be the narrative that they were sharing with the family. And they point to this one book that she had in her car, Somura, 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 bookedmarked, 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 were like, see, look, she must have taken her own life. But I ended up. It seems 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're. 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? She could still be a lot. 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 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, oh, well, she must have wanted to disappear. I know. She must have, you know, been suicidal. You don't know. So until you have definitive proof, this is an open case, and you work your ass off trying to figure it out, especially in those early hours.

Yeah. Like the fact it took 36 some odd hours to really get searches going and to use a crusty glove in the car. Freezing weather. New glove. She might not have used. No one's going to last 36 hours in those temperatures too. Like there's like a lot of urgency that needed to happen in this case. That 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, trouble for DUI. This was the second car accident in, you know, a day's 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 yeah, 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,

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 J.C. Dewgard where they're held captive for years and years. Like it's kind of crazy that investigators didn't seemingly do their job as thoroughly as they should have early on with this one, which. there's my there's my mark today yeah a mark on the botch board i do think um 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 ticotks 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 taken. Like so I don't know. I covered this case on hearts hearts 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 of. It sounded like someone was maybe chasing him. parked his car on the side of a highway in Abilene, 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 citizen sleuths 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. Mora'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 mara murraymissing.org. But this is what they're asking people who care about Mara 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. talking about this case or with any case, and 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 anyone who listens to Heart Source Pounding knows, I am such a stickler about sources. Hugely, hugely important to me. Engaged 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. Mars family is also asking the public to support a permanent historical marker for Mara near the place where her car crashed. You can go to Mara Murraymissing.org and 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 gos.nach.h.gov or call at 603-271-2663. 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 Mara 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 to find Mara 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, extremely 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. We'll 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. But they have said that the most recent photo of her is two years old, so she may look different at this point. Anyone with information can call the sheriff's department at 805-681-4150, or you can submit

a tip anonymously at 805-681-4171 or sb-sheriff.org. And that is all we have for this episode of clues. Now we want to hear from you guys on this one. Thoughts, theories, feelings, emotions, are you part of the online community that's talking about this. Just, I'm so curious what our listeners think about this one because I feel very stumped when I try to think of what could have happened. Absolutely. And I think it's, it's so important to address these cases that still go unsolved after all these years to raise awareness. I mean, I talked about it at the beginning of this episode. I had no idea about Mara's case before today.

So it's important to keep getting the word out, sharing things, sharing things on socials. All of our our socials are super shareable, especially that missing person of the week, post. coaster week put up. So takes a community. I know you guys are one willing to do the work and put in the work week after week with us. So thank you so much for being here. If you want more of us, I'm over on two out takes. Kaelin on Heart Starts pounding. At our crime house, we really value your support. So share your thoughts on social media. And remember to rate review and follow clues to help others discover our show. Next week, we are going to be off for the holidays. But join us the following week for a new episode. And as always, put the cases you want to see in the

comments. Thanks guys. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Bye. Capture your favorite summer feeling with Pandora Jewelry. Discover a collection inspired by the sunshine, freedom, and moments that make the season unforgettable. From sun-kissed metals to personalized pieces, ready to be engraved with your summer mantra. Each design moves with you, from beach days to golden nights and every memory in between. Shop Pandora jewelry's new summer collection, in store or online at Pandora.net. and let your summer unfold. When someone goes missing,

the headlines focus on what happened, but the truth often lives in the smallest details. I'm Sarah Turney. After my sister disappeared, I learned how those final hours, the last conversations, the last decisions can haunt families forever. And I'm Courtney Nicole.

After seeing crime impact my own family, I've learned how overlooked moments, missed red flags, and unanswered questions can share. change everything. Together, we're bringing those lived experiences into the work. This is the final hours, a crimehouse original powered by Pave Studios, a podcast that puts the moments before a disappearance under a microscope. Listen to and follow the final hours wherever you get your podcasts, new episodes every Monday.