You look tired. Yeah, owns eczema is really bad. We were up most of the night trying to stop him scratching. That's terrible. Sounds like you need, double base.Double.

What?double base emollient gel.

It works quickly to soften, moisturize, and protect my little girl's dry skin. That sounds perfect.

Double base emollient gel. Nothing looks, feels, or performs quite like it for childhood eczema. Ask for double base emollient gel in your local pharmacy.

Suitable for all ages. Always read the label. Visit mydoublebase. Ie to find out more. Whether you're looking for a new A true crime podcast with minimal side talk or one that focuses on the victim and their story, you've got to check out our show, Going West. Going West is a true crime podcast hosted by me, Heath, and my partner Daphne. Hello. In each episode, we dive into various US-based disappearance and murder cases. Whether it's the bizarre stalking story of Dorothy Jane Scott, a young mother who received harassing phone calls before she went missing from a hospital parking lot in 1980, or our recent 200th episode on The Man Upstairs, where we discuss the 1950 murder of Janet Crisman and the urban legend that came of it. We drop episodes twice weekly on Tuesdays and Fridays, so go check out Going West True Crime wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to the Murdoch Murders podcast, the show that started it all. 93 episodes will take you on a journey of twists and turns, ups and downs, tears and belly laughs.

We continue this mission with our newest evolution, True Sunlight. Luna Sharks' True Sunlight podcast is the antithesis of true crime.

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We continue to shed light on Steven Smith's case and Alex Murdoch's co-conspirators, but also we like to take deep dives into other cases around the country.

History.

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Listen to True Sunlight wherever you get your podcast or visit trusunlight. Com to learn more. We've been going through the woods, all our favorite spots, and we're just looking for something, somebody just to come out and say something. We love her. Kathleen Murray has spent the last three days searching for her sister, 21-year-old Maura. The UMass College student hasn't been seen since Monday night. I'm Julie Murray, and this is Media Pressure, the untold story of Mara Murray. The following podcast contains adult language and potentially triggering topics. Listener discretion is advised. The opinions presented by my guest are their own. Episode 6, The Search. In this episode, I'm going to talk about the days immediately following Mara's disappearance. I'll go in chronological order as best I can, but some topics will require a little bit of a backstory. So let's get into it. On Tuesday, February 10th, the day after Mara disappeared, a search warrant was issued by Haveral district Court at 10:20 AM to identify the driver. Sargent's Byron Charles and Mac Cassian executed the search of the Saturn, which was parked in Mike Lavoie's personal garage. This is when Mara is officially identified as the driver.

Eighteen items were taken pursuant to the warrant, seven of which had Mara's name on it, and two included an address. Still, it would be hours before my family is notified. Now, if you remember from episode one, a handwritten name and phone number were also discovered at this time, but never investigated. At 1:30 PM, the second Be on the Lookout is issued in the states of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Mara Murray is named and described as, About 5'5, 120 pounds with black hair past shoulder length. What's interesting is the second Be On The Lookout is not as accurate as the first, which lists Mara's correct height of 5'7. Also, Mara's hair was not black by any stretch. It goes on to include that she was last seen in the area of Wild Ammonusik Road with a rag stuffed in the tailpipe. At this point, my family is still completely in the dark. Sergeant Cecil Smith calls the Wymouth, Massachusetts Police Department at 3:40 PM, the town listed on my dad's registration, and he's directed to our house in Hanson. My mother is confused and panicked and explains that Mara is a student at UMass Amherst and provides Smith with her cell and dorm phone numbers.

And so the nightmare begins for my family. My brothers, who were both in Hansen at the time, recount that fateful day. Here's Freddie.

I had been at work that day. I had no idea that anything was wrong or anything was going on at all until I got home. And as soon as I walked in the door, I knew something was drastically wrong. The atmosphere, the vibe in the house, I don't even know how to describe it, but it was not good. Curtis was there. I remember Kathleen being there. My mom, of course, they told me. I'm like, What's going on? What's up? Something's happening here. What's going on? What's wrong? And they told me.

Here's Curtis reflecting on first hearing the news.

I remember coming into the door, the front door and up the stairs because we have the split ranch, so the stairs going up and down. Walked up to the top of the stairs, and it was a very serious atmosphere. I didn't really know what was going on. I just remember that I was told that they found Mara's car up in New Hampshire, and Mara was missing. And nobody really knew what happened while she was there.

This ignites a barrage of phone calls within my family. Kathleen calls my father, who's still at work, and leaves a frantic phone message. Finally, around 4:30 PM, he listens to the message from the parking lot at his job in Connecticut. What he hears is every parent's worst nightmare. His child is missing.

I came out of work just past 4:30 and went to the parking garage, and I hopped on my car, sitting there warming it up. That's when I listened to my messages because I worked in a hospital, and I wasn't supposed to have a phone in there. So I didn't want to get caught listening to my messages. And it's a panicky call from my daughter Kathleen. And it's about Mara being in New Hampshire, in some town I never heard of. And her car was found, and she's not in it. And the car had been in an accident. And evidently, it was the night before, and she just found out late that afternoon, close to 24 hours after it happened, I guess, letting me know right away. And then I said, I've got to come home. I haven't heard from her. I didn't know what to think, what to say, what to do. It's a brand new situation for me. So I went home, back to my place where I was staying, half out of my mind. At first, I thought it was Haveral mask Kathleen said, Haverhill. She said, No, there's a Haverhill in New Hampshire.

I had never heard of it. It was way up north. What's Mara doing way up north? Where's she going? What's she doing? She drove that car. I told her not to drive that car.

It's hard to describe what happens next. It's all a blur. I get a sick, anxious feeling just thinking about it. I don't remember who called me or who I called. All I know is we were in a state of absolute panic. I'm fascinated by the psychology behind how the human body responds to trauma, particularly memory. I often ask myself, why doesn't my family remember the details of the most traumatic day of our lives? To better understand, I asked psychologist Dr. Seth Gillihan this question. Trauma really overwhelms the nervous system. It turns on these basic survival mechanisms the sympathetic nervous system, which flood your body with adrenaline, that jolt you get, that sense of emergency, and your hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axis, your HPA axis turns on. So cortisol then flood your bloodstream goes all over your body. And so the systems in your body are really focused on the immediate present of just keeping you alive and handling whatever the emergency might be. And so higher functions, like being able to think clearly or to form memories of what's happening, are really offline. And so it's really common in those who survived a trauma to have fragmented memories of what happened because the brain hasn't really been able to work in a coordinated way.

So where the various parts of the brain, the frontal lobes, the memory areas, are really able to put things together in an organized way. You mentioned fragments. That's so common in survivors of trauma that we remember things in a like little snippets here and there.

Like, Oh, there's a flash of this, a piece of that. But they don't sit together like...

The analogy I use is like a mosaic. It's like you have all these little fragments of broken shards, but they're not organized like our everyday memories are, where there's that frame that goes around in like a mosaic. Everything is put in place so we can get these intrusions. And what we end up with is often these big gaps in our memory of what happened, which can be bewildering because you think, It was such an impactful day. How can I not remember this day that changed my life forever? But what we're remembering, as you said, is just the starkness of that reaction, that that eclipsed everything else. And some different family members might remember different things, or they might remember the same things, but differently. So it's really powerful, these effects on our memory. At some point, my father connects with Bill in Oklahoma, who seems equally as confused. He has no idea why she's in New Hampshire and begins calling her friends, his family, and his command. My dad also connects with Kate Markopoulos at UMass. Here's Kate describing that call. I didn't believe him. I was like, What do you mean? No, there must be a miscommunication or something.

It was nighttime. I was sitting at my desk, maybe doing homework. Questionable. I just remember he just said, Maura's missing. I was like, What do you mean? It was like, does not compute. I think it took probably a couple of hours for it to actually set in. I didn't remember if I called my own parents after. I was trying to remember that. I'm like, You must have called home to be like, Oh, my God, what is going on? But I didn't… I think I just was like, No, she must just be not feeling like talking to anybody, shutting off her computer and turning off her phone. Like I said, I just didn't believe it. Next, my father connects with Grafton County, New Hampshire at a him at least 6:00 PM, frantic for information, but he doesn't get much. He asked to speak to police immediately, but he doesn't get a call back. Earlier that day, February 10th, UMass students on Mars floor in the dorms complained of an alarm going off incessantly. It was Mars alarm clock. Now, there are many aspects of Mars disappearance that haunt me, but the mental image of her alarm clock going off hits different.

It's so routine and mundane, relatable. She should have been there, but she was gone. I think about it constantly after all these years. Sometimes it's just the simplest things that hit the hardest. We know that a UMass resident assistant gained access to Mara's room and turned the alarm off. Later that evening, Sergeant Smith calls UMass Security and request they check her dorm again. No sign of Mara. Finally, at 08:00 PM, my father speaks directly with Sergeant Smith.

Cecil Smith, he was quite hesitant and seemed a little bit annoyed that I kept calling him. He didn't have much to tell me. I knew right away I had to get there.

Shortly after they speak, New Hampshire fishing game are notified and say they will conduct a search on Wednesday morning if Mara doesn't show up in the meantime, some 36 hours after her disappearance. Well into the night of February 10th, my family is hysterical, trying to figure it out. Bill begins making arrangements with his command at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to get authorization to travel to New Hampshire. Typically, the best route for soldiers to obtain leave for emergency purposes is through the American Red Cross. Sharon Rouch, Bill's mother, calls the Red Cross to explain the situation in hopes it qualifies for an excused absence. This was a long shot because Red Cross messages typically apply to immediate family members with a clear emergency. All we knew was Mara was missing, and she was Bill's girlfriend at the time. Sharon tries anyways. I had recently come down on deployment orders, so this added a whole different set of challenges as I attempted emergency leave from my command at Fort Bragg. Bill was a lieutenant at a training unit, so he had a bit more freedom compared to my unit at Fort Bragg, which was in an active deployment cycle still early in the Iraq War.

I pleaded with my command but knew it would fall on me to find someone willing to take my place as the deploying platoon leader. A big ask, considering deployments at that time or a full year and a half. In the wee hours of the next morning, and still with Without answers, my father heads north. He arrives in Haverhill at dawn on Wednesday, February 11th. He expects to join the search, but quickly realizes he is the search.

I left in the middle of the night, so I'd be there at dawn, and I got there just as the sun was coming up. I remember the haunting ride when I got to a little town of Woodsville. And I came around a corner, look up ahead, and there's the Red Barn. I said, I'm here. Oh, my God, what am I going to find? So I stopped there and my heart sank. I was frantic, Jules. Absolutely frantic. My kids gone. I had this haunted, scary feeling. I parked my car there. I started walking down the street looking for her footprint going into the woods. And down way down 1:12, crossed to the other side, walked back up. Just as the sun was coming up and there were no footprints. I was looking for where she may have walked into the woods. I didn't see footprints walking down the road, but that would have been tough. So I got back close to where the accident scene was. And then I went up Bradley Hill Road and quite a ways up, in case she decided, Well, the police are going to come. I got to get out of the way of the police, and maybe went in the woods up there.

So the same thing going up Bradley the Hill Road looking for footprints. None. And the snow was two feet deep. You couldn't have gone anywhere in there anyway. I knew she probably didn't have boots. And you did sink up over your knees. But there were no prints It was not a difference at all. You couldn't walk on top of the snow. You'd have broken the snow when you'd have sunken in. I had crossed the road, came back down the other side. Absolutely nothing. I didn't see one person to talk to or anything like that. I get back down and then went the other way, a little bit back on the other side towards the Red Barn. There's a dirt road there. So I went up the dirt road looking for footprints. Not a thing on either side of the dirt road. So I'm back to my car, found the police station on route 10, and went in. And I think the first cop I saw there may have been the chief. It's not clear to my memory, but I saw the chief in short order. And that's another story. When I got there, I expected in short order that there would be a search, but I, in fact, was the search.

Nobody had been there, as it turns out, since the accident. And that was just... What if a police showed up there? I didn't get much of a story about that. Police seemed evasive to me. They didn't seem to want to talk about it. They were asking me questions. I'm asking them questions at the same time. It was confusing. I was on the edge of frantic, and that's my term for it. Let's get some people out there.

My dad spends most of the rest of that day at the Haverhill Police Station. At one point, he goes outside to get some air and runs into the dog handlers returning from the scene. He's the first person they speak to.

I went outside to get the heck out of the police building. They wanted me to stay there. I wanted to go up to the accident scene. They said, No, we have police there. We're working on it. We want you to stay here, and we'll let you know what we find. So this is important. I went out. I was getting some fresh air walking around the grounds, and the state police show up, dog officers, and each one had a police dog. They let the dogs out and let them off the leash to run around and went over and talked to them and introduced myself. I asked them what they did, what they had found, and I'm the first person that spoke to them. And they said, Oh, the dogs went up the street trying to find a trail of about 100 yards or so. They just stopped. They didn't find anything. We don't think that they had a trail. Well, they said it was too cold, it was too wet, and too much time had gone by, and the conditions were far less than ideal for them to be able to find anything. The police said that these are the officers, the dog officers themselves, said that they weren't following a scent.

We can't say that they were. We don't believe they were.

It was a huge disappointment that he wasn't consulted when they selected the scent item for Mara's car. They used a pair of leather gloves she just received for Christmas, one that we can't confirm whether she actually wore. If they had asked my father, he would have suggested they used her running shoes or gear, items that we can guarantee she wore. I put a big asterisk on the scent as evidence for this reason and given the amount of time that had passed. Additionally, the roads retreated in countless cars had traveled that stretch of road since the night she vanished. I've also wondered if someone else handled the gloves, perhaps one of the officers, while conducting the search of her vehicle in Lvoy's garage. New Hampshire Fish & Game combed the immediate area in several miles out, looking for footprints leaving the roadway or any sign of Mara. They used a heat-sensing helicopter, canines, and line searches. New Hampshire Fish & Game officer, Todd Bogardas, leads the search effort and concludes that if she left that roadway, they would have seen it. All footprints were either cleared or accounted for by the end of the day. And up until that point, Bogardas had nearly two decades' worth of experience conducting hundreds of searches with only one unsolved case.

Mara's would be his second. Other members of my family make their way up north. My sister Kathleen and her fiancé Tim, and my brother's Freddie and Curtis. My poor mother had a broken ankle and wasn't mobile, so she stayed home in Hanson in case Mara called or showed up. My brother Freddie recalls first arriving in Haverhill.

Well, we arrived. First thing we did, as I mentioned, was we went to the police station where everyone was meeting, and we wanted to know what the police had done. Where have you looked? What's going on? What's the situation? And what have you done so far. They hadn't really done much at all. Pretty much nothing. So right away, I want to get out and start looking on the ground, on the scene. I want to get there and evaluate and see what exactly was there and what could happened. The police, as far as I can remember, didn't have anything really helpful to add at that time. They told us that they hadn't really looked at all, which was shocking. How are you not looking for this girl whose car is abandoned and she's not there? If they're not looking, we need to get out there right away. That was what I wanted to do first and foremost, to get over there to the scene and to start looking ourselves. Drive up and down the side of the road and look for footprints on the opposite side of the snowbank and start from where the car was found and work out, concentrating on areas that she would have known about, which there were none in that particular area where the car was found.

But after searching that area and walking down every trail and searching the side of every road for footprints in the snow, we didn't see any footprints in the snow. She was either picked up or just walked on the street. But she did not go into the woods because we couldn't find footprints anywhere near the scene. And that's ours. Every possible way she could have walked. There was nothing to be found, no footprints, no clue as to where she might have gone to.

What type of gut feeling did you have when you were standing by the tree?

Just total confusion. What's going on here? I couldn't wrap my mind around it. This can't really be happening here. This can't be real. There's some explanation here, and we're going to find it, and this will all be fixed today, tonight. We'll figure this out right now. I never considered a possibility that we would not find out what happened right away. There had to be an explanation for what was going on. We searched all that day, all day long, into the night, and found nothing. Now you start to really panic. Now you knew something was wrong, but now this is getting really urgent. If we don't find her right away, it's going to be harder and harder to find out what happened. The more time that goes by, the worst the situation is going to become. So the first day went by. We couldn't find any sign, any trace. So now you're just feeling helpless, completely helpless and fearful. What's going on? I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Having that reality that your little sister is missing and it's looking like this is something bad has happened here.

Curtis remembers arriving at the police station.

I remember going Going into the police station and your father was there. I remember waiting in the police station. The thing that stuck out the most to me is the reactions of the officers at the police station did not seem normal to me. I remember feeling as if We were more in the way. We weren't wanted. There was almost a defensiveness about the situation. It was almost as if we were asking questions, and those questions were not well received. I didn't really understand why because we were just a concerned We were just concerned about our loved one. I didn't understand why that would be something that would be resisted, I guess.

Do you remember who exactly was there in terms of police officers or who you spoke to?

I know Jeff Williams was there, and His attitude really stuck out to me as being standoffish. Ceezo Smith was also there, but I didn't have many interactions with him. I just remember Jeff Williams was the one conveying information and the one that we were asking questions, but Like I said, they were not very well received at the time.

Meanwhile, Bill convinces his command to issue him advanced leave and booked a flight to Hartford, Connecticut. Bill's parents drive from Ohio to the airport in Hartford, pick Bill up, and then head north together. They arrive in Haverhill about 05:00 PM and meet with the police. During the first meeting with police, Bill's mom, Sharon, asked them to wait a second so she could grab a pen and paper. Chief Williams tells her not to worry about it, and she doesn't need to take any notes. She's persistent and does anyways. Then the police question Bill pretty extensively. Based on his phone records, Bill was on a call with Rob McDonald, his West Point mentor, at 08:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, the night Mahr went missing. This call lasts 34 minutes. His cell phone records appear in Central Standard Time because he was in Oklahoma. Roma. Bill also alerts everyone of a strange voicemail he received that morning. While going through airport security, he misses a call. When he checks his voicemail, he hears Wimpering on the other end. He's convinced it's Mara. Police later claimed that the call was traced back to a Red Cross calling card. Again, this makes no sense as the Red Cross deals directly with the command and not soldiers.

Also, why would they be using a calling card? The voice messages played from my father, who only hears static, although he desperately wants it to be Mara.

I listened to it and I couldn't make any sense out of it. I mean, it just sounded like muffled noise. It's hard to say it with wimpering. It was indistinguishable.

The day comes to a close and the searches result in nothing. My family and the Rouches book rooms at the Wells River Motel on the Connecticut River, across from the village of Woodsville. The Wells River becomes command central for my family. See, self-service is awful in the area, so anyone wanting to speak to my family knew to find us there. Here's my father describing the first night in the motel.

We tried to find out as much as we could, calling everybody that we could think of. It was just pandemonium panicky pandemonium. It's a horrible, horrible thing to remember. We had no experience with it and just trying to decide what to do next. It was a horrible time.

Freddie added this.

It was brutal. You search all day and you hope for some information, something, just anything, and then there's nothing. You go back and you're in almost disbelief, this can't be real. How could this happen? So you're in the hotel and you're trying to figure it out, and you're trying to figure out what the next move is. You don't know what is the right thing to do. So it was hard. It was very hard. It's the worst time in any of our lives, I would say without a doubt. It was horrific.

The next day, Thursday, February 12th, my family continues to canvas the area, speak to neighbors and law enforcement. We had flyers printed and posted them everywhere and expanded the search into Vermont and Maine all the way up to the Canadian border. Flyers were posted at gas stations, motels, convenience stores, hoping someone would recognize Mara's picture. Haverwell Police Department issue a press release listing Mara as, Endangered and possibly suicidal. This was incredibly frustrating to everyone who knew Mara especially my family. This suicide angle was introduced by the police. My family grew frustrated with them trying to lead us down that path, citing the alcohol in the personal note which didn't exist. I spoke about that earlier. My dad was adamant and said the only time the subject of suicide ever came up was when he and Mara were watching a movie.

Constant questioning by the police, trying to lead me to say that she was suicidal, that she would take her own life. And she walked into the woods and laid down on the snow or something like that. And they kept it up and kept it up. And I was getting irritated. I said, No, no, she is not suicidal. I said, She just wouldn't do that. I alluded to watching the movie Cheyenne, I think it was. And when elderly, going from one place to another to spend the winter, they'd walk through the woods and the real old ladies, they knew they couldn't keep up and the tribe couldn't slow down. So they would just drop off the end of the line and just lay down in the snow. And I said, that's the only time that Mara and I ever even... The only time the subject ever came up and it didn't come up, we just watched it in a movie. Like I was saying that this is what Mara would do. I was describing the end of a movie and it was irritating as could be. I was so sick of hearing it, and I was so sick of the police trying to convince me that she probably committed suicide.

That would have been an easy out for them. What can we do? She lost in the wood, committed suicide, took her own life. People do it all the time, blah, blah. I knew what the police were doing. It was the police chief who was continuing to push for suicide. He presented the mysterious his note as evidence that Mara had suicide on her mind. What a reach that was. It doesn't fit, soever, only in the police chief's mind. And that's how badly they wanted to push the idea of suicide. It was like they were sick with it. It needed to be a suicide. It can't be violence against a tourist, against someone that isn't from there, especially a 21-year-old a girl traveling by herself.

It was beyond frustrating. It was like a cop-out in a way. Instead of listening to us because we were sure she didn't run away and we were sure that it wasn't a suicide. If you know Mara, then you would know that those two things were not possible. They were not what happened. No matter what we would say, the police would never drop those as their main focus points. It's frustration, anger. Please just go out there and look for her. She hasn't run away, and she hasn't committed suicide. We need you to listen to us and help us look for her.

My father and Bill speak at a press conference in Plead for Mars Return. Local newspapers pick up the story and publish the first of many articles about her disappearance. My father speaks to the Westmans, who graciously invite them into house. He sees the crash site from their vantage point out their kitchen window, noting it was a lot closer than he expected. Mrs. Westman explains what she saw and mentioned the man smoking a cigarette.

They invited me in, and they showed me the window that Mrs. Westman did it. She was looking out, said that she looked out. It wasn't more than six minutes or something like that. She said then all of a sudden, she saw the police come. When the police came, she stopped looking out the window. The thing about Mrs. Westman looking out the window is that she started looking out the window when she made the call at 7:27. She said she looked out for six or seven minutes, and she stopped looking when the police came. So that puts the police there. It's a 7:33 or 7:34, not 7:45.

So what else did the Westman say that they saw that night?

What I remember Mrs. Westman saying is that she thought she saw somebody in the car smoking a cigarette, and Mara doesn't smoke. Mr. Westman, I guess, looked out the window, too. He said he just thought it might be an interior light, a red light or something inside the car, and they couldn't agree on that.

My dad's philosophy was to speak to people one time. He didn't want to harass them. So this is the only time he spoke to the Westmans.

Well, if a person has something to say, they'll say that I don't want to hound them and annoy them. I want them to make something up. If they have something, they'll tell me. If they didn't tell me and I don't go back and hound them, they might feel bad about not telling me. They might have second thoughts. And because I don't harang them, I did just what I said I'd do, such as Westmans. I never went back. I was there once, and they told me what they knew. That's an example, a prime example.

Next, my father speaks with the Atwoods. When shown a photo of Mara, Butch Atwood initially says it didn't look like the young woman he interacted with that night. He later recants this version, as mentioned before. You showed him a picture of Mara, and he described her as having her hair down and the picture that you showed him didn't look like Mara, or was that later?

That's the only time I spoke to Butch, so everything had to be that time. I remember it vague on up. I remember the description maybe, probably produced a quizz look on my face. Something didn't quite seem right. I don't remember exactly what it was.

I mentioned the interaction my dad had with another neighbor, John Marotte, last episode. He tells my father he saw the car's reverse lights from his kitchen window. The neighbors didn't have much more to offer. Apparently, all of them simultaneously looked away exactly when Mara went missing. It's baffling to have that many eyes on and no one saw what happened. Again, the day comes to a close, and still no sign of Mara. My family was brimming with fear at this point. It was still early, and adrenaline mixed with panic is what fueled us. On On Friday, February 13th, detectives revisit Mara's dorm room. They examined her computer and posted an away message on her instant messenger account asking people to come forward if they had heard from her in the last several days. Several of Mara's high school friends from Hansen learned of her disappearance and offered assistance. Detectives also went to one of her nursing school classes to see if anyone had any information. A nursing school representative sent an email to the students informing them of the disappearance, and police took a statement from Karen Maiott, Mara's supervisor, at the dorm security job regarding the breakdown on Thursday night.

My family continued to canvass the area, and my father went to a Vermont police station and was shocked that they were unaware of her disappearance. The exact same thing happened just east of the accident scene. When my family went to hang a flyer in the Lincoln, Hampshire police station, the first station east of the accident scene, they were completely unaware that Maura was missing. How could these local police departments not be made aware of a missing woman? Later in the day, my father and Bill go to Mike Lavoie's personal garage to see the Saturn for the first time. They see the damage to the driver's side front bumper. It was a sharp, angled, and inpatient and didn't look consistent with impacting a tree, as was reported. The driver's side windshield was cracked, both airbags deployed, and red staining on the driver's side ceiling and door. Police showed him the rags stuffed in the tailpipe. He immediately recognized it as one of his old white work towels. Police asked him to remove it. He then took the spare key hidden in the tirewell and started the car right up. This came as a surprise as none of us thought the vehicle was drivable.

I hopped in, car fired right up. One turn, one push of the gas, and boom. It was loud, but I put it in gear. I could move it a little bit, and it was drivable. I could have driven it.

But let's go back to the rag stuffed in the tailpipe for a second.

I told her to absolutely not drive that car. You do not drive that car. It's not safe. It's smoking so badly. They're going to grab you. You can't afford that. If there's an emergency and somehow you absolutely couldn't get out of driving it, you're still within the confines of the campus or where there could possibly be police, you're probably going to get stopped. But the only chance you'd possibly have, and it probably won't work, is to put a rag up the tailpipe. It might stay in there long enough to suppress the smoking until you get by the police and before it blows out. It's your only chance because the police have to. They're obligated to stop you if they see that. It smokes badly at slow speed. So don't take that chance. But even if you do that with a rag and a till pipe, it's probably not going to work. So don't drive the car, kid.

It's pretty awful advice, dad, but it was a last-ditch effort. Obviously, you didn't want to drive car. But had you ever done that yourself? Where did that advice come from?

It's just what we all thought. It was just a hope. We all thought in the old days it could possibly work, but we all knew that it wouldn't work very long and it may not work. It was just a wing and a prayer.

You spoke about having a conversation on the front lawn with Mara about this rag in the tailpipe advice that my dad gave. What do you remember about that?

I just remember the conversation started because she knew she was going to be shopping for a car, and she was very excited about that. I remember that her Saturn did drip oil out of the tailpipe and made a mess. It did not run well, it smoked badly, and it could draw the attention of police or people, and it was embarrassing. I remember she was very embarrassed by it. She told me that her father had given her the advice to put the rag there, not only to sop up the oil and to muffle the smoke because it was a problem, and she was very embarrassed by it. She was very excited at the prospect of getting rid of that car because she started to hate it because of all the problems it had. I remember very distinctly that that was the goal of the rag was only to mask the smoke and the dripping oil and those kinds of problems.

Okay, let's go back to LaVoy's garage. Mara's belongings were laid out on the floor. She had a random assortment of toiletries, textbooks, books, paperwork, running gear, car accessories, birth control with four pills missing, and over-the-counter medications, to name a few. She didn't have many clothes, and certainly not appropriate for the weather in New Hampshire. No underwear, one single sock, no warm winter gear, and no dressy clothes. She had a couple of long sleeve shirts, one pair of sweat pants, one regular pair of pants, one sports bra, one regular bra, one pair of running shoes, and five gloves. This is why I use the word pack lightly because it just seems like random stuff already in her car. Now, keep in mind, we don't know what she took with her. She also had one of her favorite books detailing misadventures in the White Mountains titled Not Without Peril. I distinctly remember the day we purchased the book. On one of our many ascent of Mount Washington, we took the Tuckerman Reveal Trail, which starts at the the Hinkham Notch Visitor's Center. After a long day of hiking, we always stopped at the Visitor's Center to get snacks and look at the cool topographical map reveling in our successful climb.

This day, the author, Nicholas Howe, was doing a book signing. We chatted with them for a bit and bought a signed copy of the book. It became one of Mara's favorites, mostly because it talked about all the same mountains and trails we grew up climbing. It was bookmarked on a chapter about death in the White Mountains. This book was referenced as evidence of the suicide angle. Again, totally out of context if you don't know the backstory. At this point, we learned of the liquor store receipt and directions to Burlington. Missing was her black Jansport backpack with the logo colored in as was required when she was at West Point. Her cell phone, a Samsung Sprint flip phone, keys and keychain, a worn piece of circular leather with a moose head imprinted on it, identification, purse, and bank cards. Also, based on the liquor store receipt, some of the alcohol she had purchased earlier in the day was missing. Now, I can dedicate an entire episode to the items found in her car and the condition of the vehicle, but we'll get into that later. Police allowed us to take some of the items. We took them back to the Wells River Motel.

Two of Bill's mentors at West Point, professors Robin Christine McDonald, make arrangements to travel to New Hampshire to assist in the search effort. The McDonalds had gotten to know Mara well over the last couple of years, hosted Mara and Bill for dinners and a place to stay when Mara visited West Point to see Bill. She even attended their wedding. They were a welcome addition to the search effort because we needed more people. Before they arrived, it was just my immediate family and Bill's. We were still in single digits in terms of boots on the ground. In fact, that weekend, we learned that police hadn't interviewed the immediate neighbors yet, except for the brief interactions on the night Mara disappeared. We were stunned. So my family and the few people we did have started talking and taking notes.

We were so glad that the McDonald's were up there. There was shop as tax. Christie spent all of her time in the neighborhood trying to talk to people. And she is the one that told us that the police actually hadn't spoken to the neighbors, which would be the first thing you got to do. And they hadn't been to the neighbors and asked them who saw what or if they saw anything. And when I heard that, I absolutely hit the roof. I couldn't believe it. This is an investigation? Are you kidding? Are you kidding me? That's not an investigation. I'm the investigation. We're the investigation. We're doing it.

Friday morphed in the Saturday, and with each passing day without answers, our desperation levels heightened. The ground searches resulted in nothing over the next several days. My family spoke to anyone willing to talk. Mara's disappearance gained traction in the news, and people started talking.

The press started asking questions. The initial publicity was invaluable. The early television coverage But Lindsay and the Caledonian, and the guy was fealess in what he asked. He breathed life into the case in the press, and that gave me hope, finding out that the police hadn't done anything. So I gave that to the press, and they ran with it. And it was either 10 or 11 days after the accident that the police finally went and talked to the neighbors. The Boston Press and Boston papers, a couple of great articles in the Boston Globe. Supremely well done. Boston television was started then, and they continued all the way through, giving us a lot of publicity and being extremely helpful. God bless the Boston Press. I thank them to this day. Bob Ward, from the very beginning, has led the charge. Mainly, it was putting pressure on the police to actually do something. It takes a lot to make that happen.

The locals were very sympathetic and helpful during this time, often seeking my family out to pass along what they knew.

People were helpful. If they had heard anything, they'd tell me what they had heard. They'd say, I don't know if this will help you, Fred. I heard this and that. The townspeople would come and tell me what they heard their neighbors talking about. I'd meet the locals wherever they were. People People would see me in a market and come up and talk to me. In a restaurant, same thing. Just walking down the street. The case was such big news and was such a small area, such a small town. Everybody had heard about it, and that's all they were talking and there was so much press around, and police early on, especially. They were earnest. The people that I liked the most are the regular people of North Averal and of Woodsville. Really decent folks. They knew that I'd be up around the tree area. If they wanted to see me, they'd drive by and drive by, and bam, there I am. I remember one lady, young lady with two little kids, standing there on the side of the road telling me what she had heard. It was stuff like that. It had to happen many times.

God bless the regular folks of Woodsville.

I want to pivot now and highlight a few witness accounts from the night of the accident. Now, we talked about Karen McNamera's accounting previously, but I want to talk about when she first reported it to the police. See, a couple of days after the accident, Karen sees it on the news and calls the Haverhill Police Department to share what she observed. They take her statement but call her back a short time later asking if she was sure she saw police SUV 001. She is adamant about it as she saw it three separate times that night. She has never waived covered from her original statement.

I saw a spot on the TV, and they were asking if anybody saw anything, even if you didn't think it was anything, you should call and let the police know.

I called the police from my office, and I remember discussing it with my office manager and told them, I just want you to know I didn't see anything.

I didn't see anything at all.

I was passed by the same police car twice just because of where I was. That didn't really make sense to me, but I told them that, and that I did not see anybody walking.

I just told them what I saw and what I didn't see. They thanked me.

They called me back. I don't remember if it was that day or if it was the next day. They said, Are you sure it was 001? I said, Without a doubt. I know what I saw. It was 001.

It felt odd the way they asked me that question.

They didn't have a lot else to ask. Who was driving Police SUV 001 the Night of Mars: Disappearance, has been heavily debated for years. Was it Chief Jeff Williams, who typically drove the SUV, or was it Smith? See, true member Monahan stated during the 2017 Oxygen Series on Mara that he believed Smith was in the Crown Vic sedan that night. Smith said he was driving the SUV. But we know Smith responded to two other calls on Route 10 and Haverhill shortly before Mara's call. A local man named Dan was ticketed by Smith for speeding after leaving work sometime after 05:00 PM. And for some reason, this stop is not in the police locks, but it was printed in the local newspaper, the Journal Opinion, on February 18, 2004. Dan maintains that Smith was in the sedan during that stop. Now, remember, the police SUV was pulled out of a snowbank between 4:30 PM and 5:10 PM that day. So Dan's stop directly conflicts with when the police SUV was pulled out. So how could Smith be in two places at once? And why isn't Dan's stop in the police log? We also know Smith cleared a call at 6:25 PM on Petticote Lane off Route 10 in Haverhill, 16 Eight minutes, eight miles from Mars' accident site, the night Mar disappeared.

So just over an hour before he responded to Mars call, he ticketed a snowmobiler for not wearing a helmet. After repeated attempts to speak to the snowmobilier mobiler who's still a local to the area, he refuses to talk. So did Smith change vehicles in that short amount of time? These differing accounts, coupled with Karen's statement, give me pause. It shouldn't be this difficult to determine who was driving what vehicle unless, of course, it points to something nefarious. But let me be clear. My goal is to find out what happened to my sister. I want a straight story, and I'm not getting one. That's why I bring these data points up. A local woman named Susan Champy worked at Loon Mountain Ski Resort in Lincoln about 25 minutes from the crash site. She was returning home from her shift and drove past the sea in the night of Mara's disappearance. She estimates it was around 08:00 PM, but she noticed a slightly different scene than the other witnesses, recalling the car was positioned more westerly, closer to the weathered barn corner. She saw a couple of figures hovering around Mara's car, presumably Sergeant Smith and fire department personnel.

The most striking thing she noticed was Mara's car door was open. She is adamant about this detail. Not a huge deal on the surface. Police were investigating an accident, but it directly contradicts the official report where Sergeant Smith says the car was locked and he did not gain access the night of Mar's disappearance. You might be asking, so what? Well, I don't know. Was it an oversight by Smith in the report? Maybe. But why not just say that? Susan contacts back to my father after she saw it on the news and invited him over to discuss what she saw. She's spunky, originally from Massachusetts, and I got the sense that she was always on the verge of cracking a joke. Not that night. She wept, telling my father her accounting. She could see the pain and anguish in his eyes. I met Susan years later. She met me at the crash site and parked her car in the exact spot she saw Mars on February ninth, It was a considerable distance further west than had been reported. So what does that mean, though? Was Mara's car moved? And if so, why and by who? I don't know if what Susan witnessed is important.

That's the dilemma. We don't know what happened that night to Mara, so we have to weigh all evidence equally. Our minds want to problem-solve, put the puzzle pieces together. With my sister's case, I feel like I have an incomplete box of loose puzzle pieces, and no matter how hard I try to jam them together, I can't. Every detail could be as equally as important as it is insignificant. Another Haveral native drove past the accident scene the night Mara disappeared. She was running an errand down at the center of town. My father and I sat at her kitchen table off Bradley Hill Road as she recounted what she saw that night. She seemed a bit nervous cleaning the kitchen as she spoke to us over her shoulder. She says, The doors were open, you know. This was the second witness to mention the open doors. I scratch some notes down in my journal, which also serves as my investigative log. I'm lying. My journal is filled with notes about Mara, random to-do list, and draughts that have never and will never see the light of day. I digress. Anyway, the neighbor rattled off some local names and rumors she heard.

I imagine she's heard it all, living so close to the accident. I shudder thinking about some of the God-awful things people have told us. I can't imagine the things they don't tell us. On Sunday, February 15th, a full six days after Mara's disappearance, Sergeant Cecil Smith completes the accident report. Naturally, my family was growing frustrated with the slow response from law enforcement. We knew the small Haverhill Police Department was untersourced for such a complex missing person case. We begged for more resources, namely the FBI, because Mara clearly crossed state lines. However, the FBI has to be invited, and New Hampshire refused to do that. They did provide some investigative assistance around UMass and West Point, but it was limited. This set the tone for the years to come. The week after Mara's disappearance, it made national news, and my father and Bill appeared on CNN and several other networks, including Good Morning America.

I had never done anything like that before. Who has? I knew I had to do it, and I knew that it was invaluable. And getting people everywhere looking for Mara. The shows were so big, and the timing was just perfect because it had just happened. I absolutely had to go on. I was I'm very nervous about it. I didn't know what to say, but I just determined that I must be there. And forget about being nervous. You're trying to help your daughter, and this is your big opportunity to do it. So don't think about anything, but Just do it. Go do it. Make the best of it you can. Almost everybody knows what I'm doing, and everybody can see what I'm trying to do, that I'm nervous. I just mean exactly what I'm saying. I'm trying to help my kid the same as they would, and I'm the average guy like they are, and there's nothing deep going on. If I'm flustered, it's because I'm flustered. It isn't any deeply thought-out scheme or anything like that.

Police started to interview the neighbors but were reluctant to share anything with my family. We passed along everything we learned to them, though. It was like two concurrent investigations were happening. On February 19th, 10 days after the disappearance, a second major ground search was conducted again by New Hampshire Fishing Game. This time, they brought a cadaver dog. The searches resulted in nothing. New Hampshire State Police Detective, John Scarinza, stated that they had spoken to everyone within a reasonable radius of the area twice, approximately within five miles in every direction. The next weekend, Bill has to report back to his duty station in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I was finally able to sort out my deployment conflict and arrived in New Hampshire that weekend. I remember getting there after dark, and the first thing I wanted to do was go to the crash site. Kathleen drove me over and I asked for a second alone at the spot. I'll never forget it. I got this eerie, dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach as I looked into the darkness. I still get that feeling when I visit the spot today. It was bone-chilling cold. I did a 360-degrees scan, trying to imagine what I would do in the situation if I was in Mars shoes.

I had no answers, and I left feeling scared. Scared for Mara. Scared for my family. The next week, we continued searching. I remember drudging around in a foot of snow, looking for disturbances or footprints. We handed out more flyers and spoke to locals. Each evening, we returned to the Wells River Motel, distraught and utterly exhausted. I could see the fear on everyone's face with each passing day.

It seems like sometimes people don't realize we are always in some a state of trauma as we go through this because we are constantly forced to confront a potentially horrifying reality of what may have happened to Maura. We've been through so many searches, and there are so many times when you are searching a location that you may find Maura, and it's such a scary thing to think that you may have to be the one to find her. Anytime we go searching, there is always that chance. As much as I want to find more, it is a very scary thing to have to confront the fact that I may find her. I may see that. That may come to reality. It's hard to express how that feels. It's just It's a strange thing. You want to search, you want to be part of things, but at the same time, you constantly have to prepare your sofa what might happen anytime you go on a search for what you might find. It's tough to know how closure will feel now. That's a very hard thing to confront. The thought of closure is almost scary. It's strange. It's such a psychological toll that the whole thing takes on you in ways that you just don't expect.

Especially when you're searching, your imagination your worst enemy. The thought of what could have happened, the horrifying reality of how things could have happened and what could have gone down. It's just that is a very, very difficult thing. I've been in many scenarios where I have to prepare myself for any number of things that could have happened to Demara. Because all I've ever wanted was to find her, and I love her so much.

Yeah, it's paradoxical. As much as we want to find her, we don't want to have to think about, did she suffer? Yeah. And those type things. It's excruciating. Two voices you haven't heard in all this is that of my mother and sister Kathleen. My mother passed away in 2009 on Mars' birthday after a long battle with cancer. Kathleen passed away on Thanksgiving Day in 2021 from the same cancer my mother had. They were both deeply impacted by Mars' disappearance and instrumental in the efforts to find Mara. Here's a rare clip of Kathleen on the news shortly after the disappearance. We've been going through the woods, all her favorite spots, and we're just looking for something. Somebody just took them out and say something. We love her. Kathleen Murray has spent the last three days searching for her sister, 21-year-old Maura. The UMass College student hasn't been seen since Monday night when she crashed her '96 black Saturn in Woodsville. After three weeks of searching, we had more questions than answers. The only tangible thing we found was a pair of women's underwear. Kathleen spotted them strewn on the side of French Prawn Road, not far from the crash site.

Police retrieved them and later determined they were not Mara's. Now, after 10 days, officials say they have suspended the ground search for 21-year-old Maura Murray.

There will be no further search of the area.

Investigators say if they find any further evidence to support such action, they will go out and search that area again, but at this point, they feel they have done all they can. The official ground search was suspended by law enforcement, but it was just the beginning for my family. Trust me, this was not a good day. We felt helpless and alone. We knew we had to keep going, but we didn't have the resources or even know what to do next. Law enforcement gave Mars belongings to us, and Kathleen agreed to store them at her house in Massachusetts. Mara's car remained at LaVoy's until we could figure out what to do with it. We packed up and checked out of the motel, devastated, returning to our lives and jobs with a gaping hole.

Leaving there gave me a feeling of desperation. I need to be. I need to do this. I need to find out what happened, where she is, what happened, what's going on. I need to stay here and keep pushing, keep looking myself and talking to people, and I need to keep pushing the police because they're not doing enough. All they do is keep saying, She ran away. She ran away. We can't help her. I didn't want them to get away with that, and I didn't want to be out of their face. I wanted to stay there. And that's why once I left, I came back every weekend. I went up there very, very close to every weekend. Almost never a weekend off.

I almost couldn't do it. I didn't want to leave. I think we all wanted to stay up there, but we needed information. We needed a direction. And we had exhausted every possible lead or anything that we could think of. It was horrible. It sucked. I didn't want to leave. But what do you do? At some point, first of all, you have to be able to depend on, hopefully, the law enforcement to help you in some way. You can't stay up there forever indefinitely. It became, at that point, Traveling every weekend, just constantly back and forth. It's unthinkable having to live in that situation. But that's what we had to do. We had to do that, and it was terrible. That's how things progressed, and that's what we had to do.

There have been a lot of hard days throughout this journey, but leaving New Hampshire without Mara was the absolute worst day ever. Our panicked energy and adrenaline stores were depleted, but the wounds were fresh and not yet calloused over or hardened to help cope with the trauma. That would take a considerable amount of time. Over the next several years, there were some official searches led by law enforcement, but most efforts were a result of volunteers offering assistance pro bono. My father traveled back up to New Hampshire every weekend for the next year. He typically met a few key people who selflessly offered assistance with the search effort. You don't hear too much about those who sacrificed so much early on in the investigation. This was before social media, podcast, and all that. Their motivations were strictly altruistic. My family will never forget their kindness. It was during these weekend trips that we started to hear more rumors and fragmented tales of what people were hearing and thinking. The infamous red truck, the bloody knife, the wood chipper, the Londonderry Ping, the Cumberland Farm sighting, the police chief's dubious past, the Loon Mountain Three, the lone figure walking on a remote stretch of Route 112 five miles from the crash site, to name a few.

I've touched on several of these, but I'll expound a bit in the next episode. I don't like to give wild speculation any air time, and I will not, but several of these rumors had, or shall I say, grew legs. The devil is in the details, so I would be remiss not to at least mention them for the outside chance that it jogs someone's memory. Join me next episode to explore some of the investigation efforts in more detail. If you have any information regarding the disappearance of my sister, Mara Murray, please contact the New Hampshire State Police, Cold Case Unit at 603-223-3648, or visit maramurrymissing. Org. Special thanks to my friend Sarah Turne, whose trust and guidance made this project possible. Media Pressure is a Voices for Justice media original and is executive-produced by Sarah Turne. This series includes original music from my brother, Curtis Murray, as well as Blue Dot Sessions. I'm your host, Julie Murray. For more information about media pressure, visit mediapressure. Com. For more information about my sister, Mara's case, visit maramurrymissing. Org. Visit mauramurrimising. Org. Whites' important Irish art auction is on view this week. See exceptional works by William Scott, Paul Henry, Jack Yates, Nora McGinnis, Dan O'Neill, Louis Labrocky, and many others.

On view this week at 38 Moleset Street and online at Whites.

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