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Seventy-five % chance. That was at least 17 years ago. We still can't get the records released. Is there still a 75 % chance? How long is he going to wait? Another 18 years.

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 guests are their own. Episode 7. We looked into that. I want to jump back in where we left off last episode. Now, there's no way to cover all the search efforts and leads we've received over the past 19 years, but I want to highlight some of the more significant ones in this episode. As I mentioned, my family traveled back up to New Hampshire constantly, and we still do. I'm headed up next week During these trips, we attempted to collaborate with law enforcement, but that was difficult. So we continued searching on our own with an army of volunteers, driven by desperation. My father spearheaded these efforts. He was absolutely relentless and put himself and his health at risk many times. He truly is determination personified, fearless in his quest to find Mara. I remember him repelling into a mine shaft, no training, just slapped on an oversight harness, quite literally, going to the ends of the Earth to find her. And that's just one small example.

Now, I know I'm biased because he's my dad and I love him more than life, but I've been witnessed to what he's done, and I can say with confidence, it is impossible to do more than he has to find his daughter. I've also been witnessed to the toll it's taken on him. Yet despite the ridiculous criticisms levied against him, he remains steadfast knowing such criticisms are completely inconsequential to his goal. Find Mara. He's 80 years old now, and there's no stopping in sight.

I'd do whatever made sense. Any place that I hadn't looked, I'd go look in any possible spot. But a lot of those times, other people would come up, and they would help me. They would help me search. A lot of them had special equipment, and a lot were just tireless. And they had their own ideas. What about this, Fred? What about this? Let's do this. And if I hadn't done it before, we'd all go together. There might be two or three of us, but they're guys who will go deep into the woods, do nearly anything to help. And there were different people, too. And they showed up a lot. Some had their own motivations. I met all kinds of people. Whatever their reason, they were very, very helpful. Even if I had already done a search, I might tell them I had already done that and would go do it a different way. The woods are a big place. You never stop searching it. You can almost walk by a pile of dirt in the ground that somebody could be buried under. And we're looking for places where there might have been burials. There's a campground just off the main road, further down 112.

I remember we're in and one of my cousins was there. And all of a sudden, he reaches down inside his jacket and whips up this little fold-up shovel. I dug up a suspicious-looking mound in there in this campground that families go to. That's just an example. We went to some unimaginable places, and I took an awful lot of chances. Despiration is what drove me.

My dad ran down every lead and created needed opportunities to hear new leads, like hanging out around local establishment in hopes he might overhear someone talking, things like that. It actually worked. We started to hear the same names over and over in different variations of similar stories. Take, for instance, the Loon Mountain 3. Loon Mountain is a popular ski resort located about 20 miles, 30 minutes east of where Mara's car was found in Lincoln, New Hampshire. It's a big operation and employs a lot of locals from neighboring towns. The night my sister disappeared, three young men didn't show up for work. They were ski makers and worked at night. Local rumors began to swirl around town. People started referring to them as the Loon Mountain Three. Police were made aware of it and assured my family that they looked into it. Nothing further. Naturally, this piqued our interest, but nothing ever materialized. Another fragmented tale we heard repeatedly was talk of a party the night of the disappearance. Some locals with unsavory reputations allegedly picked Mara up and took her to a party. Drugs were involved, and the night ended with a wood chipper. I won't elaborate, but you get the idea.

A cadaver dog search of the alleged location resulted in nothing. Some A lot of awful stuff, and the only reason I mention it because we heard the same names so many times. We couldn't, in good conscience, ignore them. These are just examples of some of the stuff we've gotten over the years. Most of it is a dead end, but it only takes one to potentially break the case open, so we run them all down. It makes me laugh thinking about some of the stuff we've chased. Like the one time I got an email saying I needed to talk to a man called Woodchuck. Nothing more, no real name or contact information. So here I am scrambling around, calling people saying, Hi, may I speak to Woodchuck? You have to laugh sometimes so you don't cry. It was also no secret in such a small town as Haverhill that the chief of police was a drinker. He had quite the reputation around town. Jeff Williams became chief in 2001. He was a big man with red cheeks and not exactly the warmest personality. Williams wasn't scheduled to work the night Mara disappeared. He was supposedly attending a birthday party in St.

John'sbury, Vermont that night. I pressed detectives on this issue because I've heard several different variations, and of course, they looked into it. The morning after Mara's disappearance, Williams insisted on obtaining the full roster of who responded to the scene that night. I thought this was curious, especially since at that time, they thought it was a DUI walk away, then pivoted to suicide. I still wonder about his urgency to pull that roster. What was he looking for? I'll never know. In another turn of events, in 2009, Cecil Smith pulled over his own chief after a brief pursuit. Williams was arrested for drunk driving and resigned as chief of police after eight years. Cecil Smith became the new chief. In our desperation to keep Mara in the public consciousness, a volunteer created the first Mara Murray website to share information and photos. It helped manage data as tips and sightings came up. Now, there have been countless sightings of Mara throughout the years. There is always an uptick after Mars in the news. One time, someone saw me running in Woodsville and called in a sighting. To date, none of them have been deemed credible. But an early one that stands out is an alleged sighting at a Cumberland Farms near Concord, New Hampshire, about 100 miles south of where Mara's car was found.

A witness saw a young woman, fitting Mara's description, mouth the words, Help me. The young woman was with a larger, older man in his 60s with white hair. Before the witness could get any license plate information, the pair took off. The witness saw Mara on TV and notified the police and my family. She was convinced it was Mara, but without any additional information, it was impossible to confirm. We get this a lot, but have trained ourselves not to get too hopeful. The stretch of road where Mara's car was found is not remote as you might imagine. It was surrounded by four immediate neighbors. We've already discussed three of them, the Westmans, Atwoods, and Marats. The fourth was a man named Rick Forcier. He lived across the street from the Atwoods on the corner of Route 112 and Bradley Hill Road. He was in the process of building his home at the time of the disappearance and lived in a trailer in the front lawn. Months after the disappearance, he came forward claiming he saw a young person moving quickly on foot about 8:30 PM along Route 112, approximately five miles east of the crash site that night.

The person he saw was wearing jeans, a dark coat with light-color hood. When pressed as to why he waited so long to report this sighting, he claims he had his dates mixed up. After checking his calendar, he realized it was February ninth when he was returning home from a contracting job in Franconia. All I can tell you is seeing a lone figure on that road at night in February is a rare sight. I can't explain the date mix up because If he was home that night, he would have noticed the commotion outside his trailer. There was police, EMS, fire, a tow truck, and about 20 plus people walking around. Police questioned him, my father too, but it never materialized into anything. He also inserted himself into the case by making disturbing statements around town saying, Mar is a good cook, and she lives in my basement, as well as posting cryptic songs to YouTube. Later, he claimed these were jokes. A few years ago, we gained access to his old property and searched with a ground-penetrating radar, but didn't find anything tangible. On March 19, 2004, a little over a month after Mara disappeared, another young woman went missing.

17-year-old Brianna Matlin vanished under eerily similar circumstances from Montgomery, Vermont, about 90 miles from where Mara disappeared. This struck fear into the North country as many thought the cases were connected. Perhaps the work a serial killer. Prolific serial killer Israel Keyes was often mentioned, but nothing ever came of it. He died by suicide in 2012 while awaiting trial in Alaska. Vermont and New Hampshire police announced publicly that Mara's and Brianna's cases weren't connected, but we developed an instant bond, albeit tragic with the maintenance. No words were needed, but the shared grief was palpable. Once the ground thawed in the spring, New Hampshire Fish & Game conducted a more robust search, extending the search radius with significantly more resources, but find nothing. Here's my brother Curtis describing one of the first spring 2004 searches. Spring searches where... That really affected me in the spring. I remember, specifically, we went on one of the foot searches with dogs in a big search party that I was part of, I remember the search leader at the time saying to follow any strange sense because we were most likely searching for a body. I don't know if he knew who I was or what my involvement was, but I remember the dread and how strange and scary that felt at the time.

It was not something you want to hear when you're searching for your loved one. I actually had recurring nightmares about that for many, many years, searching through the It was always the same. I would be searching, and I would catch a scent, and I would follow it, and I would always wake up because I'd lean over a specific tree, and Mara was there. The only thing that ever changed is how she looked. That was something that, psychologically, I struggled with for a lot of years. That dream occurred for at least five years, on and off. Around this time, my dad befriended a local man named John Smith. John's from the area, a towering figure sporting his distinctive long beard. He reminds me of a rebellious uncle, unafraid of ruffling some feathers, which was exactly what we needed. He had a ton of local knowledge, but he was warned by law enforcement to stay out of the Maura Murray case. My dad sought him out anyways because it would benefit the search effort to have someone with an ear to the ground in the immediate area.

I had heard about John Smith. I'd heard he might know something. He had made comments about it in public. I needed to talk to him. I saw his car outside the local food market. So I waited out by his car, and he was a real big guy, so I figured I'd be able to spot him. Sure enough, he came out. I popped up, John, I'm Fred Murray, and Laura Murray is my daughter. I heard that he might be able to help me. And he looked around nervously and, Fred, the police have been all over me. They've told me not to talk to you, to stay away from you, or they were going to press charges against me by interfering with an investigation. And I was very disappointed. Evidently, I looked at it. It showed, probably in my expression. I thanked him anyway and said I wish he could help me. Then I left. It wasn't more than two weeks or so before he got in touch with me and said, Fred, I can't be like that. I have to try to help. He stuck to it. He was a trustworthy guy. He was there helping when he needed help.

I'm grateful. I was grateful then, and I'm grateful for what he did now.

Here's John Smith.

In February of 2009, I believe it was on the 11th or the 12th. That was the first day that I saw a story about Mora on WMW. I news. And I thought it to be odd, but at that point in time, it didn't seem like a big deal. And then it was a few days later that I saw the story again, and then I realized, wow, that's really crazy. So being a former police officer, I became very intrigued by that. I'm a fix it person. I like to know what's going on and whatever. And that was when I became really intrigued by it. And that would have been, so probably around the 20th or so of February, I would say. And then I think it probably would have been a couple of weeks later that I heard another story. And I was like, Okay, this is really bizarre. I said, It just makes no sense. So being a former police officer and knowing the area very well, I decided to make a phone call. And I can't remember exactly how I got Kathleen's telephone number. If it was put someplace, or whatever, she was who I got in touch with first.

And I called and I left a message on her answering machine. So after that, because, of course, leaving a message on her machine and it says, My name's John Smith, of course, I'm sure, raised some red flags for her. Anyway, I believe she got in touch with your dad, and they were like, Who is this guy? What's going on? I believe they actually might have called the police to check to see who was John Smith, because Because other than calling Kathleen, I had done nothing with the case. I just was offering my help to go around. I hadn't talked to Fred yet. I hadn't talked to anyone else. I hadn't even talked to Kathleen yet because She never called me back. So one day I was at work, and I got back from delivering some equipment. And my buddy Chris, who I worked with, came walking over to me and he goes, Hey, there's two New York State police detectives. They have to talk to you. I'm Wow, what the heck is that all about? I said, I haven't done anything wrong lately. So I'm like, That's pretty bizarre. I had no idea. So it was Detective Bob Bruno and Detective Russell Hubb.

And they approached me and everything. They said, We have a place where we can talk in private. So we went into the back office, and we were sitting down. We sat down with everything, and they said... They both looked at me and they go, So what's your interest in the Maura Murray case? And I said, Well, I said, My interest is you guys know. I said, I used to be a police officer. I said, Back in 1979, in '80, in Littleton, New Hampshire, I said, I'm very inquisitive. I want to know what's happening. And I called the family to offer my assistance in getting around town, maybe getting my foot in the door or getting your foot in the door, per se, to get some questions answered, because I might be able to, being a local, better than people from Massachusetts coming here asking. Immediately, they took on that an attitude with me. And they said, Well, there's no need for you to be doing that. And I said, Why can't I offer my help? And they said, Look, this is what we're telling you. They said, If you persist and you do anything with the Murray family, you'll be interfering in an investigation, and we will arrest you.

And I said, But I'm not interfering in an investigation. I said, I'm just going to ride around with these people and try and do whatever they would be doing but only have a better, possibly, end with the locals. And immediately, they both just... And one of them stood up, and he just said, Look, we told you what we just told you. If you do this, we will arrest you they were interfering with an investigation. I said, Okay, well, I guess I don't want to be arrested. And that was basically the end of the conversation. They thanked me for my time, and then they left. I believe it was mid-March that Fred tracked me down. I was getting ready to go to the grocery store in Franconia. I went in, I did my shopping, and when I came out, he walked up to me, and the minute I saw his face, I had seen his face on the news, I knew who it was, and he goes, Are you John Smith? I go, Yeah, and you're Fred Murray. He says, We'd really like to have your help. I said, Fred, I said, I really want to help you really bad.

I told him the story about the New Hampshire State Police coming to me. And they told me that they would arrest me if I got involved. I said, I want to help, but I really don't want to be arrested either. And he said, I don't blame you. But the look on his face was just... I'll never forget the look on his face. And he turned around and walked in. He got in the car. After he drove off, he pulled out, and I got in my car, and I couldn't even drive. I was just sitting there because I was just shaking. I started crying because I just was like, I can't believe that I just had this happen to me. For two weeks, I was just I was like, Damn it, this is really making me mad. After that, I was mad. I was just mad as all it could be. And finally, I said, You know what? I don't give a crap. And I called your dad, and that would have been probably close to the end of March. And I called him and I said, Brett Murray, I said, Whatever you need, I'm there for you.

And I said, I don't care if I get arrested. And of course, the rest is history. Here I am, 19 plus years years later. And I think the most important part of that story that still gets me to this day is those guys came to me. Those police detectives came to me and were adamant that they did not want me involved in this case. And then, what is it? A month or so later, a month and a half later, I get involved in the case. They never came back to see me again. They never, ever talked to me again. Why? That doesn't make any sense. That's one thing that just does not make one click of No sense to me.

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Unbeknownst to us, we would never hear another word about them. I spoke about some of these repossessed items in a previous episode, but I wanted to highlight a few others here. In total, there were approximately 109 items repossessed. For food, she basically had nothing, a package of Twizzlers and a jar of pickles, both opened. She also had an open bottle of Diet Cherry Coke. No water. For maps and directions, she had a Vermont area attractions map, an Eastern Massachusetts road map, and a three by five card with handwritten directions to Burlington, Vermont. Interestingly enough, she didn't have any maps of New Hampshire. She had calling cards, which Mara used frequently before she got her cell phone that Christmas. She also had a UMass student phone directory, car charger, CDs, and an empty cellophane pouch, perhaps from gum or maybe even cigarettes, although Mara didn't smoke. Since we don't know what happened to Mara, some or none of these items could hold more meaning. One thing missing from the Possessed Items report is the hard drive from Mara's computer, which they obtained from her dorm room within days of her disappearance. I still don't have a clear understanding as to why they took the hard drive that early on, and I mention it because at that point, police believed it was either a DUI walkaway or suicide.

Regardless, my family certainly would have given it to them. Another thing we learned by total happenstance was about a mysterious missed call it pings Mara's cell phone the day she disappeared. Late afternoon, someone attempted to call her cell phone from Londonderry, New Hampshire area. The main thoroughfare from Eastern Mass to Lincoln, New Hampshire is Route 93 North. Route 93 passes right through Londonderry. The call didn't go through, but it pings a sprint cell tower within a 20-mile radius of Londonderry. Was someone coming from Boston to rendezvous with Mara near Lincoln? That's been the long-standing question. And who was this mystery collar? The New Hampshire State Police issued a search warrant to identify the caller, but the results have never been made public. By complete Without a chance, the search warrant affidavit prepared by Trooper Todd Landry was misfiled with another case. A private citizen stumbled upon the affidavit when requesting foia records related to the 2007 Franconia Police officer Bruce McKay, Leek O'Kennie, double shooting. Now, I've heard McKay's name many, many times. He was a corporal in the neighboring town and lived the next town over from Woodsville. According During the dispatch logs, McKay called a liquor store named Buttsons in Woodsville.

At 07:08 PM, the night Mara disappeared. No clue why, but it wasn't his jurisdiction. 20 minutes later, at 07:20 08:00 PM, he clears a call he was dispatched to in Littleton without going to the scene. Then radio silence for 2 hours. I will note that there was an alleged sighting of Mara at Buttsons, I asked police about it. They said it wasn't her. A full year went by without answers. On the anniversary of Mara's one-year disappearance, my family gathered at the crash site and hung a big blue ribbon on a tree. It was a tradition we kept up every year until the tree was cut down in 2021. We petitioned for a historical marker, but it was denied. Woodsville, New Hampshire has a good mix of people, those wishing to escape the hustle and bustle of city life and retreat into the mountains, retirees, families, new and old to the area. It's a beautiful place, really, surrounded by rivers and mountains, things to do in every season. But Woodsville itself isn't a destination. They have the essentials, a handful of local restaurants, the Nutka Lodge, a Walmart, and Dunkin' Donuts. The common denominator is people are generally private, and that's the draw.

Like any town, though, there are a number of bad actors, and Woodsville is no exception. We kept hearing about several of these bad actors or local dirt bags as my dad coined them. This isn't an arbitrary term. I'm talking about the ones with documented and publicly accessible wrap sheets. Many lived in close proximity of the crash site. We kept hearing about a a man named Claude Moulton. Moulton had a record and was known to date young girls half his age. He rented an A-Frame house about a mile from where Mara's car was found. In early 2005, his brother Larry called my dad at the Wells River Motel, saying he had information related to Mara's case. My dad met him and his wife at his house in Claremont, New Hampshire. Larry handed for a rusty knife he retrieved from Claude's glove box implicating Claude in Mara's disappearance. This was the first tangible possible evidence we had in almost a year of searching. My father raced down to New Hampshire State Police headquarters in Concord to hand over the knife, but they refused to accept it. He was flabbergasted. How could they refuse to accept potential evidence of a crime?

So he ended up having to mail it to the police. Place, and we never heard another word about it. We assume they tested it, but who knows? Claude got rid of his car shortly after the disappearance and moved out of the A-Frame. His ex-wife told us before he moved out, he ripped out the downstairs carpet, claiming it had water damage. In 2006, a team of independent investigators, I mentioned earlier, the New Hampshire League of Investigators, zeroed in on the A-Frame. See, it set vacant after Claude moved out. They obtained permission to search it with cadaver dogs. The dogs alerted in a small downstairs closet under the stairwell. They also discovered a piece of discolored carpet located upstairs. They removed it for testing, but unfortunately, there was some miscommunication, and it wasn't provided to police for two years. But like the knife, we've never been able to confirm the results. There was also a random slab of cement poured on the side yard. It appeared to have no purpose as nothing else was ever constructed on it. Obviously, this sparked a lot of debate. Several years later, the home changed ownership, and the new owners conducted their own investigation of the closet.

They used luminal, and it lit up like a Christmas tree. Their children started to have nightmares, which spuked them, and they eventually sold the house. Thankfully, my family was able to obtain some of the wood paneling paneling from inside the closet ourselves for future testing. During the 2017 filming of the Oxygen mini-series, a lab determined the wood paneling was positive for human blood. Dna testing revealed it was a mix of blood from a male and a female. Unfortunately, the sample was too degraded to link directly to anyone. I've visited the house many times. I've seen that closet in question. Been in it, actually. The fact human human blood was in this small closet is one of the most disturbing things to come out of the investigation. Why was human blood in this closet? The next owners were familiar with Mara's case and were gracious enough to let my family search the property, this time with ground-penetrating radar. We discovered several anomalies in the yard, but it turned out to be the septic system. The inspection of the odd cement slab didn't show any anomalies, although it had rebar, which the forensic team thought was peculiar.

My father and I needed to speak directly to Claude, so we did. I'll never forget driving up to his house. I was a nervous wreck. I convinced myself that there was no way he was going to talk to us. I was wrong. I parked our car on the street outside. I remember stalling, fumbling my notebook and pen, second-guessing the entire thing. Before I even closed the car door, my dad was halfway up the driveway, a man on a mission, undeterred. I walked behind him like a scared little puppy. Claude's daughter answered the door. She was young, dark hair with kind eyes. She yelled up to her father, Fred Murray is here. He wants to speak with you. ' A deep voice yelled down and said in astonishment, Fred Murray? There was a long pause and he said, Send him up. For the next 30 or so minutes, we had a tense conversation. My dad did most of the talking. I interjected with a few clarifications. Claude claimed repeatedly that he was out of town the night Mara disappeared on one of his trucking jobs. He tried to distance himself from the whole thing and saying, he didn't even know what time Mara disappeared.

An odd thing to say when he just told us he knew exactly where he was when she vanished, on the road. We asked him about the human blood in the closet. He acted as if this was the first time he had ever heard of it and couldn't explain its origin. One of the key takeaways from this meeting was the confirmation that he refused to take a polygraph. It was assumed that he was one of the four polygraphs administered by law enforcement. That was incorrect. My father also spoke to Claude's young, living girlfriend at the time of the disappearance. She was skittish and abrupt, demanding to know whether my father was law enforcement. She didn't offer anything of substance and refused to answer any specific questions. Years later, Larry Moulton's daughter reached out to us. See, Larry passed away in 2006 from cancer, but his daughter said she remembers a huge fight between the brothers over a car shortly after Mara disappeared. She said Larry would never let her be alone with her uncle Claude. After about a year, the official searches slowed. Long law enforcement wasn't sharing much with my family. Their standard response was, We looked into that.

So my dad certainly wasn't going to sit back passively. His daughter was missing, and he vowed to do absolutely everything in his power to find her. So he sued the state for the case files. So dad, it's fair to say that you were meeting with law enforcement from the beginning, from Wednesday, when you first arrived in Haverhill, and you were met with Not a whole lot of transparency, but you continually requested meetings, requested information. When you didn't get that is when you decided to sue for the case files. Could you talk about early on in the Stonewalling that happened? How often did you meet with law enforcement?

Oh, I sure can. That was the most maddening thing. I was trying to meet with them all the time. When I did talk to them, they didn't want to say anything, and they didn't want to have the meeting. It was hard to do. I persisted, though, all the time. I can remember when I would have a meeting, I'd have a room full of absolutely packed with top police brass from all over the place, people from Concord, and everything would be recorded, but they still really wouldn't tell me much. I'd be in the middle and all around me. But I was mad as hell because they wouldn't say anything, and they ran and said everything. Oh, we looked at that. We looked at that. Well, what did you find out? What does we looked at that mean? I asked a question about certain topics. You never tell me the answer. You just say you looked at that. This started early, very early, and I was pounding away at them all the I wanted some information. They were not forthcoming. Then when they had a big meet, we met with Fred, but he didn't say anything. And the case is no better off.

And eventually, I said, If you're not going to use the information I gave you and follow it up, then I'll follow it up. I'll do it myself. Because when somebody says something, it may not mean anything to you, but it could mean a heck of a lot to me. This went on and on, and it was just exasperating. They were just dragging and dragging and not saying anything. So eventually, in order to find something else, I needed the case files. This is about the end of the first year, after Maura went missing, I was contacted by an attorney who, can you believe this, was willing to take on the case to try to find information on a pro bono basis. That almost knocked me over heels, pro bono in this day and age. That lawyer was Tim Irvin.

My name is Tim Irvin from the firm of Galante Irvin, and I represent the appellant in this case, Mr. Frederick Mahrer.

I remember he called me and said, I'd like to talk to you about the case. Maybe I can help you. I'd like to try. Where are you? He wasn't showing me. I said, I'll come up. How about Sandy? And we decided to sue for the case records. We proceeded in that fashion. And I can remember the meeting with the state police and all the other high officials. This was up in Concord. So my attorney was Tim Irvin. I was after the police, and Tim had somebody that he was working with them. I don't know whether it was somebody in the end of their training or something, but it was an attorney, and she came along, too. But it was Tim Irvin running everything. He put on a masterful case, but we were after the information and trying to force it out of the police. It wasn't the police wanting me to come up when I defensively brought lawyers to hide behind. I brought a lawyer to go after them. It was me after to them after the records. That's so frustrating, and it still is just to think about it or talk about it. God bless Tim Irvin.

Attorney Irvin thought there was a good chance of gaining access to at least some of the files through New Hampshire's Right to No Law, the state's equivalent to the Freedom of Information Act. The case was heard in January 2006 by the Grafton Superior Court, where the court ruled the requested records were investigatory in nature, and disclosure could interfere with law enforcement proceedings. So our request was denied without even an in-camera review by the judge. The state police were ordered to compile a VON Index, which meant grouping the records into broad categories such as photographs, maps, witness statements, and logs. Within each broad category, they were required to provide justification for withholding the records per category. We appealed the decision, and the matter was taken to the New Hampshire Supreme Court in 2007-2008. The state argued that there was a 75% chance of law enforcement proceedings, but when pressed, would not even concede it was criminal case. I'm going to share some of the actual arguments made in court. The audio quality isn't great, but I think it's worth hearing. Here's an exchange between the justices and attorney Nancy Smith, representing the state. Shouldn't the state at the very least, conceived that it's a criminal investigation?

I gather the state hasn't even done that. Shouldn't that be the least the state should do as a premise underlying the problem? We cannot with 100% certainty, say that a crime has been committed. The standard is whether there's a reasonable likelihood.

The trial court's finding which says the court finds that they should be exempt, the documents, from disclosure because production of the records would clearly interfere with enforcement proceedings.

First of all, what enforcement proceedings would it clearly interfere with?

Secondly, how would you know that by just looking at those broad categories? If that's enough, then you can never penetrate that wall.

How do you penetrate that wall?

If you're, like the father in this case, saying, I want records, and the police come in and say, Well, we're using all these records, and the judge says, Well, if you say you're using them, I guess there's nothing I need to do here. Attorney Irvin argued that issuing such a blanket exemption undermined the very purpose of the Freedom of Information Act, pointing out that information contained in some of those files could be meaningless to long enforcement officers who didn't know Mara or my family, but could hold great meeting to those who knew Mara. Here's attorney Irvin, followed by attorney Smith. The state had sufficient time to conduct a proper investigation into her disappearance.

I believe that they have. I believe that there still will be records that the state could show will fall within an exemption.

But to suggest all 2,500 records when there has been a zero examination of any of the records in their possession to show how these exemptions apply.

This was basically what has happened here, and it's what the Supreme Court in the National Labor Relations versus Robbins case said was simply to needlessly extend A prohibition against the release of any record simply because they're an investigatory file is not in keeping with what the mandates of foyer is to.

Do we know what the state means by ongoing investigation in this case? Do we know what actually is being done?

We do not.

The offer of proof was that every day a detective monitored the case or developments. Does that mean asking somebody if anything's happened? Does that mean doing invest? What does that mean? You don't know? It's okay to say you don't know. It's more than just looking at a list of cases and say, Okay, has anything happened on the Murray case? No. And going on to the next one on the file. It's more than that. Ultimately, the court ruled that there was a reasonable anticipation for law enforcement proceedings and withheld the records. This was in 2008.

The attorney general of New Hampshire, he pops up with, Well, Your Honor, we've got, I'd say about... He looks up at the ceiling, the furrowed brow, and says, Well, Your Honor, we've got about a 75% chance of naming a suspect with this. We're just waiting. Oh, well, that's good. We'll seal these up. You're going to need these. Seal these up, and that was the end of my chance of winning the case. Seventy-five % chance. That was at least 17 years ago. We still can't get the records released. Is there still a 75% chance? How long is he going to wait? Another 18 years?

As a As a result, the state adopted the Murray Exemption, which is the equivalent of the Federal Freedom of Information Act, Exemption 7, which gives the state the right to withhold records for law enforcement proceedings. The Murray Exemption is still used in case law in foia denials today. Now, almost two decades later, that 75% chance of law enforcement proceedings, the basis for withholding the records remains dormant. Although we didn't gain access to most of the records, we did learn some valuable information as a result of the court case. We learned four polygraphs were administered, one wire tap was requested, grand jury subpoenas were issued, and police logs and dispatch records were withheld because they could pinpoint a suspect. Despite the limited success of Irvin's efforts, his kindness and selflessness gave Mara's case new life at a time when it was going cold and my family becoming forlorn. Irvin passed away in 2018 after a battle with cancer. His law partner provided all the case files to my family. We've heard from another Massachusetts attorney, Terry O'Neill, in a previous episode. He provided my family with support and guidance, all pro bono throughout the years. He was known for his work on the Patrick McCarthy case also out of New Hampshire, giving him a valuable familiarity with the attorney general's office, New Hampshire State Police, and legal pitfalls.

Patrick was a 10-year-old boy from Massachusetts whose body was found near Loon Mountain in 2003. His cause of death was ruled hypothermia. But O'Neill and hypothermia expert Dr. Murray Hamlet had reason to believe it was a homicide. But New Hampshire refused to reopen the case. John Scarinza and Chuck West were the lead investigators on Patrick's case before they took over Mara's case. In 2010, O'Neill organized a search of French Pond, which is located a little over three miles from where Mara's car was found.

The reason why I wanted to search French Pond is because of the words of the last person who supposedly saw Mara, and that would be Butch Atwood. Butch Atwood stated numerous times that he got into his own private car that night, and he searched for Mara, and he went down different areas that I didn't believe that she would walk to. In his final words, he finally went to French Pont. I said to myself, Why would you go looking for her down a dirt road in French Pont, the opposite way where she was traveling?

There is one point where you exchanged some emails with a state police in New Hampshire, inviting them to join the search. They declined and said, Let us know if you find anything.

That's correct. The first team that I was going to use was the Massachusetts State Police Dive team. But you need an invitation from another state police unit, and they wouldn't invite them in. Then I was in contact with the Rhode Island State Police, hoping they had a better relationship. Same ones, Lieutenant Scrinza wouldn't let them in. I was thinking about it before I go, Who has the biggest and the best dive team, Massachusetts, other than the Mass State Police, is the Quincy Police Department because they have the quarry.

So the Quincy, Massachusetts police dive team came up with state-of-the-art equipment, including underwater sonar and found an unnatural object at the bottom of the pond.

I did, after circling the pond on a few occasions, identified a target. When they identified the target, they dropped a large orange flotation device over that target to anchor it down and took the coordinates. Once they did that, they relayed back to the command post that it's an unnatural object. It was like a three by five foot object. It was down in the bottom, which they assumed that it was in the mud. So once they did that, then they operated a small robot type tool, which is like the Elven out of Wood's Hole, but a small division. But it was so murky down there that they couldn't see it. So the plan was that they were going to order some new equipment because they were all part of the homeland security, and they were going to go up again in a few months and do the search again. So the night before, I got called by Lieutenant Gillen to go up for operations plan up at Quincy PD. Before the meeting started, he said to me, Terry, what's the chance that the New Hampshire fishing game dragged that pond after we left? I said, A very good chance.

Because if there's a target there, they want to be the ones to recover, especially if it was a body. So we went back up again and they started their search for the size scanner. The target was gone. Where did the target go? So if that was a human body being there for so many years, then dragging it, we'd just break it to pieces. It would never be retrieved that way.

So how would somebody know that exact location?

We were under surveillance. Before we went to search French Pond with the Quincy Police Department dive team, a liaison, attorney Carlos Smelcher, or now Carlos Myers, had good contact with the attorney general's office to let them know and made an invitation for the state police to assist us or to be present while the pond was being searched, which, of course, they declined. However, when we got there, we noticed that there were two game and fish pickup trucks. Game wardens were observing us at a meeting place. Once we went down to French Pon, they didn't show up. None of the police ever showed up. However, Lieutenant Gillen had a portable radio from Pedro P. D. While I was standing next to him, I heard one game warden call the other game warden's call signs and asked what his 20 was. And his response was, I'm still hovering over French Pont, which means we were under surveillance from the tree line, and that suddenly knew where that target was. That's something. That's something.

It's almost unbelievable. Yeah. Terry O'Kono also sanctioned Mara's vehicle forensic report, which offered a huge amount of information. Mr. Daniel Parka, a retired police officer and expert accident reconstructionist, examined the Saturn. His analysis revealed some pretty interesting findings. I'll go over some of the highlights. It's the last night's. See, the Saturn remained at Mike Lavoy's personal garage for a number of weeks after the accident. It was released back to my family seemingly without any in-depth forensics. This troubled us. The Saturn could hold the answers. My father didn't know what to do with it. Toe it back to Massachusetts, pay for storage in New Hampshire, give it to someone to keep safe. After several months, the New Hampshire State Police, realizing it wasn't a simple DUI walkaway, repossessed the vehicle. It was impounded in June 2004 and stored outside, uncovered at Troop F Barracks in Twin Mountain. It was moved a number of times over the years. Harka attributed additional front bumper damage to the movement of the vehicle in the backfield of the barracks. He also noted the gas tank was nearly full, so she must have stopped for gas relatively shortly before the accident.

But where? There were no reports of her sighted at any nearby gas stations. The windshield was cracked on the driver's side from an interior unknown object, but he didn't find any hair fibers or foreign material present. The rear view mirror was missing, most likely by law enforcement for additional testing. I asked Detective Chuck West about this, but he wouldn't confirm. There was also a redish stain on the driver's side ceiling forward of the driver's position and on the driver's side door panel. The sealing liquid aspersion sprayed towards the passenger seat. The door panel aspersion sprayed downward and formed a weird, almost perfectly vertical border right after the door handle. There wasn't any staining on the driver's seat. The police attributed the red staining to a box of franzia wine Mara had purchased the Saturday before she disappeared. It was open and positioned on the floor behind the driver's seat. Obviously, without testing the staining, we're not certain what it was. Police told me they looked into it. Parker also noticed a strange brownish smear on the A-pillar of the driver's side. The A-pillar is that vertical support between the windshield and the driver's side door window.

I'm amazed at how many random fast facts I've learned throughout this process. Anyways, to me, it looked like a hand or a footprint. No clue how or why it would be there. Now, I've thought about some crazy stuff over the years, like maybe her foot bracing against someone trying to pull her out of the car. Both airbags deployed which could happen in her particular model, even without someone in the passenger seat. The airbags were cut out for testing. Finally, on the driver's side rear bumper, there was a white-colored scuffmark. I didn't realize that vehicles have the aircraft equivalent of a black box called a Sensing Diagnostic Module, SDM, that records a ton of information. Parka unbolt the SDM unit and noted he didn't see any evidence indicating it was removed before that point by investigators. He concluded that the Saturn went off the roadway along the eastbound shoulder of route 112 just past the weathered barn. It went into a ravine, then traveled further when it struck a fixed object at an acute angle. The SDM recorded two events occurring within two one-hundreds of a second apart. The first was a non-deployment, most likely when the vehicle entered the ravine.

The second was a deployment when the vehicle struck the object. The police report indicated the car hit a tree. But based on Parka's analysis, the front driver's side damage did not match that of a tree's outer radial façade pattern. Super nerdy scientific terms, I know, but hear me out. The damage wasn't smooth as it would generally appear if it hit a tree, but rather uneven. The hood was pushed back and buckled in the middle, causing the radiator support to bend. The two recorded events must have happened when the vehicle was moving forward under its own propulsion, according to parka. So the car was moving, meaning the damage did not occur while she was parked or stopped. So this notion that she was rammed while stationary is out. Also, for the damage to occur on the driver's side front, the car would have had to start some clockwise rotation before going off the road. Parka also noted that the speed was extremely low at the time of impact. The high beams were on and the driver was not wearing a seat belt. But here's the thing, Mara always wore a seat belt. And I'm not talking just most of the time.

I'm talking about her refusing to drive until everyone had their seatbelts on. So this fact immediately jumped out at me. Another thing he discovered from the SDM unit was the ignition cycle indicated someone attempted to restart the Saturn seven times after airbag deployment. Now, this analysis was done in 2010, so we have no way of knowing if it was Mara trying to restart the car that night or other people accessing the car after the accident. I know one of the seven was my dad when he started the car up using the spare key in Mike LaVoy's garage. There's no telling who else may have tried to start the car. One of the most perplexing discoveries I mentioned before was this spare automotive part with a Chrysler logo found inside Mara's car. We have no idea how or why this part from another vehicle was inside Mara's car. Now, draw from this what you will, but to me, a lot of it doesn't make any sense. Mara disappeared the same week Facebook launched in 2004. Her case was coined the first missing person case of the digital age, and we use social media as a vehicle to spread the word.

The Internet is a powerful tool with a limitless reach to a widespread audience. When used responsibly and ethically, it can change the world, start a revolution, and perhaps find a missing young woman. Or so we thought. While my father hoofed it on his weekend boots on the ground searches, handing out flyers and looking in the woods, my aunt by marriage, Helena Murray, created an online presence dedicated to Mara. Helena was a fiery woman who wasn't afraid to speak her mind. She wasn't as mobile as my dad, so she thought leveraging social media was the most effective way she could help. And boy, did she ever. She created a MySpace page dedicated to Mara in a Facebook group, hoping to generate leads to feed to law enforcement and keep Mara in the public consciousness. She was active on online message forums like topics. She befriended locals via the Internet, many who have become like family to us. The work Helena did early on was invaluable, but it certainly came at a cost. Online trolls started to infiltrate the group, spreading misinformation and leaving vile comments. Helena was the gatekeeper paper, and she moderated as best she could, but policing the Internet is an impossible task.

She became the target of vicious attacks herself, but she kept going. I remember early on, she'd call me cursing and frustrated sometimes in tears. She didn't want my family to read the disgusting comments, and for the most part, we didn't. It took a lot of discipline, and sometimes I ventured into the comment section. I remember reading horrific things said about my family. Those are seared into my mind despite my best efforts. You can never truly delete things from the Internet. Its permanence makes healing from grief extremely difficult. I remember telling myself Oh, God, I hope my dad never sees this stuff. Helena worked tirelessly, day and night, trying to balance her own life as a mother and grandmother. Eventually, she passed away from a long battle with cancer. This was a devastating blow to our family. She was the patron saint of the Mara Murray case and kept the story alive when it started to go cold. She's the reason for the national coverage and spots like the Montell Williams Show, Nancy Grace, ABC's 2020, disappeared miles to nowhere on ID Discovery. Her passing deeply affected my father as she was his right-hand woman. My father told me, Jules, you're up, and I knew what he meant.

I became the online face of Mara's case and the conduit between law enforcement and my family. But I could never fill Helena's shoes. No one could. Thankfully, she kept meticulous notes, and she made sure to pass those along to me before she passed. Rip, Helena. You are so missed. As the years kept ticking away, the case went cold, but my family has fought tirelessly to warm it up, doing countless interviews, podcasts, news spots. I've lost track of all the interviews we've done. I want to believe that these efforts have helped keep the case from becoming a file in a cabinet, and in recent years, we've had some movement. In 2016-2017 time frame, Massachusetts attorney general Mara Healey called my dad. He was very vocal about the lack of response from Massachusetts, given Mara was a Massachusetts resident. He describes the situation as a girl without a state. After they spoke, she said he would get a call back. But he never did. Then in 2019, we were able to investigate a long-standing rumor that Mara may have been buried in a cement basement of a nearby home. The rumor goes like this. There was a contractor working in a house shortly after Mara's disappearance and found what he believed to be bones in the dirt floor of the basement.

A couple of weeks later, the contractor comes back to the house to finish the and the dirt floor was cemented over. My family approached the owners and asked if we could search, but we were denied. When the house changed ownership, the new owner gave my family permission to conduct the search. Two independent cadaver dogs alerted at two separate times in the basement, near a tank against the outside wall. A ground-penetrating radar revealed an area of disturbed Earth in the same location. The results were submitted to the New Hampshire State Police, but we didn't hear anything for months. After a lot of pressure, finally, law enforcement sent a team in to excavate. My family was given less than 24 hours notice, and we all high-tailed it up to New Hampshire. We consulted with an independent forensic anthropologist who traveled to the dig site that day hoping to observe the excavation. Law enforcement refused to let anyone onto the property. After about four hours, they scheduled a press conference. We were convinced that they found her. This was it. We were escorted into a private room in the Grafton Courthouse, where the Assistant Attorney General and about eight uniform personnel told us they found a piece of pottery.

We asked about the cadaver dog alert and were told it must have been a dead rat. I watched my father completely deflate and slump into his chair. Another gut punch from my family. Later, we learned they didn't dig under the tank or investigate the wall where the dogs alerted. In the fall of 2021, human remains were discovered on the ski slope at Loon Mountain. The discovery sent my family straight up the Hope roller coaster that we'd been riding for 19 years. Could this be Mara? Our minds went to the infamous Loon Mountain 3. A forensic team went to the site and obtained the bones for testing. My family waited on pins and needles for weeks when finally the state police announced the bones were outside the date range to be Mara. Our hearts sank. We rode the Hope roller coaster back down on the ground level. We cried, we laughed, and then we went back in Nestoic mode onto the next lead. We've experienced this flat town countless times over the past two decades, and the waiting period is excruciating. In January 2022, Mara was entered into the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, VICAP. Six months later, a huge line search was conducted by New Hampshire State Police under the helm of a new detective, focusing on an area about five miles from where she disappeared.

Again, nothing. Most recently, in 2023, we started a billboard campaign in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Now, I I've alluded to our relationship with Hope during this process. It's complicated. I spoke to Dr. Seth Gillihan about it. I often find myself switching between tenses. So Mara is or Mara was. That was a struggle for me to make that switch and the timing of it because you always want to hold out hope, and that's really the only thing that fuels you and families like mine. But it also torments you in that we hope she will show up and walk through those doors. But then as years pass, our hope changes. The hope now is, I hope we get answers while the remaining people in my family are still alive. I hope that I'm able to live alongside of this unknowing. I'm hoping for myself as well as hoping for answers and resolution to my sister. And sometimes I struggle with that, too, because I feel like that's in some ways a betrayal to my sister, Maura. But in reality, it's the only way I can keep going, because if I don't keep going, the burden is on the families now.

And so many other families can relate to the same issue. As time progresses, hope changes. The whole dynamic of hope changes. I appreciate you sharing your own experiences with hope because there is so much ambivalence around it. And it's so helpful to learn to be open to that ambivalence rather than feeling like we have to choose one side or the other. But it's so normal in these in between situations. I love what you said about learning to live alongside that ambivalence. In terms of on the treatment side, clinically, that is so key to learn to coexist with the unknowing. The sad reality is we may never know what happened to Mara, but one thing is absolutely certain. We will never stop trying. My dad made a promise to Mara saying, We're coming for you, kid. We will honor that promise. And dad, when you hear this, just know no one has done more for Mara than you. I'm lucky to call you dad, and I love you. Join me next episode to discuss the impact of Mara's disappearance. 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 Sara 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 moramurrymissing. Org. So what do you want to watch tonight?

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