Maura Murray’s Sister Julie Wants Justice 21 Years Later After the Nursing Student’s Disappearance

On a cold February day in 2004, University of Massachusetts-Amherst nursing student Maura Murray decided for unknown reasons to leave campus. She loaded her textbooks into her car, bought about $40 worth of alcohol and headed north.

Murray was navigating the winding Route 112 in Haverhill, N.H., about a two-hour drive from Amherst, when she reached a hairpin turn that proved too sharp. Her car careened into a tree.

Local bus driver Butch Atwood was on his way home when he saw Murray and her crashed car and pulled over. 

According to the book True Crime Addict by James Renner, Atwood offered to assist. “You okay?” he asked. “I’m just shook up,” she replied. “I’ll call the police for you,” he said.  She responded: “No, please don’t. I already called AAA. They’re sending a tow truck.”

A tow truck was not on its way. There was no cell phone reception in the foothills of the White Mountains, so Atwood knew she could not have called for help. When Atwood got home, he called 911 and reported that Murray appeared to be alone after the car accident, cold and possibly drunk. 

Police arrived a few minutes later, but she was already gone.

Since then, Murray’s disappearance has been the subject of constant speculation and conspiracy theories on social media and left myriad questions unanswered. 

Murray’s February 9, 2004, disappearance was made more mystifying because of her strong record of academic and athletic accomplishments. She qualified for the U.S. National Scholastic Outdoor Championships in the two-mile category as a high school sophomore in 1998 and finished 33rd in the country. 

The high achiever attended the prestigious U.S. Military Academy at West Point before transferring to UMass, where she joined the intensive nursing program. 

“She would blush if you mentioned any of these accolades,” sister Julie Murray tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “She wasn’t doing it for attention.” 

Nursing was a natural calling for Maura because she enjoyed helping others, according to Julie. 

“In high school, she volunteered at a nursing home that my mother worked at and loved chatting with older people, telling them stories, making them laugh,” Julie recalls. 

In the weeks and years after her disappearance, the local and national media, true crime podcasts and amateur sleuths widely reported developments. One promising tip led her family to enlist cadaver dogs to search the basement of a home near the crash site. Nothing was found. 

After frustration over a lack of progress in the case, the Murray family hired private investigator Lou Barry, a former Granby, Mass., police chief. He pieced together a timeline of Maura’s whereabouts in the days and hours before she disappeared and concluded she was probably a victim of foul play. 

“The probability is that she was abducted, not necessarily against her will initially,” Barry says. “I think that she accepted a ride from the wrong person.” 

Asked about her AAA excuse, Barry replies, “I don’t think she wanted the police to be called. Her license in New Hampshire had been suspended for a speeding ticket. Plus, if she had been drinking, she certainly didn’t want to get into any more trouble. So she just made that up about AAA.”

Barry’s investigation raised the possibility that a drifter living off the grid may know something about the case, Julie says. She notes that the drifter was the subject of multiple police reports involving alleged domestic violence

He is “not your average person. I don’t think he ever paid into social security,” Barry says, adding that he “would be in his 60s by now. We know he was in New Hampshire. We know he was in Maine.” Barry notes that he provided the information he obtained to New Hampshire authorities.

Julie was mortified to learn that the drifter had previously encountered “a woman who was on the side of the road because her car was broken down.” He initially charmed but later harmed her, Julie says. 

Asked about the drifter and the status of the missing persons case, New Hampshire Department of Justice spokesman Michael Garrity declined comment “to protect the integrity of the investigative process,” he said in a statement.

He added: “While we recognize and appreciate the public’s interest in this case, premature or speculative disclosures could hinder our ability to pursue all avenues thoroughly and objectively. We remain committed to pursuing justice on behalf of Maura and her family, and we encourage anyone with credible information to come forward by contacting our office directly.”

Over two decades, the Murray family has managed its expectations. What began as a desire to “find Maura, bring her home, have Thanksgiving dinner together,” says Julie, has morphed into the somber desire to simply know what happened to her.

“We have grappled with the fact that we will most likely never see Maura again,” Julie laments, “but I’ve never once thought that I needed to be okay with never having an answer.”

Maintaining that optimism can be therapeutic. “Hope is something that allows us to see a path forward,” trauma therapist Chau Nguyen tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “It’s an antidote to coping and healing in many instances.” 

Having worked with families of missing loved ones, Nguyen knows the pain they experience. “You’re in this grief purgatory,” she says. “You don’t ever have closure. Your thoughts wander, and so if you think about this going on for decades, the grief, the mystery, the anguish is profound for this family trying to search for answers.” 

Julie agrees: “Hope is what fuels families like mine. But at the same time, hope tortures us in that with each passing day we don’t have the answer. It’s like, come on, hope, when are you gonna produce for me?” 

Besides keeping Maura’s name alive through updates on her TikTok account that boasts more than 320,000 followers, Julie hosted a 10-part podcast series and has no plans to slow down her search for answers.