She Crashed on a Snowy Road in New Hampshire and Vanished in Under 10 Minutes. Maura Murray.

At about seven o'clock on the night of Monday, February 9, 2004, a woman living on a sharp bend of Route 112 in Haverhill, New Hampshire, heard a thump outside.

She looked out and saw a car against the snowbank at the corner.

A school bus driver on his way home stopped. He saw a young woman by the car. She did not look hurt, but she looked cold. He offered to call the police.

She asked him not to. She said she had already called AAA.

He drove on. A police officer arrived at the scene a few minutes before eight o'clock.

The car was locked. The driver was gone.

Her name was Maura Murray. She was twenty-one. And in more than twenty years, there has never been a confirmed sighting of her.

Who was Maura Murray?

Maura Murray was born on May 4, 1982, in Brockton, Massachusetts. She grew up in a big family, with brothers and sisters, in an Irish Catholic household. Her parents divorced when she was six. She was close to her father, Fred.

She was a runner. She ran track in high school.

After high school, she went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where she studied chemical engineering for three semesters. Then she transferred to the University of Massachusetts Amherst to study nursing.

The days before

In the days before she disappeared, several things happened.

On Thursday, February 5, while she was working a campus security shift, she had a phone call with one of her sisters. Later, she was found unresponsive. All she said was, "My sister." What that call was about has never been fully explained.

On Saturday, February 7, Maura went car shopping with her father. He let her take his Toyota Corolla back to campus.

At about three-thirty in the morning on Sunday, February 8, she crashed his car on a road in Hadley, Massachusetts. It caused about ten thousand dollars in damage. Her father's insurance covered it. He dropped her back at campus and went home.

The next day, she disappeared.

February 9

What Maura did on Monday, February 9, looks like someone getting ready to go somewhere.

Some time after midnight, she looked up directions on MapQuest, to the Berkshires and to Burlington, Vermont.

At one p.m., she emailed her boyfriend. She said she did not feel much like talking.

At one-twenty-four, she emailed a nursing faculty supervisor. She said she would be away for a week, because of a death in her family. Her family says no one had died.

At two-oh-five, she called a hotel booking line in Stowe, Vermont, and talked for about five minutes.

At two-eighteen, she left her boyfriend a voicemail.

Then she packed. When police later went to her dorm room, most of her things were in boxes. The art had been taken off the walls.

At about three-thirty, with classes canceled because of a snowstorm, she drove off campus in her black 1996 Saturn.

At three-forty, she took two hundred and eighty dollars out of an ATM. Security cameras show her alone. She bought about forty dollars' worth of alcohol at a liquor store, also alone on camera.

At four-thirty-seven, her cell phone was used for the last time.

She drove north.

The crash

Haverhill is a small town in northern New Hampshire.

At around seven o'clock, a woman who lived on a sharp bend on Route 112 heard a thump and saw a car against the snowbank. She called the sheriff's department at seven-twenty-seven.

Around then, the school bus driver stopped. He saw a young woman. She did not appear hurt, but she was cold. She asked him not to call the police and told him she had called AAA. AAA has no record of a call.

He drove the short distance home, where his cell phone had service, and called the police himself.

According to the police log, a Haverhill officer arrived at seven-forty-six.

Maura was gone.

The car

The car was locked. The driver's side was damaged. The radiator had been pushed back, and both airbags had gone off.

Inside, police found a damaged box of wine, an empty beer bottle, a AAA card in Maura's name, blank accident report forms, makeup, jewelry, printed directions to Burlington, Vermont, a stuffed animal, and a book about deaths and accidents in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, called Not Without Peril.

What was not in the car: Her debit and credit cards. Her cell phone. Her black backpack.

None of her cards and her phone have been used since that night.

A rag from her roadside kit had been stuffed into the tailpipe.

Conflicting witnesses

The witness accounts do not line up.

The woman who called the sheriff first said she saw a man smoking in the car. Later she said what she saw was a red light, possibly from a phone.

Another driver said she passed at about seven-thirty-seven and saw a police SUV beside Maura's car with nobody visible. That conflicts with the official police log.

A contractor said that between eight and eight-thirty, he saw a young person walking fast, heading east along Route 112, about four or five miles from the crash. He did not come forward until about three months later.

Two days after the crash, a tracking dog followed Maura's scent about a hundred yards east of the car. Then it lost the trail. That led some to think she may have gotten into another vehicle.

The search

At first, police treated the case as a possible voluntary disappearance. She had packed. She had planned. There was no sign of a crime.

By about February 20, the FBI was involved, and the search went nationwide.

There were searches of the woods for years. In 2006, cadaver dogs reportedly reacted at a house about a mile from the crash site. In 2019, the basement of that house was dug up. Nothing significant was found.

In 2009, the case was moved to New Hampshire's cold case unit and classified as "suspicious." In 2014, a prosecutor said, "We haven't had any credible sightings of Maura since the night she disappeared."

In 2021, bone fragments found on a nearby mountain were tested. They were not Maura's. In February 2024, New Hampshire released an age-progressed photo of what she might look like today.

The theories

There are two main theories, and they pull in opposite directions.

One. Maura left on purpose. She packed her room, lied about a family death, looked up hotels and directions, and drove north. Some believe she wanted to escape something in her life, and the crash simply happened along the way. Then she walked off into the woods, or got a ride, and started over.

Two. Someone took her. A young woman, alone, after a crash, on a dark rural road, accepting a ride from the wrong person. Her father, Fred, believes she was abducted and killed. Police have said they treat it as a possible homicide, without confirming a crime.

Neither theory explains why she was going north. And neither has evidence to prove it.

What we still don't know

For years, a tree at the crash site had a ribbon tied around it in Maura's memory. In 2021, the tree was cut down.

We still do not know where Maura Murray was going. We do not know why she told her professors someone had died. We do not know what happened in the few minutes between the bus driver leaving and the police arriving.

What we know is this. A twenty-one-year-old woman crashed her car on a snowy road in New Hampshire and was gone before an officer got there. And in more than twenty years, nobody has found her.

If you have information, contact the New Hampshire State Police or the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit.

What do you think happened to Maura?