MYSTERY continues to persist around a rusty, stained knife handed to Maura Murray’s father a year after her disappearance by a man claiming his brother was responsible for her death.
Maura was a 21-year-old nursing student at the University of Massachusetts when she disappeared in February 2004, minutes after crashing her car into a ditch in Haverhill, New Hampshire.
No traces of Maura have been found since, though her family continues to push tirelessly for answers more than 20 years on.
One of the few promising leads her family has received during the course of their search concerns a knife that was given to her father, Fred, in late 2004.
The rusted weapon – said to be stained with a reddish-brown color that resembled blood – was turned over by a man who claimed his brother had killed Maura and buried her remains beneath his home.
The man has never been publicly identified, but his sibling lived a very short distance from the scene of Maura’s fateful crash in an A-frame-style home.
The indicted sibling had a history of violence, the tipster stated, and he and his girlfriend seemed to have been acting strangely in the aftermath of Maura’s disappearance.
The knife was reportedly found by the tipster inside the glove compartment of his brother’s car.
Fred attempted to turn the knife over to New Hampshire State Police but they first refused to take the potentially crucial item of evidence, according to Maura’s sister, Julie Murray.
He later mailed the knife to the department’s headquarters in Concord, along with a statement outlining the tipster’s allegations against his brother.
Within days, Fred received a receipt that his package had been received by state police but the family was left in the dark about the knife and the potential suspect therein.
The Murray family publicly clashed with detectives working on Maura’s case for years over the direction and lack of progress in their probe but have recently established positive relations with the new crop of officers now at the helm.
Julie told The U.S. Sun that recently the family finally received some clarity on the knife in question.
“They recently acknowledged that they did, in fact, test the knife, but we don’t know if the knife itself was tested recently or if it was tested years ago and we’re only finding out now,” she said.
When asked if state police confirmed the results of that test, Julie declined to comment.
Explaining why, she said, “I’m gonna say no on that. I have to be delicately balanced with what I share because I don’t want to jeopardize my relationship with law enforcement.
“What I can say is that the knife was tested for [Maura’s] DNA.
“We hold these circumstances as points of interest only because in 20 years we haven’t got much in the way of lead or evidence, but we did get a man handing over a knife and implicating his brother.
“Naturally, that is going to be interesting, if nothing else, so I’ll stay it’s definitely still interesting to us.”
DEAD-END SEARCH
New Hampshire State Police have been contacted for comment.
The man who gave the knife to Fred Murray has since died.
Other members of the tipster’s family accused him of making up the story to obtain a reward, citing an apparent history of drug use.
But several days after the weapon was handed over, the accused sibling allegedly scrapped his car.
Julie says her family asked the accused sibling if they could search his home but permission was never granted.
Years later, after the property was sold, the new homeowners allowed Fred Murray to search the property with cadaver dogs.
The K9s alerted strongly to the scent of decomposed remains in a closet in the basement of the home.
Investigators took some items from the home into evidence, including a sample from the carpet inside the closet.
Ground-penetrating radar used by private citizens also showed the ground underneath the basement had been disturbed.
In 2019, the owners of the property granted state police and the FBI to search the basement but no remains were found.
Associate Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin told local media at the time: “What happened today is that a team of over a dozen agents and detectives went into that basement.
“They cut that area, removed the concrete, and then searched several feet down and covered the area and beyond where that disturbed ground had been, and they located absolutely nothing, other than a small piece of what looks to be potentially pottery or maybe a piece of old piping.”
Fred relayed his disappointment to the media, insisting he believed he was on the verge of solving his daughter’s case.
“This one hurts because I thought we finally had it,” said Fred. “This one is worse than the other false alarms or dead ends.
“She wants to come home and be buried in her hometown. And she can’t. She’s buried up here. And I need help.”
MAURA’S VANISHING ACT
In an interview with The U.S. Sun last week, Julie Murray said her family has accepted that Maura is more than likely dead, and continuing to believe otherwise without any signs of life in the last two decades would be “denying reality.”
But she continues to reject any notions that her sister hurt herself or intended to disappear forever.
Instead, she continues to believe Maura fell victim to foul play – and that someone out there somewhere knows what happened to her.
Maura vanished on the evening of February 9, 2004, shortly after crashing her black 1996 Saturn sedan into a ditch along Route 112.
A woman reported the crash to police at 7:29 pm.
A second call was made by local bus driver Butch Atwood, who lived 100 yards away from the scene of the crash, at 7:42 pm.
Atwood had driven past Maura and stopped to ask her if she needed help.
He offered to call the police but Maura told him she’d already called roadside assistance.
We hold these circumstances as points of interest only because in 20 years we haven’t got much in the way of lead or evidence, but we did get a man handing over a knife and implicating his brother.
Julie Murray
Once he got home, Atwood decided to call the police anyway and described Maura as unharmed by “shaken up” to the dispatcher.
He added that he could not see the woman’s car from his window but he could see other vehicles driving past on the road.
By the time police arrived on the scene at 7:46 pm, Maura was nowhere to be found.
There were no tracks in the snow leading to the surrounding woods, meaning the decorated track runner either fled the scene on foot or possibly hitched a ride in a passing vehicle.
A contractor who had been passing through Route 112 that night would later report seeing a young person moving eastbound on foot just a few miles from the scene of the crash.
However, the sighting was not reported until several months later and authorities were unable to determine if it was Maura he’d seen.
Julie believes the sighting was inaccurate.
Instead of taking off on foot, she believes Maura was picked up by a passing driver.
“I don’t think she’d have enough time to make it down the road, because if she went east, she would have to have passed by the two witnesses [who called police] and they never stated they saw anyone walking or running in the road,” said Julie.
“Another thing we know is there were no footprints in the snow, and there had been a storm so there was almost two feet of snow on the ground.
“My family spent hours and hours alongside law enforcement as they used sent dogs, heat sensing helicopters, and so on, and there weren’t any footprints unaccounted for […] if she ever went off the roadway detectives felt confident we would’ve found her.
“Based on both of those things, I think she probably got into a vehicle right at the scene.
“It’s just a matter of who was driving the car.”
HIDDEN STRUGGLES
Newly released police files obtained by The U.S. Sun earlier this month shed new light on the hidden struggles Maura was grappling with in the days before her disappearance.
Hours before the crash, she withdrew the contents of her bank account and spent $40 at a local liquor store, stocking up on wine and vodka.
Red wine was spilled on the interior of Maura’s abandoned car and an open coke bottle filled with alcohol was also found inside, lending to the theory she may have been intoxicated and fled the scene to avoid arrest.
An examination of Maura’s computer search history would find more than a dozen entries for rental properties in Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.
However, no evidence surfaced showing Maura ever made a booking and it has never been determined where she was heading at the time of her crash.
Just two days earlier, Maura had been involved in another car accident.
Maura was also quietly battling an eating disorder and enduring a turbulent period with her long-distance boyfriend.
Considering the ominous circumstances, the Haverhill Police Department published a press release on February 11, 2004, calling Maura “possibly suicidal.”
Newly released documents show that, around that time, Maura’s family conceded she could’ve been suicidal and shared she’d been known to suffer serious bouts of depression.
But, as the investigation transpired, and more evidence came to light, Julie said her and her family’s opinions changed completely.
She said there are several details in her sister’s last-known movements that show Maura had no intention of ending her life or running away to start a new one.
One of the most telling pieces of evidence was recovered from Maura’s car: accident forms from the Registry of Motor Vehicles that she’d promised to collect for her dad, Fred Murray.
Fred visited his daughter in Amerhurst two days before her fateful Feb. 9 crash to go car shopping.
He loaned her his car that night to drive back to campus to go to a party, but, on the way back to her father’s hotel in the early hours, she lost control of the vehicle and collided with a guard rail, causing $10,000 worth of damage.
Fred’s insurance company agreed to cover the costs of the wreck but he needed Maura to pick up those forms for him so he could file the claim.
Julie said her sister picking up the forms is a “key” detail that debunks the police’s early theory.
“She felt horrible about crashing his car, and there was no way she was not going to follow through on her promise to get them for him,” Julie shared.
On the night she disappeared, Julie believes Maura was trying to get out of town for a while following a snowballing of disappointment and hardships in her personal life.
“I can’t say for certain what exactly made her so upset that she wanted to get away for a while, but I think it was a combination of everything going on at that time,” she added.
“She never wanted to burden anybody, and I know she beat herself up over crashing my dad’s car.”
TELLING CLUES
Other items found in Maura’s car support Julie’s hypothesis, she says.
Among the belongings recovered were school textbooks, teeth whitener, medications, birth control, changes of clothes, makeup, and one of her favorite books, Not Without Peril by Nicholas Howe.
The book, which details a century of adventure and tragedy on New Hampshire’s Presidential Range, has been the subject of much conspiracy among arm-chair detectives online.
Some believe the book’s contents to be a clue for what happened to Maura, believing she may have met a grisly end in the mountains of New Hampshire, a place where she’d hiked and camped often as a child with her family.
But Julie says there is no conspiracy to be had.
She said the book being in Maura’s possession only fortifies her belief that her sister intended to come back from her spontaneous and mysterious trip.
“The book was all about the mountains we had climbed. It was fascinating and it became Maura’s favorite book, and she read it multiple times,” she explained.
“It had a lot of significance to her, so if she was trying to get away to clear her head, she would’ve brought that book along with her for sure.
“And it’s not just what was in her car […] I like to draw people’s attention to the actions she was taking the day she disappeared, including turning in a homework assignment, picking the accident forms she promised to get for my dad, emailing her professors, and recycling 79 cans and bottles.
“In my mind, those don’t seem like the things you would do if you were trying to go and disappear forever. And I never thought that – ever.”
One potentially glaring clue that appeared to be missed by investigators was a handwritten address and phone number jotted down on a piece of paper inside her car.
The initial search warrant for Maura’s disappearance has never been released publicly, but Julie was recently given access to it for the first time.
Julie was never previously aware of the note and researched the address listed for her podcast, Media Pressure.
The number and address turned out to belong to a condo in Barlett, New Hampshire, where Maura and her family had stayed in the past. The owner of the condo was from Maura’s hometown of Hanson, Massachusetts.
“And it was a gut punch because when I called that number, the owner told me they’d never been contacted by anyone before, nobody in law enforcement,” Julie said.
“That shocked me because that’s such a simple thing to do, and if they didn’t do that originally […] things like calling up a number written in her car when she’s missing, what else did they miss?
“Nothing came of it in the end, I passed the information to investigators, but it’s frustrating and it makes you wonder.”
‘DEPRESSED AND IN DISTRESS’
Today, Julie remains stumped as to where her sister was trying to go before she crashed her car.
The new police files obtained by The U.S. Sun revealed new details about Maura’s behavior and mindset before she vanished.
The 36-page document features interviews with Maura’s family, friends, classmates, and colleagues.
None of the students on Maura’s nursing course at UMass claimed to share a close relationship with her. The vast majority of her dormmates also told police they only knew her well enough to say hello to.
She was described by some of her peers as reserved, quiet, and perhaps struggling to adapt to campus life (Julie contends her sister was an introvert, like her).
Twenty Years Gone: What have officials said?
The 20th anniversary of Maura's disappearance passed in February. The New Hampshire Attorney General released the following statement about the case at the time:
“We are continuing to work with our local, state, and federal partners, including the FBI, to identify resources to try to advance this case.
“It is our hope that this twentieth anniversary of Ms. Murray’s disappearance will bring renewed attention to the case that might ultimately lead to justice and closure for the Murray family.”
The days leading up to her disappearance were filled with increasingly odd and erratic-seeming behavior.
On February 5, 2004, Maura was on shift at her campus security job when she got a call from her older sister, Kathleen, that left Maura visibly distraught.
According to Julie, Kathleen – who struggles with alcohol addiction – told Maura her fiancé had picked her up from rehab and driven straight to a liquor store.
After receiving the call, Maura stared vacantly down at the desk in front of her, muttering undiscernible words to herself, her supervisor told police.
When asked if there had been a family emergency, Maura responded, “No, nothing to do with me.”
“She started crying and muttering word[s] under her breath that I could not understand,” recounted the supervisor.
“I asked her again, telling her I was worried about her, and she said, ‘No reason to leave, it’s my sister, not me.’ I asked her if something happened to her sister, and she responded, ‘It’s my sister’s problem, not mine,’ and started shaking visibly while crying silently.”
The supervisor tried to get Maura to see a counselor immediately but she refused.
She agreed to leave work early but appeared very distressed and depressed when she left, they said.
A family member later told police that Kathleen’s addiction battle had caused “severe depression” for Maura in the past.
WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME
Two days after receiving that call, Fred Murray visited his daughter at university.
They went out for dinner and to a brewery with one of Maura’s friends and later stopped at a liquor store.
That night, Maura crashed her dad’s car when driving back to his hotel from a campus party.
Maura informed Fred of the crash when she awoke the following morning, telling him she’d gone around a corner, hit some sand, and skidded into a guard rail.
She wasn’t breathalyzed at the scene and didn’t receive a ticket.
Recounting his daughter’s behavior that morning, Fred said she was making “whimpering sounds” and appeared very upset, telling him, “This is the wors[t].”
“We went back to the dorm, she was feeling bad because she let me down,” said Fred.
“When we reached into the back seat to get her stuff, I told her, ‘It’ll get fixed.’ She went into the dorm room, [and] sort of slumped her way in.”
Fred later found out the cost of the damage was going to be covered by his insurance, so long as Maura picked up the proper accident forms from the Registry of Motor Vehicles, which she promised to do.
Aside from Maura being upset about the crash, Fred told police his daughter otherwise seemed fine.
The following day, February 9, Maura’s behavior started to veer from logic.
After searching for rental properties in numerous states into the early hours of the morning, at around 1:30 pm, Maura emailed her supervisor at her campus security job and said she was going home for a week and could not work due to a sudden death in her family.
However, no such death had occurred and the reason for Maura sending the message remains unclear.
Maura also emailed her boyfriend at around the same time, telling her she loved him and promised to call him later that day.
Maura then drove to an off-campus ATM at 3:15 pm and withdrew $280 from her account, almost the entirety of her balance.
She then went to a nearby liquor store and purchased $40 worth of alcohol – including a box of Franzia wine, Kahlúa, and vodka – and traded in 79 bottles and cans for $3.99 in store credit.
At some stage, Maura also picked up the forms for the Registry of Motor Vehicles her dad needed and turned in some coursework.
Less than an hour later, she would use her phone for the last time to check her voicemail.
To date, investigators have recovered no evidence to indicate that Maura had told anyone of her intended destination.
Maura’s movements over the next few hours are relatively unknown but she eventually surfaced in Haverhill sometime at 7:25 pm when she crashed her car.
Whatever happened to her sister in the moments following the crash, Julie doesn’t believe it was of Maura’s own making.
She believes her sister was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and was murdered at the hands of a yet unidentified other.
“The fact her body has never been found leads me to believe she took a ride with someone from the scene of the crash and was met with foul play,” shared Julie.
“Maura would never purposely do this to our family […] I’d be lying if [her potentially taking her own life] didn’t cross my mind when she didn’t show up, but as we got more information things changed and our opinions changed.
“I honestly don’t think Maura would’ve run off and hurt herself.
“She wouldn’t leave our family to wonder.”
To learn more about Maura’s case, click here.