Everyone before we start the show, I have an important announcement about the rest
of this season. Unfortunately, two weeks ago, our cat Beatrice, was
diagnosed with cancer and she's now entering end of life palliative care. Beatrice has
been with my partner for nineteen years, his whole adult life, and she's
been with me for thirteen years. She is a part of the family,
so I have been prioritizing her and spending her last days with her, and
making sure she's comfortable and happy and healthy, and we get as much time
with her as we can before we say goodbye. That said, this episode,
which was initially meant to be the finale of part one of season six,
is more robust a story than a single episode can tell, So it
will be the penultimate episode of part one of season six, and my hope
is that the final episode will be ready to publish June thirteenth, keeping in
mind that I am trying to prioritize this time with Beatrice. After that,
we'll move forward with the pre planned season six hiatus, which will run through
late September, and we'll return with the second half of season six in early
October. Thank you for your patience during this time and your support. Now
on with the show. This is a studio both and production. Julie Hey,
Josh, Hey, how are you? I'm good? Can you hear
me? Okay, yeah, I can hear you? Great? Oh awesome.
This is true crime bullshit. I'm your host, Josh Hallmark and this
is a serialized story of Israel keys I first met Julie Murray at the True
Crime Podcast Festival in Dallas back in two thousand twenty two. She spoke on
a panel with Eric Carter Landine of the True Consequences podcast, and Mariah Day,
the daughter of Betsy Faria, who is sadly best known as the woman
murdered in the Thing About Pam. The three of them, quite eloquently,
all things considered, discussed the negative impacts of being part of the true crime
machine. How when cases become media sensations or Internet mysteries, the families tend
to lose empathy, privacy, autonomy, and even grace. Their loved ones
often lose their humanity in an effort to make them representative of humanity as a
greater whole. Mariah watched as multiple series across multiple platforms centered the story of
her mother's murder on the woman who murdered her and then told that story with
whimsy and humor, and Julie talked about how twenty years of speculation, frenzy,
and propriety turn the worst thing that happened to her family into a circus
where no one, not even more as family, was afforded grace, dignity,
or privacy. It was the most impactful panel discussion I've ever been to.
Piety, to me, is one of the most terrifying human traits,
because when we think we are or have decided we are doing the right thing,
we can very quickly overlook our means of doing it. We can easily
find ourselves doing anything or everything, all for the good of the right thing
without ever asking at what cost. And then if that one person, that
one righteous, pious person, becomes ten or twenty and they're all anonymous on
the that piety can become a frenzy, a mob, wherein because everybody is
involved, no one is squarely responsible for that mob's actions or incitement. And
that is the only thing scarier to me than piety. Just ask Sarah good
Yusuf Hawkins, Aaron Webster, or Islam Nettles. It's easy to overlook what
speculation, gossip, and misreporting can do to the families left behind by true
crime. And I have made my fair share of mistakes private planes and all
the evening following Julie's panel, I found myself at the Hotel Lobby bar with
her and a handful of other people talking. That group slowly dwindled down until
it was just Julie and me. I figured she had no idea who I
was, but then she asked me a question that shocked me, A question
I get asked all the time, probably weakly, but hearing it from Julie
Murray herself was as jarring as it was intimidating. It's hard to have this
conversation with you and not appreciate the irony of our very first conversation. And
I don't know if you recall it. It was at the Hotel Bar in
Dallas, after I think the first night of the True Crime podcast festival there,
and you approached me and you asked if I thought Keys could be involved
in Mara's disappearance. Do you remember what I said? Well? I remember
asking that because when I found out you were there, I was like,
I've got to talk to Josh about keys. But I think you told me
it was unlikely. Yeah, I think I said it's unlikely. But with
keys, anything as possible. Yeah. That has been my go to answer
to that question for almost as long as I've been investigating Israel keys. For
one, because it's true, unless we can categorically place keys somewhere else when
a crime occurred, there's almost always a possibility. And secondly, because I
have been very cautious about saying anything about Morris case that could contribute to the
circus of speculation surrounding it. Since our first meeting back in twenty twenty two,
Julie and I have crossed paths several times at various events. I've gotten
to know her and who she is outside the scope of the worst thing to
ever happen to her. I respect her immensely. I've seen her give several
other talks, one called Engaging with Empathy, which should be required listening for
anyone creating or consuming true crime media. She is a quiet, stoic forced
to be reckoned with, and she's doing everything she can to change the way
we talk about victims. They're families, and true crime writ large while also
still searching for her sister Mara. So when I found that newspaper, a
local newspaper at Keisus Cabin, dated February tenth, two thousand and four,
the day after Mara went missing, and a day that Keesus timeline would have
you believe he was in Utah, I was immediately conflicted. There is no
right way to reach out to or involve families, but there are a million
in wrong ways. And my rule has always been, and this is something
I learned from Laura and Brooke from the fall line, to only reach out
if I have significant evidence that could support Keys's involvement in a loved one's disappearance,
and then a the family is actively seeking new leads or involvement, or
b the family has a family advocate who is supporting their search for answers.
And in this case, I wasn't convinced that what I found that single newspaper
measured up to the rule. So let's talk about the newspaper and what it
could mean and does not mean. The Tuesday, February tenth, two thousand
and four issue of the Malone Telegram newspaper can be seen mostly scattered about the
kitchen floors at the Key's Constable cabin. The most clear section in the photos
we obtained is from the sports section, pages B three and B four.
It's yellowed and crinkled with time, but it's still in mostly pristine condition other
than a tear in an article that appears to be about UMass Amherst and a
large ink or paint blotch. I spoke with someone in the archives department at
the Malone Telegram, and that conversation has helped rule out a few scenarios about
how the paper got there. The Malone Telegram does not and never has done
reprints. They only print in bulk with advertisers to offset the costly printing fees.
Printing a single newspaper would be excessively cost prohibitive for them, so no
one could order an old copy of the paper to be placed at that cabin
sometime later. Additionally, the Malone office only kept archival papers for one one
year after printing, so the absolute latest someone could have gone into that office
and requested that specific newspaper would have been February of two thousand and five,
seven years before Keys was arrested and the world started to find out who he
was. Sadly, the Malone Telegram went digital in two thousand and eight and
only began digitizing their papers then. Everything prior is pretty much lost in the
ether, so we may never know what other news was reported in that February
tenth edition, including specifically whether it reported on Mara's accident the night before and
subsequent disappearance. And that's important because Mara Murray disappeared from Haverhill, New Hampshire,
just one hundred eighty miles from the Constable Cabin, between seven forty three
and seven forty six pm on February ninth of two, two thousand and four,
the day before that nearby paper was printed and distributed. I also learned
that the Malone Telegram was available at newspaper boxes throughout Franklin County, New York,
but it was also distributed on the day of printing to subscribers. The
woman I spoke with could not tell me if Israel, Keys David, the
Amish tenant, or anyone at five eleven Poplar had ever been a subscriber.
So here were our most reasonable hypotheses for how that newspaper ended up in the
Constable Cabin. Emphasis on were one either Israel or David subscribed to the Malone
Telegram. The issue here, though, is that David says he only read
the Amish News, and they were financially strapped and wouldn't likely be subscribing to
any paper, let alone one that they didn't read, and it seems unlikely
that Keyes, who was also financially strapped, would subscribe to a newspaper at
a house he didn't live in two Israel, picked up that paper while in
the area on or in the six days immediately following February tenth of two thousand
and four. Three. David picked up that paper to wrap items that they
were taking when they returned for their belongings at some point after moving out of
the cabin at the end of October two thousand and three. But there are
a few details that cast some doubt on this. The first is that David
said that they left the house as they found it, They didn't leave anything
behind and cleaned up before they left. The second is we don't even know
the exact date that David and his wife returned for their belongings. As you
may recall, it could have been any single day between December one of two
thousand and three and mid May of two thousand and four. But after spending
time looking up archival weather data on weather dot gov, I've been able to
very slightly narrow down when exactly they could have been there, because the one
thing that David and his wife could agree on is that when they returned to
get their stuff there was enough snow on the ground that they had to call
someone in to plow it. But more on that later. With all that
in mind, I went back and looked at Keys's Utah trip. I wanted
to see first what records the FBI used to place Keys in Utah at the
time, and second, how possible exactly it could be for him to get
to and from Haverhill, New Hampshire during that trip. Studio both and is
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dot com slash tcb. Since my initial reporting on Keys's February two thousand and
four trip to Utah, we've learned a lot more about how the FBI built
their Keys timeline, specifically what records they used and didn't have to construct it.
A timeline they'd used to both place Keys in specific areas on specific dates
and to rule him out of crimes that didn't align with those areas and those
dates. But as we all know by now, that timeline is a bit
flawed or at least insufficient. As we've discussed, many of the airlines didn't
keep their records for more than three to seven years, so by the time
the FBI caught Keys, most of his flight records were gone. So the
FBI used old itineraries found in his emails or in his house, and records
from the few airlines who still had them. As we all know, and
Keys has proven, you can print an airline itinerary and then change it.
So while even with Keys this is more likely the exception than the rule,
using old itinerary printouts to build the timeline is inherently flawed. The FBI also
appear to have made some pretty confusing assumptions about Keys's travels, particularly considering how
they've helped sell Keys as the most meticulous and strategic serial killer of our time.
Now, usually this is where i'd give you an example of this using
some other trip that Keys took which demonstrated multiple flaws in the timeline. But
one of the best examples for this is actually the trip we're looking at the
February two thousand and four Utah trip. As I previously reported to the FBI
timeline, Keys flew from Seattle to Salt Lake City, Utah, on February
sixth of two thousand and four. From there, he rented a silver Jetta
from Enterprise Rental Car and racked up five hundred twenty two miles on it.
On February seventh, a transaction places him in Logan, Utah, which is
about eighty miles or an hour and fifteen minute drive due north of Salt Lake
City and very near both the Idaho and Wyoming state lines. On February eighth,
a cell phone ping places Keys near Green River, Wyoming, which is
just one hundred sixty miles due east, or a two hour and forty five
minute drive from Logan. And then on February thirteenth, Keyes returned his rental
car in Salt Lake and flew back to Seattle. But here's the thing.
Some of the most important components of that narrative were built on assumptions. According
to a different FBI document in the Case Files, a document that was used
to build the FBI's timeline, the FBI has no flight records for this trip,
no airline records, no flight manifests, not even a printed out itinerary.
All they have are the Enterprise rental car records showing that Keys rented a
car from the Salt Lake City Airport on February sixth and then returned it on
the thirteenth. It's unclear if they even have a confirmation that it was returned
to Salt Lake City. Keys often picked up a car from one location and
then returned it to another, so actual records, actual proof, can only
actually place Keys in the Utah, Wyoming, Idaho tri state area on February
sixth, seventh, and eighth, and then possibly on the thirteenth, And
there are few things about exactly that which pique my interest. Keys is well
known for using his phone or his credit card when he wants to be seen,
and in this case, he, whether intentionally or not, uses one
and then the other, apparently only one time each on the seventh and then
the eighth, placing him in that area. And that begs the question,
if he's leaving digital footprints on those second and third days of this trip,
why did he suddenly stop thereafter? Why did he, according to the records
I have, turn his phone back off and stop using his credit card.
The other big assumption the FBI made is that Keys flew to Salt Lake City
directly from Seattle and then returned directly to Seattle. But again there's nothing in
the files to verify this. In all and extreme fairness, they may have
holdback material. We don't have visibility to all of his transaction records, only
the ones that they deemed important, So it is possible he used his credit
cards in Seattle on the day of both his outbound and return flights, but
there's no indication of that in their timeline, nor in the tools they used
to build the timeline. But we need to remember to be open to not
knowing the things we don't know. The FBI's most well known Keys narrative is
Keys flew from Alaska to Chicago, rented a car, and drove it nine
hundred miles to Burlington, Vermont, to use a pre arranged kil kit to
abduct, rape, and kill a couple. He went to great measures to
cover his tracks, He went to great measures to conceal his travels. He
went to great measures to create distance between his travels and his crimes. This
is how Keys has been sold to us. As the ultimate boogeyman. And
it's true, and it demonstrates his pre planning strategy, meticulousness, and impulse
control. But if that's the case the rule, not the exception, then
why isn't that being applied to this February two thousand four trip without travel records
or anything placing him anywhere during more than half of that trip. Why are
they just assuming that Israel Keys, of all people, took a straightforward trip
to Salt Lake City and Green River, Utah for no apparent reason in the
world. So let's first take a look at Keyesa's life during this time,
and then we'll look at the rental car mileage. Early two thousand four was
a pretty tumultuous time in Keyesa's life. His father died a reportedly preventable death
in November of two thousand two, and he appears to have spent the last
two weeks of November in Smyrna, Maine with his family. Emphasis on appears
because all we know is that when his father died on November thirteen, keyes
immediately took leave from work, and his dad's memorial was in Smyrna on November
two, twenty seventh, and we know Keys was there for the memorial at
minimum. Obviously we can't be certain Keys took leave and then immediately flew to
the East Coast, but since he can't be placed anywhere in that time,
we're open to him being in Maine for some of if not all of it.
It's upon his return from Maine that his and Tammy's problems began to hit
a fever pitch. By early two thousand and three, rumors were swirling that
Keys was engaged in a torrid affair. It's around the same time that Keyes
began to abuse bereavement leave at work, needing time off for dead relatives that
didn't exist. By late two thousand and three, we have Keyes spending multiple
nights in nearby shady motels, and on February twenty ninth of two thousand and
four, just two weeks after his return from this Utah trip, Nia Bay
Public Safety were called to Keys and Tammy's house to investigate a domestic disturbance.
It's the night that Keys and ended up in the tribal police station with Giovanna
Tyler. Here's my initial reporting from season three, episode five. On the
night of February twenty ninth, Tammy and Israel got into a heated fight,
which got physical after Tammy caught Key's instant messaging with an unnamed woman. At
the time, Keyes had been engaging in affairs with multiple women in Nia Bay,
and Tammy had become hypervigilant. Keys was drunk at the time the fight
escalated. Neighbors heard and eventually called the police. Tribal police separated the pair
and temporarily took Keys to the Macaw Tribal Police station, where a domestic incident
report was filed. Two months after that, Tammy and Keys finally broke up
and Keys moved out. And this is all to say that it was a
rocky time in Keyes's life, a time rife with aggravating factors. The most
important actual evidence for this Utah trip is the mileage that Keys put on his
Salt Lake City rental car, five hundred twenty two miles. From that five
hundred twenty two miles, we can immediately deduct two hundred forty eight miles based
on the credit card transaction in Logan and the phone ping in Green River that
only gives us two hundred seventy four miles. For at the very least five
more days of travel. So let's assume that Keys did in fact stay in
the area and then flew out of the Salt Lake City Airport on February thirteenth.
If he drove directly from Green River where his phone pinged back to the
Salt Lake City Airport, that would have racked up an additional one hundred seventy
two miles, leaving Israel Keys with just one hundred two miles for four to
five days of travel. So whether he's simply fishing or doing something more nefarious
like stalking, cashing, or god knows what else, that only affords him
twenty miles per day to do it in a very remote and expansive area of
the country. And that assumes that Keys drove directly without ever stopping or wavering,
from Salt Lake City through Logan to Green River. And by the way,
driving through Logan from Salt Lake to Green River is not even remotely the
most direct route. And we know there's no way he didn't stop or waiver
from that route because it took him at least forty eight hours to make that
four hour drive. So now let's assume that Keys did leave the area,
which I believe he most likely did. I'm not saying that he left the
area for the East Coast necessarily, but his patterns of behavior and m O
would make it much more reasonable to me that he left. There are few
possibilities of how that could have occurred. One, At some point after his
phone ping and Green River on the eighth, he made his way back to
the Salt Lake City airport and flew round trip somewhere else, then returned to
Salt Lake City on the thirteenth and returned his rental car, which would have
been parked somewhere nearby. It would be very easy to rack up around one
hundred extra miles during the forty eight hours in which we know he drove at
least two hundred forty eight miles between Salt Lake City and Green River. In
fact, from both a geographical perspective and a Key's history of driving perspective,
this scenario make way more sense to me than Keys having a rental car for
five days in Wyoming and barely using it, And based on his abandoned rental
car and mobile, it seems likely this is a tactic he employed at other
times. Another example would be the weird La trip we covered a few episodes
ago two, Keys drove the rental car to a second airport, flew round
trip, then returned the car there. Within the miles Keys put on that
rental car, including his trek through Logan and Green River, Keys could have
driven to any of the following airports, all in cities Keys was known to
visit or frequent Rock Springs, Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Reno and
Sacramento, and Boise. Three. A hybrid scenario where Keys drives to a
second airport, travels round trip, then still returns the rental car to Salt
Lake City on the third time. If Keys flew out of the Rock Springs
airport, where Southwest, his preferred airline at the time, had a hub,
his round trip drive from SLC to Logan to Green River to Rock Springs
back to SLC would be a minimum of four hundred and fifty two miles,
again excluding any stops or side trips which he assuredly made. It would also
better explain the ping and Green River which is en route from Logan to Rock
Springs. A fourth scenario is that the information the FBI has on that rental
car came from a printed itinerary, and that Keys could have returned it at
some other date. Perhaps he booked it for the sixth through the thirteenth,
but then returned it on the ninth. If the FBI is using a pre
printed itinerary, they'd have no way of knowing if Keys returned to the car
early or to a different location. So on a trip where five years ago
we were certain Keyes was in the Utah area, it now seems more likely
that he was not, at least not on February ninth, tenth, eleventh,
and twelfth, the exact days on which that newspaper was published, distributed
and available in Franklin County, New York, where Keyes's cabin was. Once
I felt like it was actually possible that Keys could have been in the area
when that newspaper showed up and when Moro went missing, I decided to read
deep dive what I could find that was factual about Moore's disappearance. So I
started with the premiere source material, Julie Murray's podcast Media Pressure, and this
time around with new information about Keys. Red flags were appearing everywhere, and
we'll discuss at length each of these, but for now, here's a short
list of details that stood out to me. A mysterious man driving an older
make red pickup truck. Keys owned a nineteen sixty seven Red International pickup truck.
Mora was using newspapers and the Internet to look for a used car to
buy. We know Keys used Craigslist to sell items, including guns, and
we have a fairly credible encounter with Keys, wherein a college student was led
to a remote parking lot in a small town under the pretense of buying a
used car off of Craigslist. After Mora's accident in Haverhill, the initial nine
to one one reports both cited a man being on the scene the location.
Obviously, we can place Keys on that highway many times, driving between Constable
and both Bangor and Smyrna Main. And Moreover, there are multiple sightings of
Keys being sketchy in the woods within twenty miles of the crash site. And
finally, a call to Mora's phone from an unknown caller in the late afternoon
hours of February ninth, several hours before she went missing, A call that
came from the town where the Manchester Airport is, the airport that Keys would
fly into when traveling to the East Coast. It was all compelling enough to
continue exploring, but it still didn't meet my criteria for family outreach. But
this felt different because I know Julie and because Julie had specifically asked me about
Keys. So I reached out to three respected mutual friends. Hailey Gray,
who co founded the Ethics Forward true crime podcast training program, Laney Hobbes,
host of True Crime Cases with Laney and co founder of the True Crime Podcast
Festival, and Charlie Worrel, host of The Crime Lines and Crime Lines and
Consequences true crime podcasts. And they, all, to varying degrees, encouraged
me to reach out to Julie with this new information, and so on the
afternoon of March twenty eighth of this year, I called Julie. I told
her I had some information that could pertain to her sister's case, but that
was not by any means definitive. It was very circumstantial evidence at best that
could not in any way confirm that Keyes was involved, but merely could indicate
that, despite what the timeline said, he was in the area at the
time Moro went missing. We talked for about forty minutes. We compared both
on and off the record information. We discussed Key's familiarity of the area and
other information you'll hear about in the next episode, and I assure Julie that
I would not report on any of this. It didn't feel conclusive enough,
if at all, and what was already a pretty caustic case, riddled with
bob mentality, piety, and a strong and strange sense of propriety. On
a personal level, it just wasn't something I really wanted to be a part
of, and on a professional level, I didn't want to add to the
circus that both surrounds that case and has caused a lot of undue additional pain
to Mara's loved ones. But Julie cut me off and said, and I
quote, no, I want you to report on this, and so here
we are. Six hours after that call, I received the phone call from
David Keys's Amish tenant, and that obviously muddled things. Julie and I chatted
about it a few days later, and then decided to talk on the record
on May tenth. So we talked, I guess about a month ago now
about the newspaper found in Keesus cabin, and I have a pretty frustrating update
for you. And it's strange that these two things kind of happened in conjunction.
While we were looking into this, one of our researchers was pulling data
on the history of Kees's cabin, who he bought it from, deed exchanges,
et cetera, and she kept coming across this gentleman who appeared to have
lived there during the time that Keys owned it, and you know, people
find her searches are incredibly fallible, so we kind of kept writing it off
as just like an error or maybe Keys had stolen this guy's identity. But
we were able to find his information, which was not super easy because he's
amish, and I was able to get in touch with him, so he
did. In fact, he and his wife lived on Keys's constable property in
October of two thousand and three for just that month. So without giving him
any information, I asked him a bunch of questions to confirm it was actually
Keyses property. It most definitely was. Other than having heard that it was
owned by someone who killed people. He didn't really know anything about Keys,
which I attribute to him being amish and not probably super tapped into the news.
So then I asked him just about newspapers, does he read them?
How often does he read them which news did he prefer? And what he
said to me was, he rarely reads the news, and when he does,
it's usually the Amish news. And then he went on to say that
the gentleman who lives across the street from Keyes's cabin is Amish, and it
is or was involved in printing the local Amish news up there, and he
usually would just walk across the street to get the newspaper from him. So
the newspaper we found in the cabin was not Amish news, it was the
local newspaper. So I asked him if there was any possibility that they would
have returned after they moved out in October, and he said yes, that
it took them a while to come collect their stuff. He and his wife
couldn't agree on when that was. He said it was about one to two
months later, so either November December. His wife believes it was early spring.
So technically neither of these would include February. But also, you know,
it's been over ten years, and they February falls kind of dead center
in between. The two ask them if they could remember any detail about when
they returned. They said that there was enough snow covering the driveway that they
actually had to call someone to plow it before they could enter to collect their
belongings. And they're going to reach out to their friend who help them get
the plow to see if he can recall the exact date or even an approximate
date, And they're going to look further into their records to see if there's
any anything that can help them specify when this was. So I pulled archival
weather data and between November and April of two thousand and three, two thousand
and four, there's only a few times where and I, you know,
we're both in New England or you were like to me, anything over six
inches would require a plow, like anything under that, I'm just going to
drive right over it. Yeah, So the first time there's enough snow that
they would need a plow is December of three. Between the seventh and tenth
there were nine to ten standing in inches, fifteenth to sixteenth there were eight
to nine standing inches, and then the eighteenth to the twenty second there were
eleven to thirteen standing inches. There's not an abundance of snow again until January
nineteenth through essentially the end of the month, they have between eight and thirteen
standing inches every day and then in February, and this is not a surprise
considering how the weather was where more it disappeared, which is not too far
from here. The entire month of February they have between ten and seventeen inches
of snow and then going on into what is technically spring. The only other
times they have a depth of snow that's considerable is March first and second,
and then that's it. So it doesn't necessarily negate that the newspaper was keys,
but it muddles it for sure. I went on to ask them what
it was like living there. They said that they didn't know who they were
renting it from. All they knew is they were sending a check to some
woman who lived in New England, which I'm assuming is Key's mother who lived
in Maine, and that many times someone would enter their house in the middle
of the night and they were too afraid to go downstairs and check. But
it happened at least two to three times while they were living there. When
they came back to collect their stuff, some of their items had been stolen.
Someone had clearly been in the house. There were beers everywhere. After
they kind of explained all this. I told them why the newspaper was important,
and he reiterated that he could not recall a time that he ever got
that newspaper or read that newspaper. I asked if it was possible that they
would have used newspaper to pack their belongings. He said it was possible,
but again, he would have just gone across the street. Wow. So
it's like a very bizarre coincidence and a very frustrating one. Yeah, I
mean, it's still Paul it is. I wouldn't report on it if I
didn't think there was a possibility, because you know, if either of them
are exactly accurate, then it would negate February, and whoever bought that newspaper
had to buy it on February tenth, or you know, the days following
the tenth. Yeah. So it leaves a pretty small window in what they're
creating, a five to six month window that they could have gone back.
What's also interesting is he said that they had a horse and a cow on
the property when they lived there, and they were in the barn, which
means most of the stuff in the barn got there after they moved out.
I'm trying to make sense of like what that necessarily means. But at some
point Keys cleared out that house and then everything accumulated there after, either he
brought or had been moved to a second location on the property. The property
is massive, it's about ten acres, so yeah, yeah, But the
other concern I have is was this the only time this happened. Keys was
hard up for money, so it's possible he was renting out this property for
extra cash. But also the property was quite dilapidated, so I can't think
of many people other than the Amish who might be willing to live there.
I'm going to talk to him, hopefully soon. I left a message on
his answering machine a couple of days ago. Are there any questions you you
would have for him? No? I mean, I think you've got it
covered. But it's just it's interesting that he says he wouldn't have read that
type of newspaper. I mean, that's telling, yeah, And you know
he said that without context, which you know, to me, the more
context you provide, the more people try to look for the answers they think
you want. Yeah, and so I just without any context whatsoever, he
said, like no, he pretty much only read Amish news, and you
know, I believe it more just out of human routine, which is like,
especially if you don't have a car, are you going to take your
horse and buggy four miles into town to get a newspaper that isn't written for
you? Or are you going to walk across the street to get newspaper that's
more amenable to your lifestyle? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So with all
that said, I had a few questions for you just about you know,
our conversation and I guess Mora's disappearance in the media at large. You had
mentioned, or I've heard this from other people that you are pretty vocal about
not wanting people to cover Mora's case anymore. Can you get into that.
Actually, I don't know where that came from, because I've never said that.
Oh really, Oh yeah, yeah, somebody else mentioned that to me,
or somebody wrote it online, or maybe it was in a video,
and I chimed in and I said, I I haven't said that, because
when you have a missing loved one, you want the coverage. I just
don't want all the sensationalism and misinformation. If people are putting out true,
accurate information, I have no problem with that. I'm not trying to,
you know, control the whole thing. I mean, I haven't solved it
yet. I need help. Okay, that's good to hear. Yeah,
I had heard from a few people that your thought was, you know,
everything that could be said at this point has been said, so unless there's
new information to add to the conversation, no, no, yeah, And
that kind of goes against everything that I do talk about. You know,
I say people in my position were desperate for awareness and opportunities to keep our
loved one stories out there in the public consciousness and get people talking, because
I'm of the mindset that we need fresh eyes, new perspectives because to date,
no one solved the case, and so who am I to try to
shut it down. That's absolutely not true. Okay, that's good. And
with that in mind, you know, of all the cases I'm familiar with,
or have read about, or have heard people discuss, I think more
as probably more than any other, h is very diluted or convoluted with speculation
and misinformation that has over time become mythology. In fact, can you give
us a high level of your perspective on like the actual facts of the case.
Yeah, I mean, and I can see why that happens. It's
because we have so few answers and we don't have a lot of documents,
we don't have evidence, and so people want to solve a mystery, and
so they start digging in and take bits and pieces of what's been said or
what's been posted, and you know, form this new narrative that's just based
on a premise that's not true, and that that starts the proliferation of misinformation
and that's very harmful to the investigation in my family and you know, getting
resolution from Aura. I I wish that the new Hampshire State Police would share
more information. My dad did sue the state under FOYA back in two thousand
and six, two thousand and seven to try to get some of those records
released, but he wasn't successful. I mean, they did had released some
records, they were heavily redacted. Most of it we already knew, and
so that just adds to the mystery of it. So there's really two mysteries.
Where was Maura going and what happened to her? But as an overall
high level, just brief update, my sister was a twenty one year old
nursing student at the University of Massachusetts, and on February ninth, two thousand
and four, really early in the morning, she submitted her nursing school homework
assignment, which was to look up maternity terms. She presumably got some sleep,
and then midday on February ninth, the day that she went missing,
she emailed her professors about a fictitious death in the family. But this wasn't
true. There was no death in my family. And then she started to
take some steps that looked like she was trying to come up with some hasty
plan to get away for a few days. So she called one eight hundred
goes Stowe, which was just an information line, and Stowe is a ski
resort popular up in Vermont, near kind of near Burlington. She also called
a condo owner in New Hampshire at a condo complex that my family had stayed
at before, but she does not secure a reservation. Then she goes to
an ATM and withdraws two hundred and eighty dollars, leaving Jesshi of twenty dollars
in her bank account. Then she goes to a liquor store and she purchases
approximately forty dollars worth of liquor, and she also recycles seventy nine cans for
three dollars and ninety five cents, And that's always stood out to me because
it's kind of a weird to do. I know that she was conscious of
being a good citizen, and you know, recycling wouldn't be out of character
for her, but it's just it's a lot of cans. And we know
that because the receipt for both the liquor and the recycling was found in her
abandoned car. Then she goes and she picks up some accident forms because she
had an accident in my father's car on the Saturday before she disappeared, so
she had those accident forms inside her car. They were found inside the abandoned
car. And then she doesn't tell anyone and just heads north. Really,
it doesn't seem like she had any particular destination in mind. She didn't have
any reservations. And then there's a few hours where there's nothing. We do
know that she checked her voicemail at four thirty seven pm and that's the last
known cell phone activity ever. And then at seven thirty pm in a small
town called Woodsville, New Hampshire. A witness notices a vehicle off the side
of the road in the eastbound lane, facing the wrong direction, so she
calls nine to one one, and a few minutes later her neighbor, a
bus driver, is returning home, and he parks his bus and stops to
the driver, who we have to assume was Mara, offers help and the
driver declines, and he goes back to his home and he places the second
nine one one call at seven forty two, and then a few minutes later,
the first responding officer arrives on scene at seven forty six, and the
car is locked, is nowhere in sight, and she's never been seen again.
So that's kind of the high level overview. There's a whole lot more
to the story, but that's kind of the the main points there, I
guess, before we get into exactly that all the other information. When we
talked last month and I told you about the newspaper, you seemed pretty intrigued,
and I asked you you know what you thought, and you said that
you and correct me if I'm wrong, that you've come to the conclusion that
it seems most likely that Maura was abducted. Do you want to go into
that a little bit and like, what brought you to that conclusion. Yeah,
well, there's two reasons that lead me to believe that she was abducted
and most likely was met with foul play. And the first one is that
in twenty years, there has been no credible sightings. Now there have been
hundreds of sightings all the time, but none of them have been deemed credible.
So that's the number one reason. And the second reason is nothing's ever
been found. So we know that she took her backpack, it was a
black backpack, she took her wallet, her cell phone, her keys.
Nothing has ever been found, and so that leads me to believe that in
that short time frame, and we're talking minutes here, when the bus driver
left the scene and when the first responding officer arrived, there's no way that
she could have gotten away from the scene that quickly on foot, and she
would have had to take the roadway because there was over two feet of snow
and there were no footprints in the snow, so we know that she didn't
go into the woods. So yeah, I mean, for those reasons,
I believe she accepted a ride away from the scene in those minutes between the
bus driver engaging with her and the responding officer. And I just think that
she probably accepted a ride from the wrong person. And you had mentioned a
smoking man, Yes, tell me more about that. On The first witness
who called her name was Missus Westman. She called in. In the dispatch
log, she mentions that she thought she saw a man smoking a cigarette.
She later recanted and said it may not have been a man smoking a cigarette.
It could have been the light from a cell phone. So from the
minute my sister went missing, or the minute of the first nine on one
call, we don't have a clear picture of what is happening. And it's
been that way for twenty years, the stories clouded with questions from the minute
that she disappeared. Now, I you know, we met I guess three
years ago at True Crime Podcast Festival and I saw you give what is I
think maybe the most important presentation or discussion on true crime media empathy victims' families.
Are you comfortable? You know, obviously I don't want you to give
a thirty minute presentation, but good, you know, a hammering home.
I guess the most critical points from that for listeners and people who do engage
in true crime. Yeah. Well, the whole reason for that is,
you know, obviously I have a lot of experience. I've been doing this
for twenty years, and something that I noticed was this gap between true crime
consumers and creators and the real humans at the center of these tragedies, and
that gap allows for speculation, criticism, misinformation. And so I experienced this
myself where when we bridge that gap with empathy, it brings those two sides
closer together and then you're really able to understand that, Okay, this is
a real person, this is a real family that's stuck in the grips of
ambiguity. They're not characters in the screenplay. So I created this awareness campaign
called Engage with Empathy, and it's built off of four pillars that spell out
care, so it's quick and easy way to remember it when dealing with these
stories. And the first is is it victim centered? Are we discussing information
that's going to further the case or are we discussed discussing a topic that just
entertains And the A is avoiding harmful misinformation. That's pretty obvious. Why that's
a problem. The R is research responsibly and that's a big one because a
lot of times people don't do their due diligence and they'll read something online like
you alluded to earlier, and just repeat it and then it's a train off
the tracks and it's just this this snowball of misinformation that you can't you know,
stop it. And so you've got to do your own due diligence and
you've got a question sourcing and you know, put some work in before you
just spot spout out something that you read online. And then the e is
engaged with empathy because the fact of the matter is the victims nor the families
chose these tragic paths and we don't have a way out. It's kind of
like we're frozen. We're stuck, and so there's a responsibility for both consumers
and creators to handle handle it with care. And so that's kind of the
overview and why I think empathy is important. And it really gets people thinking
about Okay, am I just cleaning my house listening to this horrible tragedy,
or am I thinking about it through the lens of a fellow human being.
And that's something that I've have felt this has been missing in true crime especially.
Yeah, it's something that weighs heavy on my mind, especially having you
know, covered the same case now for quite some time, as trying to
make sure I'm doing it because I can move the investigation forward and not I
guess out of habit or out of routine. And so I am so appreciative
of your perspective and not what you've been through, but how you've I guess
reconciled what you've been through to help us be better. Are you comfortable at
all, and please say no if you're not. Just briefly discussing how the
circus surrounding More's disappearance has impacted you and your family on a personal level.
Oh, it's just it's been a nightmare. You know. Not only are
we dealing with this tragedy of lou Mara, but the other tragedy is the
constant retraumatization because people don't engage with empathy. They will just say whatever and
don't consider how their words affect other people. And it's very hurtful and it's
caused my family a lot of pain. And not just my family, I
mean there's other there are other families going through the same thing. But that's
why I always like to hammer home empathy because if you are coming at these
cases with some level of empathy, it's gonna give you pause before you spread
around misinformation or call people suspicious because they didn't behave in a certain way.
And the list goes on and on. But the bomb line is, if
we infuse some empathy into our interactions with families and the missing and murdered,
then we're going to eliminate lessons some of the pain. The other thing I
think about a lot is, you know, there are all these cases that
get covered in true crime and talked about, and they become household names.
And I am appreciative that they have because it keeps their cases in people's minds
and front and center. But I also am a little saddened by the fact
that these people are known for the worst thing that has ever happened to them.
That's how they're remembered. And with that in mind, like who was
Maura? Yeah, And that goes back to victim centered In a lot of
the coverage of my sister's case, Mars lost in her own story. She's
just a character, and so any chance that I get, I try to
remind people who she was as a human being. She was introverted, to
like everybody else in my family. She was extremely talented, both athletically and
academically. She was an outstanding runner. She still holds some records in the
state of Massachusetts, and this is going on twenty two year old records.
I mean, she was just a phenom. But what's most important and what
I want people to remember Mara for is how humble that she was and how
kind she was. You know, she would write a thank you letter for
anyone, to anyone that showed her any level of k kindness, and you
know, that's who mar was. And so it kind of makes me cringe
a little bit when I think about how she would react to what her story
and essentially her life has become. It's just like you said this us and
a lot of times victims are boiled down to the few decisions that they made
right before tragedy struck, and people forget that they had a whole life before
that. And that's what I like to remind people. Yeah, the one
thing that has struck me. I know Morri's case, you know fairly well.
I know Suzanne Lyles's case very well, and Brianna Maitland's quite well.
And there's all this speculation about you know, things they did, actions they
took, and how they may have led to their disappearances. And to me,
I just remember being in my early twenties and anything I could have done
on any day that seemed routine or mundane could later be picked apart and turned
into some impactful or important decision. And it's like, no, you were
just impulsive at that age. You're not always thinking about the long term effects
of your actions, and that doesn't mean that your actions were leading up to
any specific point. It just means that you were a kid and impulsive.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, you know, Maura went missing
when she was twenty one, and so yes, she was technically an adult,
but everybody knows when you're twenty one, you're not fully developed, your
brain isn't fully matured, and you make dumb decisions. And Mara certainly made
her share of dumb decisions, but that doesn't define her whole life. And
that's the other hard part of my sister's case is all these little things that
have been picked apart online, and every little move she made has been dissected,
and until we find Maura, all of it or none of it could
be important. And that's the hard part, and that leads to my next
question, like what can be do to help if they want to, and
what shouldn't they do? Well, the best thing that people can do for
unsolved cases is to keep talking about the victim, keep them in the public
consciousness, because I can tell you one of the biggest fears of family dealing
with unsolved cases is that our loved one story case is forgotten or is shuffled
to the bottom of a mountain of unsolved case files. And so the more
that you talk about these cases, these victims, the more people are going
to hopefully remember something, because I do believe that there's somebody out there that
knows something. Maybe they don't think what they know is significant, but we
need those puzzle pieces because right now we have an incomplete puzzle and Mars been
missing for twenty years. So that's the best thing. And it's it's not
a heavy lift. And I get a lot of feedback where people say,
well, that's not enough. I mean, yeah, I'll share a missing
poster online, but I want to do more. That doesn't seem like a
lot, But I can tell you that that's huge. It's so huge,
and it doesn't take a lot of effort, it doesn't take any time,
doesn't cost anything. So that's what people should be doing. What they shouldn't
be doing is treating these these cases as entertainment and wildly speculating and throwing people's
names on the internet. That could just be private citizens who may have had
some interaction with Maa or we're seen in a picture with Maa. That doesn't
mean that they should now come under suspicion. And that's that's definitely happened a
lot in my sister's case. It's hard to have this conversation with you and
not appreciate the irony of our very first conversation. And I don't know if
you recall it. It was at the Hotel Bar in Dallas after I think
the first night of the True Crime podcast festival there, and you approached me
and you asked if I thought Keys could be involved in Mara's disappearance. Do
you remember what I said? Well, I remember asking you that because when
I found out you were there, I was like, I've got to talk
to Josh about Keys. But I think you told me it was unlikely.
Yeah, I think I said it's unlikely, but with Keys anything as possible.
Yeah. With that in mind, you know, I think, just
to recap where we're at now, all these years later, is I think
it's worth investigating this is this newspaper could mean anything, but it also could
mean that Keys was in the area at the time, And even if that's
true, that doesn't necessarily mean he was involved in Mara's disappearance. But I
think for me, just looking at everything I know about Maura and the conversations
we've had, I agree that there's at least a fifty percent chance that she
was abducted that night. And because of the location and the roots Keys took,
and it's an area we can place keys in over and over and over
again, I think there is significant value in doing what we can to further
investigate this. Yeah. No, I one hundred percent agree. And people
say, well, yeah, I mean, what are the chances, what
are the chances that Maura met up with a prolific serial killer? Low?
But also what are the chances that somebody vanishes off the face of the earth
without a trace? Also very low? And so I don't like to take
anything off the table. I know that initially we thought that, or I
did at least that Keys wasn't in the area, and so I kind of
put that on the back burner, but I never took it off the radar.
I mean, it is possible that Maura, you know, met the
wrong person. Julie sound went out. Yeah, my dad was, well,
thank you for your time. And I know, or I imagine you
know, having these conversations over and over again is pretty taxing. So I
appreciate your openness and willingness and your candor. Yeah, of course, And
you know, I'm just glad that you know, you're you're still on the
case and you know, still looking at the potential connections, and you know,
we'll see where it leads. And our ongoing investigation into the items found
in Keys's cabin, the newspapers in particular, have led us to new leads
and new sightings in the Keys case have further lent credence to his potential involvement
in Mara's disappearance. And my deep dive into Mora's disappearance and the day leading
up to it has incited questions about her timeline that I've never heard asked before,
Questions that I think could be critical. And we'll get into all of
that in the next episode. A few weeks ago, I texted Julie asking
if Mara had a favorite song, and she said that they found a new
Radical CD in her car's CD player and that their song get What You Give
has kind of become her song for Moura that she thinks of her whenever she
hears it back bobcast, we got the Dreamer's Disease. See Edge Party,
They got it down on your k These songs bus It's filled, Saty love
Mesmandic Dalage written and the Smash of Purses Friends, best Fellow. We want
to cry. But when all the cads a dias a, you got the
music, give you, when you got the music, give you what dance
that the Swans got a bull through. Don't give up. You've got a
reason to guess. We only get what we g. This episode was written,
researched, edited, and produced by Me Your Host Josh Hallmark, with
additional research by Kim Kay and Michelle Tooker, and research assistants by Shana will
Lensky and Jordan Taylor. Resources included media Pressure, Maura Murray, Missing dot
Org, The one hundred seventh Degree, dot com, and weather dot gov.
This episode was made possible by the following Patreon producers Amelia Hancock, Amy
Basel, Anna, Marie Cash and El Ash Fish, Becky C, Benjamin
choppafonk Casey Jensen, Richardson, Christina Sissone, Drew Vipond, Heather Horton,
Wheedon, Gillian Natale, Jordan good Night, Kathleen Studar, Kendall C,
Charisma Rodriguez, Kimberly, Kaylna Holiday, Lauren f Linley, tuscoff Manolas Bulcus,
Nicole and Dennis Henry, Nicole Guzman, Sarah King, s C.
Shelley Brewer, Sherry D. Trista, Tuesday Woodworth, Vicky Russell, Zach
Ignotowitz, Warren, Beth McNally, John Comery, Jordan M Jordan Taylor,
Lisa, Sarah Cee, SHAWNA Hardens, Spooky Express, and Lydia Fiedler.
Thank you to Studio both Anne's newest Patreon supporters Lisa Ann Jackson, Renee l
Michelle D, Jillian w k c h Kim S, Rebecca Cea, Alexandra
H, Carrie b Coox, Courtney g and Rachelle s. To support the
investigation and get ad free episodes, go to Patreon dot com Slash Studio both
and This episode included music by William Hellfire Streams, Spearfisher, Radical Face,
Sergei Cheramisanov, amulets A Tai Argamon, j haz cal Rez, and Kyle
Preston, with featured music by The New Radicals. You just be, you
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to live. We only got what ck so the walk could be okay,
follow your hat, You're in home's way. I'm rapping high now saying God,
you got the music indus stop lest you got the music engine one dance
lest the swell. This couple pup stop, get them up. You gotta
readon to live. Can't fuck cat way on the game up the game talk
lest go. I feel the music in you. You forget that? What's
you? Don't only get what you give. You're gonna get what you give.
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