Speaker 1: Okay, round two. Name something that's not boring.
Speaker 2: Laundry, a book club, computer solitaire.
Speaker 3: Huh oh, Sorry, we were looking for Chumbu Casino.
Speaker 1: Chum.
Speaker 4: That's right, chumbucasino dot com as over one hundred casino
Speaker 4: style games joined today and play for free for your
Speaker 4: chance to redeem some serious prizes. Chum, chumbacasino dot com.
Speaker 4: No process, We're located by the lock eighty plus trs
Speaker 4: conditions of blue website details.
Speaker 5: With Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 1: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen
Speaker 1: the bride and groom?
Speaker 5: Ri Sorry we're here.
Speaker 1: We were getting lucky in the limo and we lost
Speaker 1: track of time.
Speaker 4: No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up
Speaker 4: quicker than a guess registry.
Speaker 3: In that case, I pronounce you lucky.
Speaker 5: Thanks for free Lucky Landslots dot Com. Daily bonuses are waiting.
Speaker 5: No purchase necessary board. We're prohibited by lock eighteen plus
Speaker 5: terms and conditions applack see website for helse.
Speaker 4: Hey guys, it is Ryan. I'm not sure if you
Speaker 4: know this about me, but I'm a bit of a
Speaker 4: fun fanatic.
Speaker 6: When I can.
Speaker 4: I like to work, but I like fun too. It's
Speaker 4: a thing. And now the truth is out there, I
Speaker 4: can tell you about my favorite place to have fun,
Speaker 4: Chumba Casino. They have hundreds of social casino style games
Speaker 4: to choose from, with new games released each week. You
Speaker 4: can play for free anytime, anywhere, and each day brings
Speaker 4: a new chance to collect daily bonuses. So join me
Speaker 4: and the fun. Sign up now at Chumba Casino dot com.
Speaker 5: No we're necessary, dhe I lost in terms conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 5: With the Lucky Land slots, you can get lucky just
Speaker 5: about anywhere.
Speaker 3: It's your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the
Speaker 3: weather's fine, but we're just gonna circle up here a
Speaker 3: while and get lucky. No, no, nothing like that. It's
Speaker 3: just these cash prizes add up quick. So I suggest
Speaker 3: you sit back, keep your trade table up right, and
Speaker 3: start getting lucky.
Speaker 5: Play for free at Lucky Landslips dot com. Are you
Speaker 5: feeling lucky? No purchase necessary void, We're prohibited by law
Speaker 5: eighteen plus. Terms and editions apply to see website for detail.
Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them, Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week,
Speaker 1: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host
Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 7: Good Evening. When an eleven year old James Renner fell
Speaker 7: in love with Amy Mihaljevik, the missing girls seen on
Speaker 7: posters all over his namehood, it was beginning of a
Speaker 7: lifelong obsession with true crime. That obsession leads James to
Speaker 7: a successful career as an investigative journalist. It also gave
Speaker 7: him p T. S d. In two thousand eleven, James
Speaker 7: began researching the strange disappearance of Mora Murray, a University
Speaker 7: of mass student who went missing after wrecking her car
Speaker 7: in rural New Hampshire in two thousand and four. Over
Speaker 7: the course of his investigation, he uncovers numerous important and
Speaker 7: in shocking new clues about what may have happened to Mora,
Speaker 7: but also finds himself in increasingly dangerous situations with little
Speaker 7: regard for his own well being. As his quest to
Speaker 7: find Mora deepens, the case starts taking a toll on
Speaker 7: his personal life which begins to spiral out of control.
Speaker 7: The result is an absorbing dual investigation of the complicated
Speaker 7: story of the all American girl who went missing and
Speaker 7: James's own equally complicated true crime addiction. James Renner's True
Speaker 7: Crime Addict is the story of his spellbinding investigation of
Speaker 7: the missing person's case of Maura Murray, which has taken
Speaker 7: on a life of its own for armchair saluths across
Speaker 7: the web. In the spirit of David Fincher's Zodiac. It
Speaker 7: is a fascinating look at a case that has eluded
Speaker 7: authorities and one's man's obsessive quest for answers. The book
Speaker 7: that we're featuring this evening is True Crime Addict, How
Speaker 7: I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Moura Murray,
Speaker 7: with my special guest, journalist and author James Renner. Welcome
Speaker 7: to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 7: James Renner, Hi, there, can you hear me? Yes, I can.
Speaker 7: Welcome to the program. James. Thank you very much.
Speaker 6: Oh thanks for having me. Thanks a lot, This is
Speaker 6: a lot of fun. Thank you.
Speaker 7: Now let's start with giving the audience your background, because
Speaker 7: I think it's very important to this story obviously, as
Speaker 7: the audience will discover. Tell us what your background is
Speaker 7: in true crime. Some of this we alluded to it
Speaker 7: with the story of Amy. So tell us a little
Speaker 7: bit about your your investigative journalism background which will be
Speaker 7: important to this story.
Speaker 6: Sure, I was a journalist, a reporter for Cleveland Scene,
Speaker 6: which is the village voice like newspaper in Cleveland for
Speaker 6: about some of eight years, and I kind of became
Speaker 6: the true crime guy in Cleveland at a time where
Speaker 6: we had a few active serial killers in town that
Speaker 6: you might have heard of, Anthony Sowell on Ariel Castro,
Speaker 6: and I actually started writing crime. One of the first
Speaker 6: stories I pitched was I wanted to take a new
Speaker 6: look at the cold case of Amy Nahalovic. Now, Amy
Speaker 6: was ten years old when she was abducted across the
Speaker 6: street from the Bay Village Police Department and Day Village
Speaker 6: is a western suburb of Cleveland, very affluent. It's where
Speaker 6: you know a lot of the FBI agents raised their
Speaker 6: own families. Now, this little girl was abducted broad daylight
Speaker 6: on a Friday afternoon in late October October twenty seventh,
Speaker 6: nineteen eighty nine. Like I said, right across from the
Speaker 6: police station, there's a little shopping plaza there. And Amy
Speaker 6: and I are actually the same age. We were both
Speaker 6: born in nineteen seventy eight, and at the time she
Speaker 6: was in fifth grade, I was in sixth grade and
Speaker 6: my mother lived in Rocky River, which was one town over.
Speaker 6: So this case had a huge impact on me as
Speaker 6: a kid. And I remember seeing her missing posters all
Speaker 6: over every telephone pool around Cleveland in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 6: And when I saw that picture of the first that
Speaker 6: struck me as oh, she's you know, she's really cute.
Speaker 6: You know, if she was in my sixth grade class,
Speaker 6: i'd be passing notes to her, you know, behind this
Speaker 6: client's back right. And you know, so I, for many reasons,
Speaker 6: I developed this, uh, this odd obsession. This even back then,
Speaker 6: when I was eleven years old, I would get on
Speaker 6: my bike and I would ride to this mall it's
Speaker 6: called Westgate Mall, kind of near Bay Dog, and I
Speaker 6: figured this was the place where the most people were
Speaker 6: at at any given time, and I would look for
Speaker 6: any in the crowds, thinking, well, maybe whoever, Sofia brought
Speaker 6: her back, or maybe she got away, and you know
Speaker 6: this is where she would go, and of course when
Speaker 6: they found their body a couple months later, you know,
Speaker 6: I would still continue to go there looking for her,
Speaker 6: the face of her abductor in the crowds. And so
Speaker 6: it was a very weird hobby for an eleven year
Speaker 6: old to have, right and as an adult now looking
Speaker 6: back at that, you know, I and through the course
Speaker 6: of writing this book on Laura Murray, this true crime addict,
Speaker 6: I had to ask myself, well, why why did I
Speaker 6: gravitate towards that eleven years old? Why was I trying
Speaker 6: to find her killure? And you know, I kind of
Speaker 6: explored that a little bit as I'm exploring the disappearance
Speaker 6: of Laing early in the book. So the book is
Speaker 6: very personal, it's very memoir at the same time, it's
Speaker 6: very much about the disappearance of Laura Murray and where
Speaker 6: that case stands today.
Speaker 7: Now. You, as I mentioned in the opening, you didn't
Speaker 7: get involved till twenty eleven, So we're talking about seven
Speaker 7: years after the crime. What was the state of the
Speaker 7: Murray family itself in terms of their efforts to have
Speaker 7: a website or something dedicated to the still the slim
Speaker 7: hope that she was alive, and well, so what was
Speaker 7: the state at that time seven years later, and what
Speaker 7: did you learn from from, say, the websites at that time,
Speaker 7: what did you sort of your general knowledge over and
Speaker 7: beyond based on some of the stuff that's been posted
Speaker 7: by the family at that time or during that time.
Speaker 6: Sure, so I actually got involved with researching the case,
Speaker 6: I'd say back in twenty ten, you know. So, yeah,
Speaker 6: at least six years on, and when I started to
Speaker 6: get involved and I started my research, everything had gone quiet.
Speaker 6: It was a very cold case. And the way it
Speaker 6: was presented at the time was that mar Murray was
Speaker 6: this all American girl, perfect to a fault, former West
Speaker 6: Point Cadet, nothing but good grades, skies that the met.
Speaker 6: This was going to be somebody who's going to do
Speaker 6: great things. And she disappeared, you know, and in the
Speaker 6: White Mountains of New Hampshire. Now the family were no
Speaker 6: longer active researching for her. You know, they had done
Speaker 6: these searches back in two thousand and four after she
Speaker 6: went missing. So you know, the state of the case
Speaker 6: was very it was very quiet. There's an official family
Speaker 6: web page run by somebody that you know a kind
Speaker 6: of a woman who's not blood related, but had married
Speaker 6: into the Murray family. She had never met Maura, but
Speaker 6: she had That's not so uncommon, you know, a lot
Speaker 6: of times, you know, families need a little bit of
Speaker 6: a separation between the public and what's going on behind
Speaker 6: the scenes. So it made sense that she was running
Speaker 6: the official page. But that was really it. And the
Speaker 6: reason I was attracted to the More Murray mystery was
Speaker 6: I was looking for a national story to work on
Speaker 6: I had. I was no longer working for Scene. I
Speaker 6: was looking to write another true crime book. I had
Speaker 6: already written a couple, but I wanted to do something national,
Speaker 6: something bigger. And I was sitting at home one day
Speaker 6: and the twenty twenty special came on. There was a
Speaker 6: special about More Murray's disappearance, also the disappearance of Brooke Wilberger,
Speaker 6: which has since been solved. Something about Maura Murray's case
Speaker 6: struck me as particularly unusual and different, And it's the
Speaker 6: fact that Laura Murray's case is actually a bit of
Speaker 6: a double mystery. There's two mysteries going on here. And
Speaker 6: just a real quick summary, Laura Murray was twenty two.
Speaker 6: She was a student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Speaker 6: She was studying nursing. On a Monday in February, she
Speaker 6: emailed her professors and said, there's been a death in
Speaker 6: the family. Hold my work. I'll be in at the
Speaker 6: end of the week. Then she empties her bank account
Speaker 6: only to the end of about two hundred and eighty dollars,
Speaker 6: gets into her car, drives hours north into the White
Speaker 6: Mountains of New Hampshire. Around seven thirty that night, her
Speaker 6: car impacts the snow bank on the side of a
Speaker 6: wild amnusic road, Route one twelve up there. Sometime between
Speaker 6: the accident and the first responding officer it was we're
Speaker 6: talking like maybe seven minutes, and it could be as
Speaker 6: few as three minutes. But between the accident police arrived
Speaker 6: Somewhere in that time frame, she vanished, never to be
Speaker 6: seen again. And you know what makes it a double mystery,
Speaker 6: right is the first mystery is what happened to more
Speaker 6: in Murray. The second mystery is what was she doing
Speaker 6: in the White Mountains? To begin with? Why did she
Speaker 6: lie to with a professor's Where was she going? And
Speaker 6: I figured if I could figure out the answer to
Speaker 6: that question, we'd get a lot closer to the answer
Speaker 6: to what happened to her to begin with, So it
Speaker 6: seemed like the odds were in my favorite I could
Speaker 6: at least solve, you know, one of those questions. And
Speaker 6: so I devoted the next five six years of my
Speaker 6: life to research and writing this book. And I do
Speaker 6: believe I've answered the question as to what she was
Speaker 6: doing up there.
Speaker 7: Now before you undertake this for all the Again, we
Speaker 7: talked about all the amateur sleuths that were that you
Speaker 7: you you use their assistance. You relied on a lot
Speaker 7: of the postings for information, and then one contact led
Speaker 7: to another. So you did use social media for that purpose.
Speaker 7: Tell us the other techniques that you embarked upon that
Speaker 7: you had used before, but you were especially going to
Speaker 7: need in this case to be able to fully research this,
Speaker 7: and so tell us a couple of the things that
Speaker 7: you used that you employed to be able to do
Speaker 7: this research.
Speaker 6: Sure. Well, yeah, like you said, the first thing I
Speaker 6: did was I started a blog devoted to the case,
Speaker 6: because I had already had a blog running devoted to
Speaker 6: Amie the heal of It case. And what I discovered
Speaker 6: is you can build a really decent blog with detailed
Speaker 6: information on the cold case. It kind of becomes a
Speaker 6: lightning lot for new information and clues. So, for instance,
Speaker 6: with Amy's case, you know, some of their old classmates
Speaker 6: would google her name wondering whatever happened to this case,
Speaker 6: and they would be directed to my blog and then
Speaker 6: if they had information to share, they could easily contact
Speaker 6: me with an email. So and even you know, you'd
Speaker 6: be surprised with being in the hell of the case,
Speaker 6: I was contacted by suspects. I was contacted by people
Speaker 6: who had new information that they didn't feel comfortable sharing
Speaker 6: with the police because they have shady backgrounds themselves, but
Speaker 6: they would share with me and then I would be
Speaker 6: a liaison between that information on the police. So it
Speaker 6: worked very well. So that's what I did with More's case.
Speaker 6: I'm sure enough a lot of these are on chair
Speaker 6: sleus came forward and helped me, help direct me to
Speaker 6: new avenues of investigation, and even people that knew more
Speaker 6: from what point or new mass were able to contact
Speaker 6: me through the website too, so it was very helpful.
Speaker 6: You know, other methods that I used, you know, go
Speaker 6: back to when I was a journalist and I'd learned,
Speaker 6: you know that sometimes it helps to go in these
Speaker 6: fishing expeditions, that's what that's what we call them, where
Speaker 6: we send out public records requests to every jurisdiction that
Speaker 6: this person has ever lived or spent time in. And
Speaker 6: that's what I did, and that's how I discovered the
Speaker 6: police records that showed that at the time that she disappeared,
Speaker 6: Laura Murray was in trouble for credit card fraud and
Speaker 6: identity theft and so these other layers. It's more showing
Speaker 6: the complicated person that she was started to appear. You know,
Speaker 6: she had stolen credit cards from other girls, other women
Speaker 6: in her dorm and use those credit card numbers and
Speaker 6: that person's name to order food. So nothing huge, but
Speaker 6: I mean that's kind of a big deal, you know.
Speaker 6: At the same time, the judge said if she could
Speaker 6: stay out of trouble for six months, that would wipe
Speaker 6: off her record. Now I don't know that she was
Speaker 6: able to stay out of trouble though. A couple of
Speaker 6: days before she disappeared, she was driving her father's car
Speaker 6: back to his hotel room he had visited her on
Speaker 6: campus at three o'clock in the morning, and she ran
Speaker 6: into a guard rail and it appears she was probably
Speaker 6: going to be charged with at the very least reckless
Speaker 6: operation for that, and I think she realized that her
Speaker 6: nursing career was kind of over. This credit card charge
Speaker 6: might be coming back to bite her in the ass,
Speaker 6: and I think that was one of the many reasons
Speaker 6: she had to leave and start a new life, because
Speaker 6: that's that's what it can happen here. I think, I
Speaker 6: feel and think, and I hope at the very least,
Speaker 6: but I think the evidence points to Mara Murray having
Speaker 6: the motive means an opportunity to leave and start a
Speaker 6: new life someplace.
Speaker 7: Okay, we have to go backwards. We have to mention
Speaker 7: the actual disappearance itself. And then we talked about a
Speaker 7: gentleman named Attwood and the tow truck driver and other
Speaker 7: witnesses that obviously that come up in your investigation, but
Speaker 7: in your investigation also and in your book, you paint
Speaker 7: a very vivid portrayal of this woman. Again, we talked
Speaker 7: about west Point, which is no mean feat. So let's
Speaker 7: talk about Mora Murray, who, at least by her achievement,
Speaker 7: she was. And then through your investigation, there seems to
Speaker 7: be a little again, a little krack and the veneer
Speaker 7: here in terms of this, all perfect, all American woman. However,
Speaker 7: again nothing too serious. But again it's the interesting your investigation.
Speaker 7: So tell us in your investigation, tell us about mor Murray,
Speaker 7: her father Fred, tell us about her mother, tell us
Speaker 7: about her early life. What you found.
Speaker 6: Sure, So, Moura Murray grew up in Hainton, Massachusetts, which
Speaker 6: is it's about forty five minutes south of Boston, close
Speaker 6: enough to the city that you can get there, close
Speaker 6: enough to the ocean that you can get there quickly,
Speaker 6: to a town of Cranberry Bogs. It's where Ocean's Break
Speaker 6: got its starts. It's a nice, quaint, little safe suburb
Speaker 6: of Boston, of Greater Boston anyways, and it reminds me
Speaker 6: a lot of the hometown I grew up in here
Speaker 6: in Ohio. You know, all the families kind of knew
Speaker 6: each other. She lived on Joe Anne Drive, which is
Speaker 6: a little bit of a cul de sac, but it's
Speaker 6: a you know, so it's a it's even a safe
Speaker 6: little street. Everybody knows each other's business out there. And
Speaker 6: she Moura was the second youngest in her family. So
Speaker 6: there was her father, Fred, her mother Laurie. There's Fred Junior,
Speaker 6: there's Kathleen Murray, the oldest daughter, Julie Murray, and then
Speaker 6: you've got Maura and a younger brother, Kurt. And after
Speaker 6: the younger brother, Kurt came along that her parents separated
Speaker 6: and Fred moved to Weymouth and lived in an old
Speaker 6: house and there while Maria stayed with her siblings and
Speaker 6: her mother in Canson. Now, her father was very involved
Speaker 6: with her life, even after the separation. He would come
Speaker 6: down very strict, very controlling. He would condition his daughters
Speaker 6: into star runners and star athletes. And I say they
Speaker 6: conditioned every day. He talked to the neighbors and friends there.
Speaker 6: They said, yes, you know, you'd see Maura and Julie
Speaker 6: running on Christmas morning with Fred, you know, with you know,
Speaker 6: shouting behind them. You know they're urging them on. So
Speaker 6: they and they became star athletes in high school track
Speaker 6: and field and cross country. Julie was first and she
Speaker 6: was fast. Now Moura came up a year after Julie,
Speaker 6: and she was faster and she was better there for
Speaker 6: a little while. After graduation, Julie goes on to West
Speaker 6: Point and then more follows her, and Drelie ends up
Speaker 6: graduating Least Point. Moura lasts. I think it's three semesters
Speaker 6: heading into her fourth when she leaves. Now, just one
Speaker 6: of the stories that the family kind of, you know, well,
Speaker 6: her father specifically lies about at times, and you can
Speaker 6: kind of understand them and kind of not you know,
Speaker 6: she's missing. Why are you lying about anything? Nurse Point.
Speaker 6: But the truth is Maura was about to be kicked
Speaker 6: out of West Point when she withdrew in the spring
Speaker 6: semester of her sophomore year to go to unass Amherst
Speaker 6: and begin her nursing and begin studying for nursing there.
Speaker 6: What happened at West Point was and this took you know,
Speaker 6: I'd heard rumors for a while, but it took a
Speaker 6: while to track down and speak to the people involved.
Speaker 6: She she got in trouble for stealing from Fort Knox
Speaker 6: of all places. Now you know, if that's not a
Speaker 6: right for help. I don't know what is stealing from
Speaker 6: the most secure facility in the United States, but what
Speaker 6: she had stolen, again, we're having small things in big situations.
Speaker 6: She stole make up from the commissary at Fort Knox,
Speaker 6: and she got caught and she was brought up on
Speaker 6: They have their own little judicial process within West Point,
Speaker 6: and you know, they were going to recommend that she'd
Speaker 6: be expelled, and before that happened, she withdrew so that
Speaker 6: she didn't have that on her record. Now, during that process,
Speaker 6: that whole judiciary process, it's kind of interesting, she ended
Speaker 6: up meeting one of the fellow student liaisons with the
Speaker 6: Judicial Review Board and his name's Bill Raush, and they
Speaker 6: end up having a relationship. And it's Bill Raush who
Speaker 6: you see in the early reports and sometimes he's referred
Speaker 6: to her, referred to as her fiance, but they weren't
Speaker 6: quite engaged to be married. They had kind of promised
Speaker 6: to become engaged, but the endpoint made it that far.
Speaker 6: But had spent that Christmas holiday with Bill and his
Speaker 6: family in Ohio a month before she disappeared in two
Speaker 6: thousand and four, so they were pretty close. So that
Speaker 6: that's kind of a quick overview of of More. She
Speaker 6: you know, she was an overachieved in school. She came
Speaker 6: from a big family, although it was broken, you know,
Speaker 6: there were troubles there. Her mother was an alcoholic. She
Speaker 6: ended up dying just a couple of years after More disappeared.
Speaker 6: Actually she died on Laura's birthday, and so, you know,
Speaker 6: it's a complicated, complicated family, you know, a New England family, Catholic,
Speaker 6: you know, perhaps Catholic type.
Speaker 7: Of What was the status of the relationship with Bill Rausch.
Speaker 7: You say that they met, it was good, good relationship,
Speaker 7: and you say they weren't engaged. But was there any infidelity?
Speaker 7: Was she faithful? What did you determine? What did you
Speaker 7: determine through her girlfriends and your research?
Speaker 6: Well, you talked to More's friends and family, and they're
Speaker 6: very candid about the fact that nobody really liked Bill
Speaker 6: raush you know, and the reason why the family at
Speaker 6: least didn't like Bill rashes because he cheated on Laura
Speaker 6: more than once. Now, it's interesting to note when Moore disappeared,
Speaker 6: the police eventually got into her dorm room and they
Speaker 6: found that all of her things, or most of their things,
Speaker 6: had been packed neatly into boxes, and on top of
Speaker 6: the boxes was printed out email from Billy that Billy
Speaker 6: had sent to.
Speaker 4: Laura.
Speaker 6: And in the email, he's talking about how he cheated
Speaker 6: on Laura, you know. So you know that almost seems
Speaker 6: like you know, Morris saying kind of f you to
Speaker 6: Bill on the way out. That's one interpretation of it. Otherwise,
Speaker 6: why would you print that out? Maybe on top few boxes.
Speaker 6: But so Bill was cheating on her, but Maura was
Speaker 6: no angel. At the same time, Maura had a lot
Speaker 6: of secrets, and one of those secrets was the fact
Speaker 6: that she was having an affair with one of the
Speaker 6: track coaches at UMass. This guy with the auspicious name
Speaker 6: of Hosting Bag Daddy and he goes by Hass and
Speaker 6: Moss was a track coach and Maura and her friend
Speaker 6: Keith Marcopolis would often get together with Hass for drinks
Speaker 6: or just to hang out after practice. Maura was no
Speaker 6: longer with the team, I think at that point. But
Speaker 6: Maura and Hass had a very incident relationship and I
Speaker 6: spoke to him and he, you know, surprise, he was
Speaker 6: surprisingly candid about it. Admitted that he's like, yeah, we were,
Speaker 6: we were really close for a long time and uh uh.
Speaker 6: And he's the one that said, you know, they would
Speaker 6: be lying in bed and he said on a couple
Speaker 6: of times Maura mentioned starting a new life and running away,
Speaker 6: and he always thought that she meant Mexico.
Speaker 7: Now with the relationship with her father, let's again, you've
Speaker 7: done some exploration here, and of course his behavior after
Speaker 7: his daughter is missing is going to be much different
Speaker 7: than what happened after she immediately after she went missing,
Speaker 7: and then when you became involved in the investigation and
Speaker 7: tried to question him and the rest of the family.
Speaker 7: So tell us more about this phone call that she
Speaker 7: has at work. Apparently her supervisor comes by and then
Speaker 7: notifies the other supervisor. Tell us about this, and what
Speaker 7: do you think the significance if any, about this phone
Speaker 7: call which happens around this time as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they say, past his prologue. And if you look
Speaker 6: at the day's leading up to Morris this appearance, there's
Speaker 6: some strange there's some strange behavior going on, and it
Speaker 6: all seems to starts that Thursday night. She disappeared on
Speaker 6: a Monday. Now she goes back to Thursday night. Morea
Speaker 6: is working at the security desk. She had a job
Speaker 6: checking in IDs at Melville Hall, which is near her dorm,
Speaker 6: living out of Kennedy Hall in the mass And so
Speaker 6: she'd sit at the desk checking in IDs and she
Speaker 6: wasn't supposed to be talking on the phone, but she
Speaker 6: was talking on the phone that night, and there were
Speaker 6: a couple of calls that came in, one from her
Speaker 6: sister Kathleen, her older sister Kathleen, and then she there
Speaker 6: was a later call with Phil with Phil Raush. Now
Speaker 6: shortly after that second call, her supervisor Karen Mayott, who
Speaker 6: visits and checks in on her, and finds Laura, in
Speaker 6: her words, in a catatonic state. She was so upset
Speaker 6: she couldn't really talk. The only thing that she managed
Speaker 6: to say was my sister her. The supervisor was so
Speaker 6: concerned about her, she walked More back to her dorm,
Speaker 6: signed her off her ship, and even suggested More might
Speaker 6: need some mental health attention, like she kind of suggested
Speaker 6: she go to the hospital and check herself in. Moore
Speaker 6: assured her that she was okay, that you know, she
Speaker 6: had a roommate, that she'd be fine. That was also
Speaker 6: a lie. More had a single. She didn't have a
Speaker 6: roommate in that dorm, so you know. And then the
Speaker 6: next day school was canceled because of weather. That was
Speaker 6: the Friday, so the supervisor thought, well, you know, good
Speaker 6: for her, she can sleep in and rest and get
Speaker 6: some needed needed a relaxation time. So and then you're
Speaker 6: in this Saturday, and that's when Fred Murray shows up
Speaker 6: on campus, and there's some strange things about that. You know,
Speaker 6: he's mentioned this before where he says he was at
Speaker 6: you know, why why is the father on campus? Rachel?
Speaker 6: She disappears. Now he says, bring or find a new car.
Speaker 6: So he brought some money. He brought four thousand dollars,
Speaker 6: and he makes a point to tell the police this later.
Speaker 6: I had four thousand dollars in cash on my person,
Speaker 6: he says in a statement to police. And so now
Speaker 6: when you look into that four thousand dollars, it gets
Speaker 6: a little strange too, because in order to get that
Speaker 6: four thousand dollars in cash, Fred doesn't just you know,
Speaker 6: he's not going to write a check to the place
Speaker 6: where he's looking for a car. And by the way,
Speaker 6: they never did get a new car for more that weekend,
Speaker 6: he doesn't withdraw it from his bank and one one
Speaker 6: sun on the way U Mass he visits I think
Speaker 6: eight different ATMs and let's draw us one hundred dollars
Speaker 6: from each. It's a very strange way of getting that money.
Speaker 6: And if if he truly got it, you know, I
Speaker 6: don't know. Everything about that's always been strange to me.
Speaker 6: So he's with more during the day and Saturday, there's
Speaker 6: a call some one of them called Reliance Auto, which
Speaker 6: is a used car, so they might have visited there.
Speaker 6: Kate Markopolis, Julie's best friend at UMass, joins them for
Speaker 6: drinks at a blue pub later that night. Then fred
Speaker 6: Let takes the girls to buy a liquor and the
Speaker 6: girls are planning to go to Sarah Alfieri. It's another
Speaker 6: friend of Morris. Sarah Alfieri is holding a party in
Speaker 6: her dorm room, so they dropped Fred off at his
Speaker 6: hotel and then they drove back to campus and supposedly
Speaker 6: Kate in more than attend this party with Sarah Alfieri. Now,
Speaker 6: this party has been described as as being standing room only.
Speaker 6: There was packed with people, but after more disappears. Kate
Speaker 6: can never remember who else was at that party, and
Speaker 6: Sarah has always been playing sarahs never never said anything
Speaker 6: about this too, at least two journalists, at least to
Speaker 6: you know, the family. There's been a report that Sarah
Speaker 6: told quote unquote the real story to Fred once and
Speaker 6: she was asked never to repeat it. So whatever she
Speaker 6: did around on note. But nobody can seem to remember
Speaker 6: what exactly happened at that party. All we know is
Speaker 6: that Maura leaves around three o'clock in the morning and
Speaker 6: decides to drive her father's car back to his motel
Speaker 6: room and along the way, that's where she gets into
Speaker 6: her accident, the first accident at UMass and drives the
Speaker 6: car into a guardrail. Sow truck comes, the police come.
Speaker 6: The police decline to charge her with the UI, although
Speaker 6: it looks like she's going to be cited for reckless hops.
Speaker 6: A failure to control the tow truck sews the car in,
Speaker 6: brings Maura back to the motel where Fred is staying,
Speaker 6: and then she saves the night in this motel room,
Speaker 6: and then you're into Sunday. Fred drops her back off
Speaker 6: of the dorm and then he goes radio silent for like,
Speaker 6: like I think it's like sixteen hours. And it's possible
Speaker 6: she left her cell phone at that party at Sarah
Speaker 6: Alfieri's place. That's one story. It's been sold that there's
Speaker 6: no calls from her cell phone until like I think
Speaker 6: it's Monday morning or maybe late late Saturday night, and
Speaker 6: then and then Monday she gone, you know, Monday she leaves.
Speaker 6: So that's that's the days and events leading up to
Speaker 6: her disappearance.
Speaker 7: Now, when you talked about the character of the father,
Speaker 7: we haven't really explored that as much as you do
Speaker 7: in the book. But if he was up there to
Speaker 7: help her buy a car, and he took four thousand
Speaker 7: dollars of his own money, then it would seem that
Speaker 7: he was buying her a car, whether I mean voluntarily,
Speaker 7: but maybe reluctantly or begrudgingly. And then during that time,
Speaker 7: he has a job that he has to travel a
Speaker 7: couple hours, so his vehicle's important to him. She goes
Speaker 7: to a party and she smacks up his car. So
Speaker 7: how disappointed do you think, which could add to the
Speaker 7: an element to the story. How disappointed do you think
Speaker 7: he would have been with her behavior involving cars and
Speaker 7: money and him being put out and.
Speaker 3: What do you think?
Speaker 6: Yeah, the only person that we can get that, you know,
Speaker 6: there's only two people who know what exactly went on
Speaker 6: in a tell room after Maura shows up with his
Speaker 6: booken car, and that's Fred and Mara, and one of
Speaker 6: them's gone. And Fred's story about that changes, you know,
Speaker 6: in one story and the one he told police. He
Speaker 6: wakes up and finds that Mauras in bed in the
Speaker 6: metel room, which is hard to believe because how did
Speaker 6: she get into the metell room to begin with. Maybe
Speaker 6: maybe he gave her another key card or something. I
Speaker 6: don't know. The other version of that story that he
Speaker 6: told investigators, these are private investigators that were helping search
Speaker 6: in the White Mountains for Moura weeks after the disappearance,
Speaker 6: was that he was called to the front office of
Speaker 6: the motel, the lobby and more was passed out drunk
Speaker 6: on a couch and then he woke her up and
Speaker 6: brought it back there. But yeah, he's you know, I imagine,
Speaker 6: you know, imagine this Irish class lapsed Catholic from from
Speaker 6: from South eas Boston. You know, you know, he's not pleased.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I don't know how angry he was with her,
Speaker 6: how disappointed he made her feel, But it probably wasn't
Speaker 6: a good conversation. But you know, it's hard getting starting
Speaker 6: hard getting the truth from Fred. You know, you get
Speaker 6: half half troops, you get half stories. He's just never
Speaker 6: you know. And when reporters pushed him on this, they're like, hey, man,
Speaker 6: help us try and help us, try to find your daughter.
Speaker 6: Tell us what was happening in her life that might
Speaker 6: help us understand why she was going up to the
Speaker 6: White Mountains. And he would say, no, I'm not going
Speaker 6: to talk about that. Don't even ask me what I
Speaker 6: do for a living. It doesn't matter. All that matters
Speaker 6: is she disappeared in New Hampshire and now we got
Speaker 6: to find her. Well. The best way of trying to
Speaker 6: find her is figuring out why she was up there
Speaker 6: in the first place. I've never wanted to talk about that.
Speaker 6: It's weird. It's weird behavior from the father of a
Speaker 6: missing kid and a missing woman. You know, I've never
Speaker 6: seen it before, and I've done a lot of true crime.
Speaker 6: I certainly am well versed in many of the major crimes.
Speaker 6: And most times parents of a missing child are doing
Speaker 6: everything they can to to tell the media what was
Speaker 6: going on in their life. And we know everybody has
Speaker 6: skeletons in their closet. We know more is not perfect,
Speaker 6: but that doesn't matter. She's missing. You know, share the
Speaker 6: infos so we can so we can help find her.
Speaker 6: And it's not like he wasn't just doing that journalist.
Speaker 6: He wasn't down for a formal interview with the lead
Speaker 6: detectives in this case, with the state police for two
Speaker 6: and a half years after More went missing, and when
Speaker 6: he finally did, he brought two lawyers with him. So
Speaker 6: this is not typical behavior, and then a US to
Speaker 6: explain it. I really don't know, because ultimately I don't
Speaker 6: think Fred was involved with what happened to More that
Speaker 6: night that she went missing, But I certainly think he
Speaker 6: knows more than he's ever shared.
Speaker 7: Let's talk about the actual event and the disappearance, and
Speaker 7: then let's talk about To be fair, again, you say
Speaker 7: odd behavior, but it's not like the father doesn't search
Speaker 7: for his daughter. But you talk to somebody that named
Speaker 7: Tim that outlined it was very close to that. So
Speaker 7: let's first talk about the event itself, and then let's
Speaker 7: talk about the search again.
Speaker 6: So More gets up to the White Mountains at about
Speaker 6: seven thirty that night, which is interesting because if you
Speaker 6: look at the time she took out her money from
Speaker 6: the atm at UMass and figure that she left shortly
Speaker 6: thereafter for this drive, there's about forty five minutes that
Speaker 6: are unaccounted for. That. You know, if she had driven
Speaker 6: straight up to where she got into an accident, the
Speaker 6: accident should have happened about forty five minutes earlier. Than
Speaker 6: it did. So what was she doing. Did she meet
Speaker 6: somebody somewhere? Did she stop to eat? We don't know so,
Speaker 6: but anyways, about seven thirty at night she her car
Speaker 6: runs into the snowbank on the side of Route one
Speaker 6: twelve near the town of Havell, New Hampshire. And the
Speaker 6: first person on the scene is actually a bus driver
Speaker 6: who gets there like a couple seconds after the accident happens.
Speaker 6: And his name's Butch Atwood and he's like this three
Speaker 6: hundred pound white handlebar must look in country dude of
Speaker 6: a guy, and very imposing, but he's driving a school bus.
Speaker 6: He's got this this tender heart at the same time,
Speaker 6: and he stops and he asks more she needs help,
Speaker 6: and she says, no, no, no, I already called triple A,
Speaker 6: don't worry about it. And he knows that she's lying
Speaker 6: because even to this day you can't get cell phone
Speaker 6: service up there. So he's like, well, all right, so
Speaker 6: if you need a ride, and she's like that, she declines,
Speaker 6: and she says, and please don't call the police. Well,
Speaker 6: you know, he knows better, so he goes. He pulls
Speaker 6: into his driveway and he can see he lives right there.
Speaker 6: Across the street basically, and he can kind of still
Speaker 6: see the accent scene, and he goes and tells his
Speaker 6: wife what happened, and she calls the police immediately, of course,
Speaker 6: and so that's one of the calls. Now, there was
Speaker 6: another call right after the accident by Faith Westman, who
Speaker 6: lived right across the street from where this accident occurred,
Speaker 6: and then occurred at this like almost ninety degree turn
Speaker 6: in the road by this old weathered barn. There's accidents
Speaker 6: there all the time. In the winter, there were snow
Speaker 6: banks that were like five feet high on either side,
Speaker 6: and it's very easy to come along that turn and
Speaker 6: lose control. And that's that's where she's gotten an accident.
Speaker 6: So Faith Westman lives right there at that turn, and
Speaker 6: she hears the accent. She calls him the police too.
Speaker 6: And there's another house on the same side of the
Speaker 6: street where more crashes that can also see the accent.
Speaker 6: So you've got three pairs of eyes that are kind
Speaker 6: of you know, I always picture them as like beams
Speaker 6: from a lighthouse. And they're there, you know, they'll check
Speaker 6: the accident scene, they'll see Maura sitting in the car,
Speaker 6: and then she gets out. She opens the trunk and
Speaker 6: she's fiddling with something back there for a little bit
Speaker 6: and the beam of lights kind of illuminate the scene
Speaker 6: and then turn away. When they get boreder, they go
Speaker 6: to do other things in the house. So there were
Speaker 6: moments there where she wasn't being watched, but not for
Speaker 6: very long. Sometime in there, she disappear before the police
Speaker 6: show up. And so that's the scene of the accent there,
Speaker 6: and you have to wonder what happened to her, you know,
Speaker 6: did she you know, what are the possibilities? Okay, number one,
Speaker 6: maybe she got scared and ran into the woods to hide.
Speaker 6: We know that's not true because they started the search.
Speaker 6: They were up. I spoke to the guy, Sergeant Scerenza,
Speaker 6: Lieutenant Scirinza, who was in charge of the investigation for
Speaker 6: the first like five or six years. Now. He was
Speaker 6: up in a helicopter about thirty six hours after the disappearance.
Speaker 6: It had not snowed again since more disappeared. There's ideal
Speaker 6: conditions for seeing things from the air. He was able
Speaker 6: to see footprints of a fox and follow it back
Speaker 6: to where the fox was that in the woods. That's
Speaker 6: how detailed he could see. And there were no footprints
Speaker 6: leading anywhere near the crash site into the wa so
Speaker 6: she didn't go into so did she Was she abducted?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 6: Was she abducted from the side of the road. And
Speaker 6: it's a very sexy thought. It's it's you know what
Speaker 6: we think of when we watch CSI or something like that.
Speaker 6: But in order for that to happen, considered the astronomical
Speaker 6: you know, probability against it, you would have to there
Speaker 6: would have to be a serial killer coincidentally driving down
Speaker 6: that road at that exact moment, and at that time
Speaker 6: of night, at that time of year. They've counted the
Speaker 6: number of cars that passed by that place within an
Speaker 6: hour and there's only there's seven on average, there's seven
Speaker 6: people that drive by that that scene at that time
Speaker 6: of night on that day, and one of those people
Speaker 6: to be a serial killer, it's it's it's beyond reason.
Speaker 6: So and and then you'd have to assume that they
Speaker 6: were able to get her into the car against her
Speaker 6: will and get away from the scene without being seen
Speaker 6: by India any of those people that are watching the
Speaker 6: accident scene. And it's just remember we're dealing with the
Speaker 6: former West Point Cabet. She's not going to go quietly.
Speaker 6: It would not have been quickly, so it can't be
Speaker 6: a messy abduction. She was traveling in sandem with another driver,
Speaker 6: a friend or family member, somebody she knew and trusted.
Speaker 6: They were driving in a vehicle in front of her.
Speaker 6: She gets into an accident. The other vehicle sees this
Speaker 6: or sees that she's no longer following. They turn around
Speaker 6: and pick her up. Now that transaction, that interaction could
Speaker 6: have been quick, could have been five seconds. They slow down,
Speaker 6: more hops in the car, go go go, They're gone.
Speaker 6: That could account for why nobody sees it happened, because
Speaker 6: it was so quick, and the any way for it
Speaker 6: to be quick is if she knew the person. So
Speaker 6: that's kind of where I eventually ended up is believing
Speaker 6: that this had to have been There had to have
Speaker 6: been a Seendom tribe. There's other evidence to support this too.
Speaker 6: One of the last things she does before leaving UMass.
Speaker 6: The police discover is that she was doing searches on
Speaker 6: her computer for condos and she actually she called a
Speaker 6: condo in New Hampshire and contacted them about rooms, and
Speaker 6: the rooms that she was searching for were not single rooms.
Speaker 6: They were actually units that had at least two bedrooms,
Speaker 6: So she wasn't looking for a place just for herself.
Speaker 6: She was looking for a place big enough to accommodate
Speaker 6: at least two people, maybe more.
Speaker 7: Now, a big part of this book is that you
Speaker 7: have a hard time, in one way trying to get
Speaker 7: some answers, and you again are surprised that and shocked
Speaker 7: by the reaction by Fred, especially the father, but a
Speaker 7: lot of the rest of the family and friends, like
Speaker 7: there's some super dark secret that nobody wants to, you know,
Speaker 7: to reveal. Uh So, tell us who was one of
Speaker 7: the big or your first breakthrough in terms of getting
Speaker 7: information that was very, very useful and led to the
Speaker 7: next bit of information.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a good question. I'm trying to think what
Speaker 6: my My first big break was probably speaking to her supervisor,
Speaker 6: the woman that found her catatonic, you know, at the
Speaker 6: desk of Melville that night, and that was my first
Speaker 6: interview with somebody directly you related to the mystery of
Speaker 6: what happened to Maura, and you know, hearing her describe
Speaker 6: Maura here, Hearing somebody talk about Maura who had known
Speaker 6: her and known her well was very interesting, and that
Speaker 6: definitely got the ball rolling because I shared that interview
Speaker 6: on my blog and should have allowed more people to
Speaker 6: see what I was doing, and you know, and then
Speaker 6: they would come forward and speak. The other big break
Speaker 6: was speaking and sitting down with Lieutenant Scerinza, who was
Speaker 6: in charge of their investigation. He was a lieutenant with
Speaker 6: the State Police in New Hampshire and again he's a
Speaker 6: guy up in the helicopter too, and thirty six hours
Speaker 6: after she disappeared, I sat down with Scuenza for a
Speaker 6: couple of hours one day. It was one of my
Speaker 6: first interviews and you know, he's the one that you know.
Speaker 6: He explained to me the difficulty they had with talking
Speaker 6: to Fred and how you know, he wasn't very helpful,
Speaker 6: and then he was very antagonistic. Actually he ended up
Speaker 6: suing the State of New Hampshire and the police to
Speaker 6: try to get more information. But another thing that came
Speaker 6: out of that conversation with Cuenzo was that believes that
Speaker 6: Mara was pregnant when she disappeared. They did the search
Speaker 6: of her computer and they found that in the day
Speaker 6: leading up to her disappearance, more was searching for information
Speaker 6: on the effects of drinking and being pregnant. You know
Speaker 6: whether or not that could hurt the baby. So and
Speaker 6: I think he's probably right. I mean, that would be
Speaker 6: one very good reason to stay hidden after all this
Speaker 6: attention is if you're dealing with a child.
Speaker 4: Hey, guys, it is Ryan. I'm not sure if you
Speaker 4: know this about me, but I'm a bit of a
Speaker 4: fun fanatic when I can. I like to work, but
Speaker 4: I like fun too. It's a thing. And now the
Speaker 4: truth is out there, I can tell you about my
Speaker 4: favorite place to have fun, Chumba Casino. They have hundreds
Speaker 4: of social casino style games to choose from, with new
Speaker 4: games released each week. You can play for free, anytime, anywhere,
Speaker 4: and each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonuses.
Speaker 4: So join me and the fun. Sign up now at
Speaker 4: chum casino dot com.
Speaker 2: No we're necessary, Dad, Where if I lost?
Speaker 6: In terms?
Speaker 7: Conditions?
Speaker 2: Eighteen plus You're dedicated to building a bright financial future.
Speaker 2: Grow your investments with Millibank's High Yield Savings account. Earn
Speaker 2: a highly competitive annual percentage yield with no fees or minimums.
Speaker 2: Getting started is simple to download the app, link your account,
Speaker 2: and start growing your money. Welcome to a new way
Speaker 2: to save more for the things that matter most. Welcome
Speaker 2: to Millibank, visit Milli dot bank, or download the Milli
Speaker 2: app today.
Speaker 6: If she was pregnant and she did have a kid,
Speaker 6: and maybe this is a kid that she doesn't ever
Speaker 6: want to worry about custody or sharing custody with the father,
Speaker 6: So that to me is a heck of a motive
Speaker 6: to say to stay hidden.
Speaker 7: What's interesting is that the police must believe that there's
Speaker 7: there's some well, maybe you can tell us what you
Speaker 7: think the police believe, what their theory of this whole
Speaker 7: thing is. But regardless, you're talking about eighty troopers, helicopters.
Speaker 7: We're talking about a massive search here. And when I
Speaker 7: talked about that big break, I'm what I'm talking about
Speaker 7: is when you got a chance to speak to Tim,
Speaker 7: and this is a little bit later on. Tell me
Speaker 7: what this gentleman Tim, how he got he was in
Speaker 7: the had the ability to be privy to this conversation
Speaker 7: or these conversations, and then tell us about the searches
Speaker 7: that were conducted with Fred and just the impression that
Speaker 7: Tim had.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so in the media, you know, you read about
Speaker 6: Fred and you see him as this man who's out
Speaker 6: to find his daughter at all costs. And he's out
Speaker 6: there walking through the woods and you know, every weekend
Speaker 6: after her disappearance, you know, ready to find her, doing
Speaker 6: everything and take to find her. Now. Yeah, the who
Speaker 6: you're talking about is a fellow by the name of
Speaker 6: Kim Carpenter, and he was a very big interview. Tim
Speaker 6: was the was married to Kathleen Murray, that's Moore's oldest sister.
Speaker 6: He was married there for a number of years and
Speaker 6: the marriage to her. When Laura disappeared. I tracked him
Speaker 6: down and he talked to me for a little while
Speaker 6: and the things he said put a new slant on everything,
Speaker 6: a new light. And you know, he you know, he
Speaker 6: would talk about you know, he was there for the searches.
Speaker 6: He would go out there on the weekends. And what
Speaker 6: he says is that Fred would put on a certain
Speaker 6: appearance when the media was there, and he'd be very
Speaker 6: different when the reporters and the cameras were not there.
Speaker 6: And yes, he would be up there on the weekends,
Speaker 6: but he would he would sleep in. When he'd get up,
Speaker 6: everybody's like, all right, let's go. You know, all these volunteers,
Speaker 6: they're like, let's go with for Laura, and but you
Speaker 6: know he wouldn't he wouldn't be ready. He'd sleep in
Speaker 6: and then he'd go for a run and then he'd
Speaker 6: take a shower, and then they'd start the day and
Speaker 6: he'd give them leaves and he'd say, okay, you go
Speaker 6: look here, you go look here, you go look here,
Speaker 6: and they'd go look for an hour or so, and
Speaker 6: then they'd come back and have lunch, and then they'd
Speaker 6: go off again. And then they'd break a short time
Speaker 6: after that and everybody would go back to the pub
Speaker 6: and start drinking and then roll into the next day
Speaker 6: where he's sleeping in. So but when the reporter showed up,
Speaker 6: when the camera showed up, Fred was, you know, front
Speaker 6: and center and in the woods and searching and relentless.
Speaker 6: But that is not the thread that Tim Tim Carpenter
Speaker 6: described existed when cameras were not there. So there's weird
Speaker 6: behavior again there. And you know, Tim said that, you
Speaker 6: know that, you know that there was a very different
Speaker 6: side of the family. You know that's kind of the
Speaker 6: darker side. And you know, specifically if Kathleen, he was
Speaker 6: married to Kathleen for a while, and you know, Kathleen
Speaker 6: ends up getting in trouble. You know, she's in and
Speaker 6: out that we have. You know, she ends up getting
Speaker 6: pulled over for a d UI blows a point three five. Now,
Speaker 6: I've never never heard of anybody with that high of
Speaker 6: blood alcohol content. With the point three five we're talking about.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm I'm like one hundred and eighty pounds
Speaker 6: five to ten. If I were to drink that, I
Speaker 6: could die. You look up the effects of this. That
Speaker 6: Kathleen's a little bigger she, you know, But still we're
Speaker 6: talking beyond the point of the blackout trunk. If you're
Speaker 6: drinking that much, you are self medicating, you know. And
Speaker 6: and and I'm you know, I know from self medicating.
Speaker 6: I'm a recovering alcoholic myself. I know I know how
Speaker 6: it works. And that's self medicating behavior. You're doing drunk
Speaker 6: because you don't want to think about certain things. So
Speaker 6: you know, there's a family with secrets of family of trouble,
Speaker 6: and Kim opened up a door into that and it
Speaker 6: gives a better look of it suggests that there might
Speaker 6: have been other things that Moore was running away from.
Speaker 6: I think she was getting away from her family. I
Speaker 6: think she was unhappy with that that part of her life.
Speaker 6: I think she wanted to get away from her father.
Speaker 6: I think she wanted to get away from her boyfriend Bell.
Speaker 6: And you know, she finally was pushed to the point
Speaker 6: where she was either going to break or she was
Speaker 6: going to go, and I think she went. I think
Speaker 6: she took off and didn't look back.
Speaker 7: What was your research in terms of the likelihood of suicide?
Speaker 7: Did the police have that idea that any of the people,
Speaker 7: the commenters, the people following this case, did they think
Speaker 7: maybe she went up to the mountains to kill herself.
Speaker 7: What did you find?
Speaker 1: Was she?
Speaker 6: Yeah? You know, it's interesting. The first person to suggest
Speaker 6: suicide is actually Fred Murray, her father. When they finally
Speaker 6: get in central him after they realized that more is missing,
Speaker 6: the first thing he says to the police say is,
Speaker 6: oh my gosh, I bet she went up to Mount
Speaker 6: Washington on an old squawwalk. Fred says the weirdest things.
Speaker 6: You know, It's like the things that he says are
Speaker 6: only things he would read in like a weird book
Speaker 6: or see ONTIV. It's they're bad lines, and that was
Speaker 6: one of them, the old squawwalk. And what he means.
Speaker 6: What he means is this old idea that you know
Speaker 6: in Native American cultures. When the woman you know was
Speaker 6: was beyond her abuse, when she didn't feel she could
Speaker 6: contribute anything, she would walk into the woods and die.
Speaker 6: And so he's assume that that's what Maraa did. So
Speaker 6: why does Fred believe that she's so upset that his
Speaker 6: daughter would commit suicide? What happened that he would think
Speaker 6: that she could do that? And I've never believed in
Speaker 6: suicide theory for a couple of reasons, but the biggest
Speaker 6: is that's a long way to go to commit suicide.
Speaker 6: If she was going to commit suicide, why not just
Speaker 6: do it at your mass you know why? You know
Speaker 6: her gas tank is full when she gets into the accident,
Speaker 6: this is you know, and her her car is packed
Speaker 6: with with with a lot of stuff. This is not
Speaker 6: a person who has checked off everything, who you know,
Speaker 6: is just going up there to commit suicide. And if
Speaker 6: she did, where's the body? You know, it's it's it's wooded.
Speaker 6: You have people will say, wow, that's the wilderness. You know.
Speaker 6: Of course she could have died there. Nobody would ever
Speaker 6: find your body. That's not entirely true. We know she
Speaker 6: didn't walk into the woods. There were no footprints, no
Speaker 6: signs that she had walked away from the car. But
Speaker 6: let's say she did. She got up there. I think
Speaker 6: by now hikers would have found her body. But I
Speaker 6: think they would have found her in the searches. There
Speaker 6: were two mass of searches that were conducted by the
Speaker 6: Fish and Game Department. We're talking hundreds of volunteers. The
Speaker 6: area around where she disappeared was searched thoroughly, within like
Speaker 6: a five mile radius. She can commits suicide.
Speaker 7: What about Obviously you're going to check her ATM or
Speaker 7: bank card for activity. What was that checked? Like? What
Speaker 7: what did that uncover? And then we could talk about
Speaker 7: Billy and is he cleared in terms of alibi.
Speaker 6: Well, so the first question is you know the bank stuff,
Speaker 6: and there's some interesting things with the banks. She like
Speaker 6: I said, she had emptied, essentially emptied her account as
Speaker 6: much as she could. I think there was like eight
Speaker 6: dollars left in her account or something. Now, her father
Speaker 6: remember that four thousand dollars he has on him, or
Speaker 6: says he does when when Lago is missing. Comes from
Speaker 6: the family spokesperson, This Helena Dwyer Murray, who runs the
Speaker 6: message board a couple a couple of months ago on Facebook.
Speaker 6: She explained that because people started asking, well, what did
Speaker 6: you do with that four thousand dollars after more disappeared,
Speaker 6: or is it possible that Morea took that money? And
Speaker 6: she came forward and said, well, Fred put it into
Speaker 6: an account that Maura had access to specifically to see,
Speaker 6: you know, if more was missing and she needed money,
Speaker 6: she could access it. But they say that that account
Speaker 6: was never touched again. Now there's also I was contacted
Speaker 6: through the website by somebody they worked with Citizens Bank,
Speaker 6: and you know, they did, you know, and they did
Speaker 6: this before they contacted me, But they did something that
Speaker 6: was probably not entirely legal, which on their spare time
Speaker 6: they would have looked up people kind of famous people's
Speaker 6: accounts out of curiosity. And I verified this person did
Speaker 6: work for Citizens Bank, by the way, and she and
Speaker 6: I passed this along to the cold case gait even
Speaker 6: she said at the time of More's well this was
Speaker 6: two years after more disappeared that she searched this. She
Speaker 6: said there was an active account for a car Loan
Speaker 6: under Moore's name, using more A's date of birth and
Speaker 6: social Security number that was taken out in the state
Speaker 6: of New Hampshire, and it was being paid. It was current,
Speaker 6: which means somebody was paying it on a monthly basis.
Speaker 6: So that's really strange too. So that's the interesting thing information.
Speaker 6: And then you asked about Bill Rausch's alibi, And at
Speaker 6: first I always figured Bill was above suspicion. And then,
Speaker 6: you know, at the eleventh dollar, right before the book
Speaker 6: was due to go to the you know, to be
Speaker 6: laid out, and we couldn't puddle with him anymore, some
Speaker 6: information came in about Bill and by four different women
Speaker 6: who worked with him at a place called rig Group
Speaker 6: International in DC, and they handled contracts with the VA.
Speaker 6: Bill was working for them back in twenty eleven. And
Speaker 6: these women claim, and I spoke to the woman directly involved,
Speaker 6: claimed that he assaulted a female co co worker after
Speaker 6: on Saint Patrick's day. After work, this woman came back
Speaker 6: to the office. She says that he asked her to
Speaker 6: come into the President's office and then closed and locked
Speaker 6: the door behind her and proceeded to push up against
Speaker 6: her and then turn around push her face down into
Speaker 6: a table, and then push his body up against behind her.
Speaker 6: Another worker came in at that point and this girl
Speaker 6: was able to get away. This woman was able to
Speaker 6: get away from him. And you know, that was after
Speaker 6: he said, don't he say anything about this, and he
Speaker 6: ended up leaving. I spoke to Bill about this. The
Speaker 6: acknowledges that these allegations, that he had heard these allegations,
Speaker 6: and that he left that job. He never came back
Speaker 6: after that day, and you no longer of course listed
Speaker 6: that job on LinkedIn or anything like that. So he
Speaker 6: ends up, you know, not working there anymore. After they
Speaker 6: do an internal review, the woman goes to police. She
Speaker 6: ultimately decides not to press charges. I think worried what
Speaker 6: what impact that might have on her career in DC.
Speaker 6: So anyways, that led me to take a real hard
Speaker 6: look at Bill again and eventually I was able to
Speaker 6: obchange his cell phone records for the days before, leading
Speaker 6: up to and after Moore's disappearance, and it's you know,
Speaker 6: ninety nine point nine percent sure that it puts him
Speaker 6: where he says he was, which is Fortsville, Oklahoma, which
Speaker 6: is like one thousand miles away from New Hampshire. We're
Speaker 6: talking about twelve hour longer I think, like a twenty
Speaker 6: hour drive. So but he was in the field. You
Speaker 6: know he's using his cell phone. It seems that he's
Speaker 6: calling a lot of court cell numbers. You know, I can't,
Speaker 6: I can't say without a doubty, you know, but I would,
Speaker 6: I would say he's got a pretty solid alibi, you know,
Speaker 6: for when more disappeared.
Speaker 7: Now, you had some luck with some people, and you
Speaker 7: had some leads that turned into things that you seemed like,
Speaker 7: I say, you describe it as a rabbit hole, but
Speaker 7: there's some things that lead to not conclusions, and then
Speaker 7: other things that seemed to support the idea you already
Speaker 7: had that she may have ran away. Let's talk about
Speaker 7: Dick guy and the EMS guy and what he had
Speaker 7: said about the crash itself and what you got from it.
Speaker 7: How was that significant for you? What did that tell
Speaker 7: you or lead you to believe?
Speaker 3: You know what.
Speaker 6: So when we go up to the accident scene and
Speaker 6: take a look at where this happened, you're at this
Speaker 6: she's coming from She's heading east down Route one twelve,
Speaker 6: and she comes to this like almost ninety degree turning
Speaker 6: the road, but her car ends up facing west on
Speaker 6: the southern side of the road, so she's she ends
Speaker 6: up completely turned around on the lane that she she
Speaker 6: had been driving it so she can picture that. And
Speaker 6: the official police report says that she she ended up
Speaker 6: in that situation because she struck a tree. Now that
Speaker 6: doesn't make sense. First of all, there's no trees right there.
Speaker 6: She would have had to have remember there's like five
Speaker 6: foot tall snow snowbanks. She would have had to you know,
Speaker 6: jump over the snowbank, hit a tree, and then then
Speaker 6: come back. It just doesn't work with physics. You know.
Speaker 6: It was badly reported, you know, accident scene. So through
Speaker 6: the reports, and I find that there were a number
Speaker 6: of other people at the accident scene that night, volunteer EMTs.
Speaker 6: One of them was this guy, uh Dick guy, the
Speaker 6: TV guy. He ran this TV repair business in Woodsville
Speaker 6: next door to Hadril, and I went to the shop
Speaker 6: and I talked to him one day and he had
Speaker 6: a better explanation for how she got in that accident,
Speaker 6: and he drew a little diagram for me to explain it.
Speaker 6: But he believes he was there that night and he said, so,
Speaker 6: you've got that turn, and on the north side of
Speaker 6: the road, there's there's this, you know, essentially a corner,
Speaker 6: and there's a snowbank there. But it was it was
Speaker 6: somebody had cheered it off, and he thinks that she
Speaker 6: had actually crossed the double lane, the double yellow lines
Speaker 6: and impacted the north side of the road. So she's crossing,
Speaker 6: she's heading age, she crosses the lane to the turn,
Speaker 6: smacks into the corner, sears off that snowbank, and that force,
Speaker 6: that that impact and force flips her car around and
Speaker 6: sends it back into the lane she was in. And
Speaker 6: that works a lot better in my mind than the
Speaker 6: official explanation and the police report. So it and it
Speaker 6: explains the damage done to the car, why the front
Speaker 6: on the left part of the hood is pushed down
Speaker 6: and the crack of the windshield, the airbags were deployed.
Speaker 6: I think she impacted that snowbank, just like this.
Speaker 7: Guy said, what's the significance of the tow truck driver?
Speaker 7: And tell us about what he said he saw in
Speaker 7: the tailpipe? And what is your conclusion? What was his conclusion?
Speaker 6: This is the one clue that nobody can quicke make
Speaker 6: head their tails out. The third truck driver's name is
Speaker 6: Mike LaVoi, and he is called by the police. They said, hey,
Speaker 6: come down and pick up this car ticket and he
Speaker 6: takes it back to not his shop but his home.
Speaker 6: It's like after hours, so it kind of makes sense
Speaker 6: he chose More's saturn back to his house and then
Speaker 6: puts it in his garage, which has a lock in it.
Speaker 6: At the time, the police are they're not treating it
Speaker 6: yet as a missing person's case. They think what they're
Speaker 6: dealing with is a dui and that walked away, and
Speaker 6: they've seen that type of thing a lot. And there
Speaker 6: was evidence that More had been drinking in the car.
Speaker 6: There was spilled wine that they could see inside so
Speaker 6: and it smelled like booze. So they think that somebody
Speaker 6: got drunk and crashed into the snowbank, will probably be
Speaker 6: back in the morning. How those are looking for their car.
Speaker 6: So so the boy tows it back to his place
Speaker 6: and then he notices that there's like a rag stuck
Speaker 6: in her tailpipe. And so that's weird because the first
Speaker 6: thing you think, at least in my mind, when you
Speaker 6: think ragging and tailpipe is you know, I mean, some
Speaker 6: people think suicide. Other people think did somebody put it
Speaker 6: in there so that her car would stall? You know,
Speaker 6: did the car stall at that turn? Is that what
Speaker 6: caused the accident? Now thinking I'm the father myself. Now,
Speaker 6: I've got two kids, God for the bigger missing, and
Speaker 6: I'm in this situation and i'm her father, and I
Speaker 6: come to town and I hear that my daughter's missing
Speaker 6: and there's this rag stuck in the tailpipe. Well, I'm
Speaker 6: going to use that clue to get the police to
Speaker 6: to to really investigate this because it seems like somebody
Speaker 6: wanted a car to stall. That's not what Fred Murray does.
Speaker 6: When he sees that rag in the tailpipe, he explains
Speaker 6: it away and he says, oh, yeah, yeah, her exhaust
Speaker 6: was smoking, and I told her to put a rag
Speaker 6: up in the tailpipe so she didn't get get in
Speaker 6: trouble for the exhaust smoking. Now, either that that's true
Speaker 6: and he gave her really really bad advice about how
Speaker 6: to take care of a smoky exhaust, or it's not true.
Speaker 6: And to wonder why he's trying to explain away that
Speaker 6: that detail is it because he makes a point to
Speaker 6: say that he got her that rag and that it's tested.
Speaker 6: You know, that would explain why's fingerprinter on it if
Speaker 6: they ever test it. I don't know, but as a father,
Speaker 6: I'm not going to explain away that that has very
Speaker 6: important evidence. I don't know what to make of it, and
Speaker 6: I don't know what to make the rag and the
Speaker 6: tail pipe. It's a it's a weird, weird piece of.
Speaker 7: Now, let's get to how you come to believe that
Speaker 7: she may have run away, tried to run away from
Speaker 7: her life. What leads who leads you to that decision,
Speaker 7: that conclusion. Tell us how you come to that decision,
Speaker 7: and then what do you plan to do as a result.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, so what's the motive for running away? You know?
Speaker 6: And and to me, it started to become clear when
Speaker 6: I learned a little bit more about friend's background and behavior,
Speaker 6: and about Bill's background and behavior. And we have a
Speaker 6: guy who you know, lost his job of her allegations
Speaker 6: of assaulting a woman in a strange way in the office.
Speaker 6: And I spoke to high school girlfriends who said that
Speaker 6: they weren't surprised to hear that he had a reputation
Speaker 6: for being rough back then. Now, if he's rough with
Speaker 6: women before More and rough with women after them, you know,
Speaker 6: I can only wonder what it was like with More. Certainly,
Speaker 6: her friends and family didn't like this guy. He was
Speaker 6: cheating on her. The chief of police in Havevil at
Speaker 6: the time was a guy, well later a little bit
Speaker 6: Cecil Smith and Cecil you know, very peaceful guy, very
Speaker 6: nice guy. The only time I ever saw him angry
Speaker 6: was when I asked him about Bill and he said,
Speaker 6: if you know, whatever happened to more up in New
Speaker 6: Hampshire was whether or not Bill was directly involved, it
Speaker 6: was his fault. Guy is an a hole, you know,
Speaker 6: and so he was furious with this guy. So she
Speaker 6: had and then add to that these legal troubles. I
Speaker 6: think she realized she was never going to be a nurse.
Speaker 6: The police believed she was pregnant, so there was a
Speaker 6: lot of motives for her to run away and start
Speaker 6: fresh summer with maybe maybe with this kid. And you know,
Speaker 6: so how did she do that? Did she go on
Speaker 6: her you know, did she go on her own with
Speaker 6: maybe help from a friend or two. Another way she
Speaker 6: could have gone gone about that is utilizing some of
Speaker 6: these really interesting abused women resources where there are places
Speaker 6: that it works almost like the Witness Protection Program but
Speaker 6: better and it's for abused women. And you know, it's
Speaker 6: kind of like this underground railroad that's not talked about
Speaker 6: too much that will help women find a new home,
Speaker 6: find a new identity, find a new life and set
Speaker 6: them up. But they have to leave their old life behind.
Speaker 6: And it's interesting, but that really does happen. And you know,
Speaker 6: these other women that are involved in the organization will
Speaker 6: learn these abused women their social security number and so
Speaker 6: they're set up with a new one so that they
Speaker 6: can fly completely under the radar.
Speaker 7: You talk about sort of like a witness protection. What
Speaker 7: better thing to do than to disappear right out of
Speaker 7: your own country. And how is it that you think
Speaker 7: that she may have gone to Canada? Tell us what
Speaker 7: makes you believe that?
Speaker 6: Well, there's there's a couple of things that point to Canada.
Speaker 6: Although I would not be surprised if Maura Murray is
Speaker 6: still living in New Hampshire, you know, I would not
Speaker 6: be surprised that she's still in the New England area somewhere.
Speaker 6: But there are these rivers. Early on that Moura was
Speaker 6: spotted in Canada, there were a couple of posts on
Speaker 6: message boards, one purportedly by a classmate of Morris who
Speaker 6: was visiting a town called Sherbook in Canada, which is
Speaker 6: not too far away from you know where she went missing.
Speaker 6: A couple hours drive north but past the border, and
Speaker 6: they said that they had seen Moura and said, you know,
Speaker 6: called out to her, said hey, Maura, and she turned
Speaker 6: and you know, looked really shocked and then walked away
Speaker 6: and said she was with this you know, handsome young
Speaker 6: man and seemed happy. And there were a couple other
Speaker 6: reports like that and message boards, and eventually, you know,
Speaker 6: I and a couple you know, Lance and Tim who
Speaker 6: do the podcast and they're working on a documentary on
Speaker 6: the case. We all drove up to trying to see
Speaker 6: what we could do and see if we could find her.
Speaker 6: Maybe this was back I think in twenty thirteen, and
Speaker 6: we visited Sherbrook, We visited Montreal, and we visited Quebec
Speaker 6: City and there were a couple of places that we
Speaker 6: would show her picture. There's a coffee shop in I
Speaker 6: think it was in I think it was in Montreal.
Speaker 6: We visited where we showed her picture and the person
Speaker 6: that worked there was adamant. She's like, yeah, she was
Speaker 6: in here like a couple of days ago, and I
Speaker 6: know this woman. And we showed her picture at a gym,
Speaker 6: you know, because more was always very athletic and thought
Speaker 6: maybe those would be good places to check out. So
Speaker 6: we showed her picture at this gym and the woman
Speaker 6: behind the counter again, she was adamant. She's like, yes,
Speaker 6: I know this person, she was in here not too
Speaker 6: long ago. Absolutely so, but you know, could they be mistaken,
Speaker 6: could they be thinking another brunette. I don't know, But
Speaker 6: to me, there were some really decent sightings in Canada
Speaker 6: and it's either a look alike or you know, or
Speaker 6: it's more.
Speaker 7: Now you have this very interesting clue, and again you
Speaker 7: have these leads that seem to go not so far
Speaker 7: and then just seem to be more perplexing than anything else,
Speaker 7: not so conclusionary. Tell us what you find with a
Speaker 7: place and if I'm pronouncing it wrong, Seiko Maine and
Speaker 7: Rick Graves, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that's one of those weird things that so
Speaker 6: many strange things about this case. But so I've got
Speaker 6: a friend who's a private investigator here in Cleveland. His
Speaker 6: name's Mike Lewis, and he's helped me out now and
Speaker 6: again through his business confidential investigations, and they're kind of
Speaker 6: the premiere private eyes for the Greater Even area. And
Speaker 6: I asked him to run Morea's background and what that'll
Speaker 6: do is kind of run her social Security number two
Speaker 6: and see if anything's come up. And when you did that,
Speaker 6: something odd happened where it showed that her social Security
Speaker 6: number was attached to this address in Seiko, Maine, this
Speaker 6: town Saco Sacho or Seiko, Maine, very kind of rural place,
Speaker 6: odd place for her social Security number to connect to,
Speaker 6: and it was kind of it was connected after her disappearance.
Speaker 6: So you know, my first thought was, well, was that
Speaker 6: where she's living? Is that where she's hiding? I don't know.
Speaker 6: And it was when I went to speak to Tim Carpenter,
Speaker 6: you know, I asked, I said, you know, because Tim
Speaker 6: was and Cathleen, Laura's sister, were involved in the searches
Speaker 6: for Laura, you know, in the weeks after she disappeared,
Speaker 6: And so I asked him, I said, can you get
Speaker 6: me in touch with any of the other volunteers who
Speaker 6: were helping to look for more back then? And he
Speaker 6: said sure. He's like, you know we should talk to
Speaker 6: is this this guy Rick Graves? He was all about
Speaker 6: trying to find more and you know, we don't really
Speaker 6: we didn't really know who he was, but he wanted
Speaker 6: to offer his time and I said sure, you know,
Speaker 6: and he gave me his number and I said, oh,
Speaker 6: this is a weird prefix, isn't this main? And he
Speaker 6: said yeah, So what where's Rick Graves live? And he said, oh, Sacho, Saco, Maine.
Speaker 6: So that was a yeah. I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 6: you know, could this you know what's going on here?
Speaker 6: You know, how is this working? And what I ended
Speaker 6: up learning was that Fred actually gave Fred's Moore's father,
Speaker 6: he gave this Rick Graves permission to put some sort
Speaker 6: of tracker on more social Security numbers. So he gave
Speaker 6: this guy more as social and he used it, you know,
Speaker 6: on some programs. And that's why, you know, to this day,
Speaker 6: her social Security number beings with his address if you
Speaker 6: look for it. So that's the connection. At first, it
Speaker 6: seems really promising, like maybe I could drive there and
Speaker 6: you know, she'd answer the door. But it quickly became
Speaker 6: a parent that it was connected to the volunteer who
Speaker 6: helped search for her. And he's a good guy. I've
Speaker 6: talked to him, and I'd say he's above suspicion. He
Speaker 6: is confused about the whole thing that everybody else and
Speaker 6: very confused about the way Fred acted The whole time
Speaker 6: as well.
Speaker 7: To be fair, though he doesn't act like a killer
Speaker 7: or anything, because he does really do the kinds of
Speaker 7: things that a father would do. You mentioned in the
Speaker 7: book or you talk about in the book. That looks
Speaker 7: like he doesn't carry sleeps late, he gets up late.
Speaker 7: Then he turns into Cervica party atmosphere after the search
Speaker 7: that day, after seven or eight hours of search. But
Speaker 7: he did do things like get Graves to put this
Speaker 7: tracker on her card. So he did things that we
Speaker 7: are aren't indicative of somebody guilty of foul play involving
Speaker 7: his daughter, is it.
Speaker 6: I'm not suggesting I'm not suggesting Fred did anything like that.
Speaker 6: At most, I'm suggesting that that Fred knows more about
Speaker 6: why More wanted to disappear and why More wanted to
Speaker 6: run away than he's ever said. I think Fred would
Speaker 6: like to find her. I don't think More wants Fred
Speaker 6: to find her. I think, you know, there's all sorts
Speaker 6: of explanations that you could come up with as to
Speaker 6: why Fred acted the way he does. But you know,
Speaker 6: it just nothing he did ever ring true to me,
Speaker 6: you know, And I've I've spoken to I've met with
Speaker 6: the fathers of missing women, of missing children, and it
Speaker 6: just it's not a part of the course. This is
Speaker 6: a strange individual, you know. I think back to the
Speaker 6: I mean to have of it case, and I've certainly
Speaker 6: been on the outs with Amy's family over the things
Speaker 6: that I've reported. I mean, there's some things they don't
Speaker 6: particularly care that I shared, you know, the fact that
Speaker 6: her parents were planning to get divorced at the time
Speaker 6: that Amy was abducted, and you know whether that played
Speaker 6: into everything, you know, but her father always talked to
Speaker 6: me and always was happy that I was getting his
Speaker 6: daughter's name out there, and it was always adamant that
Speaker 6: he would do everything he could to find that. He
Speaker 6: didn't care about the skeletons, you know, he was a
Speaker 6: little myth, you know, it would rub him the wrong way,
Speaker 6: But he wasn't quiet.
Speaker 7: But is there a chance, though, that the family, despite
Speaker 7: the search, despite the you know, the website, that they
Speaker 7: may have come to the same conclusion as you that
Speaker 7: that More just wanted to leave it, couldn't handle the
Speaker 7: pressure of the family, pressure of the impending charges, which
Speaker 7: he thought were bigger than certainly they were. But maybe
Speaker 7: she was in a certain psychological state to fake that
Speaker 7: somebody was missing or a part of me dead in
Speaker 7: her family to stage that sort of comatose evening where
Speaker 7: she had apparently received a call from her sister. When
Speaker 7: you spoke to the sister, when other people spoke to
Speaker 7: the sister police, she said it was no big deal,
Speaker 7: there was nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe more just
Speaker 7: wanted to take a night off. So is there could
Speaker 7: that explain why the family wasn't cooperative with you and
Speaker 7: especially Fred that maybe they just thought this worse thing too,
Speaker 7: that you know, they weren't agreeing did she take off?
Speaker 7: But certainly maybe they concluded that she had.
Speaker 6: I think that's the most logical explanation to that accounts
Speaker 6: for the behavior, I think, So I think, yeah, I
Speaker 6: can't you know, again, I can't say one hundred percent
Speaker 6: and that explained that logically to me, that would be
Speaker 6: an explanation for why they acted the way she did,
Speaker 6: and that they realized that that more most likely stuck
Speaker 6: off and they will and she doesn't want anything to
Speaker 6: do with her family anymore. So yeah, I think that's possibility.
Speaker 7: It's fascinating that we don't have enough time to really
Speaker 7: and it's no way except if you read the book
Speaker 7: to really capture your adventure in this because we really
Speaker 7: haven't even touched on the effect that this investigation has
Speaker 7: on you. And finally, I guess all of the work
Speaker 7: that you've ever done sort of catches up to you psychologically.
Speaker 7: But there are some things that are almost humorous in
Speaker 7: the danger that you put yourself in trying to interview people.
Speaker 7: I thought it especially kind of humorous, but very very
Speaker 7: vivid again where you talk to Fred Junior and he
Speaker 7: says that he wants to strangle you and he'd like
Speaker 7: he'd like to kick your ass basically. So to say
Speaker 7: that people weren't cooperating with you in a lot of
Speaker 7: cases is an understatement, isn't it?
Speaker 6: On this case? Certainly yes, And I was threatened numerous times,
Speaker 6: not just by the family, but you know other people,
Speaker 6: you know, witnesses or you know, even people that got
Speaker 6: involved later on. You know, they're very antagonistic for some reason.
Speaker 6: But it's because I can't I have to ask hard
Speaker 6: questions because i'd really like to know. I really like
Speaker 6: to know what happened to Maura. I would I have
Speaker 6: an idea. I think it's a pretty good one, but
Speaker 6: I'd like to know for sure, I'd like to close
Speaker 6: this one. And in order to do that, you have
Speaker 6: to ask some uncomfortable questions, especially with families. So they
Speaker 6: were they were not they were not so so willing
Speaker 6: to answer or pleased with the questions. But I will
Speaker 6: say that, you know, when I finally managed to confront
Speaker 6: and speak to her sister, Julie, I think Julie was
Speaker 6: really really close to telling me something and you wanted to.
Speaker 6: And I asked her, I said, tell me what Fred
Speaker 6: was really doing up there and at Amherst that weekend?
Speaker 6: What was what really happened that weekend before she went missing?
Speaker 6: What else? What else am I missing? And Julie said,
Speaker 6: I could tell you, I could tell you exactly what happened.
Speaker 6: And and her boyfriend at the time, who was also
Speaker 6: a lawyer, stepped in between and said, Julie, don't don't
Speaker 6: you say a word. Don't say anything more, and he
Speaker 6: shut her down. But I think Julie was close to
Speaker 6: tell me something some bitter this.
Speaker 7: Well, to be fair too, what else would a lawyer advise?
Speaker 7: Do you think a lawyer would advise anything other than
Speaker 7: what he advised there?
Speaker 6: Well, of course, but that doesn't mean I can't be
Speaker 6: very disillusioned and disheartened that she you know, she didn't anyway,
Speaker 6: at the end of the day, Again, if this was
Speaker 6: a missing relative, brothers, sister, whatever, I don't care there
Speaker 6: what lawyers tell me. I'm going to I'm going to
Speaker 6: give reporters and gurlist, every end police at least every
Speaker 6: bit of information I can that that may help them
Speaker 6: find her.
Speaker 7: Now, the thing is with this, we talked about the
Speaker 7: effect of social media, and social media had a big
Speaker 7: effect in your earlier case with Amy. What was the
Speaker 7: what has been the effect of this book and this
Speaker 7: ongoing mystery and the amateur sleuth sort of movement that
Speaker 7: has evolved from that.
Speaker 6: Again, what exactly I'm sorry you want to know more
Speaker 6: about the you know, the effects of the social media with.
Speaker 7: Well, well, the effect of the book on again, on
Speaker 7: the on the movement itself, on the mystery itself, on
Speaker 7: the debate itself. You say, there's these again, there's there's
Speaker 7: numerous people that are have been contributing. So what has
Speaker 7: been the effect of now the release of the book
Speaker 7: and that information, What has that done to this this movement?
Speaker 6: It's interesting, everything's kind of like in a standstill, So,
Speaker 6: you know, the blog itself. It generated a ton of
Speaker 6: interest in this case. And over the last just you know,
Speaker 6: three years or so, there's been about five million views
Speaker 6: on the blog, and well, you know, each of these posts,
Speaker 6: you know, I'm looking. There were some days where I'd
Speaker 6: get ten thousand visitors. I mean, there were a lot
Speaker 6: of people interested in this, and and it built and
Speaker 6: built and built, and you know, new information was coming out,
Speaker 6: and there'd be weird twists and and eventually everything kind
Speaker 6: of led to this book. Now, now that the book's out,
Speaker 6: everybody's taken a moment to read it, and it's only
Speaker 6: been out for about two weeks now, and it definitely
Speaker 6: has an impact. Everything seems to kind of be in spasis,
Speaker 6: you know, now that all the info we have is
Speaker 6: basically out there for you know, a new twist. We're
Speaker 6: looking for a new bit of information. Or maybe somebody
Speaker 6: that you know was hesitant to talk to me or
Speaker 6: the book, you know, maybe one of her close friends
Speaker 6: from from high school, you know, somebody from that area
Speaker 6: or family member, now that the book's down, Now that
Speaker 6: it's out there and they see the lengths to which
Speaker 6: I went to try to find more, and perhaps they'll
Speaker 6: come forward and they'll finally speak and open up. But
Speaker 6: everybody's kind of waiting to see what happens next, and
Speaker 6: I don't know what that's going to be.
Speaker 7: Now throughout this too. This is part of a memoir
Speaker 7: of this true crime book. And you had the great
Speaker 7: support of your wife, Julie, is.
Speaker 6: It, Yes, Yeah, My wife's also made teresting.
Speaker 7: Yes, and and and your young son, uh so. And
Speaker 7: you even took her along. It's very interesting you took
Speaker 7: her along in in your investigation because she could help
Speaker 7: you sort of smooth your way into into certain interviews.
Speaker 7: So she was a very crucial person in this entire
Speaker 7: investigation in this book, wasn't she.
Speaker 6: Of course, Yeah, she was, and she yeah, I wouldn't
Speaker 6: wouldn't have been able to see that as much time
Speaker 6: to this if if she wasn't as understanding as she was.
Speaker 6: And you know, she's understanding is one thing, but she's not.
Speaker 6: You know, she's I will say this, she's she has
Speaker 6: not read the book. She won't read the book. She
Speaker 6: doesn't want to read the book because it's dark, it's
Speaker 6: it's too sad, and she doesn't want to go there.
Speaker 6: She would kind of lived through, must of it. And
Speaker 6: you know, she was understanding that she knew that this
Speaker 6: was important to me, that this had become kind of
Speaker 6: an obsession, that this would eventually become a book, that
Speaker 6: this would eventually, you know, exist out there. But she
Speaker 6: wasn't happy about it. She wasn't happy that I would
Speaker 6: take off for a week to go looking for more
Speaker 6: in the White Mountains, trace trace down. You know, her
Speaker 6: family and friends who didn't want to talk to me,
Speaker 6: especially because you know, we had this. We had this kid,
Speaker 6: you know, Casey, and you know, he's you know, at
Speaker 6: the time I was really digging into this, he was
Speaker 6: about four or five years old, and uh, you know
Speaker 6: he's uh, you know, he's got his own troubles. And
Speaker 6: then that's part of the book too, is raising this
Speaker 6: kid who's showing the beginning to show violent tendencies at
Speaker 6: age four while I'm trying to track down dangerous men
Speaker 6: in my job, and the weird parallels. I was saying to,
Speaker 6: you know, my responsibility of raising a good man, you know,
Speaker 6: turning Casey into a good man so that he doesn't
Speaker 6: go out there and do harm and and he walked.
Speaker 6: You know, he's got he's got a good heart, and
Speaker 6: it took us a while to figure out what was
Speaker 6: going on. And uh, you know, there were doctors that
Speaker 6: said he was on the autism spectrum, you know, Aspergers
Speaker 6: when they still use that name, and there's something unique
Speaker 6: and special about him. You know, he's highly functioning, he's
Speaker 6: brilliant in school, gets great grades, but behaviorally, you know,
Speaker 6: he's he's always had trouble and you know, he was
Speaker 6: lashing out and being violent with classmates and teachers and
Speaker 6: had to go to a special school for a couple
Speaker 6: of years because of that. And now he's unfortunately back
Speaker 6: in public. So my life was very stressful, you know
Speaker 6: when I was going through this search, and it was
Speaker 6: stressful for my wife because I had to, you know,
Speaker 6: take time away and and go through these these these
Speaker 6: things to finish the book. And you know, yes, he
Speaker 6: was very understanding, but she's very happy he's done. And
Speaker 6: then one of the things that they came of all
Speaker 6: this was you know, kind of a promise that you
Speaker 6: know that this would be my last big case, you know,
Speaker 6: at least until the children are grown and out of
Speaker 6: the house. And and for good reason. You know, there's
Speaker 6: a there's some creepy people that gravitate towards these cases,
Speaker 6: there's a you know, there are these internet trolls that
Speaker 6: come out that just want to cause anarchy and chaos
Speaker 6: on these blogs and discussion boards, and they act like
Speaker 6: they have information and made them you know, rabbit holes
Speaker 6: and wild goose chases, and that most of it is harmless.
Speaker 6: But then they're the ones that, for instance, in this case,
Speaker 6: there is a troll that uh put pictures of Casey
Speaker 6: up on the internet and maybe YouTube video of my son,
Speaker 6: and uh, you know, that was very scary, and I
Speaker 6: had conversations with prosecutors and we were trying to get
Speaker 6: this guy put away and it just, uh, it just
Speaker 6: didn't happen. And so he's still out there. And I
Speaker 6: have to, you know, make everything private. I had to
Speaker 6: switch everything on Facebook and to unless my car number
Speaker 6: and address, and I had to you know, basically become
Speaker 6: this you know hermits and and you know that. And
Speaker 6: now I can understand why, you know, people like Jade
Speaker 6: Salander go into hiding. You know, it's it's uh, it
Speaker 6: makes you want to cut ties with the human race
Speaker 6: when you run into people like that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we're gonna have to wrap this up quickly. But
Speaker 7: I also wanted to mention one, I guess one bright
Speaker 7: spot during this that really helped you do the have
Speaker 7: the money and also more importantly the time to be
Speaker 7: able to do this is Bradley Cooper's silver Lining Production
Speaker 7: Company has optioned your book man from from Rose Lane,
Speaker 7: So that gave you a lot more breathing room. And
Speaker 7: congratulations on that and hope to see that hit the
Speaker 7: silver screen. So for those that might want to contact
Speaker 7: or find out more about your work, can you tell
Speaker 7: us about your web page or website or Facebook? How
Speaker 7: might they do that find out more about your work?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Really, the best place for that is just James
Speaker 6: Renner dot com. Your find links to you know, my
Speaker 6: Facebook page and Twitter accounts and the more Murray blog
Speaker 6: and halivi it blog and yeah, everything kind of goes
Speaker 6: up from there. So James Renner R E N N
Speaker 6: E E R dot com.
Speaker 7: Well, I want to thank you very much James for
Speaker 7: coming on and talking about true Crime Addict how I
Speaker 7: lost myself in the mysterious disappearance of Mora Murray. Uh,
Speaker 7: we just touched on some of this fascinating story, but
Speaker 7: thank you very much for coming on and talking about
Speaker 7: this incredible tale.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Hey, thank you, thank you so much. Thanks
Speaker 6: for being so in depth with this too. It's a
Speaker 6: it's a fascinating case and I hope it. I hope
Speaker 6: it closes one day. I hope we get an answer.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, it would be. It would be a fitting ending
Speaker 7: from all your work. Thank you very much, good
Speaker 6: Night, thank you, thanks