carpanthers
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"Buying into the local dirtbag theory?" I have said over and over again that she could have killed herself. You are the one who wants to eliminate a possibility of what might have happened to Maura, and you want us to discredit the idea that someone could have possibly killed her, and you ask us to eliminate this possibility without a stitch of evidence that she wasn't killed.
I have already explained why I believe Maura packed her room and left the printed e-mail from Billy (an old e-mail, nonetheless).
"I have long thought there is a strong possibility that Maura was simply going North to wait for word about possible charges that would be pending against her. Her packed dorm room and the printed e-mail from Billy were perhaps to excuse her absence from the dormitory, in case she later needed to deny that she had fled from charges. Her e-mail to her professors about a family emergency was to excuse her absence from classes for the same reason. The fact that she searched for lodging in both New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as the fact that she had printed directions to Burlington, VT in her car as she was allegedly driving towards Bartlett, NH seems to imply that she did not care with great specificity where she went, so long as it was out of state. Although a lack of concrete destination could perhaps also suggest suicide, I believe the steps she took to leave her life as intact as possible speak against this. This is not to say she was not suicidal, but I believe any serious suicidal ideation happened after the New Hampshire crash. I think it was simple: she wanted to go North, to an area she was familiar with, out of state, to have as many options as possible should charges in fact be issued. Remember that the Hadley officer stated in an interview with Renner that Maura most likely would have been issued a citation for failure to control her vehicle had she not disappeared. Maura did not necessarily know this for certain when she left, but probably felt an inkling that this could jeopardize her deal with the courts and she could face more serious legal repercussions. If charges did come down, she would already be out of the state. She could choose to remain in New Hampshire or Vermont, or even drive to Canada (Burlington,VT is a hop, skip and jump from the border). In the event that she did have to return to Massachusetts, she could claim that she was not fleeing prosecution, but simply went to the White Mountains because she was upset about Billy and needed to get away. If no charges were issued, she could return to her life and her classes, assuming her professors accepted her excuse for her absences. I think she went North to keep her options open while she waited to see if she would be charged."
I don't think she went to Canada. I just think if you were waiting for charges, going out of state would leave your options open. I think she died in New Hampshire shortly after she disappeared, by her own hand, by someone else's, or by plain exposure. I have never eliminated any of these possibilities from consideration, and I think your total dismissal of the possibility that she was killed by someone else is perhaps indicative of a lack of objectivity on this issue.
I agree with you that Fred introduced the "local dirtbag" theory. That doesn't preclude law enforcement from having formulated that theory before Fred Murray suggested it. I think Fred Murray's personal opinions about what happened to Maura are probably not the reason that law enforcement conducted a traffic stop when the home of a former resident of the area surrounding the crash was being relocated and driven down the highway, or from conducting a search of his trailer. Law enforcement didn't eliminate the possibility that somebody killed her. You are basically asking everyone to take your word over the words and actions of the case's actual investigators, who you admit have information that we do not know, that this scenario is impossible.
Who said he was lying about everything? I said he lied about material facts and not Maura's state of mind. You have been selling us a theory in which Fred's lines are explained by wanting to cover up a suicidal line of thinking. In no way do his statements make her seem less suicidal. They make her seem more so.
I'm not saying he lied about everything. I'm saying it is alarming that he lied at all. I'm saying he lied about concrete facts, on the record, during an investigation into his daughter's whereabouts. This is worth examining. Your own theory implies and sometimes outright declares that Fred Murray lied to the police and tried to influence the direction of the investigation. You told us that police are puzzled by his behavior. You told us that Fred Murray introduced the dirtbag theory and that we bought it, hook, line and sinker. We shouldn't believe that somebody killed her because that idea was introduced by Fred Murray? By that logic, shouldn't we also discredit suicide, because that idea, by your own admission, was also introduced by Fred Murray?
Somebody disappeared in a place they love and visit all the time? They owned a book about a place they like to go? Call the coroner, it's a suicide! There are plenty of reviews on Amazon about this book, stating things like "If you have been there, or are planning on going, this book is a must read, IMO." She liked to hike in the White Mountains. Why wouldn't she have this book? She owned it for awhile, right? Did Fred maybe even give it to her? I'm not sure she even purchased this book for herself.
By your own theory, she would have to keep books in her car that she did not plan on using. If she was going to kill herself, why were her textbooks in her car? There are only two options:
1. She planned on doing her homework before she killed herself.
2. Maura kept books in her car that she had no immediate use for.
I won't even discuss idea number one, because it is obvious why that is not true. If we presume suicide, we are left with the fact that Maura is known to keep books in the car, even if she had no immediate use for them. Why should we presume that this book is special? That she wouldn't have left it in her car if she were reading it, like we know she did with her textbooks, if we presuppose that she killed herself.
This book is called Not Without Peril. It is not called Peril: A How to Guide. From the reviews, these are not glamorized stories about dying, but cautionary tales about hikers who did not take the necessary precautions to prevent their untimely deaths in the White Mountains. It seems that the book seeks to show that the White Mountains are not as safe as they seem (I think the title demonstrates this pretty effectively as well) and that hikers should take caution if they want to survive. Safety is apparently stressed, and stories of survivors are included. Though the book includes stories about death, the stories are included to show the reader how to prevent death, not attract it. It is more about survival than it is about death. It doesn't seem like most of the hikers in the book were suicidal. It seems like they died in accidents. Are we to suppose that Maura read a book about hiking accidents for ideas on how to kill herself? Why should we assume that the book's presence in her car is evidence of her plans to kill herself? You said yourself you think her troubles started on Thursday night. So are you confident that Maura didn't start reading the book before Thursday night? That leaves only a few days for Maura to have read this book. Also, if she owned the book before Thursday, when you claim her problems started, wouldn't this lend credence to the idea that contemplating suicide was not the reason that she owned this book? If she was going to kill herself, and the book is so significant to her plans, why didn't she take it with her? We know that she took other items with her. If we are to attach so much significance to this book as it relates to her apparently indisputable suicide, I think we should ask ourselves why she didn't take it with her.
I'm not picking and choosing any of Fred's statements. I'm saying he lied in a police interview about his missing daughter, more than once, and that fact is provable. This alone is alarming, and makes it an avenue worth pursuing. When Casey Anthony lied in a police interview about her missing daughter, it was an avenue worth pursuing. When Scott Peterson lied in an interview about his missing pregnant wife, it was an avenue worth pursuing.They didn't have to lie about everything for their stories to warrant suspicion. Why should a lie to the police be summarily dismissed in his case? Proven discrepancies in a story have always been a significant indicator of guilt. When a loved one is missing and likely dead, the seriousness of the situation amplifies the seriousness of the lie. Both Fred's refusal to give statements to other law enforcement agencies for two years and the presence of the two lawyers that accompanied him when he finally agreed should also be met with suspicion if this is true. We are being asked to excuse Fred Murray's lies to police on the grounds that he would do anything to find his daughter. I guess that would be anything to find her except set aside his dissatisfaction with the other law enforcement agencies for a few hours to provide them with information about the events leading up to her disappearance?
I'm not even suggesting that this potential guilty knowledge is relevant to her disappearance and probable death, only to the events on the night of the Hadley crash. I'm suggesting it's possible that Fred Murray was the driver of the Corolla. The stories about the party and Maura driving to her father's motel room have long been met with skepticism, as they should be. Your comments presume that these stories aren't questioned by law enforcement, when we have no way of knowing that. Your comments presume that Fred, Kate and Sara have never retracted those statements, when we have no way of knowing that. Are we to assume that if the police caught one of them lying or if one of them changed their statement they would have alerted the press? We do know that when recently offered the opportunity to reissue these statements, they all declined, as they have for many, many years now. How can we accept as given fact the idea that they never changed or retracted their statements to law enforcement? According to the Globe, one of them admitted withholding information, because "she didn't want to get Maura in trouble." Fred lied in his statements to police. How can we know for sure that either of them didn't later retract these statements? Why would the police alert us to that if they did? We do know that Fred and one of Maura's friends changed their stories once. We don't even know what information the friend was withholding.
The crash requires explanation beyond normal driving mistakes. That is why the cause of the crash is cited as operator inattention. We usually assume that Maura was drunk at the time of the Hadley crash, because her friends reported that she was drinking at the supposed party and because the crash itself suggests a drunk operator. You often cite Maura's alleged intoxication as evidence of her supposed mental deterioration. But Officer Ruddock found that she wasn't drunk, and didn't cite her for DUI. By assuming that Maura was drunk at the accident scene, we summarily discredit Officer Ruddock's ability to determine whether or not she had been drinking. Why should we throw away, without examining it, Officer Ruddock's professional opinion that she wasn't drunk? I didn't notice anywhere in the report that he even performed field sobriety tests, not that this necessarily means he didn't. But if he did perform the tests, she clearly passed them or reason suggests he would have arrested her for DUI. In all reasonable likelihood, Maura either passed a sobriety test or Officer Ruddock did not think it was necessary to even perform one. Why should we just dismiss Officer Ruddock's account of Maura's level of intoxication? He saw her, he saw the crash and he let her go. She either passed a sobriety test or he didn't feel the need to administer one. He is the person in the best position to judge how drunk Maura was at the scene of the crash, and he determined that she wasn't drunk. But instead we should believe Fred Murray, who we know lied to police, and her friends, at least one of whom we know withheld information. In examining the potential scenarios for this evening, the reports that Fred, Sara and Kate have offered suggest that Maura was drinking for several hours before this crash. Officer Ruddock's findings were that she was not driving drunk. These accounts tend to conflict. That is why we have been willing assume that Maura was drunk at this scene (that and the fact that the nature of the accident tends to suggest that the driver was impaired). This conflict potentially supports the possibilities that:
1. The accident was caused by a drunk driver. We usually just assume this is true when we consider Maura to be the driver of the Corolla.
2. Maura was not drunk at the scene. This was, at face value, Officer Ruddock's professional determination when he did not charge her with DUI.
Fred Murray has thrown mud on the good name of basically everyone who has crossed his path and he has indisputably lied about this case, on the record. Why should he be immune from our suspicions about something as common as asking a more sober driver to get behind the wheel after a DUI accident? This is a frequent occurrence, and plenty of family members, friends and significant others have tried to take responsibility for accidents caused by intoxicated drivers.
It has been argued that Fred wouldn't do this to Maura in light of the credit card fraud charges that she was facing and her deal with the courts. Why should we assume that he knew about this? He never told us about it. Isn't this usually what we consider to be the pressing matter that inspired her to drive to her father's motel room in the middle of the night? There is no evidence that he knew about these charges before the Corolla was crashed. In fact, we usually presume the contrary. If he were behind the wheel and didn't know about about Maura's fraud charges, and Maura was not drunk (which is what Officer Ruddock concluded), he could have easily assessed the situation as follows:
He was drunk and Maura was not. Maura would at most get cited for the accident (indeed, she was cited for driver inattention, which would probably wouldn't have been a serious legal issue if she hadn't been arrested for the credit card theft). Fred, on the other hand, would face serious consequences if he was driving drunk during this accident. Insurance likely would not have covered an accident that occurred as a result of a DUI, and there was $8000 worth of damage. Fred had a prior arrest for OUI in 1987, so his legal consequences would be more serious than for a first time offender. These legal consequences have the potential to jeopardize employment, and he could have felt his job was also at risk. He could have been staring down the face of an $8000 bill to repair his car, serious legal problems, and the loss of his job. As far as I know, Fred was financially responsible for at least some of Maura's school expenses, and she would have known this.
I don't see why we should immediately write this off. Fred lied about this night. This is proven fact. The excuse that has been given for his lies is that he knew Maura was suicidal and wanted to convince law enforcement that she was not. But his police statement about Maura makes her seem more likely to have been suicidal, not less. He is the one who describes to us how upset Maura was after the crash. Why would he do this if he wanted to make her look carefree and not suicidal? Why does he tell us that he thought Maura was lucky not to get a DUI, when Officer Ruddock either didn't find it necessary to perform sobriety tests or Maura passed them? Nothing in his statement would make Maura seem less upset about this accident. The whimpering, the this is the worst comment, the slumping into the dorm all make her appear more upset, not less. How can we just assume that Fred's lies are designed to make her seem less suicidal, when his whole statement makes her seem more so?
Fred lied to the police. He refused to meet with certain law enforcement agencies. He refuses to talk to journalists writing about the case. He told us over and over that what happened before the New Hampshire accident is not important. Several private detectives may have stopped working with him, to my recollection. Yet we just dismiss these events. "You know Fred Murray, he's just the kind of guy who can't get along with anybody, no matter how it might help find his daughter. Believe me, he would do anything to find her, it's just that, tragically, his personal grudges always get in the way. Sure he's told tons of lies in this case, and tried to change the trajectory of the investigation, but he has his reasons."
You have excused these lies by presuming to know Fred's motive for lying, specifically that he wanted to make it seem unlikely that she killed herself. But the factual record of Fred's statements refutes this idea. He offers us, in many ways, evidence that she was in a fragile mental state. I can't think of a single sentence in his statement that could possibly have been designed to make Maura look happier. In fact, his statement makes her look more despondent than we would have presumed without it, and in light of this, I see no reason to simply declare Fred's lies to be the byproduct of his desire for Maura to be seen as a happy woman who wouldn't have taken her own life. This excuse for lying is refuted by Fred's own words in this statement. If we don't blindly apply this unsubstantiated excuse to his statement to police, it is, at face-value, full of lies and holes. And we are just going to throw that knowledge in the garbage? Just accept excuses for his lies, excuses that he didn't even make himself, excuses that we create, in this forum, for him? You want us to "believe evidence and follow what is known," but you feed us excuses for Fred's lies that you created yourself, based on speculation that is clearly contradicted by his own words.
You claim Maura's relationship status could be upsetting her, and I agree. If that is the case, why must we believe that Thursday night couldn't have been about her boyfriend? You tell us that this is where her trouble started. Why couldn't her breakdown have been about the alleged trouble with her boyfriend, which you want us to believe is so serious that it implies suicide? Why couldn't Kathleen have been telling the truth about that? Why wouldn't Maura have a reason to call her boyfriend if they were in a fight and she wanted to resolve things? Why wouldn't she imply to her supervisor that her calls were about personal family issues if she needed to explain her cell phone use during her shift, which was against the rules? We know she used her phone during a time she was forbidden by her boss to do so. The phone records reflect this. I don't think we can eliminate the idea that Maura's breakdown was a regular fight with her boyfriend, and then cried to get out of trouble, alluding to personal family trouble while offering no real explanation. Her relationship may not have been as perfect as Billy's mother described, but that isn't evidence that she killed herself over it. Billy visited her often enough that we have no problem assuming he would buy a car in Northampton and drive it back to Oklahoma. He got emergency leave from his military base to come search for her. The necklace he gave her was found in her car. She isn't mad at him in the e-mail she sends him on the day she left. She just says she doesn't feel like talking to anyone, and she promises to call him later. She's going to kill herself over this relationship, and this is the last thing she has to say about it? Don't really feel like talking, call you later? It is also worth noting that when she went looking for an e-mail to print about trouble with her boyfriend, she didn't have a more recent one.
So here is the compelling evidence you offer that Maura went to the White Mountains to kill herself:
1. Maura's relationship was not necessarily as perfect as it may have seemed. She may have had an argument with her boyfriend on Thursday night. Even though she talked to him for seven minutes, and her sister for twenty. Isn't it usually suggested that the seven minute phone call seems too short to be the source of her breakdown? Don't we just usually assume, without evidence, that Kathleen told her something that upset her? Or that she could be upset because she ran over Vasi, even though the phone records suggest that her break was much earlier, during her twenty minute conversation with her sister? On her way to kill herself, she prints out an old e-mail from her boyfriend. This suggests excusing her absence, not rubbing salt in Billy's wounds after she is gone. We know they weren't fighting when she left. We know she had to print out an old e-mail, she didn't have a new one. She is supposedly suicidal over this relationship, but she leaves him an old e-mail instead of a personal note?
2. She packed her dorm room. This does not imply that she planned to killMa herself. It merely suggests that she thought there was a possibility she would not be returning to school. There are plenty of reasons this might have been true. She was missing clinicals, which she was not supposed to do. Her nursing program has strict ethics standards, and she potentially violated these with her credit card fraud. If she was going to be cited for inattentive driving, this should also be considered with regard to the ethics standards of the nursing department and why she might think she wouldn't be returning to school. The 2004 UMass academic calendar indicates that the last day to drop classes without substantial fees (End of Interchange Registration, also known as Add/Drop period) would have been February 10th (https://www.fivecolleges.edu/academics/academic_calendars/academic_calendar_03-04), and she could have done this online if it were her intent. The last day of add/drop also would have been the last day to move out of her dorm room without fees, and if her stuff wasn't packed and ready to go, she would have also faced a room block fee of several hundred dollars. She was also facing legal problems at the time she left the state. The packed room only means that she wasn't sure she would be returning to UMass.
3. She owned a book about a place she liked to go. This isn't evidence that she planned to killed herself. Even your own theory claims that Maura kept books in her car that she had no immediate plans for (textbooks).
4. "[F]red and family said so to the media." Well, I'm convinced. Fred also told the media it was a local dirtbag, but we're supposed to just assume there is no possibility that that is true.
And here is the compelling evidence that she was involved in the Vasi hit and run:
...... Just the sound of crickets.
On the presumed merit of these two theories, you want us to stop exploring every other option about Maura's disappearance? You want us to eliminate the possibility that somebody else killed her or that she died from exposure and just conclude that she obviously killed herself? This isn't what the police think. They have given lie detector tests, they have searched trailers for evidence, and in the transcripts of Fred's court case, they claimed to have at least one person who was a focal point in the investigation. We should just assume that the police are wrong to have any kind of doubt?
What is the argument against exploring other avenues? We should just doggedly pursue the same two tired theories, no matter where it leads us? No matter what evidence speaks to the contrary? You don't want us to pursue more than one avenue at a time? It's been years of this theory. If we should abandon any theories, shouldn't it be the two that we have been pursuing for years without any new insights?
I'm not willing to eliminate the possibility that somebody killed her, especially when law enforcement has made it clear that they have not eliminated that possibility. She might have killed herself, but that doesn't mean that we should be pursuing this theory to the exclusion of all others. None of the real investigators have eliminated exposure or murder as possibilities in Maura's case, yet you think this is the only idea we should discuss. Just because you like this theory doesn't mean that other theories are impossible.
I'm also not willing to waste any more mental energy trying to make the Vasi scenario work, especially when it is probable that her break was hours before the crash, during the twenty minute phone call. I'm absolutely willing to hear any new insights or evidence that people may be able to offer in support of this theory, and in fact, I want to.
I wouldn't expect you to "get on board" with any of the theories mentioned, or anybody else for that matter. I'm not "on board" with your contention that it's impossible that she was killed. I'm sick of pursuing this dead end Vasi angle too. Even Vasi's sick of it.
I'm also sick of answering for statements that nobody made, like that the police know Maura is alive and are hiding that from us. Or that Kate and Sara are going to be descended upon by a SWAT team. You offered these statements yourself, and then argued against them, insinuating that somebody else had suggested them. It's pretty easy for you to argue against statements that are made by you, wouldn't you agree?
False pretenses? You told us that law enforcement hasn't been actively investigating this case, a statement rooted in personal knowledge that you don't have. Maura's case is being investigated by the Cold Case Unit of the New Hampshire Department of Justice. The sole job of a Cold Case Unit is to actively investigate these cases. It's not a room full of people sitting around waiting for a phone that never rings. They are actively investigating this case because that is the purpose of this unit. It's not a glorified tip-line, as you seem to represent.
I don't expect you to jump on board with any theory presented here. You made it perfectly clear that you don't like to pursue multiple avenues, which is pretty questionable investigative technique even for an internet message board. A single-minded pursuit of one theory is something that law enforcement officers both avoid and deny, because it speaks to bias. It speaks to a lack of objectivity. It speaks to a person who has already made up his mind.
