scoops,
Thank you vey much for posting part of that article. You have contributed a lot of valuable info to this case.
Knowing MM liked The Onion and Bottle Rocket makes me like her quite a bit more. I feel like I know her better now. I also feel like she has good taste in comedy
scoops, would you mind posting the article in full? I couldn't find a shade of it -- hard to find indeed. If you post it I can add it to the archive (the BitTorrent Sync folder).
Also, do many people here use Dropbox? I can create a shared Dropbox folder instead.
Here is the full article.
I speculate that this article is hard to find because family (as I understand it) had a major problem with a quote one of Maura's friends said in the article about Maura being flirtatious when drinking. But that is just a guess on my part.
Article done one month after Maura went missing by The Patriot Ledger in Quincy Mass.
By JOE McGEE
The Patriot Ledger
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AMHERST - Kate Markopoulos considers herself one of Maura Murray's closest friends and yet knows she had a mysterious side.
I really didn't know (everything) about her, so now I don't find it so hard to believe Murray's disappearance from the University of Massachusetts, Markopoulos said.
She is struggling these days to figure out why Murray packed up her dormitory room a month ago today and took off for New Hampshire.
Murray, a Hanson native, crashed on Route 112 in Haverhill, N.H., that Monday night and hasn't been seen or heard from since. Theories include that she is hiding out, was kidnapped, or wandered away disoriented and perished in the rugged, snowy woods.
But what made her leave campus in the first place?
She took care of stuff on her own. That's Maura,'' said Markopoulos, a senior history major from upstate New York who ran track with Murray for a year.
Murray, an excellent student and athlete at Whitman-Hanson Regional High School, enjoyed challenges like hiking in the White Mountains. When she scored 1420 of a possible 1600 on her SATs, everyone knew she was headed for big things.
After graduating in 2000, she was accepted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where her older sister was a cadet.
She had excellent marks and was a great runner,'' her boyfriend, Army Lt. Bill Rausch, said.
Rausch met Maura through Julie Murray, his classmate at West Point.
She was a top student, in great shape and, of course, extremely beautiful,'' Rausch said.
For Murray, life appeared good at West Point.
Things change at West Point.
Then one day things changed. Military life wasn't for Maura, after all.
Rausch said West Point does that to people. His class started with 1,200 and finished with 900.
That's the great thing about West Point. It forces you to grow up quick and figure out exactly what you want,'' he said.
To Murray's father, Fred Murray of Weymouth, it was a surprise but not a total shock that she wanted to pursue a nursing degree at UMass. He graduated from the school and Maura's mother, Laurie, is a nurse.
The decision to leave West Point after her freshman year wasn't a rash one, Rausch said. The couple researched the transfer and it was a smooth transition.
The couple figured that making new friends at UMass would be hard for Murray. After all, she would be entering her sophomore year and social cliques were already set.
One day, UMass track coach Julie LaFreniere introduced Murray to her teammates. Markopoulos remembered it as the typical, awkward group introduction.
At first, she noticed Murray was quiet and at times elusive.''
Planning marriage, starting career
Their birthdays are 11 days apart. Their friendship blossomed last year when they turned 21. Then a new Murray came out - someone who could be somewhat flirtatious'' when she drank.
All along, however, she was focused on settling down with Rausch and starting a career, said Markopoulos. She held two jobs so she could fly to Oklahoma, where Rausch is stationed at Fort Sill. She planned to move there after graduation.
When Rausch visited Amherst during vacations, they'd do what many couples do on the weekends: hiking in the mountains, shopping for antiques and visiting book stores in Western Massachusetts.
Basically, any time together was time well spent,'' Rausch said. Their life together was beginning to take shape.
We really considered ourselves engaged. We actually were looking for rings over Christmas break,'' Rausch said.
On the afternoon of Feb. 9, Murray acted like she wanted to drop everything she worked hard for in life. She packed up her belongings in her room on the fourth floor of the John F. Kennedy residence hall, including wall decorations. She left messages for professors and bosses, lying about a death in the family. Then she loaded her Saturn sedan, a car that friends said she hadn't started in weeks, and took off.
Her dorm mates didn't even notice she was gone.
I didn't even know she lived here,'' said Kelli Martinson, a freshman from Hull who lived five doors down from Murray.
Can't figure out what went wrong
Even after four weeks, E-mails continue to go back and forth between friends from Hanson and friends at UMass, trying to figure out what went wrong. Nobody has been able to offer frustrated investigators much about their friend's background.
Katie Jones, Murray's childhood friend and a student at Western New England College in Springfield, said although they've lived a few miles apart, they never visited each other at school.
She was a very secretive person,'' Jones said.
She never even told us about transferring to UMass until after it happened. Sometimes we think there might be more to that story than we know,'' she said.
Sophomore Sara Alfieri is just as puzzled. She and Murray met while working at art galleries on campus, drawn to each other because of their sarcastic attitudes and love of things ironic.
Kept biggest problems to herself
She was so funny. She loved the web site The Onion. Her favorite movie is Bottle Rocket, Alfieri said.
Despite being so close, Murray never talked about her friends at home, a group of seven girls at Whitman-Hanson who Jones said were inseparable.
Murray kept even her biggest problems to herself. She didn't say a word to Alfieri about getting into an accident in her father's car the day before she left Amherst. The accident happened only an hour after they were hanging out in Alfieri's dorm.
Alfieri said Markopoulos, Murray and a few friends were drinking into the late-night hours of Feb. 8. Fred Murray was staying in a hotel on Route 9 that weekend. He was in town to help his daughter find a new car.
Father and daughter ate dinner at the Amherst Brewing Co., a popular watering hole, that night. Then Markopoulos showed up for a drink. After about an hour, they left, the girls dropped Fred Murray at his hotel, and headed to Alfieri's dorm.
Everyone's left wondering
At about 1 a.m., Alfieri said she was passed out from drinking. Markopoulos was still up with Murray and they were talking about going home at about 2:30 a.m. But Murray wanted to go to her father's hotel, according to Markopoulos.
I told her just to go back to her room and meet him in the morning, but she wouldn't listen,'' she said.
About an hour later, Murray cracked up her father's Toyota Corolla on Route 9. Alfieri found out the next week from news reports about her friend's disappearance.
I thought that was so weird. I talked to her that day and she didn't even say anything,'' said Alfieri
Now everybody is wondering about what they don't know about Maura Murray. If she can't figure it out after three years of friendship, Markopoulos said nobody might ever know.
