NH NH - Maura Murray, 21, Haverhill, 9 Feb 2004 - #12

[carpanthers]

It wasn't her credit card. It was her friends credit card who lived on a different floor. She then went downstairs where the police were.

"I then asked (name redacted) how she remembered the number, (name redacted) just stood quietly without speaking for a moment looking at the floor. After a few moments I asked her to give me the receipt that she had or whatever she used to remember the number. (Name redacted) then went to the desk in her room and retrieved a note card with the credit card number on it. (Name redacted) handed me the card, I looked it over and asked what the other numbers on the card were she stated that the(sp?) were friends phone numbers. I noted that written next to the credit card number on the note card was room (number redacted).

I then walked down the hallway of Kennedy Dorm to room (number redacted) and knocked on the door. I was greeted by the resident of the room (name redacted). I asked (name redacted) if she knew her neighbor (name redacted) down the hall she stated that she did not. I asked (name redacted) if she had noticed any unusual charges on her credit card statement. (Name redacted) stated that she had not had any. (Name redacted) then stated that her friend (name redacted) who lives in the same building had charges on her account. I asked her if she could call her friend for me”

Patrolman Pinkham received this index card from Maura, and on the index card was a credit card number with a dorm room number written next to it. He goes down the hall and knocks on the door of this dorm room.

He asks the occupant of the room if she has noticed any unusual charges. She says she has not, but her friend who also lived in Kennedy had charges on her account. Patrolman Pinkham asks her to call her friend and ask her to come down to the room.

This means the owner of the card Maura used that night is not the occupant of the dorm room that Patrolman Pinkham visited. The owner of the card notified her bank, who filed a claim for her, and then she went to the police station to file a report. The occupant of the dorm room had not noticed any unusual charges.

But this dorm room number was written by Maura on the notecard with the credit card number. If the occupant of this dorm room is not the owner of the credit card Maura is known to have used, why did Maura write this number on the index card? The occupant said she did not know Maura.

So why would she write the number of a stranger’s dorm room on an index card with somebody else’s credit card number on it? Doesn’t this make it more likely that the other numbers were credit card numbers and not phone numbers?

If the police didn’t think the other numbers were credit card numbers, why did Patrolman Pinkham knock on the door of the dorm room?

Police had already spoken to the owner of the card, and presumably knew her address. Patrolman Pinkham should know that the girl in the dorm room is not the owner of the card, but he still wants to talk to her. Why?

ETA The friend didn't just happen to be in the hall either, she was called on the phone, so this is still somewhat strange.

 

[carpanthers]

So Anne Marie is the girl who was called downstairs and she is the girl who originally reported her card stolen? Or are these two different stolen cards?

 

[Ricochet]

So Anne Marie is the girl who was called downstairs and she is the girl who originally reported her card stolen? Or are these two different stolen cards?

The officer asked her to call "Ann Marie" to see if she would come to her dorm. She did, and a few moments later she was downstairs.

Yes, "Ann Marie" was the girl called downstairs and she would of been the one who would of filed the police report.

We can't see any names in the report because they've all been redacted, but what we do know is Maura produced a note card, on the note card was a dorm # on the same floor as Maura, the police went to that dorm # written on the note card that Maura produced, the person who answered the dorm didn't know Maura, she didn't notice any unusual charges on her credit card, but her friend who also lived in Kennedy had unauthorized (officer uses the word unusual charges) charges on her credit card, she calls her friend, she comes down stairs and states she often orders food to room (? the way it's worded I'd infer her friends room), she states she throws the receipt in the trash with the discarded food, there's a trash room nearby, the police will be in further contact with the person who ordered the food and stated she threw the discarded food with the receipt in the trash room nearby and there actually is a trash room nearby. I think it's HIGHLY unlikely it could be anyone else but the girl upstairs who filed the police report.

 

[Ricochet]

I think what's also relevant is Maura states if she didn't get the credit card number from the Pinochio's receipt it would've been the Domino's receipt. The law to truncate credit card numbers was not passed until December 03 and business will older equipment had until December 06 to comply with the law and businesses with newer equipment had until December 04. Domino's is a large nationwide chain and I doubt they were truncating credit cards by December 03, but I emailed Domino's yesterday and asked if there was a way they could tell me when they began to truncate credit cards. Hopefully they'll respond and be able to tell me this, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

 

[carpanthers]

The officer asked her to call "Ann Marie" to see if she would come to her dorm. She did, and a few moments later she was downstairs.

Yes, "Ann Marie" was the girl called downstairs and she would of been the one who would of filed the police report.

We can't see any names in the report because they've all been redacted, but what we do know is Maura produced a note card, on the note card was a dorm # on the same floor as Maura, the police went to that dorm # written on the note card that Maura produced, the person who answered the dorm didn't know Maura, she didn't notice any unusual charges on her credit card, but her friend who also lived in Kennedy had unauthorized (officer uses the word unusual charges) charges on her credit card, she calls her friend, she comes down stairs and states she often orders food to room (? the way it's worded I'd infer her friends room), she states she throws the receipt in the trash with the discarded food, there's a trash room nearby, the police will be in further contact with the person who ordered the food and stated she threw the discarded food with the receipt in the trash room nearby and there actually is a trash room nearby. I think it's HIGHLY unlikely it could be anyone else but the girl upstairs who filed the police report.

I agree that if the girls were friends, the one who lived upstairs would have occasion to come downstairs to visit and perhaps the two of them would order food.

But why is it unlikely that these could be two different girls? I don't see anything in the report that suggests they are the same girl.

She does state that she throws the receipt in the trash, but this isn't information that she offers on her own. It is in response to a question by the officer, who specifically asks her what she does with her delivery receipts. He only asks this because Maura told him that she got this information from receipts. The officer knew her first statement about the Pinocchio's receipt was untruthful, so I don't see why he would take for granted that Maura obtained the numbers in this way. I think it is just as likely that the officer is trying to eliminate the possibility that Maura obtained the numbers from discarded receipts. If the girl had said that she keeps all her receipts, the officer would have been able to prove that Maura found this number (or these numbers) in some other way.

 

[carpanthers]

I think what's also relevant is Maura states if she didn't get the credit card number from the Pinochio's receipt it would've been the Domino's receipt. The law to truncate credit card numbers was not passed until December 03 and business will older equipment had until December 06 to comply with the law and businesses with newer equipment had until December 04. Domino's is a large nationwide chain and I doubt they were truncating credit cards by December 03, but I emailed Domino's yesterday and asked if there was a way they could tell me when they began to truncate credit cards. Hopefully they'll respond and be able to tell me this, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

The first thing she says is that she got the credit card number off the Pinochio's receipt. She doesn't mention Domino's until the officer confirms that the number is not on the receipt.

Maura made plenty of untrue statements, so I'm not willing to take her word on this one.

The date of the law makes it possible for her to have obtained the numbers off the receipts, but I don't see how that makes it probable. How do we know they weren't already truncating? There are other motivations for a business to truncate credit card numbers; perhaps customers had already expressed dissatisfaction. We don't even know if they ever listed complete numbers.

Even if they did, this doesn't mean Maura was telling the truth.

I actually did the same thing on Sunday (emailing Domino's). They are going to think it's a petition.

 

[leilarose68]

Have people really looked into how implausible/plausible it is that a fairly high-profile missing person could go off the grid for a good decade? I just find it very unlikely that a young middle-class girl, who was in deep distress with a lot of mental health issues, could pull off something so elaborate with no concrete signs that this was what she was planning. I find it very hard to believe that she wouldn't have contacted her sisters, whom she loved. If she did, would they really not have squealed for so long?

Sorry. I just think it's absurd that so many people believe that she's been living a new life for the past 10 years. A tremendous amt of money has been spent looking for her over the years, and if there was something fishy going on, she would have been found.

 

[gnomony]

Have people really looked into how implausible/plausible it is that a fairly high-profile missing person could go off the grid for a good decade? I just find it very unlikely that a young middle-class girl, who was in deep distress with a lot of mental health issues, could pull off something so elaborate with no concrete signs that this was what she was planning. I find it very hard to believe that she wouldn't have contacted her sisters, whom she loved. If she did, would they really not have squealed for so long?

Sorry. I just think it's absurd that so many people believe that she's been living a new life for the past 10 years. A tremendous amt of money has been spent looking for her over the years, and if there was something fishy going on, she would have been found.

Dropping out of sight is easier than you might think. I spent several years working for cash as a handyman in Key West, Florida. With a few rare exceptions, no one knew my last name (and zero people would have known had I wanted it that way). There was no planning involved -- it just happened. Most of the people I knew went by nicknames and I assumed that many of them had left unsatisfactory lives behind them. No one cared. No one asked. As long as I didn't get arrested, I could have stayed off the radar forever. (I never had a motor vehicle -- all I needed was a bicycle.) I don't have any strong opinion about what happened to MM, but I do know that dropping out of sight is possible.

 

[Fireweed]

Have people really looked into how implausible/plausible it is that a fairly high-profile missing person could go off the grid for a good decade? I just find it very unlikely that a young middle-class girl, who was in deep distress with a lot of mental health issues, could pull off something so elaborate with no concrete signs that this was what she was planning. I find it very hard to believe that she wouldn't have contacted her sisters, whom she loved. If she did, would they really not have squealed for so long?

Sorry. I just think it's absurd that so many people believe that she's been living a new life for the past 10 years. A tremendous amt of money has been spent looking for her over the years, and if there was something fishy going on, she would have been found.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying. The truth is that 99.9999% of people in the world, no matter what they are going through, do not just take off and start a new life. Indeed it is a very unusual thing to do. However, we actually have a few case studies of people who were located after many years away. They did not contact their family, even though the entire time they were missing their families insisted that they would never do that. I can think of two cases off the top of my head where women with minor children disappeared. Again, everyone was absolutely convinced that they would never voluntarily leave their children. But they did.

What were their problems? What was so horrible that they simply had to leave all their friends in family living the nightmare of not knowing what happened to them? Well, Brandi Stahr had racked up quite a lot of credit card debt and was doing poorly in school Additionally, her mother did not like the guy she was dating (I think she was going through something else in that area that I will not discuss on the board but which you can PM me about). Essentially she had issues that many a college student has been through. The reasonable solution to her problem was to get a job and pay off her debts, and maybe get some therapy on how to deal with an overbearing and unreasonable mother. But she just left one day and started a new life somewhere. Even though her case was widely publicized, she worked at the same place for seven years before she was discovered. Imagine if she had moved every two years or so? Would she still be a missing person?

Another good example is Brenda Heist. She was going through a divorce and she had just been declined for housing assistance. I am sure she was going through a very hard time, but I bet there is at least one person on this board here tonight who went through a divorce and found themselves in difficult financial times.

It just so happens that people who pull this off for a long period of time were not geniuses, they did not plan it out, they did not have "major" problems, and their families all insisted that if they were alive, they would have contacted them. They also were sort of in a limbo state between being "on" the grid and being "off" the grid. It also turns out that people really do not recognize people they have never met before. Human recognition of another human does not work that way. You can see a photo, but to really recognize someone, you had to have met them before. Also, go to work tomorrow and ask three random colleagues about Maura Murray. They probably have either never heard of her or only barely know what you are talking about. There is a selection bias on this board; we find her case interesting, but most people in the world have no idea who she is.

 

[gnomony]

Although Key West is a tourist town, I stayed away from most of the tourist traps and only once did I run into someone I knew "from the mainland" -- a former lover who also had dropped out of sight. She was living with her current partner on a boat and no one really knew who she was, either. Not only is this sort of thing possible without planning, but the new life can develop incrementally, so that someone who is just taking an impulsive "time out" from their unsatisfactory lives suddenly realizes, after a few years, that the time out has become their new life and their old self is, in effect, dead. (Granted, I didn't have a thousand people on the internet speculating on what happened to me -- but I'm also not sure that many people in Key West would care to look for someone who disappeared up north.)

 

[Fireweed]

it's really not all that hard to live off the grid. I grew up on a hippie commune and people were constantly drifting in and out of there. If you're willing to live frugally then you can pick up odd jobs and manage. I am also not entirely convinced that a person necessarily needs to live off the grid in order to disappear. I think it is entirely possible to not be found even if you're no longer actively hiding.

 

[BillNH]

Have people really looked into how implausible/plausible it is that a fairly high-profile missing person could go off the grid for a good decade? I just find it very unlikely that a young middle-class girl, who was in deep distress with a lot of mental health issues, could pull off something so elaborate with no concrete signs that this was what she was planning. I find it very hard to believe that she wouldn't have contacted her sisters, whom she loved. If she did, would they really not have squealed for so long?

Sorry. I just think it's absurd that so many people believe that she's been living a new life for the past 10 years. A tremendous amt of money has been spent looking for her over the years, and if there was something fishy going on, she would have been found.

We don't know that she "loved her sisters". We don't know that she loved her father. Or her brother, mother, boyfriend or friends. All we know is what each of those people or their spokesperson has told us from the beginning, after Maura disappeared and was not able to speak for herself. I have not seen any proof that she loved any of them and absolutely nothing that would lead me to believe she wouldn't just disappear without contacting one of them. I don't just take it for granted that she loved them and would contact them if she could. Obviously this is not a normal situation so why would we believe that her family life was normal? She may have despised each and every one of them and would go to the ends of the earth to have them out of her life. If that were the case here, it suddenly does not seem so odd that she has not been seen or heard of in 11 years. You may not want to believe it, but it happens, and it could have been the motivation for leaving in the first place or at the very least, made it easier to leave. I'm not sold on the starting a new life idea, but her alleged love of her family is definitely not a valid or provable reason against it, in my opinion.

 

[Fireweed]

I was always struck by Kathleen manner in the news reports right after the crash. Her message to Maura had the unders tones of someone implying that they promise to be nice if Maura would just come.back

 

[JamesRenner]

I thought the same thing. Good call.

 

[ZooSleuth]

it's really not all that hard to live off the grid. I grew up on a hippie commune and people were constantly drifting in and out of there. If you're willing to live frugally then you can pick up odd jobs and manage. I am also not entirely convinced that a person necessarily needs to live off the grid in order to disappear. I think it is entirely possible to not be found even if you're no longer actively hiding.

It's not impossible, but I wouldn't say it's not hard. You can never have a bank account. You have to pay for everything with cash. You have to have a job that will only pay you in cash. You can never have a driver's license. You can never have health insurance. The list goes on and on. I'm not sure when you grew up but in 2015 it's much more difficult to do than it used to be.

 

[Fireweed]

It's not impossible, but I wouldn't say it's not hard. You can never have a bank account. You have to pay for everything with cash. You have to have a job that will only pay you in cash. You can never have a driver's license. You can never have health insurance. The list goes on and on. I'm not sure when you grew up but in 2015 it's much more difficult to do than it used to be.

yet millions of illegal immigrants live like this every.single day.

 

[carpanthers]

Domino's Pizza:

So Domino's is amazing and they actually responded to my email inquiry. Here is their response about truncated credit card numbers:

Dear (Withheld for Privacy),

My name is Jamie Cotter. I am currently the General Manager of Domino's Pizza in Hadley Ma. I am writing in regards to the inquiry you made about credit card receipts. Even though I have only been employed at this location for 10 years, I know that the full 16 numbers of a credit card has never been included on Domino's receipts. I was a student at UMASS when Maura went missing. I also ordered Domino's at that time, and never saw more than the last 4 didgits of my card number. I hope this clears up any questions you have about our policies. If you have any further questions, feel free to reply to this e-mail.

Sincerely,
Jamie Cotter
General Manager
Domino's Pizza of Hadley Ma.

So Maura got the credit card numbers somewhere else.

Thanks so much to Jamie and Domino's for going out of their way to answer this question.

 

[Fireweed]

Thank you Carpanthers. I do recall there was a time when sometimes all digits were printed on a receipt from time to time. I know first-hand that this definitely used to happen. I would bet that a local, smaller place might still have had the old system of printing the whole number but that Domino's would have been more careful.

I still think that if Maura had several numbers written on a card that she very easily could have had another "source" for her numbers.

 

[Fireweed]

I was just thinking of something, namely that Maura's sister Kathleen reassured Maura that she was not in any sort of trouble. The implication was that Maura should not have to worry about a DUI, but I wonder if something else was going on. Perhaps were they implying that Maura should not worry about having "tricked" her father into giving her $4,000?

 

[carpanthers]

I was just thinking of something, namely that Maura's sister Kathleen reassured Maura that she was not in any sort of trouble. The implication was that Maura should not have to worry about a DUI, but I wonder if something else was going on. Perhaps were they implying that Maura should not worry about having "tricked" her father into giving her $4,000?

I think this is certainly a possibility. It seems like Maura had extra money when she was inquiring about renting the condo in Bartlett. Her father offers the information about the $4000 apropos of nothing, and seems to think it is significant even though nobody asked him a question about it. The car never materializes, and Kate didn't remember them talking about looking for a car. Bringing cash to go shopping for a car is strange. I'm sure it has been done before, but I do not think this is the normal way to purchase a car.

I wonder if Kathleen might have been trying to assure the public, rather than Maura herself, that Maura was not in trouble.