I have some thoughts that may help regarding the possibility, in my mind high probability, that she did indeed go into the woods and is somewhere up in that vast wilderness.
A couple points that are very important to remember, and I will offer some facts that support my next sentence. A scent dog, any scent dog, is a very useful tool only when the dog is able to track the scent you want tracked. HOWEVER in scenarios where the dog does not track the scent you want you can not then draw a conclusion that the scent was not present or that the dog tracked the correct scent.
Unfortunately we are not able to question the dog about what scent did they track, we just know that they tracked a scent. A scent dog is a great example of a 'positive test' tool, meaning when they track the correct scent you can say they have a 100% success rate. However they are a terrible example of a 'negative test' tool in that because they didn't track a scent, or the scent you wanted them to track, you can not then infer that there was no scent there, or that they tracked the correct scent and that scent trail ended at the intersection. You can not ask the dog, "how certain are you that the scent you tracked down the road was absolutely that of Maura Murray?"
How do you know it wasn't Cecil Smith? Or maybe one of the EMT guys? Or a deer? Or a squirrel? We don't know, and that is why a dog is not a reliable tool to prove a negative result.
A few more points regarding the dog track.
* If I recall the accident was around 8pm on February 9. The first dog track did not take place until 8AM on the 11th, so you are talking about 36 hours of time before the dog track was attempted. Also consider that the track was run ON a paved roadway where cars had been driving by for those 36 hours. The weather conditions were at or below freezing during this time frame. That is a long time and fairly poor conditions for a scent to be tracked. ***Remember this time and conditions for a point to be made later in this post***
* Also consider that there does not appear to be any certainty that Maura wore the gloves that the dog obtained the scent from. If I recall Fred had said that the gloves were new and that he could not confirm that Maura had ever worn them. Also consider that the car had been moved and it's contents had been inventoried after the accident, so there is a possibility that the gloves may have been handled by someone other than and more recently than Maura.
Now back to the dog track and subsequent search. In an ideal world we would like to be able to say that because the dog or dogs did not pick up a scent or pick up the correct scent then therefore Maura could not have walked from the scene and into the woods.
It would be nice to draw that conclusion and it seems as if many (most?) people to include the TV show with Maggie and Art have done so. In fact at the end of one of the episodes Art and Maggie did just that, they said that because the little dog (and pony) demonstration they did gave these results, then therefore every other possible result must be the same and therefore Maura did not or could not have left the scene on her own and either walked down the roadway some distance or into the woods on her own.
I believe this is a HUGE mistake and it eliminates what to me is the most obvious and most likely scenario, which is that Maura continued on the path and with the same pattern of behavior she had been demonstrating for at least the last several days if not longer.
Let's talk about the search dog demonstration they did on the TV show. Although it was very neat and convincing to most people who have never actually been on a search and rescue and have never seen a dog actually track, it was conducted in ideal circumstances with scenarios that most dogs are trained to. The dog track from the accident site to the intersection was 36 hours after the accident, it appears as if the demo with Maggie was done within an hour or so, that is a big difference.
Same thing with the cadaver dog demonstration, it looks good when demo'd however real world experience has shown that again, a dog is a great tool when they get a positive result, but when they don't get a hit it does not mean that you can infer there is no hit or track to be had. More on this later.
Now I know that much weight is given to the 2 experts who provided the search dogs and conducted the demonstration, and I am sure that they are absolute professionals and have great confidence in the skills of their dogs, however seriously do you expect they would say otherwise? They make a living off of training and selling their dogs, it does not surprise me that they would voice confidence in their dogs abilities.
Ok so let's talk reality for a minute. In the real world dogs sometimes track the right target and sometimes they don't. Now I have seen dogs do amazing things over the years, track a suspect through the woods and even through a river to get to the target, when they are on they are amazing. However I have also seen a dog run a track from an absolute known location, with an absolute known scent provider (ie: the person's hat or shirt) and run that track far from where the person actually is. It is really hit or miss, it's like sex panther cologne, 70% of the time it works every time.
You want proof? Let's go with the absolute awful case of Patrik McCarthy just 8 months later. Patrik was an 11 year old boy who walked (or ran) away from condos in Lincoln NH and was found dead 4 days later a few miles away. As awful as this case is my point is that the boy went missing sometime late afternoon from a known location. There were several dog searches attempted from that known location using a known scent article. I am not familiar with the exact details of the dog tracks but suffice to say that even when attempted within several hours of when the boy went missing, no dog was able to successfully track him despite what may be considered very favorable circumstances. If the dog had been able to track it is very likely or almost certain that Patrik would be alive today. I was a part of this case from the very beginning and the extent of the search effort to find Patrik was absolutely overwhelming, yet despite that we didn't find him until almost 5 days later and it was too late.
Also consider the case of Beth Upton, an 85 year old woman who walked away from her home in Waterville Valley on September 10 2010. Within hours a full scale search was launched to find her, though sadly she was not found until nearly 2 months later. Here is some info on this case.
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...H-Beth-Upton-85-Waterville-Valley-7-Sept-2010
Again, the search for Beth began within hours of her going missing, there were multiple dog tracks attempted, and the conditions were much more favorable than was for Maura. Despite this, and also despite an absolute massive search conducted in a much smaller, more known area, they were unable to track or find Beth for almost 2 months. Again, there were search dogs used in this search, many dogs to include bloodhounds.
There were also multiple searches conducted in the days and weeks after Beth went missing using the same search dogs and cadaver dogs, however unfortunately Mrs. Upton was not found alive, nor was her body found using a cadaver dog.
Consider these 2 cases where search dogs were unable to track the missing person despite both having much better circumstances than was with Maura and the track was attempted much sooner than was with Maura, the difference between several hours in both cases and 36 hours with Maura.
In neither case was the body found using a cadaver dog.
In both cases the missing person was within a mile or 2 of where they went missing. Patrik was an 11 year frightened old boy and Beth was an elderly 85 year old woman, whereas Maura was a 21year old athlete, competitive runner, and accomplished hiker. It stands to reason that Maura was much more capable (and motivated) of putting distance between herself and the accident site than an 11 year old boy or an 85 year old woman.
Now I can think of many other cases where a dog track did not accomplish a successful result, however I provide these 2 cases because they are well known, easy to research, and were both in the same general area as where Maura went missing. In the case of Patrik McCarthy I can recall seeing the same Troopers at both searches (Maura's) as they were 8 months apart and both in Grafton County, if I recall there were several K9 units in Troop F as well as at least one bloodhound on scene. With Beth Upton I was not in the area at that time however I am familiar with the search that was conducted, it was massive.
So in summary, when people draw the conclusion that Maura could not be somewhere up in those mountains based on the dog tracks, or lack thereof, or the searches that were conducted, consider the cases I provided above. In both cases the dog was unable to track the missing person, in both cases the missing person was not found until days or months later despite being in fairly close proximity to where they went missing, and in both cases the searches that were conducted were much larger and more timely than was with Maura. Also in both cases there did not appear to be the same scenario where the person (Maura) who went missing had given significant indicators that they did not want to be found, at least not immediately, as was evidenced by her refusing help from the bus driver.
Also consider the sheer size of the area that Maura could have accessed if she wanted to put as much distance between herself and the accident site. If you look at a map, the area South of the accident site is just huge, it is also dense and very hard to access. Many people who have never been a part of a large wilderness search routinely make the comment that “Maura couldn’t be in the woods, someone would have found her body by now….” I can see how this would make sense to people who have never been in such a large, dense forest area, however that is simply not reality.
Consider that Beth Upton went missing in Waterville Valley, and area that is very confined being a valley, and she was not found (by accident) until almost 2 months after she went missing, despite the largest search I have ever seen, at least since Patrik McCarthy.
Also consider that in 1996 a Leer Jet crashed in similar, but less expansive, forest and was not found for 3 years, despite there being a massive search for the crash site. Obviously a Leer Jet and it's crash site, is much larger than a human, also much less likely to decompose. And it took 3 years to find, again by accident. Source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_New_Hampshire_Learjet_crash
So could a 21 year old distance runner, who was obviously suffering from some level of stress and emotional distress, who had just been involved in her second car accident in as many weeks, while drinking and having alcohol in the car, have gotten far enough from the crash site and into the woods to complete her “Squaw walk”? I think so.
She has alcohol, sleeping pills, stress, distress, and a flight mentality at the time of the accident. What was Fred’s first comment to Cecil Smith? The squaw walk. That my fellow sleuths is most likely what happened, in my opinion of course.
