TRUE CRIME ADDICT-James Renner

in rural New Hampshire in two thousand and four. Over the course of his investigation, he uncovers numerous important and in shocking new clues about what may have happened to Mora, but also finds himself in increasingly dangerous situations with little regard for his own well being. As his quest to find Mora deepens, the case starts taking a toll on his personal life which begins to spiral out of control.

The result is an absorbing dual investigation of the complicated story of the all American girl who went missing and James's own equally complicated true crime addiction. James Renner's True Crime Addict is the story of his spellbinding investigation of the missing person's case of Maura Murray, which has taken on a life of its own for armchair saluths across the web. In the spirit of David Fincher's Zodiac. It is a fascinating look at a case that has eluded

authorities and one's man's obsessive quest for answers. The book that we're featuring this evening is True Crime Addict, How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Moura Murray, with my special guest, journalist and author James Renner. Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview. James Renner, Hi, there, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Welcome to the program. James. Thank you very much.

look at the cold case of Amy Nahalovic. Now, Amy was ten years old when she was abducted across the street from the Bay Village Police Department and Day Village is a western suburb of Cleveland, very affluent. It's where you know a lot of the FBI agents raised their own families. Now, this little girl was abducted broad daylight on a Friday afternoon in late October October twenty seventh, nineteen eighty nine. Like I said, right across from the

police station, there's a little shopping plaza there. And Amy and I are actually the same age. We were both born in nineteen seventy eight, and at the time she was in fifth grade, I was in sixth grade and my mother lived in Rocky River, which was one town over. So this case had a huge impact on me as a kid. And I remember seeing her missing posters all over every telephone pool around Cleveland in nineteen eighty nine.

And when I saw that picture of the first that struck me as oh, she's you know, she's really cute. You know, if she was in my sixth grade class, i'd be passing notes to her, you know, behind this client's back right. And you know, so I, for many reasons,

I developed this, uh, this odd obsession. This even back then, when I was eleven years old, I would get on my bike and I would ride to this mall it's called Westgate Mall, kind of near Bay Dog, and I figured this was the place where the most people were at at any given time, and I would look for any in the crowds, thinking, well, maybe whoever, Sofia brought her back, or maybe she got away, and you know this is where she would go, and of course when

they found their body a couple months later, you know, I would still continue to go there looking for her, the face of her abductor in the crowds. And so it was a very weird hobby for an eleven year old to have, right and as an adult now looking back at that, you know, I and through the course of writing this book on Laura Murray, this true crime addict, I had to ask myself, well, why why did I gravitate towards that eleven years old? Why was I trying

to find her killure? And you know, I kind of explored that a little bit as I'm exploring the disappearance of Laing early in the book. So the book is very personal, it's very memoir at the same time, it's very much about the disappearance of Laura Murray and where that case stands today.

years after the crime. What was the state of the Murray family itself in terms of their efforts to have a website or something dedicated to the still the slim hope that she was alive, and well, so what was the state at that time seven years later, and what did you learn from from, say, the websites at that time, what did you sort of your general knowledge over and beyond based on some of the stuff that's been posted by the family at that time or during that time.

great things. And she disappeared, you know, and in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Now the family were no longer active researching for her. You know, they had done these searches back in two thousand and four after she went missing. So you know, the state of the case was very it was very quiet. There's an official family web page run by somebody that you know a kind of a woman who's not blood related, but had married

into the Murray family. She had never met Maura, but she had That's not so uncommon, you know, a lot of times, you know, families need a little bit of a separation between the public and what's going on behind the scenes. So it made sense that she was running the official page. But that was really it. And the reason I was attracted to the More Murray mystery was I was looking for a national story to work on I had. I was no longer working for Scene. I

was looking to write another true crime book. I had already written a couple, but I wanted to do something national, something bigger. And I was sitting at home one day and the twenty twenty special came on. There was a special about More Murray's disappearance, also the disappearance of Brooke Wilberger, which has since been solved. Something about Maura Murray's case struck me as particularly unusual and different, And it's the fact that Laura Murray's case is actually a bit of

a double mystery. There's two mysteries going on here. And just a real quick summary, Laura Murray was twenty two. She was a student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was studying nursing. On a Monday in February, she emailed her professors and said, there's been a death in the family. Hold my work. I'll be in at the end of the week. Then she empties her bank account only to the end of about two hundred and eighty dollars, gets into her car, drives hours north into the White

Mountains of New Hampshire. Around seven thirty that night, her car impacts the snow bank on the side of a wild amnusic road, Route one twelve up there. Sometime between the accident and the first responding officer it was we're talking like maybe seven minutes, and it could be as few as three minutes. But between the accident police arrived Somewhere in that time frame, she vanished, never to be

seen again. And you know what makes it a double mystery, right is the first mystery is what happened to more in Murray. The second mystery is what was she doing in the White Mountains? To begin with? Why did she lie to with a professor's Where was she going? And I figured if I could figure out the answer to that question, we'd get a lot closer to the answer to what happened to her to begin with, So it seemed like the odds were in my favorite I could

at least solve, you know, one of those questions. And so I devoted the next five six years of my life to research and writing this book. And I do believe I've answered the question as to what she was doing up there.

Tell us the other techniques that you embarked upon that you had used before, but you were especially going to need in this case to be able to fully research this, and so tell us a couple of the things that you used that you employed to be able to do this research.

lightning lot for new information and clues. So, for instance, with Amy's case, you know, some of their old classmates would google her name wondering whatever happened to this case, and they would be directed to my blog and then if they had information to share, they could easily contact me with an email. So and even you know, you'd be surprised with being in the hell of the case,

I was contacted by suspects. I was contacted by people who had new information that they didn't feel comfortable sharing with the police because they have shady backgrounds themselves, but they would share with me and then I would be a liaison between that information on the police. So it worked very well. So that's what I did with More's case.

I'm sure enough a lot of these are on chair sleus came forward and helped me, help direct me to new avenues of investigation, and even people that knew more from what point or new mass were able to contact me through the website too, so it was very helpful.

You know, other methods that I used, you know, go back to when I was a journalist and I'd learned, you know that sometimes it helps to go in these fishing expeditions, that's what that's what we call them, where we send out public records requests to every jurisdiction that this person has ever lived or spent time in. And that's what I did, and that's how I discovered the police records that showed that at the time that she disappeared, Laura Murray was in trouble for credit card fraud and

identity theft and so these other layers. It's more showing the complicated person that she was started to appear. You know, she had stolen credit cards from other girls, other women in her dorm and use those credit card numbers and that person's name to order food. So nothing huge, but I mean that's kind of a big deal, you know. At the same time, the judge said if she could stay out of trouble for six months, that would wipe off her record. Now I don't know that she was

able to stay out of trouble though. A couple of days before she disappeared, she was driving her father's car back to his hotel room he had visited her on campus at three o'clock in the morning, and she ran into a guard rail and it appears she was probably going to be charged with at the very least reckless operation for that, and I think she realized that her

nursing career was kind of over. This credit card charge might be coming back to bite her in the ass, and I think that was one of the many reasons she had to leave and start a new life, because that's that's what it can happen here. I think, I feel and think, and I hope at the very least, but I think the evidence points to Mara Murray having the motive means an opportunity to leave and start a new life someplace.

she was. And then through your investigation, there seems to be a little again, a little krack and the veneer here in terms of this, all perfect, all American woman. However, again nothing too serious. But again it's the interesting your investigation. So tell us in your investigation, tell us about mor Murray, her father Fred, tell us about her mother, tell us about her early life. What you found.

each other. She lived on Joe Anne Drive, which is a little bit of a cul de sac, but it's a you know, so it's a it's even a safe little street. Everybody knows each other's business out there. And she Moura was the second youngest in her family. So there was her father, Fred, her mother Laurie. There's Fred Junior, there's Kathleen Murray, the oldest daughter, Julie Murray, and then

you've got Maura and a younger brother, Kurt. And after the younger brother, Kurt came along that her parents separated and Fred moved to Weymouth and lived in an old house and there while Maria stayed with her siblings and her mother in Canson. Now, her father was very involved with her life, even after the separation. He would come down very strict, very controlling. He would condition his daughters into star runners and star athletes. And I say they

conditioned every day. He talked to the neighbors and friends there. They said, yes, you know, you'd see Maura and Julie running on Christmas morning with Fred, you know, with you know, shouting behind them. You know they're urging them on. So they and they became star athletes in high school track and field and cross country. Julie was first and she was fast. Now Moura came up a year after Julie, and she was faster and she was better there for

a little while. After graduation, Julie goes on to West Point and then more follows her, and Drelie ends up graduating Least Point. Moura lasts. I think it's three semesters heading into her fourth when she leaves. Now, just one of the stories that the family kind of, you know, well, her father specifically lies about at times, and you can kind of understand them and kind of not you know, she's missing. Why are you lying about anything? Nurse Point.

But the truth is Maura was about to be kicked out of West Point when she withdrew in the spring semester of her sophomore year to go to unass Amherst and begin her nursing and begin studying for nursing there. What happened at West Point was and this took you know, I'd heard rumors for a while, but it took a while to track down and speak to the people involved. She she got in trouble for stealing from Fort Knox of all places. Now you know, if that's not a

right for help. I don't know what is stealing from the most secure facility in the United States, but what she had stolen, again, we're having small things in big situations. She stole make up from the commissary at Fort Knox, and she got caught and she was brought up on They have their own little judicial process within West Point, and you know, they were going to recommend that she'd be expelled, and before that happened, she withdrew so that

she didn't have that on her record. Now, during that process, that whole judiciary process, it's kind of interesting, she ended up meeting one of the fellow student liaisons with the Judicial Review Board and his name's Bill Raush, and they end up having a relationship. And it's Bill Raush who you see in the early reports and sometimes he's referred to her, referred to as her fiance, but they weren't

quite engaged to be married. They had kind of promised to become engaged, but the endpoint made it that far. But had spent that Christmas holiday with Bill and his family in Ohio a month before she disappeared in two thousand and four, so they were pretty close. So that that's kind of a quick overview of of More. She you know, she was an overachieved in school. She came from a big family, although it was broken, you know,

there were troubles there. Her mother was an alcoholic. She ended up dying just a couple of years after More disappeared. Actually she died on Laura's birthday, and so, you know, it's a complicated, complicated family, you know, a New England family, Catholic, you know, perhaps Catholic type.

more than once. Now, it's interesting to note when Moore disappeared, the police eventually got into her dorm room and they found that all of her things, or most of their things, had been packed neatly into boxes, and on top of the boxes was printed out email from Billy that Billy had sent to.

track coaches at UMass. This guy with the auspicious name of Hosting Bag Daddy and he goes by Hass and Moss was a track coach and Maura and her friend Keith Marcopolis would often get together with Hass for drinks or just to hang out after practice. Maura was no longer with the team, I think at that point. But Maura and Hass had a very incident relationship and I spoke to him and he, you know, surprise, he was

surprisingly candid about it. Admitted that he's like, yeah, we were, we were really close for a long time and uh uh. And he's the one that said, you know, they would be lying in bed and he said on a couple of times Maura mentioned starting a new life and running away, and he always thought that she meant Mexico.

notifies the other supervisor. Tell us about this, and what do you think the significance if any, about this phone call which happens around this time as well.

is working at the security desk. She had a job checking in IDs at Melville Hall, which is near her dorm, living out of Kennedy Hall in the mass And so she'd sit at the desk checking in IDs and she wasn't supposed to be talking on the phone, but she was talking on the phone that night, and there were a couple of calls that came in, one from her sister Kathleen, her older sister Kathleen, and then she there

was a later call with Phil with Phil Raush. Now shortly after that second call, her supervisor Karen Mayott, who visits and checks in on her, and finds Laura, in her words, in a catatonic state. She was so upset she couldn't really talk. The only thing that she managed to say was my sister her. The supervisor was so concerned about her, she walked More back to her dorm, signed her off her ship, and even suggested More might need some mental health attention, like she kind of suggested

she go to the hospital and check herself in. Moore assured her that she was okay, that you know, she had a roommate, that she'd be fine. That was also a lie. More had a single. She didn't have a roommate in that dorm, so you know. And then the next day school was canceled because of weather. That was the Friday, so the supervisor thought, well, you know, good for her, she can sleep in and rest and get

some needed needed a relaxation time. So and then you're in this Saturday, and that's when Fred Murray shows up on campus, and there's some strange things about that. You know, he's mentioned this before where he says he was at you know, why why is the father on campus? Rachel? She disappears. Now he says, bring or find a new car. So he brought some money. He brought four thousand dollars, and he makes a point to tell the police this later. I had four thousand dollars in cash on my person,

he says in a statement to police. And so now when you look into that four thousand dollars, it gets a little strange too, because in order to get that four thousand dollars in cash, Fred doesn't just you know, he's not going to write a check to the place where he's looking for a car. And by the way, they never did get a new car for more that weekend, he doesn't withdraw it from his bank and one one sun on the way U Mass he visits I think eight different ATMs and let's draw us one hundred dollars

from each. It's a very strange way of getting that money. And if if he truly got it, you know, I don't know. Everything about that's always been strange to me. So he's with more during the day and Saturday, there's a call some one of them called Reliance Auto, which is a used car, so they might have visited there. Kate Markopolis, Julie's best friend at UMass, joins them for drinks at a blue pub later that night. Then fred Let takes the girls to buy a liquor and the

girls are planning to go to Sarah Alfieri. It's another friend of Morris. Sarah Alfieri is holding a party in her dorm room, so they dropped Fred off at his hotel and then they drove back to campus and supposedly Kate in more than attend this party with Sarah Alfieri. Now, this party has been described as as being standing room only.

There was packed with people, but after more disappears. Kate can never remember who else was at that party, and Sarah has always been playing sarahs never never said anything about this too, at least two journalists, at least to you know, the family. There's been a report that Sarah told quote unquote the real story to Fred once and she was asked never to repeat it. So whatever she did around on note. But nobody can seem to remember

what exactly happened at that party. All we know is that Maura leaves around three o'clock in the morning and decides to drive her father's car back to his motel room and along the way, that's where she gets into her accident, the first accident at UMass and drives the car into a guardrail. Sow truck comes, the police come. The police decline to charge her with the UI, although it looks like she's going to be cited for reckless hops.

A failure to control the tow truck sews the car in, brings Maura back to the motel where Fred is staying, and then she saves the night in this motel room, and then you're into Sunday. Fred drops her back off of the dorm and then he goes radio silent for like, like I think it's like sixteen hours. And it's possible she left her cell phone at that party at Sarah

Alfieri's place. That's one story. It's been sold that there's no calls from her cell phone until like I think it's Monday morning or maybe late late Saturday night, and then and then Monday she gone, you know, Monday she leaves. So that's that's the days and events leading up to her disappearance.

to a party and she smacks up his car. So how disappointed do you think, which could add to the an element to the story. How disappointed do you think he would have been with her behavior involving cars and money and him being put out and.

maybe he gave her another key card or something. I don't know. The other version of that story that he told investigators, these are private investigators that were helping search in the White Mountains for Moura weeks after the disappearance, was that he was called to the front office of the motel, the lobby and more was passed out drunk on a couch and then he woke her up and brought it back there. But yeah, he's you know, I imagine, you know, imagine this Irish class lapsed Catholic from from

from South eas Boston. You know, you know, he's not pleased. So yeah, I don't know how angry he was with her, how disappointed he made her feel, But it probably wasn't a good conversation. But you know, it's hard getting starting hard getting the truth from Fred. You know, you get half half troops, you get half stories. He's just never you know. And when reporters pushed him on this, they're like, hey, man, help us try and help us, try to find your daughter.

Tell us what was happening in her life that might help us understand why she was going up to the White Mountains. And he would say, no, I'm not going to talk about that. Don't even ask me what I do for a living. It doesn't matter. All that matters is she disappeared in New Hampshire and now we got to find her. Well. The best way of trying to find her is figuring out why she was up there in the first place. I've never wanted to talk about that. It's weird. It's weird behavior from the father of a

missing kid and a missing woman. You know, I've never seen it before, and I've done a lot of true crime. I certainly am well versed in many of the major crimes. And most times parents of a missing child are doing everything they can to to tell the media what was going on in their life. And we know everybody has skeletons in their closet. We know more is not perfect, but that doesn't matter. She's missing. You know, share the infos so we can so we can help find her.

And it's not like he wasn't just doing that journalist. He wasn't down for a formal interview with the lead detectives in this case, with the state police for two and a half years after More went missing, and when he finally did, he brought two lawyers with him. So this is not typical behavior, and then a US to

explain it. I really don't know, because ultimately I don't think Fred was involved with what happened to More that night that she went missing, But I certainly think he knows more than he's ever shared.

somebody somewhere? Did she stop to eat? We don't know so, but anyways, about seven thirty at night she her car runs into the snowbank on the side of Route one twelve near the town of Havell, New Hampshire. And the first person on the scene is actually a bus driver who gets there like a couple seconds after the accident happens. And his name's Butch Atwood and he's like this three hundred pound white handlebar must look in country dude of a guy, and very imposing, but he's driving a school bus.

He's got this this tender heart at the same time, and he stops and he asks more she needs help, and she says, no, no, no, I already called triple A, don't worry about it. And he knows that she's lying because even to this day you can't get cell phone service up there. So he's like, well, all right, so if you need a ride, and she's like that, she declines, and she says, and please don't call the police. Well,

you know, he knows better, so he goes. He pulls into his driveway and he can see he lives right there. Across the street basically, and he can kind of still see the accent scene, and he goes and tells his wife what happened, and she calls the police immediately, of course,

and so that's one of the calls. Now, there was another call right after the accident by Faith Westman, who lived right across the street from where this accident occurred, and then occurred at this like almost ninety degree turn in the road by this old weathered barn. There's accidents there all the time. In the winter, there were snow banks that were like five feet high on either side, and it's very easy to come along that turn and lose control. And that's that's where she's gotten an accident.

So Faith Westman lives right there at that turn, and she hears the accent. She calls him the police too. And there's another house on the same side of the street where more crashes that can also see the accent. So you've got three pairs of eyes that are kind of you know, I always picture them as like beams from a lighthouse. And they're there, you know, they'll check the accident scene, they'll see Maura sitting in the car,

and then she gets out. She opens the trunk and she's fiddling with something back there for a little bit and the beam of lights kind of illuminate the scene and then turn away. When they get boreder, they go to do other things in the house. So there were moments there where she wasn't being watched, but not for very long. Sometime in there, she disappear before the police show up. And so that's the scene of the accent there, and you have to wonder what happened to her, you know,

did she you know, what are the possibilities? Okay, number one, maybe she got scared and ran into the woods to hide. We know that's not true because they started the search. They were up. I spoke to the guy, Sergeant Scerenza, Lieutenant Scirinza, who was in charge of the investigation for the first like five or six years. Now. He was up in a helicopter about thirty six hours after the disappearance. It had not snowed again since more disappeared. There's ideal

conditions for seeing things from the air. He was able to see footprints of a fox and follow it back to where the fox was that in the woods. That's how detailed he could see. And there were no footprints leading anywhere near the crash site into the wa so she didn't go into so did she Was she abducted?

of night, at that time of year. They've counted the number of cars that passed by that place within an hour and there's only there's seven on average, there's seven people that drive by that that scene at that time of night on that day, and one of those people to be a serial killer, it's it's it's beyond reason.

So and and then you'd have to assume that they were able to get her into the car against her will and get away from the scene without being seen by India any of those people that are watching the accident scene. And it's just remember we're dealing with the former West Point Cabet. She's not going to go quietly. It would not have been quickly, so it can't be a messy abduction. She was traveling in sandem with another driver, a friend or family member, somebody she knew and trusted.

They were driving in a vehicle in front of her. She gets into an accident. The other vehicle sees this or sees that she's no longer following. They turn around and pick her up. Now that transaction, that interaction could have been quick, could have been five seconds. They slow down, more hops in the car, go go go, They're gone. That could account for why nobody sees it happened, because it was so quick, and the any way for it

to be quick is if she knew the person. So that's kind of where I eventually ended up is believing that this had to have been There had to have been a Seendom tribe. There's other evidence to support this too. One of the last things she does before leaving UMass. The police discover is that she was doing searches on her computer for condos and she actually she called a condo in New Hampshire and contacted them about rooms, and the rooms that she was searching for were not single rooms.

They were actually units that had at least two bedrooms, So she wasn't looking for a place just for herself. She was looking for a place big enough to accommodate at least two people, maybe more.

definitely got the ball rolling because I shared that interview on my blog and should have allowed more people to see what I was doing, and you know, and then they would come forward and speak. The other big break was speaking and sitting down with Lieutenant Scerinza, who was in charge of their investigation. He was a lieutenant with the State Police in New Hampshire and again he's a guy up in the helicopter too, and thirty six hours after she disappeared, I sat down with Scuenza for a

couple of hours one day. It was one of my first interviews and you know, he's the one that you know. He explained to me the difficulty they had with talking to Fred and how you know, he wasn't very helpful, and then he was very antagonistic. Actually he ended up suing the State of New Hampshire and the police to try to get more information. But another thing that came out of that conversation with Cuenzo was that believes that

Mara was pregnant when she disappeared. They did the search of her computer and they found that in the day leading up to her disappearance, more was searching for information on the effects of drinking and being pregnant. You know whether or not that could hurt the baby. So and I think he's probably right. I mean, that would be one very good reason to stay hidden after all this attention is if you're dealing with a child.

So join me and the fun. Sign up now at chum casino dot com.

and this is a little bit later on. Tell me what this gentleman Tim, how he got he was in the had the ability to be privy to this conversation or these conversations, and then tell us about the searches that were conducted with Fred and just the impression that Tim had.

He was married there for a number of years and the marriage to her. When Laura disappeared. I tracked him down and he talked to me for a little while and the things he said put a new slant on everything, a new light. And you know, he you know, he would talk about you know, he was there for the searches.

He would go out there on the weekends. And what he says is that Fred would put on a certain appearance when the media was there, and he'd be very different when the reporters and the cameras were not there. And yes, he would be up there on the weekends, but he would he would sleep in. When he'd get up, everybody's like, all right, let's go. You know, all these volunteers, they're like, let's go with for Laura, and but you

know he wouldn't he wouldn't be ready. He'd sleep in and then he'd go for a run and then he'd take a shower, and then they'd start the day and he'd give them leaves and he'd say, okay, you go look here, you go look here, you go look here, and they'd go look for an hour or so, and then they'd come back and have lunch, and then they'd go off again. And then they'd break a short time after that and everybody would go back to the pub and start drinking and then roll into the next day

where he's sleeping in. So but when the reporter showed up, when the camera showed up, Fred was, you know, front and center and in the woods and searching and relentless. But that is not the thread that Tim Tim Carpenter described existed when cameras were not there. So there's weird behavior again there. And you know, Tim said that, you know that, you know that there was a very different side of the family. You know that's kind of the

darker side. And you know, specifically if Kathleen, he was married to Kathleen for a while, and you know, Kathleen ends up getting in trouble. You know, she's in and out that we have. You know, she ends up getting pulled over for a d UI blows a point three five. Now, I've never never heard of anybody with that high of blood alcohol content. With the point three five we're talking about. You know, I'm I'm like one hundred and eighty pounds five to ten. If I were to drink that, I

could die. You look up the effects of this. That Kathleen's a little bigger she, you know, But still we're talking beyond the point of the blackout trunk. If you're drinking that much, you are self medicating, you know. And and and I'm you know, I know from self medicating. I'm a recovering alcoholic myself. I know I know how it works. And that's self medicating behavior. You're doing drunk

because you don't want to think about certain things. So you know, there's a family with secrets of family of trouble, and Kim opened up a door into that and it gives a better look of it suggests that there might have been other things that Moore was running away from. I think she was getting away from her family. I think she was unhappy with that that part of her life. I think she wanted to get away from her father. I think she wanted to get away from her boyfriend Bell.

And you know, she finally was pushed to the point where she was either going to break or she was going to go, and I think she went. I think she took off and didn't look back.

one of them, the old squawwalk. And what he means. What he means is this old idea that you know in Native American cultures. When the woman you know was was beyond her abuse, when she didn't feel she could contribute anything, she would walk into the woods and die. And so he's assume that that's what Maraa did. So why does Fred believe that she's so upset that his daughter would commit suicide? What happened that he would think

that she could do that? And I've never believed in suicide theory for a couple of reasons, but the biggest is that's a long way to go to commit suicide. If she was going to commit suicide, why not just do it at your mass you know why? You know her gas tank is full when she gets into the accident, this is you know, and her her car is packed with with with a lot of stuff. This is not a person who has checked off everything, who you know, is just going up there to commit suicide. And if

she did, where's the body? You know, it's it's it's wooded. You have people will say, wow, that's the wilderness. You know. Of course she could have died there. Nobody would ever find your body. That's not entirely true. We know she didn't walk into the woods. There were no footprints, no signs that she had walked away from the car. But let's say she did. She got up there. I think by now hikers would have found her body. But I

think they would have found her in the searches. There were two mass of searches that were conducted by the Fish and Game Department. We're talking hundreds of volunteers. The area around where she disappeared was searched thoroughly, within like a five mile radius. She can commits suicide.

says he does when when Lago is missing. Comes from the family spokesperson, This Helena Dwyer Murray, who runs the message board a couple a couple of months ago on Facebook. She explained that because people started asking, well, what did you do with that four thousand dollars after more disappeared,

or is it possible that Morea took that money? And she came forward and said, well, Fred put it into an account that Maura had access to specifically to see, you know, if more was missing and she needed money, she could access it. But they say that that account

was never touched again. Now there's also I was contacted through the website by somebody they worked with Citizens Bank, and you know, they did, you know, and they did this before they contacted me, But they did something that was probably not entirely legal, which on their spare time they would have looked up people kind of famous people's

accounts out of curiosity. And I verified this person did work for Citizens Bank, by the way, and she and I passed this along to the cold case gait even she said at the time of More's well this was two years after more disappeared that she searched this. She said there was an active account for a car Loan under Moore's name, using more A's date of birth and social Security number that was taken out in the state

of New Hampshire, and it was being paid. It was current, which means somebody was paying it on a monthly basis. So that's really strange too. So that's the interesting thing information. And then you asked about Bill Rausch's alibi, And at

first I always figured Bill was above suspicion. And then, you know, at the eleventh dollar, right before the book was due to go to the you know, to be laid out, and we couldn't puddle with him anymore, some information came in about Bill and by four different women who worked with him at a place called rig Group International in DC, and they handled contracts with the VA.

Bill was working for them back in twenty eleven. And these women claim, and I spoke to the woman directly involved, claimed that he assaulted a female co co worker after on Saint Patrick's day. After work, this woman came back to the office. She says that he asked her to come into the President's office and then closed and locked the door behind her and proceeded to push up against her and then turn around push her face down into a table, and then push his body up against behind her.

Another worker came in at that point and this girl was able to get away. This woman was able to get away from him. And you know, that was after he said, don't he say anything about this, and he ended up leaving. I spoke to Bill about this. The acknowledges that these allegations, that he had heard these allegations, and that he left that job. He never came back after that day, and you no longer of course listed that job on LinkedIn or anything like that. So he

ends up, you know, not working there anymore. After they do an internal review, the woman goes to police. She ultimately decides not to press charges. I think worried what what impact that might have on her career in DC.

So anyways, that led me to take a real hard look at Bill again and eventually I was able to obchange his cell phone records for the days before, leading up to and after Moore's disappearance, and it's you know, ninety nine point nine percent sure that it puts him where he says he was, which is Fortsville, Oklahoma, which is like one thousand miles away from New Hampshire. We're talking about twelve hour longer I think, like a twenty hour drive. So but he was in the field. You

know he's using his cell phone. It seems that he's calling a lot of court cell numbers. You know, I can't, I can't say without a doubty, you know, but I would, I would say he's got a pretty solid alibi, you know, for when more disappeared.

in that situation because she struck a tree. Now that doesn't make sense. First of all, there's no trees right there. She would have had to have remember there's like five foot tall snow snowbanks. She would have had to you know, jump over the snowbank, hit a tree, and then then come back. It just doesn't work with physics. You know.

It was badly reported, you know, accident scene. So through the reports, and I find that there were a number of other people at the accident scene that night, volunteer EMTs. One of them was this guy, uh Dick guy, the TV guy. He ran this TV repair business in Woodsville next door to Hadril, and I went to the shop and I talked to him one day and he had a better explanation for how she got in that accident, and he drew a little diagram for me to explain it.

But he believes he was there that night and he said, so, you've got that turn, and on the north side of the road, there's there's this, you know, essentially a corner, and there's a snowbank there. But it was it was somebody had cheered it off, and he thinks that she had actually crossed the double lane, the double yellow lines

and impacted the north side of the road. So she's crossing, she's heading age, she crosses the lane to the turn, smacks into the corner, sears off that snowbank, and that force, that that impact and force flips her car around and sends it back into the lane she was in. And that works a lot better in my mind than the

official explanation and the police report. So it and it explains the damage done to the car, why the front on the left part of the hood is pushed down and the crack of the windshield, the airbags were deployed. I think she impacted that snowbank, just like this.

yet as a missing person's case. They think what they're dealing with is a dui and that walked away, and they've seen that type of thing a lot. And there was evidence that More had been drinking in the car. There was spilled wine that they could see inside so and it smelled like booze. So they think that somebody got drunk and crashed into the snowbank, will probably be back in the morning. How those are looking for their car.

So so the boy tows it back to his place and then he notices that there's like a rag stuck in her tailpipe. And so that's weird because the first thing you think, at least in my mind, when you think ragging and tailpipe is you know, I mean, some people think suicide. Other people think did somebody put it in there so that her car would stall? You know, did the car stall at that turn? Is that what

caused the accident? Now thinking I'm the father myself. Now, I've got two kids, God for the bigger missing, and I'm in this situation and i'm her father, and I come to town and I hear that my daughter's missing and there's this rag stuck in the tailpipe. Well, I'm going to use that clue to get the police to to to really investigate this because it seems like somebody wanted a car to stall. That's not what Fred Murray does.

When he sees that rag in the tailpipe, he explains it away and he says, oh, yeah, yeah, her exhaust was smoking, and I told her to put a rag up in the tailpipe so she didn't get get in trouble for the exhaust smoking. Now, either that that's true and he gave her really really bad advice about how to take care of a smoky exhaust, or it's not true. And to wonder why he's trying to explain away that that detail is it because he makes a point to say that he got her that rag and that it's tested.

You know, that would explain why's fingerprinter on it if they ever test it. I don't know, but as a father, I'm not going to explain away that that has very important evidence. I don't know what to make of it, and I don't know what to make the rag and the tail pipe. It's a it's a weird, weird piece of.

for being rough back then. Now, if he's rough with women before More and rough with women after them, you know, I can only wonder what it was like with More. Certainly, her friends and family didn't like this guy. He was cheating on her. The chief of police in Havevil at the time was a guy, well later a little bit Cecil Smith and Cecil you know, very peaceful guy, very

nice guy. The only time I ever saw him angry was when I asked him about Bill and he said, if you know, whatever happened to more up in New Hampshire was whether or not Bill was directly involved, it was his fault. Guy is an a hole, you know, and so he was furious with this guy. So she had and then add to that these legal troubles. I think she realized she was never going to be a nurse. The police believed she was pregnant, so there was a lot of motives for her to run away and start

fresh summer with maybe maybe with this kid. And you know, so how did she do that? Did she go on her you know, did she go on her own with maybe help from a friend or two. Another way she could have gone gone about that is utilizing some of these really interesting abused women resources where there are places that it works almost like the Witness Protection Program but

better and it's for abused women. And you know, it's kind of like this underground railroad that's not talked about too much that will help women find a new home, find a new identity, find a new life and set them up. But they have to leave their old life behind.

And it's interesting, but that really does happen. And you know, these other women that are involved in the organization will learn these abused women their social security number and so they're set up with a new one so that they can fly completely under the radar.

But there are these rivers. Early on that Moura was spotted in Canada, there were a couple of posts on message boards, one purportedly by a classmate of Morris who was visiting a town called Sherbook in Canada, which is not too far away from you know where she went missing.

A couple hours drive north but past the border, and they said that they had seen Moura and said, you know, called out to her, said hey, Maura, and she turned and you know, looked really shocked and then walked away and said she was with this you know, handsome young man and seemed happy. And there were a couple other reports like that and message boards, and eventually, you know, I and a couple you know, Lance and Tim who do the podcast and they're working on a documentary on

the case. We all drove up to trying to see what we could do and see if we could find her. Maybe this was back I think in twenty thirteen, and we visited Sherbrook, We visited Montreal, and we visited Quebec City and there were a couple of places that we would show her picture. There's a coffee shop in I think it was in I think it was in Montreal. We visited where we showed her picture and the person that worked there was adamant. She's like, yeah, she was in here like a couple of days ago, and I

know this woman. And we showed her picture at a gym, you know, because more was always very athletic and thought maybe those would be good places to check out. So we showed her picture at this gym and the woman behind the counter again, she was adamant. She's like, yes, I know this person, she was in here not too long ago. Absolutely so, but you know, could they be mistaken,

could they be thinking another brunette. I don't know, But to me, there were some really decent sightings in Canada and it's either a look alike or you know, or it's more.

and see if anything's come up. And when you did that, something odd happened where it showed that her social Security number was attached to this address in Seiko, Maine, this town Saco Sacho or Seiko, Maine, very kind of rural place, odd place for her social Security number to connect to, and it was kind of it was connected after her disappearance. So you know, my first thought was, well, was that where she's living? Is that where she's hiding? I don't know.

And it was when I went to speak to Tim Carpenter, you know, I asked, I said, you know, because Tim was and Cathleen, Laura's sister, were involved in the searches for Laura, you know, in the weeks after she disappeared, And so I asked him, I said, can you get me in touch with any of the other volunteers who were helping to look for more back then? And he said sure. He's like, you know we should talk to

is this this guy Rick Graves? He was all about trying to find more and you know, we don't really we didn't really know who he was, but he wanted to offer his time and I said sure, you know, and he gave me his number and I said, oh, this is a weird prefix, isn't this main? And he said yeah, So what where's Rick Graves live? And he said, oh, Sacho, Saco, Maine. So that was a yeah. I was like, oh my gosh, you know, could this you know what's going on here?

You know, how is this working? And what I ended up learning was that Fred actually gave Fred's Moore's father, he gave this Rick Graves permission to put some sort of tracker on more social Security numbers. So he gave this guy more as social and he used it, you know, on some programs. And that's why, you know, to this day, her social Security number beings with his address if you look for it. So that's the connection. At first, it seems really promising, like maybe I could drive there and

you know, she'd answer the door. But it quickly became a parent that it was connected to the volunteer who helped search for her. And he's a good guy. I've talked to him, and I'd say he's above suspicion. He is confused about the whole thing that everybody else and very confused about the way Fred acted The whole time as well.

tracker on her card. So he did things that we are aren't indicative of somebody guilty of foul play involving his daughter, is it.

why Fred acted the way he does. But you know, it just nothing he did ever ring true to me, you know, And I've I've spoken to I've met with the fathers of missing women, of missing children, and it just it's not a part of the course. This is a strange individual, you know. I think back to the I mean to have of it case, and I've certainly been on the outs with Amy's family over the things

that I've reported. I mean, there's some things they don't particularly care that I shared, you know, the fact that her parents were planning to get divorced at the time that Amy was abducted, and you know whether that played into everything, you know, but her father always talked to me and always was happy that I was getting his daughter's name out there, and it was always adamant that

he would do everything he could to find that. He didn't care about the skeletons, you know, he was a little myth, you know, it would rub him the wrong way, But he wasn't quiet.

she had apparently received a call from her sister. When you spoke to the sister, when other people spoke to the sister police, she said it was no big deal, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe more just wanted to take a night off. So is there could that explain why the family wasn't cooperative with you and especially Fred that maybe they just thought this worse thing too, that you know, they weren't agreeing did she take off? But certainly maybe they concluded that she had.

I thought it especially kind of humorous, but very very vivid again where you talk to Fred Junior and he says that he wants to strangle you and he'd like he'd like to kick your ass basically. So to say that people weren't cooperating with you in a lot of cases is an understatement, isn't it?

this one. And in order to do that, you have to ask some uncomfortable questions, especially with families. So they were they were not they were not so so willing to answer or pleased with the questions. But I will say that, you know, when I finally managed to confront and speak to her sister, Julie, I think Julie was really really close to telling me something and you wanted to. And I asked her, I said, tell me what Fred was really doing up there and at Amherst that weekend?

What was what really happened that weekend before she went missing? What else? What else am I missing? And Julie said, I could tell you, I could tell you exactly what happened. And and her boyfriend at the time, who was also a lawyer, stepped in between and said, Julie, don't don't you say a word. Don't say anything more, and he shut her down. But I think Julie was close to tell me something some bitter this.

get ten thousand visitors. I mean, there were a lot of people interested in this, and and it built and built and built, and you know, new information was coming out, and there'd be weird twists and and eventually everything kind of led to this book. Now, now that the book's out, everybody's taken a moment to read it, and it's only been out for about two weeks now, and it definitely has an impact. Everything seems to kind of be in spasis, you know, now that all the info we have is

basically out there for you know, a new twist. We're looking for a new bit of information. Or maybe somebody that you know was hesitant to talk to me or the book, you know, maybe one of her close friends from from high school, you know, somebody from that area or family member, now that the book's down, Now that it's out there and they see the lengths to which I went to try to find more, and perhaps they'll

come forward and they'll finally speak and open up. But everybody's kind of waiting to see what happens next, and I don't know what that's going to be.

She would kind of lived through, must of it. And you know, she was understanding that she knew that this was important to me, that this had become kind of an obsession, that this would eventually become a book, that this would eventually, you know, exist out there. But she wasn't happy about it. She wasn't happy that I would take off for a week to go looking for more in the White Mountains, trace trace down. You know, her family and friends who didn't want to talk to me,

especially because you know, we had this. We had this kid, you know, Casey, and you know, he's you know, at the time I was really digging into this, he was about four or five years old, and uh, you know he's uh, you know, he's got his own troubles. And then that's part of the book too, is raising this kid who's showing the beginning to show violent tendencies at age four while I'm trying to track down dangerous men

in my job, and the weird parallels. I was saying to, you know, my responsibility of raising a good man, you know, turning Casey into a good man so that he doesn't go out there and do harm and and he walked. You know, he's got he's got a good heart, and it took us a while to figure out what was going on. And uh, you know, there were doctors that said he was on the autism spectrum, you know, Aspergers when they still use that name, and there's something unique

and special about him. You know, he's highly functioning, he's brilliant in school, gets great grades, but behaviorally, you know, he's he's always had trouble and you know, he was lashing out and being violent with classmates and teachers and had to go to a special school for a couple of years because of that. And now he's unfortunately back

in public. So my life was very stressful, you know when I was going through this search, and it was stressful for my wife because I had to, you know, take time away and and go through these these these things to finish the book. And you know, yes, he

was very understanding, but she's very happy he's done. And then one of the things that they came of all this was you know, kind of a promise that you know that this would be my last big case, you know, at least until the children are grown and out of

the house. And and for good reason. You know, there's a there's some creepy people that gravitate towards these cases, there's a you know, there are these internet trolls that come out that just want to cause anarchy and chaos on these blogs and discussion boards, and they act like they have information and made them you know, rabbit holes and wild goose chases, and that most of it is harmless.

But then they're the ones that, for instance, in this case, there is a troll that uh put pictures of Casey up on the internet and maybe YouTube video of my son, and uh, you know, that was very scary, and I had conversations with prosecutors and we were trying to get this guy put away and it just, uh, it just didn't happen. And so he's still out there. And I

have to, you know, make everything private. I had to switch everything on Facebook and to unless my car number and address, and I had to you know, basically become this you know hermits and and you know that. And now I can understand why, you know, people like Jade Salander go into hiding. You know, it's it's uh, it makes you want to cut ties with the human race when you run into people like that.

silver screen. So for those that might want to contact or find out more about your work, can you tell us about your web page or website or Facebook? How might they do that find out more about your work?