The Wells River Motel is a modest, cozy refuge that sits on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River just across from New Hampshire. The motel offers 11 rooms, each with its own theme, including a teddy bear room outfitted with teddy bears on the beds.

As of Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2004, the Wells River Motel became the unofficial headquarters in the search for Maura Murray. Just 36 hours earlier Maura's car had been found abandoned along Route 112, eight miles away in neighboring Woodsville, N.H. 

Maura's father, Fred Murray, was the first to arrive. Fred is an intense, energetic man in his 60s with a wiry frame, graying hair and a passion for the outdoors. He knows the White Mountains intimately and often hiked and camped in the area with Maura, the youngest of his three daughters.

Fred had visited Maura the prior weekend at school in Amherst, Mass. Following a two-day visit and some car shopping with Maura, Fred departed on Sunday to Bridgeport, Connecticut for a contract job at a local hospital where he worked as a medical technician. This was the last time Fred ever saw his daughter.

It was around 5 p.m. on Tuesday that Fred first heard of Maura's disappearance. After several frantic phone calls to Haverhill police, he hit the road in the wee hours of Wednesday morning and arrived at the Haverhill, N.H., police station just before dawn.

As police arranged a formal search party, Fred headed to Wild Ammonoosuc Road (Rt. 112), a rural, twisting route that hugs the Wild Ammonoosuc River and later turns into the Kancamagus Highway. Maura's Saturn had been found just past a sharp elbow in a heavily-wooded section of the road.

Fred combed the snow-covered area lining the street; no snow had fallen since Maura disappeared and that made the search for footprints less difficult. Her car had already been towed away but Fred scoured the scene looking for any clues his daughter may have left behind. There was no sign of Maura. 

"You find footsteps; you're following them, but you're afraid to look down because it might be your daughter," Fred later recalled.

That same Wednesday morning 1,800 miles away, Maura's boyfriend, Army 2nd Lt. Billy Rausch, headed to the Dallas Fort-Worth Airport to catch a flight north. Once he heard that Maura was missing Billy requested a leave of absence from his unit at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, to join the search in New Hampshire.

"You find footsteps; you're following them, but you're afraid to look down because it might be your daughter," Fred later recalled.

Before walking through airport security Billy shut off his cell phone. Shortly after, a mysterious call came in that would later be a source of dispute. 

Family members began to arrive in Woodsville, including Maura's sister Kathleen and her brothers Freddy and Kurtis. Maura's sister Julie was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and flew up a few days later.

The group had few clues to go on. Maura's siblings drove Eastbound on Route 112, to North Woodstock and Lincoln, then across the Kancamagus Highway to Bartlett and Conway -- tourist towns the family knew well from years of summer vacations. They checked motels and asked if anyone had seen Maura; no one had. They handed out flyers and posted them at bus stops, gas stations and police stations.

Meanwhile on Wild Ammonoosuc Road, members of New Hampshire Fish and Game arrived on the scene in a helicopter while Haverhill Police, New Hampshire State Police and a K-9 team gathered on the ground. This was the first time the area had been searched since Monday evening.

A search dog sniffed the area trying to track Maura's scent while a Fish and Game pilot flew just above the treetops, scanning the forest for footprints; snow had accumulated to about two and a half feet in depth by the first week in February. No exact times were reported, though the search must have occurred before the sun set at 5:12 p.m. that day.

Back in Hanson, Mass., at the family's white split-level home, Laurie Murray was living "a mother's worst nightmare." She had first learned of Maura's disappearance Tuesday afternoon when Haverhill, N.H. police called the house looking for the owner of an abandoned Saturn. A fractured ankle kept Laurie from joining her family in New Hampshire. Instead, she remained in the home where she raised Maura and her four siblings, sat by the phone and waited helplessly for any news of her daughter.

There was little good news to report that day. Fred Murray and the rest of the family came up empty in their search along the Kancamagus Highway. The New Hampshire Fish and Game's helicopter search turned up only deer and moose tracks.

"It's like looking for a needle in a haystack," said Kathleen.

Wednesday's efforts did produce one significant lead. The lone search dog on the scene was given a black leather glove from Maura's car to sniff. Though the dog did not get any hits in the adjacent wooded area or from nearby homes, the dog did track Maura's scent near the intersection of Bradley Hill Road 100 yards eastbound from where her car was found.

There are several homes in that area of the road, which is just yards from the Bath town line. On the even side of Wild Ammonoosuc Road is the home of Arthur "Butch" Atwood, the bus driver who said he stopped and offered Maura help that Monday evening. Across the street at 1 Wild Ammonoosuc Road is the home of Rick Forcier, a 45-year-old local contractor, who was living in a trailer on his property while his home was being built. Also within view is the property of Virginia and John Marrotte who live adjacent to Rick Forcier.

The abrupt loss of Maura's scent in the middle of the road prompted officials to speculate that Maura got into a passing vehicle. Whether she did so voluntarily or was forced remains open to question.

As the day's search drew to a close, police spoke with the Murray and Rausch families.

Billy Rausch had arrived in Woodsville earlier Wednesday and met up with his parents, Bill and Sharon, who travelled from their home in Marengo, Ohio.

Around 5 p.m. Wednesday the Rausch family arrived at the Haverhill Police Department, located on Route 10, about nine miles from the scene of Maura's accident. "Billy was extensively interrogated in private, and then Bill and I were questioned in the room with Billy," Sharon Rausch later recounted.

Fred Murray was asked if his daughter had recently experienced any traumatic events. He could only think back to Amherst when Maura banged up his new car. But in Fred's words, "It wasn't a big deal."

At a meeting that night, Haverhill Police speculated that Maura was suicidal or had planned to run away. There was no evidence of foul play or that Maura had wandered into the woods, Haverhill Police Chief Jeff Williams said. He also explained that Maura, at age of 21, was within her legal rights to not want to be found.  {sidebar id=11}

Sharon Rausch did not share that opinion. "I cannot believe," she said, "that there would be any problem in her life that would cause her to run away from three close groups of people in her life; her family, Billy and his family and the very close knit group of Hanson high school girl friends."

"I cannot believe that there would be any problem in her life that would cause her to run away from three close groups of people in her life; her family, Billy and his family and the very close knit group of Hanson high school girl friends," said Sharon Rausch.

Exhausted and defeated, the search party returned to the Wells River Motel for the night.

By the next day, Thursday, Feb. 12, police had issued a press release stating Maura may be enroute to the Kancamagus Highway area and was "listed as endangered and possibly suicidal."

The press release also stated that "witnesses at the scene reported seeing a lone female with no apparent injuries who appeared impaired due to alcohol consumption." It still remains unclear who the witnesses were that said Maura appeared to be intoxicated. The release was not dated, but a time stamp shows it was faxed to the Hanson, Mass. police department at 3:05 p.m. Thursday.

On the UMass Amherst campus, another search was underway at Maura's dorm room. Investigators found her belongings packed in boxes and a search of her computer showed she had downloaded directions to Burlington, Vermont.

UMass police and college counselors met later that week with students from Maura's nursing class. The dean of the nursing school, Eileen Breslin, sent out an email to the entire nursing college alerting them of Maura's disappearance. Details about Maura's last few days on campus were starting to emerge, including the fact that Maura had reported a death in the family when there was no death.

It was later reported that Maura's credit cards, ATM card and cell phone had not been used since Monday. The location of Maura's cell phone could not be traced using GPS technology, possibly due to poor cell phone coverage or a dead battery.

In New Hampshire, the search efforts continued on Thursday. Fred and other family members posted flyers and canvassed the area. "We went to every spot we thought she might go to -- hotels and motels -- and put up flyers," Billy Rausch said later. 

"Anything that looked suspicious we'd try to check it out," said Kathleen.

The first newspaper report about Maura's disappearance hit the stands that day, a 200-word news brief from the Manchester Union Leader. Maura was described as "possibly suicidal" by Chief Williams. Other news outlets quickly latched onto the story, including New Hampshire and Boston television stations which dispatched reporters to Woodsville. Police informed the media that no new leads had surfaced.

"We did an intense search of the crash scene area for evidence that she may have walked into the woods, but nothing like that was uncovered," Chief Williams told a New Hampshire TV station.

After wrapping up their own search that day, Fred and Billy met with reporters in an outdoor press conference in Bethlehem, N.H. on Thursday night. "This is very unusual," Fred explained to reporters. "It's not like her to just take off."

Fred pleaded for Maura to come home. "I don't know what the matter is, or the trouble you think you might be in, but it isn't anything we can't solve," he said through the media. "It's me - you can tell me. We'll work it out until we solve it."

Haverhill police were suspending their search efforts until new leads developed, Billy Rausch told reporters that evening.

Family members planned to continue their search into Vermont on Friday, reasoning that Maura could have been headed to Burlington or Stowe. But when Fred walked into Vermont police stations on Friday, he was dismayed to learn that local law enforcement officers knew nothing about Maura's disappearance.

"I could hit a three iron over the river into Vermont where there was no investigation," he said.

The frustration level was growing for family members. Fred was already distraught having learned that on Monday night, when Maura's car was found, the Haverhill Police had not called ahead to alert other police stations along Route 112.

"They should have put money and manpower where it counted -- February 9th and 10th," Fred said in a later interview.

New Hampshire State Police and Haverhill police officials no longer comment on Maura's case, referring all inquiries to the state Attorney General's office. In earlier reports they defended their actions on the grounds that there was no evidence of foul play.

Lt. John Scarinza, who is commander of State Police Troop F, which covers Grafton and Coos County, said at the time that he appreciated the family's frustration in not knowing what happened. "But it is also true that she was apparently leaving Mass. without telling her family or friends or her boyfriend," he told the Associated Press. He also speculated with reporters that Maura may have fled the scene to avoid arrest because she was intoxicated.

A manpower shortage could have hindered the abilities of the Haverhill Police. Due to sick time, training and vacancies the seven-man department was down to as few as three full-time officers and a chief at the time of Maura's accident, town records show.

Short of any new leads, official search efforts were curtailed as the days wore on.

Even so, more family and friends headed north to conduct their own investigations. Strangers who didn't know Maura also offered to help. They knocked on doors, made telephone calls and spoke with residents, including those who had called 911.

When Julie Murray finally got her leave from the U.S. Army and arrived in Woodsville the first thing she did was head to the scene of the accident.

"I wanted to see it as Maura had seen it -- after dark. I got out of the truck and walked up and down the road, looking at different angles and perspectives. There was a constant thought in my mind as I did this -- if I was Maura what would I have been thinking," Julie said in a recent email.

"It was very cold, dark and quiet; I felt stunned. I will never forget that eerie feeling," she wrote.

Fred was unrelenting in his pursuit. He chased down every new rumor, turned over debris, looked through rivers and scoured every remote trail for any sign of Maura.

After spending hours searching in the woods "down long dirt roads where you wouldn't hear a thing," Fred would emerge, as he said, "muddy, gooey" and covered in "200 ticks...mosquitoes and black flies."

It was 10 days after Maura went missing when Fred realized that some residents living within eyeshot of the accident scene had not yet been interviewed. He voiced his displeasure with police.

Authorities then launched a second search, on Thursday, Feb. 19. State police, members of New Hampshire's Fish and Game conservation team, three search dogs and a helicopter crew searched a two-mile radius in the Route 112 Woodsville area.

"We wanted to make sure we had done everything twice," Lt. Scarinza told the Caledonian Record.

At a press conference held at the end of the day, Lt. Todd Bogardus of Fish and Game said the search came up empty. "Ground crews checked trails and roadways...there are no conclusive clues to continue," Bogardus told the Union Leader.

Lt. Scarinza concurred, saying, "We have a very good feeling we have done everything we can do at the crash site."

In a phone interview following the second search, State Police Sgt. Tom York, now retired, said that while there was no longer an active ground search underway, investigators were still "charging forward," looking into background information and other leads. 'We're concerned about where she is."

Sgt. York said that while police found no evidence of foul play to suggest a criminal investigation, he stressed that the term was just a "label" and that police would be treating the case much as they would a criminal investigation.

The second search had done little to assuage Fred's frustration. He feared the status of "missing person" would be a roadblock in pursuing an investigation, and told the media, "We should think of it in terms of a criminal investigation. ... Let's grab the bull by the horns and call it foul play."

As the second search came to a fruitless end, friends and family members began to return to their lives.

Billy had to get back to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, and about two weeks later, on March 2, Maura's siblings checked out of the Wells River Motel, fighting "utter exhaustion and desperation," a friend recalled.

Maura's belongings were returned to the family; Kathleen brought them to her house in Hanover. The car itself was released from police custody but remained at Lavoie's Garage in North Haverhill.

Bleary-eyed, but resolute Fred also checked out of the Wells River Motel after three solid weeks searching for Maura.

He was not giving up though; Fred would become a regular at the motel, returning nearly every weekend over the course of the next year.

Fred Murray was as determined as a man could be. The immediate search for Maura was over. His battle to find his daughter was just beginning.

Maura Murray: The Series

1. Maura is Missing Part I: The Departure
2. Maura is Missing Part II: The Accident
3. Maura is Missing Part III: The Search
4. Maura is Missing Part IV: The Aftermath
5. Maura is Missing: The Epilogue

Sidebars

1. Could a hit & run accident be connected to Maura
2. Did Maura make the mysterious phone call?
3. Legal battle waged over files