The Disappearance of Maura Murray

At 7:46 p.m. on February 9, 2004, a Haverhill police officer arrived at a crash site on Route 112 in New Hampshire to find a locked 1996 Saturn sedan with a cracked windshield and deployed airbags. The vehicle had impacted a tree on the driver's side, severely damaging the left headlight and pushing the radiator into the fan.

The driver, a 21-year-old nursing student named Maura Murray, was gone. Inside and outside the car, the officer discovered red stains that looked to be red wine. He found a damaged box of Franzia wine on the rear seat, along with an empty beer bottle, diamond jewelry, and a book about mountain climbing in the White Mountains. Her debit card, credit cards, and cell phone were missing.

Just minutes earlier, a passing school bus driver had spoken to her. She was shivering, asked him not to call the police, and claimed she had already called AAA. Knowing there was no cellular reception in the area, he drove home and called the sheriff anyway. Between his departure and the police arrival, she disappeared completely. The case file shows a frantic series of events leading up to that narrow window.

A Weekend of Collisions

The days before the crash were marked by strange incidents. On February 5, 2004, Maura was working a security job on the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. Around 10:30 p.m., she reportedly broke down in tears. Her supervisor found her completely unresponsive and escorted her back to her dorm room. When asked what was wrong, Maura said two words: "My sister." Her sister Kathleen later explained they had spoken on the phone that evening. Kathleen had been discharged from a rehabilitation clinic and relapsed on the way home.

On Saturday, February 7, Maura's father Fred visited the campus. They went car shopping, had dinner, and Maura borrowed his Toyota Corolla to attend a dorm party. She arrived at 10:30 p.m. and left at 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, February 8. An hour later, she struck a guardrail on Massachusetts Route 9 in Hadley, causing nearly $10,000 worth of damage to her father's car. The responding officer wrote an accident report, but there is no documentation of field sobriety tests being conducted.

Fred rented a car, dropped Maura back at campus, and left for Connecticut. That night, they spoke on the phone and agreed to talk again Monday night to fill out the insurance claim. Instead, shortly after midnight on Monday, February 9, Maura used her personal computer to search MapQuest for directions to the Berkshires and Burlington, Vermont.

The Preparations

On Monday afternoon, Maura started making calls and sending messages. At 1:00 p.m., she emailed her boyfriend, promising to call him later that day. She called a number about renting a condominium in Bartlett, New Hampshire. The call lasted three minutes, but the owner did not rent to her. At 1:24 p.m., she emailed a nursing school faculty supervisor to say she would be out of town for a week due to a death in her family. Her family later stated no such death had taken place.

Back in her dorm room, Maura packed clothing, toiletries, textbooks, and birth control pills in her car. When campus police eventually searched her room, they found most of her belongings packed in boxes, with the art removed from the walls. On top of the boxes was a printed email to her boyfriend indicating possible trouble in their relationship.

At 3:40 p.m., Maura withdrew $280 from an ATM. Security footage shows she was alone. She then went to a nearby liquor store and bought about $40 worth of alcoholic beverages, including Baileys Irish Cream, Kahlúa, vodka, and a box of Franzia wine. Again, the footage shows she was alone. Between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., she drove off campus in her black Saturn. Classes had been canceled that day due to a snowstorm. She called to check her voicemail at 4:37 p.m., the last recorded use of her cell phone.

Nine Minutes on Route 112

The crash on Route 112 happened some time after 7:00 p.m. The resident who called the sheriff's department at 7:27 p.m. initially reported seeing a man smoking a cigarette in the car. She later stated she had not seen a man, but rather what appeared to be a red light glowing from inside the car, potentially from a cell phone. The bus driver who stopped to help noted Maura did not appear impaired, though a later police report stated she was intoxicated at the crash site.

When the first Haverhill police officer arrived at 7:46 p.m., the scene was frozen. The car contained a AAA card issued to Maura, blank accident report forms, gloves, compact discs, and driving directions to Burlington.

Maura's debit card, credit cards, and cell phone were missing, and none have been located or used since. Police noted some of the bottles of purchased liquor were also missing. Another local resident driving home claims she passed by the scene around 7:37 p.m. and saw a police SUV parked face-to-face with Maura's car, with no one around. This witness statement contradicts the official police log, which has Haverhill police arriving nine minutes later.

The Immediate Search

Police initially treated Maura as a missing person on the belief that she may have wanted to disappear voluntarily. They based this on her travel preparations and no obvious evidence of foul play. By noon the next day, almost twenty-four hours after the last confirmed sighting, authorities would refer to her as simply missing.

On February 11, a tracking dog tracked the scent from one of Maura's gloves 100 yards east from where the vehicle had been discovered but lost the scent. This suggested to police she had left the area in another car. Between 8:00 and 8:30 p.m. on the night of the crash, a contractor returning home saw a young person moving quickly on foot eastbound on Route 112, about 4 to 5 miles east of where the vehicle was discovered. The person wore jeans, a dark coat, and a light-colored hood. He did not report the sighting immediately due to his own confusion of dates.

The FBI joined the investigation ten days after the disappearance. Searches expanded into Vermont. In late February, Maura's older sister discovered a ripped white pair of women's underwear lying in the snow on a secluded trail near French Pond Road, but DNA tests found that the underwear did not belong to Maura. In July, nearly 100 searchers performed a one-mile-radius search around the crash site. Police stated the search discovered nothing conclusive.

Decades of Ground Searches

Over the years, the case file filled with leads that went nowhere. In late 2004, a man gave Fred Murray a rusty, stained knife that belonged to his brother, who had a criminal past and lived less than a mile from where the car was discovered. The brother allegedly scrapped his Volvo several days after the knife was turned in. Family members of the man who turned in the knife claimed he had made up the story in order to obtain reward money.

In October 2006, cadaver dogs allegedly went bonkers in the closet of an A-frame house approximately 1 mile from the crash site. The house had formerly been the residence of the man implicated by his brother in the knife story. In early April 2019, excavation was done within the basement of the house. The search found absolutely nothing, other than what appears to be a piece of pottery or old piping.

On September 14, 2021, the New Hampshire State Police announced that bone fragments had been found on Loon Mountain, approximately 25 miles east of the crash site. Maura had been to the mountain before and had knowledge of the area. In November, it was announced that the remains were not of Maura. New Hampshire authorities eventually moved the case to their cold case unit, officially treating it as a suspicious missing-person investigation. They have started using newer technology, including LiDAR to identify abnormalities in terrain and facial recognition.

A Fingerprint Match in Ohio

A major development in the case emerged decades after the crash, connecting the New Hampshire scene to Maura's early college years. Before attending UMass Amherst, Maura spent three semesters studying chemical engineering at the United States Military Academy in West Point. She chose on her own to leave the military academy before an honor board met to address an allegation that she stole from the PX.

In March 2025, a man named Steffen Baldwin, formerly Finkelstein, was convicted of running a fraudulent Ohio animal rescue charity. Baldwin had been a classmate of Maura at West Point. Journalist James Renner reported that the two had been in a relationship, and that Baldwin had been Maura's student advocate before the review panel that investigated her for a breach of discipline.

Baldwin was arrested in 2020 and charged with 48 felonies. According to a Campbell, Ohio police officer who investigated Baldwin's fraud, an unidentified fingerprint on a CD or CD case that had been in Maura's car was matched to him via police databases. Baldwin denied involvement in Maura's disappearance.

The Current Investigation

Despite the fingerprint match and the ongoing application of advanced methods, the core facts of the timeline remain stubbornly fixed. A young woman crashed her car on a dark, snowy road, spoke to a passing driver, and vanished before police arrived.

Her family has never stopped pushing for answers. Fred Murray has stated his belief that his daughter was abducted and is dead. Her sister Julie started a TikTok account in 2021 dedicated to bringing awareness to the disappearance, sharing updates and evidence.

The investigation is still active. As of 2026, the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit released a statement that their determination to find answers for Maura's family and the public does not diminish. They stated the unit continues to work daily with state and federal law enforcement partners to pursue every credible lead. Review the timeline. The facts remain on the record.

Sources

1. Disappearance of Maura Murray
2. Evidence from the Snow: A Breakthrough for Maura Murray?
3. Maura Murray Disappearance - Latest Theories and Updates
4. Major update in case of missing student, 21, who left a creepy car clue ...
5. Cold Case Break? Convicted Felon's Fingerprints Found in Maura Murray's Car

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