Maura Murray (born May 4, 1982) is an American woman who disappeared on the evening of February 9, 2004, after a car crash on Route 112 near Woodsville, New Hampshire, a village in the town of Haverhill.

[7][8] In 2017, the case was the subject of a documentary series on the Oxygen network, which described Murray's disappearance as the "first crime mystery of the social media age", having occurred days after the launch of Facebook.

[14] Believing that West Point was not a good fit for her, she transferred to the University of Massachusetts Amherst after her freshman year to study nursing.

[14] In November 2003, three months before her disappearance, Murray admitted to using a stolen credit card to order food from several restaurants, including one in Hadley, Massachusetts.

Murray dropped her father off at his motel room and, borrowing his Toyota Corolla, returned to campus to attend a dorm party.

[6] She also made a phone call inquiring about renting a condominium at the same Bartlett, New Hampshire, condo association with which her family had vacationed in the past.

[2] On the afternoon of Monday, February 9, at 1:24 pm, Murray emailed a work supervisor of the nursing school faculty that she would be out of town for a week due to a death in her family.

[25] Around 3:30 pm, Murray drove off the campus in her black 1996 Saturn sedan;[2][28] classes at the university had been canceled that day due to a snowstorm.

At a nearby liquor store, Murray purchased about $40 worth of alcoholic beverages, including Baileys Irish Cream, Kahlúa, vodka and a box of Franzia wine.

[33] However, she later stated that she had not seen a man nor a person smoking a cigarette, but rather had seen what appeared to be a red light glowing from inside the car, potentially from a cell phone.

[32] Another local resident driving home from work claims she passed by the scene around 7:37 pm, and saw a police SUV parked face-to-face with Murray's car.

[42] Journalist Joe McGee, writing for the Quincy, Massachusetts, Patriot Ledger, summarized the incident: "At a hairpin turn, she went off the road.

[4][5] Between 8:00 and 8:30 pm, a contractor returning home from Franconia saw a young person moving quickly on foot eastbound on Route 112 about 4 to 5 miles (6 to 8 km) east of where Murray's vehicle was discovered.

He did not report it to police immediately due to his own confusion of dates, discovering only three months later (when reviewing his work records) that he had spotted the young person the same night Murray disappeared.

In a press release, they stated they believed that "Maura was headed for an unknown destination and may have accepted a ride in order to continue to that location," adding that they had discovered no evidence that a crime had been committed.

[68] Family members of the man who turned in the knife claimed he had made up the story in order to obtain reward money in the investigation, and that he had a history of drug use.

[68] In 2005, Fred Murray petitioned New Hampshire Governor Craig Benson for help in the search,[38][69][70] and appeared on The Montel Williams Show in November 2004 to publicize the case.

[71] On February 9, 2005, the first anniversary of Murray's disappearance, a service was held where the car was found, and Fred met briefly with New Hampshire Governor John Lynch.

[6] Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin stated that law enforcement "was aware of the backpack," but did not disclose whether it had been taken for forensic testing.

[6] The New Hampshire League of Investigators, ten retired police officers and detectives, and the Molly Bish Foundation started working on the case in 2006.

[45][74][75] Tom Shamshak, a former police chief and a member of the Licensed Private Detectives Association of Massachusetts, said, "It appears...that this is something beyond a mere missing persons case.

[78] In the closet of an A-frame house approximately 1 mile (1.6 km)[68] from the crash site, cadaver dogs allegedly went "bonkers", possibly identifying the presence of human remains.

[17] Jeffery Strelzin said in February 2009 that the investigation was still active: "We don't know if Maura is a victim, but the state is treating it as a potential homicide.

[84] On February 9, 2017, the thirteenth anniversary of Murray's disappearance, Strelzin wrote in an email to The Boston Globe: "It's still an open case with periods of activity and [at] times it goes dormant.

Following its sale, the new owners allowed several searches of the property; however, the excavation conducted in early April found "absolutely nothing, other than what appears to be a piece of pottery or old piping.

[6] On the Internet, Maura's disappearance is the perfect obsession, a puzzle of clues that offers a tantalizing illusion—if the right armchair detective connects the right dots, maybe the unsolvable can be solved.

And so every day, the case attracts new recruits, analyzing and dissecting and reconstructing the details of her story with a Warren Commission–like fervor.In the years after Murray's disappearance, her case received media attention from ABC News, NewsNation and StoryCorps; television shows American Morning, The Montel Williams Show, 20/20, Nancy Grace’s Cold Cases, Disappeared and the Dr. Oz Show; in print from The Boston Globe, People magazine, Newsweek, Seventeen magazine, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone; and from dozens of local and regional newspapers, magazines, radio and television programs.

[99] In 2017, the Oxygen network produced a six-part television documentary miniseries titled The Disappearance of Maura Murray, hosted by journalist Maggie Freleng.

[100] The Oxygen miniseries described Murray's disappearance as the "first crime mystery of the social media age", having occurred days after the launch of Facebook.

In the book, Renner proposed the theory that Murray traveled into New Hampshire with a tandem driver and may have disappeared willingly and started a new life elsewhere due to fears her pending credit card fraud case would prevent her being hired as a nurse, or less likely, was murdered by someone she knew.