When local officers reached the Saturn on Route 112, they treated it at first as a single car accident with an absent driver. Over the next forty eight hours, that assumption eroded under the weight of what searches did and did not uncover.
The First Night After The Crash
Police checked the immediate area around the car and nearby houses along the road. They spoke with residents who had called 911 and with the bus driver who had seen Maura at the scene. Those early interviews confirmed there had been only a short window between the crash and her disappearance.
Inside the Saturn, officers noted damage to the front end, deployed airbags, and signs of alcohol, including a box of wine that appeared to have leaked. The car was locked and later towed to a local garage for examination. There was nothing inside that clearly explained where she had gone or why she had left.
That night, there was no large scale organized search through the woods. The case still sat in an awkward place between traffic incident and missing person, and decisions made in those first hours have been argued about ever since in coverage and commentary from her family.
From Accident Scene To Missing Endangered
On Tuesday, February 10, a “be on the lookout” notice was issued for Maura just after midday. By late afternoon, Haverhill police were describing her as missing, and New Hampshire Fish and Game prepared to lead a structured search if she did not contact anyone by the following morning.
Her father arrived before dawn on February 11. That morning, state Fish and Game officers, local police, and family members began a coordinated search along Route 112 and into the surrounding woods and fields. They used line searches, a helicopter with thermal imaging, and tracking dogs on a clear winter day.
A tracking dog was given one of Maura’s gloves and led east from the crash site along the road. The dog followed a trail for roughly a hundred yards, then lost the scent near an intersection. That detail led investigators to consider the possibility that she entered another vehicle at that point.
In the days that followed, official searches covered miles of roadway, riverbanks, and woods. A later account in the Boston Globe noted that teams covered nearly twenty miles along Route 112 without finding her footprints or any clear sign of a person leaving the road into the snow.
Ten days after the disappearance, New Hampshire Fish and Game conducted a second air and ground search using a helicopter with a heat sensing camera as well as tracking and cadaver dogs. Again, nothing linked to Maura was confirmed. A ripped pair of women’s underwear found on a trail later tested negative for her DNA.
Leads That Never Settled Anything
As weeks passed without progress, the FBI became involved and the search widened beyond New Hampshire. The case moved into the state’s new cold case unit when that office formed in 2009, which meant it was formally treated as a potentially criminal disappearance rather than an ordinary missing person file.
Several objects and tips created brief hope and long term frustration. A man gave Maura’s father a rusty knife that he claimed might have been used in a crime, pointing to his own brother as a suspect. The brother’s family later said he made up the story for reward money. No public evidence tied the knife to Maura.
Another reported lead involved a black backpack seen at an overlook about thirty miles east on Route 112, similar to one she was believed to have carried. Authorities acknowledged they knew about the report but have never publicly said what, if anything, the backpack contained or whether it was connected.
Through 2004 and 2005, police and volunteers conducted additional searches around the crash site, including one in July 2004 when the snow had melted. Nearly one hundred people combed a one mile radius around Swiftwater that summer. The search was described in news reports as producing nothing conclusive.
The A Frame House Near The Crash Site
In October 2006, retired officers and private investigators working with the family organized another search within a few miles of the crash scene. Cadaver dogs were taken into an A frame house about a mile from where the Saturn had been found. In an upstairs closet, handlers said the dogs gave a strong reaction.
A piece of carpet from that closet was sent to New Hampshire State Police. The fact of the testing is public, but the results have never been released. Later media coverage and commentary from investigators describe the samples and a small blood stain in the house as having limited or no evidentiary value.
The house connection fed years of speculation, especially because a man linked to the property had been mentioned in an earlier tip involving the knife. Law enforcement has not publicly announced any charges or confirmed any forensic link between the A frame house and Maura’s disappearance.
Volunteers returned to wooded areas around Haverhill in 2008 with dog teams and private investigators. Those later searches again produced nothing that moved the official investigation forward. The case remained in the cold case unit, active but without confirmed physical evidence beyond the crash scene.
The Basement Tip And Renewed Attention
Years after the initial searches, Maura’s father received a tip about a different house near the crash site. Neighbours believed a body might have been buried in the basement around the time she went missing. The owners refused access for years, so the tip sat unresolved.
In late 2018, new owners allowed private investigators and cadaver dogs into the basement. Two separate dogs reportedly alerted to the same spot under the concrete floor. Ground penetrating radar scans suggested an anomaly beneath the slab, and her father publicly expressed belief that his daughter might be buried there.
The attention around those alerts led to a formal search by New Hampshire State Police and the FBI in early 2019. Investigators broke through the concrete and examined the area the dogs had indicated. Afterward, state authorities said they had found nothing connected to Maura or any other crime in that basement.
In 2022, police conducted another ground search off Route 112 in the nearby towns of Landaff and Easton. They described it as part of the ongoing investigation, offered no specifics about what prompted it, and later said the search yielded no publicly shareable evidence.
A Case That Moved Online
As official leads stalled, the case shifted heavily into public view. Message boards, Facebook groups, and dedicated podcasts began to pick apart the timelines and documents. Shows like Missing Maura Murray and later Media Pressure revisited the search decisions, the scent trail, and the handling of early witnesses.
Coverage often returned to the tracking dog losing scent on the road and to the absence of footprints leading away from the car in snow. Those two points continue to anchor many discussions about whether she left on foot and succumbed to the elements, was picked up by a driver, or staged a disappearance.
Her family has consistently argued against the idea that she set out to die or permanently vanish. They point to her homework, the accident forms she collected for her father, and her usual personal items in the car as signs that she expected to come back. They lean toward the possibility of a crime by an unknown person.
Over time, law enforcement actions reflected a more formal recognition of risk. New Hampshire added her case to the cold case unit, and the FBI placed her in its Violent Criminal Apprehension Program list for missing persons. In 2025, the state expanded its cold case team, which her family publicly welcomed but treated with cautious hope.
What Remains Fixed After Two Decades
More than twenty years after the night on Route 112, the stable facts remain narrow. A young woman left campus with a short term cover story, drove to a familiar region, crashed on a rural road, spoke briefly to a passing driver, and vanished before police arrived.
Extensive ground searches, tracking and cadaver dogs, private investigations, and renewed digs in houses near the crash have not produced confirmed physical evidence of where she went after that short walk from the Saturn. The New Hampshire Department of Justice still lists her disappearance as an active, suspicious missing person case.
