today we are super excited it's an honor it's an honor to get to have here in the studio with us Julie Murray for those of you who don't know Julie is morea Murray sister Mar's been lost in many ways in the coverage of her own story and she's been seen as a character and not as a real human and that was something that I wanted to make sure everyone heard what made Mara special was she was so humble even though she was so talented what makes most sense to you at this point after thinking about everything over and over again for 20 years is there one Theory or idea that you've really landed on I think she got into a vehicle and I think whoever she got into that vehicle with did her harm people ask me all the time what can I do to help what can I do to help and I tell them just keep talking about Mara share a missing flyer engage with content that's victim centered things like that go a long way [Music] hey what's up everybody welcome back to mile hire podcast episode 289 and today we are super excited and it's really um it's an honor it's an honor to get to have here in the studio with us Julie Murray welcome to the show hey guys thank you so much for having me oh my gosh of course for those of you who don't know Julie is more a Murray sister um who is someone that we' have talked about many times over the years I think if you are into true crem at all you have at least heard of this case and probably have many questions like we all do so we wanted to have the opportunity to take you know to answer some of those questions that people have I mean some of them can't be fully answered but who better to tell the story than Julie herself um which also I just wanted to quickly shout out Julie has just come out with a new podcast called media pressure which is excellent It's So Good by the time that this episode goes live I think episode five will be out right it's excellent so if you are looking for an overview on the case I would definitely check it out it's going to be eight episodes total and then possibly a Q&A is that correct right eight total and then we'll have a Q&A episode yep yeah which if you want we can go ahead and Link a Q&A form or whatever you guys are doing for that um Sarah tney many of you are familiar with her she's also producing the podcast it's she just started her own Media company called voices for justice media and this is the the first of many podcasts to come so today we are going to be going over the case obviously we have talked about it many times times it was one of the first cases that I covered so like I said you know getting to talk to Julie here is really a kind of Full Circle moment for me it's I never thought I would actually get to speak with you and hear everything from you and um one thing I wanted to point out is over the years there's been endless coverage on this case and there is a lot of misinformation out there even from really reputable sources so even in the past you know when we've covered it we haven't gotten everything completely right because we thought we could trust you know normally reputable news sources and that turns out to not be the case so that's why we wanted to bring Julie here today to to clear up a lot of that and you know really bring the story to you guys in her own words yeah I'm so happy for the opportunity to to come on here and do some of that I've gotten things wrong myself within my own sister's case and as long as you have the ability and the awareness to self-edit and take accountability and as better information surfaces be able to change your um Theory and and not be married to it which is something that happens in my sister's case a lot is people become married to a certain Theory and discount any new or better information and so that's one of the things that I've dedicated myself in being more public to try to provide better information more context and get to some of the nuances of my sister's case because I mean you you both know it's full of nuance oh yeah yeah it really is I mean it's just been really interesting to take a look at it again now um after speaking to you and really clear up some of the things that we thought for so long were accurate because they're reported in so many different places um um so yeah it's really a great opportunity for us to to hear the whole story from you and not only for our audience but really for us because this is a case that we have both followed for so long it is one that really got me interested in True Crime um one that I've spent you know not as many hours as you but countless hours thinking about and I just have endless questions so I wanted to to jump in here obviously um you know we don't have to go through the entire case but as much as you feel comt with yeah I was just thinking before we kind of jump into things s I'm getting ahead no no you're good I was just thinking let's let's talk a little bit about the podcast because I think that's really yeah what what you've done and what you've created and what we've listened to so far I think has been it was eye openening for me because like you've been saying there's a lot of things that have been misreported and I think you're providing a valuable service to the public a valuable service to your family to be able to get out there and tell your the story as as it happened to you guys and I think that's what was really missing from the information that was out there is everything's kind of you know information's come by random ways some ways we have no idea where this even came from but now we're really getting the inside look at the Murray family and how everything unfolded and to hear from your family members you know your father Fred your brothers and you know friends and those close to tomorrow is I I think it's going to do a lot of good for the case and I think it's also going to write a lot of the wrongs that have happened in this case because we're talking about a disappearance from 2004 so we're talking about the 20-year anniversary uh was just a few weeks ago and so that's a lot of time and so would you just kind of tell everybody how the podcast came about and why why now why now release this podcast after all these years well an a number of different reasons but the first and most important reason was I was approached by Sarah tney who we all know and love and she presented this at the time I thought wild idea of what do you think about telling Mara's story in your own words on this network that I want to put together where victims and families are essentially taking back their narratives and and at first I thought to myself I'm not cut out to do that I I'm just a regular person I'm just a sister with a missing sister and after I thought about it I said this would be a great opportunity to tell the story in full share our lived experience which we have a vast amount of of over 20 years and I agreed and so that's what kind of started it was all Sarah's vision of presenting these tragedies by the people who knew and were closest to the investigations and I think what you're seeing is people are really it's resonating with people because what's missing in my sister Mara's story after 20 years of coverage endless coverage is who she really was mhm and I'm the only one in my family can are the only ones that can tell the stories about what she was really like and that's powerful and so I I said Sarah yep let I'm I'm in let's do it I didn't know at the time exactly what I was getting myself into uh with all the work that goes on behind the scenes in creating a podcast but it was so therapeutic it was cathartic for everyone in my family to give Mara some of her Humanity back that's been Stripped Away in all of the coverage and people are enjoying it people are telling me hey I really feel like I hear Mara in this podcast which was the point so that's kind of the origin of how media pressure started and I'm just so excited because Mara is season 1 and there'll be other Seasons that will cover other cases is told by the ones that knew the victim the victims yeah that's what I really enjoyed about it too you know having followed so much coverage on it over the years it was so nice to hear more about Mora and the person that she was hear little stories hear from her friends hear from all of your family I mean that's that's what was so interesting to me right and Mar has been lost in many ways in the coverage of Her Own Story y and and she's been seen as a character and not as a real human and that was something that I wanted to make sure everyone um heard who the real person was at the center of this tragedy and also to share some of my lived experience because I've been in this for 20 years now and I've learned a lot I made a lot of mistakes and sharing that with the world and being vulnerable is powerful and you know it might just help the next family navigating a tragedy oh I think it definitely will because like we were talking about earlier today there are so many families out there who have just been thrown into this world never thought they would be in this situation and don't really know how to navigate so I think it's really important to hear from people like you and from Sarah and so many others who have have already navigated tried to figure it all out and have learned so much along the way and sharing that information and getting to look up to you I think is is really valuable for so many families out there more than you can even imagine yeah I mean when when you have a tragedy strike you don't get handed a guide book here are the things that you should do here are the things you shouldn't do right well I've been there done that I've already made all those mistakes and so hopefully I can reach the next family and and help them navigate because you don't know what you're doing you're just you're just doing the next thing yeah and well how can you in that moment I mean your focus is on what happened to your family how can you think about all these other things that are unfolding that you've never experienced before it's just it seem I can't even imagine how overwhelming that experience was for you and your family and to try to you don't have time to think about like oh is this person trying to like take you know are they really trying to help me or are they trying to get something from me and so I I just want to commend you for you know it takes a lot of confidence and and really just bravery to put out this type of personal experience and story out to the internet to the world and kind of open your family up to whoever's out there you know listening I think that takes you know not everybody can do that not everybody's comfortable doing that but I think it's amazing that you guys you know you're like you know what screw it everybody else thinks like we're going to get this out there and because at the end of the day this is about Mara this about her story and that's what matters is not what everybody else thinks and and hopefully you know the goal of this is to hopefully drive more leads tips things like that and ultimately you know we're all hoping for some sort of resolution in in her case as I'm sure you guys are so yeah and it's already paying off within the F release of the first two episodes we're getting tips in we're getting viable tips that's crazy after 20 years wow yeah on a cold case we're getting tips because people are realizing that this isn't going away and also over the course of 20 years relationships change loyalties change people are seeing the coverage hearing my family and those closest to the investigation speak and realizing hey that little thing that I thought was insignificant I'm going to just report it just in case it's that missing piece to this puzzle to help get resolution and arguably one of the most well-known missing person cases ever yeah you know so that's a really great point and why it's so important no matter how long the case has been uh cold right to continue talking about it to because time does change things I mean it changes things on the investigation side of things as well as like you said with people like people change their relationships change so how they felt in 2004 might be far different than how how they feel now and maybe they've been withholding information because of X Y or Z and now they feel comfortable sharing that with authorities and that could just be that that missing piece as you said so yeah that's that's super important I mean that's why we you know as a show have really tried to focus on the the unsolved cases because we we've learned that it is so important to keep talking about these cases for those very reasons so um and obviously you guys are are really connecting people to and that's that's what I think really really helps is when people feel more connected to the victim and they feel like oh okay I know more about her than just the mystery surrounding her disappearance I think everybody's gotten so wrapped up and it's almost this lore that exists around the case which is so bizarre I understand why it happens because you know the media and you know investigation discovery and you know all of these media Outlets really kind of focus you know they're like spend 5 minutes it's on her backstory and then it's like the rest of the episodes about the mystery and who could have been involved in theories and things like that so it creates this this almost fantasy environment that everybody gets sucked into and focuses on that but you guys are really you guys are focusing on that but also going back and really letting people see an inside look into your family really and and what it was like growing up with her so I think that's really cool yeah and I'm glad that that's what you got from it because that's what I was trying to express and one thing I'll add on that is the way to warm up a cold case is to get new leads and tips and so this is just another Avenue that we're finding is helpful in that because it's already happening we're getting leads and tips and that is what we need for a cold case in all cold cases yes we need awareness we don't want Mara to be forgotten about about she's not going to be but we also need something to pursue and so we're seeing that now which is incredible and there are a lot of things being done behind the scenes on the case to this day so I don't want people to have the idea that this is just unsolvable because it's absolutely not we could we could really see the answers that you guys have desperately want at any time and you can never give up hope yeah that's so true I I believe the k is solvable this is just the tip of the iceberg on what we're doing we're doing as a family with professionals a ton of stuff behind the scenes and we've always been doing that for 20 years just some of it's not responsible to put out there on social media yeah and that's fine um but we are we're just we're pulling out all stops and this is just another another Avenue and it's working so far did you ever before you decided to do the podcast did you go to law enforcement and the authorities and be like hey I'm going to do this is this going to be a issue for you guys I did I went to the lead detective I told him I want you to hear it from me before you hear it from anybody else and this was probably only two months into me doing the research for it uh he looked me in the eye and said if I was in your position I would be doing the exact same thing and I said got it I've got work to do I got to go that's awesome that's actually I feel like that doesn't always happen where the authorities don't want that kind of attention often times on cases they're working on but that's really cool to hear that he gets it and I think more law enforcement agencies are starting to understand like we've got to embrace social media we've got to embrace you know all these new forms of media and and not look at is like a negative and and rather let's utilize it as a positive I mean a lot of agencies use it to connect with the public you know trying to rebuild that relationship between the public and police which I think is really cool but also utilizing it as a tool to drum up new information and tips I think it's I mean it's just a no-brainer it just is like why wouldn't you do that right are they going to participate at all in the podcast or are they kind of because it's active they're like we there's not much we can say type of thing oh I asked them yeah I'm sure you did they politely declined which is fine um but you know they they can't really say too much because it it's still an open active missing person case so yeah it makes sense so I guess we should dive into yeah you know her who Mara was a little bit and you know this is going to be very kind of more conversational overview of the case to kind of give you you maybe the the information to then go to Media pressure and get the real inside scoop on everything and and hear from the family I think that's the most interesting thing about the podcast especially your father I just was like so drawn in and I love listening he he just makes you feel like as a listener I just kind of feel like oh I'm kind of part of the fam you know he's like he's got that very likable um way of speaking and he just seems like a amazing guy so mhm so that's kind of the plan for today is hopefully we'll leave you know we'll give you enough information in case you haven't heard the case and you know you know get some additional Insight from Julie but ultimately once you're done listening to this episode head over to Media pressure make sure you subscribe follow over there and start from episode one and start working way through you'll probably binge it in a day like we did so it's it's that good so really good should we dive in yeah okay okay so I want to talk more about Mora I want to talk about her background and you know who she really was I think you know there's the majority of people out there want to hear that information of course there's people that you know they just want to hear the case and blah blah blah but we find it incredibly valuable especially you know as podcasters but also as listeners um to really to feel connected um so I wanted to to just kind of hear from you about what she was like growing up um she was born May 4th 1982 in the small town of Hansen Massachusetts to your parents Fred and Lori um you have three older siblings Fred Jr Kathleen and one younger brother half brother Curtis who did the music for your podcast that was really cool and it was nice to hear from Fred junor too yeah in the show so can you tell us a little bit about growing up what your family dynamic DC was like and maybe some fun stories or memories that you have yeah well we had a large family obviously um we didn't have a whole lot of money but we didn't really know that we didn't have a lot of money because we were a very athletic outdoorsy type of family so we would always go camping hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire every year multiple times a year we were always playing sports no no matter what the season we would be playing the sport For That season and so it was fun I mean it was fun um we didn't realize that we we didn't have all the bells and whistles that maybe some of the other kids had because we were out in the woods camping hiking you know we loved it um so Mara was two and a half years younger than me and she was incredibly intelligent she was in all high honor classes and she scored almost a perfect score on the SATs um super super smart and we knew that early on she just picked things up and we knew because she was so witty and funny that okay you know she's she's smart you know because she's coming back with comebacks against all our older siblings and we're like wait a minute we didn't think of that so it it was cool she was kind of the jokester goofy quirky um kid and then she was an outstanding athlete like I said so she was on the varsity basketball team as a freshman oh wow wow yeah she made the US Nationals in cross country and track finished 33rd in the nation oh my God just incredibly gifted but what made Mara special was she was so humble even though she was so talented she was so humble even with me you know I'm the older sister you'd think that she throw it in my face about how smart she was or how she's beating my times at the same age but no I mean she was my number one fan so that was cool [Music] um and eventually my parents got divorced and so we didn't see um my dad as much although he became our chauffeur so we would see him probably more than we should have uh because he was picking us up from practice CU my mom worked the 3 to 11 shift as a nurse and then he was always involved with coaching and some capacity so um he was always around and uh that that was good to have such an Engaged father after a divorce yeah yeah so that was definitely special and so we were all very close um it was just a lot of fun growing up um we came from a really small town new englanders will get this but we only had one Dunkin Donuts and that's that's kind of how you judge how big a town is is that's so funny how many Dunkin Donuts there are and so we had one we have since gained another one so we're a town of two dunks um wow coming up in the world we are are they full service locations though we're not talking they are they are not in a gas station give me the full credit for that s funny I was telling you earlier my dad grew up in Massachusetts and when we moved out to Colorado he would get it shipped here in boxes oh yeah yeah yeah bostonians are very serious about their Dunkin' Donuts good stuff yeah so I mean that's kind of Mara in a snapshot um she was goofy funny always playing practical jokes making everybody laugh um just fun to be around so you guys really all had like similar interests and was any of your siblings kind of like the odd one out as far as like they're totally interested in something else like maybe not outdoorsy was everybody just like camping sounds great let's do it well we all loved camping so that was there but my sister Kathleen and Freddy in in a way were more the artistic type so Kathleen could sculpt anything she could paint anything and of course I I couldn't do any of that um Mara could kind of um but Kathleen was definitely more artsy I would say but she's still played all sports and still loved to camp and hike and be outdoors we we all did but the the the major commonality within the siblings are that we're all introverted oh really yeah that that works out well then you've got your friend group kind of like built in did you guys have like mutual friends and things like did you and Mara have mutual friends at all well our teammates so we're always you know when you're on a longdistance cross country team you bond with each other over many miles and so we we had the same teammates so the same group of friends yep that's really cool that is so you you know talk about how you know once you left high school you go to West Point kind of talk us through why you went to West Point and then subsequently how Mara ended up kind of following in your footsteps there and can you kind of explain what West Point is for people who don't know yeah um well I knew growing up that my family probably wasn't going to be able to pay for college CU we didn't have a lot of money and we had so many kids so there was one summer where I went to the Coast Guard Academy for a week long just high school kid program and I absolutely loved it I fell in love with it I loved marching around I loved doing push-ups I loved all the yeah I it was weird scam that I loved it I loved it and so I came back I remember coming back and like Dad I love this and he's like oh well that's fully funded he's like great I kind of love that too um so that was my first experience nobody in my family were military um so I really didn't know what I was getting myself into I just thought this summer program for high school kids where they didn't really yeah it was like a water down version a water definitely and he said well if that's something you love we could we could pursue that and so right around that time I started getting recruiting letters for track and cross country and I was like oh man I could go to college on a scholarship so I started looking into some of these and one of the letters came from West Point the West Point track coach and I arranged a weekend visit and I went out to West Point and visited and loved it even more than the Coast Guard Academy wow yeah and it it was a little bit more intense obviously uh because it was the real deal what I saw but probably a little watered down as well um because I didn't want to scare everyone away uh and I came back and I I applied I also applied to the Naval Academy and I applied for an army Roc scholarship ship at Boston University or maybe it was Boston College but I was hooked I wanted to be in the military um so I applied and then you have to go through this major process to do the West Point application you've got to take an aptitude test a physical you got to write essays you've got to get a congressional nomination from a cting wow Senator so I did all that it was overwhelming for a high school kid um um and then I got my nomination from Senator Ted Kennedy and I got accepted and I went and so to answer your question it's fully funded Cadets do not pay um it's one of the best schools in the country uh but it comes with a cost and that cost is you have to be disciplined you don't get a true college experience every minute of every day is programmed and it's hard emotionally psychologically physically you know you have to memorize all these different things you've got to make your bed to a certain standard you've got to shine shoes you've got to March around you've got to learn how to fire a rifle and I just loved it all of it so I would tell Mara I said this is awesome you're going to love it I'm meeting all these new people from all over the world everyone seems pretty smart um and so I would write home to her and tell her how much I thought she'd enjoy it and oh by the way you get to go to school with me and we can run together like we used to and it's free and so she got recruiting letters from major top schools Harvard Yale Brown she didn't apply she applied to West Point and West Point only the only school that she applied to like I'm going to go be with my sister she's going to go be with her sister and my dad even tried to convince her to maybe you know put some feelers out for some other schools go on some visits nope didn't do it wow and so she got her nomination also from Senator Ted Kennedy and join me at West Point is there is it easier for a sibling to join another sibling like you know sometimes they have that like family like Legacy Legacy type of thing there yeah it's not it's it's kind of an Unwritten um thought that it's easier of course Mara had all the credentials she didn't need need me to be there but it it definitely is easier um once you have you're established because a lot of my friends had parents or yeah or other siblings that also went too to West Point which makes sense cuz that's kind of the military um kind of thing just for joining the military if you have a come from military family I know there's you know connections there and stuff but obviously she was well qualified on her own without the connection to to get get into West Point did you cuz like in my mind I'm thinking this had have been a shock to the system you know your first day at West Point were you guys growing up like pretty organized like you guys did you felt well prepared going to West Point or was it just like a rude awakening for you I didn't I didn't feel feel well prepared um I I'm more of a um slower thinker and so memorizing all of the we call it plea knowledge that was hard for me um like learning how to shine shoes you get it you you got classmates that had other family members in the military that could show you the ropes um but I don't know I I just the minute I I step foot into on the grounds the first day you're just immersed in this shock to the system and I was It was kind of thrilling to me so I liked it um but not everybody likes it I mean at West Point the first day the first week is when you have the the most um people drop out oh really oh yeah cuz it's that way by Design because if you don't really want to be there say if you apply and you get in because your parents pushed you to be there you're not going to withstand with the the yelling and screaming and the push-ups and stuff like that so because you have like drill sergeants and stuff too right and you're like running around marching around carrying all your gear around yeah and all that yeah that's I mean you can go watch videos on YouTube now they they do like a day I've watched all the the military cies and also very random but like the chefs at these schools and just like oh yeah the people that work in the kitchen that's always fascinating me to see how they prepare meals for all these cadetes and I'm just like wow and then watching how fast everybody come it's like everything's a well oiled machine at these schools this is not like let's go hit the Taco Bell you know I'm going to ride my skateboard over here I'm sure you can like can you ride skateboards and stuff like that no no so you're marching from you're marching yeah defin definitely a different college experience than we had so did you was there anything you did like and you relay any of that to her or did you just love it you're like you're going to love this everything's awesome it's a challenge every day and Mar's like yes that's what I want well I I liked all the stuff at the in the we called it Beast Barracks it's the first eight weeks and it's meant to weed out people that don't really want to be there it wasn't until I hit the Academic Year where I was like whoa um because I'm I wasn't that great at math and all it was was like high level math and I I really struggled with that and Mara I would write home or call my one call a week or whatever it was ridiculous um and she would help me she'd say okay here's the formula you need to look at this or whatever and she would help me as a high schooler um but you know having me at the Academy before Mara I I prepared Mara I gave her my plea knowledge book and I was said memorize all of this so I didn't have that um and I taught her how to make the bed Shine the shoes wear a uniform March salute the whole nine so she was prepared um but I there was nothing that I could say to prepare her for three people surrounding you screaming at you right I cannot even imagine yeah what did you major in I majored in systems engineering and minored in Psychology oh interes and Mora did um chemical engineering mhm um smart family very impressive I I was probably the dumbest but I don't think that's fair to say at all okay so she gets there and I'm sure you were so pumped to finally have her there um how were her first couple weeks not great not great I didn't I didn't realize that she was going to react the way she did I thought it was a game and it was to me and that's how you get through it it's just a game these are just other cadetes yelling at you they've gone through it and you could see them some of them would be like talking on the side and you could see them like laughing and and you think oh they're real they're not these these machines they're actual real you know people yeah but they wouldn't show that to you so I think that got toara a bit and there was one day where I went in to give her cookies in her room which was a her to have a sibling at the Academy cuz I could sneak her stuff she wasn't supposed to have cookies um and she was sobbing crying and that's when I realized oh this might this might be too much for her emotionally can we talk about the training trip to Fort Knox MH and kind of what happened there because that's obviously something that many people bring up and i' I'd love for you to like kind of set the record straight and just explain it in your own words what happened right I'd be happy to so the second Mara makes it through the Beast Barracks which is 8 weeks the hardest time at West Point and then she made it through the entire first year Academic Year again the hardest time because you're we call them pleaes but you're freshman and you just are kind of like toys for the upper classman to entertain themselves with and make them do dumb stupid things um so Mara makes it through that and then the second summer West Point you have to go to this 8-week training program maybe it's 10 weeks and it's called Camp Buckner and it was at Camp Buckner where they take a week-long trip to Fort Knox and that's where you learn about tanks and other more advanced um military training so she's at but Fort Knox and she goes into the Post Exchange which is kind of like the Walmart of military bases it's tax-free they have everything and she steals less than $5 worth of makeup and she was with another friend her name is Megan she's on the podcast and she Megan looked at Mara she was right beside her and said what you know what happened after the incident and Mars said I don't know why I did that and of course Mora fessed up to it immediately took ownership of stealing the make up um but she I still to this day I don't know why she did that and I I was at my own training um that summer so I didn't see her until the next academic year when we started uh and I asked her just face to face why did you do that and she looked down embarrassed and just told me I don't know cuz she had money yeah to just buy it yep so well aren't you given some type of stiping too yeah cadetes are given a very small amount but enough to like buy sodas and some food and stuff but she had the money did she ever steal prior like even throughout her childhood as like a kid like steal anything or is that literally the first time you had ever heard of her stealing something I mean she may have but not that I was aware it was when I learned that I was like whoa what are you doing it was way out a character especially from the post exchange like right full well knowing the risk involved with that and obviously there's discipline action you have to go before a committee and all of that like it's it's a pretty big deal to Comm in fense like that especially over something so small did you kind of get the impression at that point that there's something else going on or you know was obviously she was kind of struggling through through school the academy and having a rough time did you feel like that was part of it like maybe she just was kind of just not thinking or going through something like a way out I know you kind of mentioned that yeah I it was way out of character for her there was no reason for her to do that I thought it could have been this is just my opinion I get beat up for this all the time but I think it could have been that was her way to have an excuse to leave without outright quitting yeah and what's interesting is I was just in contact with another one of Mara's classmates who struggled at West Point and also had disordered eating and she told me that was a symptom another indicator of losing control is not only disordered eating but also those little petty theft type things so that may have contributed to it I I don't know exactly when Mara's eating disord started but I'm assuming it was around that time yeah we talked a lot about this earlier I I really appreciated you guys getting into conversation around you know her struggle with eating disorders it's it's so incredibly common in college but as you brought up in the in media pressure that it's there's even more pressure on you know athletes and people who are under lots of stress like Adam Military Academy and um you know it's something that's not talked about enough I think it's so incredibly common I was Bic around Mora's age too and you know hearing that like I've just related to a lot of the things that she was doing kind of like cuz you do feel like shameful about it I know you said you wish she sought help for that and you know it takes a lot and sometimes it's not as easy to to seek that help you know and it's it's easy to to hide it yeah and it it wasn't easy for me to talk about it because I still have guilt myself for not doing more for her because I knew about it not right then but I eventually learned that she was struggling and my response was stop it yeah and it's it's I hate that I wasn't there to support her I I beat myself up over that for sure because I didn't understand it I didn't know what it was um but after talking to so many different people that struggle with it and I've had tons of people reach out since I talked about it on mediate pressure saying that you know I went through the same struggles and I beat it or I also did made these stupid decisions and it's sad but I think avoiding it isn't giving people the full picture of what she was dealing with so yeah I think it's important um it is it's she was embarrassed she was ashamed and um but it was something that she was struggling with and a lot of my friends at West Point especially female were those type A people who also struggled yep yeah it makes a lot of sense and I think it's important for people to to hear that that part of her even though it's not easy but you know you couldn't have how would you have known I mean it's it's such a complicated thing that there wasn't enough especially back then really wasn't any education about it and um if you haven't like experienced it yourself it's it's really hard to wrap your mind around and you'd have the same attitude of all right I had family members that were like why are you doing this just yeah just don't do that anymore you know and it's like so it's so much more complicated than that and it doesn't come from a bad place I think it's just like a lack of understanding that's why it's it's so great to talk about it yeah um do you feel like the school support Ed Cadets with with issues or you know going through stuff like that not as much as they should have looking back of course hindsight's 2020 but also in 2004 there wasn't as much research on eating disorders and so Mara did see a counselor at West Point the same counsel that the friend I spoke about a couple minutes ago saw and it was just a joke to them Mara and this woman talked about it about how ridiculous it was to sit with this counselor who didn't know anything about eating disorders disappointing yeah that's yeah that definitely doesn't make it any better yeah they really across the board should have more you know mental health support for college students just in in all yeah aspects it's such a pivotal age where I think pretty much everyone at some point struggles with with something and college is definitely a time for that to to really come out well that's what's important to remember we were talking about this earlier too is like this could have been any of us you know to there's some people that like to hone in on the stealing and and some of the mistakes that she made and and try to Define her by her mistakes but it's like this could have been any of us like if we all look back especially those of us who've been through college and stuff we can all go back to college and be like just youth or just yeah just growing up I mean we've all made mistakes I've stolen things before um not proud of those things but like it you're you know you make dumb decisions in in your adolescence and in in college and stuff so it's like I'd like to meet a person who has never made a but to define the individual and attempt to shame or blame them for what ends up happening to them based on some of the mistakes that they made I think is just way out of line and I mean you're just you're you're missing the entire point I feel because of that incident she left West Point that contributed to why she left I believe yeah so this happened the summer before 911 so she admitted guilt and so when Cadets admit guilt then they don't have to go through the full honor board procedures because they said yep I did it and then they just have to determine punishment so her trial her honor committee was condensed um because she admitted wrongdoing and it was just a matter of punishment so that was happening she was missing class her grades were dropping she was having to do this archaic punishment where she had to walk back and forth with a rifle March back and forth for hours and so that's one of the punishments at West Point it's called hours walking hours and it zaps you of your time which as a Cadet you have no time I talked about earlier how my roommate and I used to set an alarm for six minutes to nap in between classes because unreal I mean we just we didn't have the luxury to take a real nap but if we had six minutes we would do it cuz we're exhausted um so Mara's walking these hours she's missing track practice she's she she's missing class and catching up on homework and things like that then 911 happens and she's in this process of um going through this honor board punishment and I think that contributed to her to why she wanted to leave as well because at the end towards the end of the your second year as a Cadet you have to take the oath of affirmation which locks you into five years active duty military service and at that time we were absolutely going to be um shipped over to Iraq or Afghanistan it was guaranteed um because everybody was and those deployments were going to be over a year long and so when you're a 20 21 year old and you're thinking a year long that's an eternity yeah for someone so she opted not to take the oath of affirmation and she um never received her punishment and she opted to transfer to UMass so to answer the question I think there was multiple factors involved with that she wasn't happy at West Point she didn't want to go to war nobody did I didn't that wasn't my plan to go to war I thought I was just going to get this great education and then go on maybe go to law school or something nope didn't happen but I had had already taken the oath so I was locked in if you take the oath and then decide to drop out then you have to pay back your time okay I was wondering about that so you do have to pay it back if you exit early if you exit early you pay it back or you have to join the regular army as an enlisted Soldier and pay back your time that way oh wow which yeah you don't want to do you don't want to do that so she was already and she was struggling with this eating disorder she wasn't happy so she decided to leave and people say she was kicked out that is verifiably false she was not yeah that's been widely misreported yeah I was under that impression for a while but then you can take all your credits and transfer them like in any other university and go to another school to finish your degree yes and that's what Mar did so do you think that decision for her was good that it was a good move for her to go to UMass I thought it was a great decision for her to get out because I didn't want I didn't want to go to Iraq but I knew I was going or somewhere and I obviously didn't want my sister to be In Harm's Way either right and I knew she wasn't happy I knew she didn't like it and she was struggling she had mental health issues and that wasn't a good place for her for so many reasons yeah how did she do with her first semester at UMass Dean's like turned it around incredible yeah she kind of felt like the weight of the academy lifted off her where she could really Thrive and obviously a lot of her Freedom freedoms came back so yeah but she also wasn't in the clear I mean you don't just stop West Point and now you don't have an eating disorder anymore she was definitely still struggling with that and so she made more poor decisions that I I'm not I'm not minimizing Mara's decisions what she did was wrong let me be clear but you also have to factor in the stressors that she was under and this mental health issue that she didn't have control over going back a little bit while she was at West Point she met Billy Rous Rous I always say his name wrong but they continue to date even after West Point yes even though he was now stationed at Fort S at that point in Oklahoma right okay so and they had broken up before but they were trying to make the longdistance thing work where things like pretty Rocky between them yeah yeah they they would break up get back together break up get back together okay that they did the D the whole do Loop you know typical of kids that age college kids that age of course I told Mara directly to leave him because I found out that he had cheated on her and she can tried to make it work anyway mhm did she ever express like long-term plans with him like did she ultimately want to marry him and kind of settle down that sort of thing yeah they had talked about Mara getting a nursing job because nursing jobs are very um transferable so it made sense in her mind I think that if she was a nurse and Bill got stationed somewhere else that's probably the one of the best careers you could have because you can work at a hospital and they're everywhere so they did talk about that um and there was talk about being engaged they were not engaged um but I do believe that they discussed it okay what what did your dad think of Bill my dad thought that bill well he described him as a used car salesman bill was like to talk a lot so bill was a talker and I didn't particularly um like that and he knew it and everybody else knew it because I told them to include Mara um but my dad didn't have any reason to not like Bill he didn't give us any reason I mean he gave me enough reason not to like him because I didn't think Mara deserved a guy that was going to cheat on her when you're out of school that's 85% outstanding most outstanding topnotch candidates to date so there's other fish in the pond was my thought process yeah of course you always W best for your sister right yeah so then going forward a little bit here um Mora did find herself in a little bit more trouble in Fall of 2003 um in no that November she had food delivered to her dorm six times using a credit card number and it turns out that that credit card didn't belong to her can you kind of explain that situation as well right she used somebody else's stole somebody else's credit card uh to order large quantities of food late at night which is just so typical of someone struggling to not only order food late at night to kind of mask the shame of it all but also the quantities in which she was ordering was way more than one person mhm if you add up the total charges it was still relatively low it's not like she was stealing hundreds of dollars but it was wrong and she got caught doing that and then she was put on 3 months probation but I think it's important to note that when she was confronted about doing this she like she had in the past she totally um owned it she admitted it she always did it says a lot yeah yeah she could have denied it said I don't know right it does count for something yeah it it it does um and I actually this was interesting I got a message from the woman whose credit card she used really yeah and she follows the case and she's very very kind and she told me that she didn't want to file a police report but in order to get the the amount that was used back she was forced to file the police report so she had some sort of guilt for doing that because she was thinking as we all have gone through this where we blame ourselves and she's saying well if I didn't do this maybe she wouldn't have gotten in the trouble and I I was just like no you you did what you were supposed to do but it was just nice to hear to hear from her yeah I'm sure probably been nice to connect with a lot of the the people over the years who you know had some part of this in some way yeah seems like you've been able to connect with quite a few people yeah um and she turned herself into the police is that correct well the police showed up at her dorm room which is kind of odd that it it people say it was like a sting operation for like a pizza um yeah what never heard of that before yeah the police showed up and knocked on her door I don't know if they were dressed as the delivery person or what but she answered the door and the police you know said what are you doing this isn't your card and she owned up to it yeah so did you ever talk to Mara about that whole incident no I didn't I wasn't aware of it okay when did you become aware of it not until after she disappeared okay and Mara hated to disappoint me as an older sister and I was I was by the rules I you know like to follow the rules I like structure so she she would probably would know that I would have said what the hell are you doing why did you do that yeah right mhm well it seems like she really never wanted to disappoint any of your family but she really looked up to you and didn't want to let you down in any way yeah she did which of course you know I think you would have been understanding and yeah obviously it went the best for her but I I totally get that I know you know I have a little sister too and I know that she wouldn't want to you know disappoint me in any way yeah so it's an interesting Dynamic but okay so let's let's fast forward here and talk about her disappearance and there's a lot to go over here so I want to make sure we get through as much as we can um so that brings us to February 5th Thursday and Friday February 6th 6th 2004 um Mara had finished the fall semester and went back to school after winter break on Thursday February 5th she was scheduled for a late night shift at the security desk at Melville Hall which was near the building her building Kennedy Hall now was that um something she volunteered to do or was it kind of like an RA type thing where you're you get like credit towards school or was it just a paid job it was described to me as a job where she yes she got paid but she could also do her schoolwork on the job and so for for somebody like Mara who you know her school workor was important to her like I said before she was on the dean list a job where you could do your homework kind of is like killing two birds with one stone and get paid for so what how long would these shifts be and how late would she end up working they varied based on the day because UMass had different hours where these shift workers um worked and this shift would would take her to 1 a.m. wow I believe I I believe yeah okay so the first several hours of that shift we're pretty uneventful just taking a few calls on her personal cell phone and then at 12:40 a.m. right before her shift is supposed to end uh she took a call on the security desk phone and what we know about this mysterious call is uh UMass police detective Brian Davies told the uh is it kalonian record yes yes um in an article that was printed on February 27th 2004 that his Department um was actually able to track the phone call saying quote we know the location we have not been able to identify whom she was speaking with um that maybe indicates that the phone call was upsetting um most likely from the dorm line that's what I believe so let me let me back up and give a little bit of more clarity here so marrow is at the desk she takes a call from my sister at 1010 she talks to my sister Kathleen for 28 minutes and after The Disappearance Kathleen said there wasn't Mar didn't seem upset Kathleen did share that she had relapsed so Kathleen had issues with alcohol and she had been to a rehab center and her fiance got her from the rehab center and took her directly to a liquor store unbelievable I don't need to say any more about that um that probably would have upset Mara but not to the degree to which she was unresponsive later on in the night then we know that she took another call about 12 midnight 6 minutes past midnight from her boyfriend bill um and I've asked Bill and he said said nothing about that call stood out to him and Mara did not seem upset and then shortly before 1:00 a.m. is when Mara's Supervisor was notified that Mar something was wrong with Mara and she was unresponsive at the death job at Melville Hall and so she wasn't actively doing her job because she was upset so she wasn't checking people in people were just coming and going so we've always been trying to identify the source of what made her so upset yeah and so in talking to my C sister Kathleen and in what bill says it doesn't seem like either of those two calls Mara was upset so I'm not sure about the 12:40 timestamp about when the dorm phone call happened but we do know that there was a dorm phone there and Mara probably took took a call from somebody else and that may have been what caused her to be so upset but to this day we still don't know who it was and like you said in the Caledonian record article the UMass police identified the location of that call but not who it was so that's still a big question mark what made her so upset to where she wasn't able to respond the Thursday before she went missing and I I still can't answer that yeah and you don't have like any Theory or any certain you know belief of what it could have been or who it was well what I what I thought about is if Mara was talking to another guy she wouldn't have done so on her cell phone because the cell phone was a shared family plan with her boyfriend bill so bill would have been able to see those calls and Mara was smart enough not to do that so maybe this is just my opinion maybe she talked to another guy and something about that call on the dorm line made her upset but we do know when her supervisor showed up all Mara could say was my sister my sister so that makes it seem like it had something to do with the earlier call with Kathleen or something was said in the later call pertaining to me but I don't know what that would be I have some ideas but do you think it's possible that she was actually upset about something else but said my sister my sister CU she didn't want to explain it to whoever was asking I think that's very possible yeah yeah that's kind of what I was thinking too cuz she was really upset she was described as sobbing uncontrollably um yeah almost like in a she's been described as being almost in a trance like State like something traumatic had happened yeah um and of course people have all types of theories about what it could have been and I think that's what's so hard not knowing what that call actually was or who it was from because that leaves so much room for speculation and for people to come up with all these I mean I've heard so many wild theories and right some of them don't really make any sense um that must be so frustrating for you to not have an answer like that which could be such a huge piece of the puzzle yeah it it could be huge because I've I've never seen Mara like that yeah and so whatever it was that upset her was big and now she's missing she's gone and we don't know what that was and no one's come forward and Kathleen said you know we did have this difficult discussion obviously it's it was a upsetting topic but she doesn't think it would have made her upset to that degree right and that many hours later so Kathleen ended her call with Mara at 10:30 this emotional breakdown didn't happen till close to 1:00 a.m. yeah so it's really really strange yeah was there any other like you alluded to maybe it was a guy another guy she talked to so is there do we have any confirmation that she was romantically involved with any other guys at this time like was there other guys she was seeing on the side because I think that's a big point of contention for a lot ofes um besides yeah besides dating Bill Rous yeah because well and the track coach I'm forgetting yeah B Daddy yeah B Daddy yeah yeah so during one of Mara's breakups with Bill she and this isn't 100% confirmed but it's been said that she had a romantic relationship with the assistant track coach who was a grad assistant so people have kind of made him see team like this older guy but he was a 22 maybe maybe 23y old graduate assistant not married oh interesting that's definitely misreported I didn't understand that yeah and he was actually going to parties with the college kids cuz he was basically just out of college himself right um so he he's at parties whether he was supposed to be or not I don't know um but he was definitely there and I have pictures of him there with with Mara um so I definitely can confirm that he was partying with the college kids to include Mara um so there's this romantic relationship that she had with him um during one of the breakups I know bill bill has said that he was when during their breakups he was with other women as well so they were definitely not exclusive in that way so she could have been pursuing someone or someone was pursuing her I don't know who it is though who it was and again why would that make her so upset to this point that she's unresponsive that is very weird yeah it is very weird but i' like to remind people we're talking about a 21y old true true woman who could EAS I got upset about so so many things that are so insignificant now that I have all these years to look back on like why was I so upset over this one incident or this one issue with this guy back when I was 21 meant nothing totally but when it's magnified by your how naive you are at that age um it could have caused her to be upset absolutely so do you think there's a possibility maybe we're reading too much into that and that is completely unrelated to her disappearance or do you really feel that this is kind of that trigger moment that kind of starts everything off oh I think it's important I think it's very important um I think whatever that was had some sort of role in her decision to leave UMass on Monday when she disappeared but the problem is looking at Mara's case every single thing that we're talking about could be as insignificant as it is important but we just don't know yeah so that's why I think it's important to not completely rule anything out and keep everything on the table I disagree with my dad in in many ways in terms of his initial Focus was you know what happened in New Hampshire I've always thought that what happened at UMass is important and plays into and he's come around to that idea yeah sure with a lot of convincing yeah it makes sense cuz I think a lot of it goes back to her mind State and where she was at yeah because her actions are clearly affected by the way that she's feeling internally and what she's dealing with because otherwise if you discount that completely it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever right as to why she'd end up where she does yeah that's H so getting great way to look at it back to the timeline a little bit um so after she is having this emotional episode um Karen tells Mora that she can go home early she walks her back to her dorm at Kennedy Hall and she even offered to come up and talk to her Mara said you know I I'll be okay I have a roommate that she was home um but this was a lie and she actually lived alone um do you think she just wanted the space and so just like told her whatever in that moment so she could be alone that's what I would have done as an introvert dealing with some sort of emotions the last thing I want to do is sit and chat with somebody I want to be alone I think Mara was trying to unburden Karen by not and being polite Mara I I believe Mara's response was a polite way to tell Karen that she need some alone time yeah yeah well as far as anyone knows she went to bed without talking to anyone else and then that Friday February 6th was a normal day for her it was pretty uneventful based on her phone records we do know that school was cancelled that day because UMass got hit with a snowstorm right okay so then jumping forward to Saturday February 7th um early that morning your dad came and picked her up to go car shopping so what was going on with her car Mara had my dad's old 1996 Saturn and after Christmas between this weekend and after sometime in Christmas Mara took a trip down to visit my dad in Bridgeport Connecticut where he was working a travel job as a Nuclear Med um Tech and while she was driving from UMass the car started bucking a little bit and then it started smoking and so she gets to Bridgeport and she says dad there's something wrong with the Saturn it's not acting right and so my dad takes it to a local mechanic down there in Connecticut and has him look at it he tells my dad that it blew a cylinder or it's down a cylinder I don't know the technical term um but it seemed like a pretty big job and he didn't think that he could fit it in in the time that Mara was at Connecticut was in Connecticut so my dad said okay don't worry about it we are going to get you a new car anyway because you need a you need a car that's reliable as a prerequisite for the nursing program she had to have a reliable car at that point she um she had been car pooling um so my Dad decided I'm not going to dump a bunch of money into getting this Saturn fixed that's not a not a good not a good investment M at that point and he did not want her to drive that car so he drove it himself back to UMass while Mara followed him in his new Corolla and he put it in the back parking lot at UMass and told her you do not drive this car we're we're going to I get you a new one it's not safe so that just illustrates how serious it was that my dad would drive it himself all the way back up to UMass he did not want Mara driving that car yeah otherwise he would have just put her back on the road but he knew it wasn't safe okay so then that day they go car shopping and they're out like all afternoon right and then um Fred takes Mara and her friend Kate who was she was friends with from the track team team yeah and they all go out to dinner um and neither of them mentioned the car shopping in front of Kate was there a specific reason for that or I don't know if that's I don't know if I don't know about that yeah why wouldn't they like why is that a if it even matters it seems odd something that people kind of get yeah it does seem odd but the fact that my dad drove up there to go-kart shopping has been something that's been discussed so many times nause him yeah um but there there is evidence that he was up there I have a picture of one of the places that they went to from that day uh and there's a phone call to Reliance Auto that Mara made clearly looking for Autos uh and then she called me at 321 and she told me about one of the cars she liked um but before before my dad showed up at UMass he the week prior he went to several different ATMs or maybe it was the same ATM and withdrew the maximum amount so he withdrew $500 because he wanted to have some sort of bargaining power when he went to ums um and so he ended up having $4,000 it's been said online that he withdrew $4,000 the day of which defeats the purpose of going to multiple different ATMs because he was in just pulling out the maximum amount and that's something I asked my dad about I said dad why didn't you just write a check but he said his checkbook was back in Eastern Massachusetts so he didn't have it but come to find out he would have had to write a check anyway okay so then after dinner um Fred takes the girls to the liquor store uh to buy alcohol for another friend's party and this has been like a weird point of contention people get confused on this about him taking her but she was 21 years old and could just buy the alcohol herself MH um after buying the alcohol Fred drove back to the hotel he was staying at and that then let Mara drive his brand new Toyota Corolla to this party um obviously cuz he didn't want her driving her car which and let's define party yeah this was an interesting CU I think in our heads are like raging College you know house party or something but that wasn't necessarily the case yeah it it's it was described as a party initially but as we talked to different people we found out that it was inside a dorm room in in the dorm so it was a small dorm room that could only fit certain a certain amount of people so there was no more than 8 to 10 people in this small tiny dorm room it's like a dorm hangout more than anything yeah yeah there's not like loud music and strobe lights going and craziness so this was out of friends dorm and her name is Sarah yes um I know you talked about her a little bit on the podcast which was interesting to hear cuz I never really heard these details were the two of them how did the two of them know each other Mara and Sarah knew each other from working together at Mara's second job which was working at an art gallery oh that's cool okay so the strange thing about and I don't know if you want to get into all of this you do go into it on media pressure but we don't have to get into it here but you've said that like Sarah's you haven't really gotten a lot of information from Sarah that she hasn't been really forthcoming about that night and that there's a lot of you know questions that you have that you've never been able to get answers to um is that I'm imagining that's frustrating for you yeah yeah so we still don't know a lot we know close to nothing from Sarah she told my dad in the one time that she spoke to my family she told my dad she was asleep the entire time and it was her dorm room and ever that's ever since then she's never responded to any of my messages or phone calls do you find that to be weird yes yeah I would I would be really frustrated with that and that's that really stands out to me as strange obviously I don't want to make any accusations or you know she could have just been asleep and maybe she's just like I don't it's just hard to imagine that you could you could sleep in a dorm room party I mean it's a like what isn't it aren't the beds in the room so I don't that's all very confusing it's very confusing and she's the host remember she's the host of this Gathering she invites everyone over for a party then goes to sleep with them all in the room that just yeah lots of questions there that's really that's really frustrating I hope maybe she'll come forward with more information one day and maybe she has I don't know what she's told law enforcement that's true that is true maybe she just doesn't want to speak about it publicly yeah and in her in her defense once you speak about my sister's case publicly then you become a target for incessant harassment yeah and that's understandable yeah have you how many times have you tried reaching out to her over the years too many to count yeah and you just never get responses MH well maybe maybe one day she'll feel comfortable enough to to at least have a conversation and I'd be happy if she if she told law enforcement everything that's all I want she doesn't need to tell me or anybody else anything as long as she told the authorities whatever she knew or that she didn't know anything that's all that we want just acknowledgement that yeah if she doesn't want to come out publicly or even privately and talk to me I get it I understand but it's just odd it is odd Kate on the other hand now has always been really forthcoming with what she remembers tried to help you her family as much as she can um what what has she told you guys about what she remembers about the party well she she confirmed that it was a small room in southwest and couldn't hold a lot of people she says on the podcast media pressure she says she didn't have any bad feelings at the party she didn't notice anybody pairing off with anybody else and it was really just an average event for her and nothing really stood out does she remember Sarah sleeping during it she doesn't remember that specifically H interesting I assume they were having some drinks and yeah you know typical colge yeah chill sest okay so she likely left around 2:30 3ish in the morning uh to return your dad's car to the motel um Kate tried to get her to stay and return the car in the morning knowing that that she had been drinking but she did insist on leaving is that all correct yeah so around 3:30 a.m. Mara ends up running into a guard rail and totaling the car and an officer came to the scene wrote an accident report um but there's no record of a sobriety test being taken and Mar didn't get any into any trouble for the wreck but you mentioned that this was a Cadet has that confirmed that it was the actual was it an actual police officer was it like a Cadet or did the cadet just radio or call in the police officer Mara left her cell phone at the dorm so Mara didn't have any communication so we believe that the cadet is the one that called police what we don't know is whether this Cadet who was also a student uh was with Mara was he he or she at the party or did they just happened upon the accident that I can't answer okay yeah 3:30 in the morning I definitely didn't want to know right like yeah why is this random dude just happen to be there yeah it's it's very confusing so what was the extent of the damage to the car oh significant really bad really bad yeah so it was total and and this was your dad's brand new car brand new car sure he was like dang yeah yeah Big D um but he was uh you know really he didn't get angry at her for it it sounds like he was pretty understanding told her that the insurance company is going to take care of it the car was towed she ends up getting a ride back to the motel um and and told your dad the the next morning cuz he was sleep when she got back but um yeah that that whole night is is pretty confusing it it's imagine still confusing to you to this day yeah yeah and one thing I want to add is we so Sarah so Kate says that they left about the same time that was about two to 2:30 Mara doesn't get into this wreck until 3:30 so there's some missing time and so what did she do in that time did she go back to our room did she go somewhere else we don't know we know that the crash happened in the direction of where my dad's Motel was but was she actually going to his Motel because it makes no sense for her to go back to the motel was she planning to go somewhere else was this Cadette with her it's all just very mysterious yeah yeah I'm curious because this car was so new I assume was this a new vehicle with like zero miles was it a used vehicle that had some mileage to it cuz I'm curious if Fred ever looked at the mileage from when or ever noticed like what the mileage was when he gave it to Mara and then after that accident to look at the mileage I know that's like really yeah I'm just saying like that' be interesting to know what the mileage would be yeah my dad would never pay attention to that he that was no he wouldn't know that I wish he did I wish he kept a log right I know he didn't but it was a new car and he had driven it around he had driven it obviously up to UMass a couple times um but pretty low mileage it's pretty new okay and to clarify I kind of like jumped past this but I do want to make it clear that Mara ended up sleeping in Fred's room that night even though he didn't even realize that she had come in until the next morning um and he claimed he didn't let her into the room and she didn't have a key to the room so that's been all very confusing there's some theories that maybe she slept a while in the lobby before the front desk would actually let her in but in this case your dad probably would have been woken up before someone was just let into his room if like the hotel staff wouldn't just give her this key unless it was like specified beforehand can you make sense of any of this or are you still confused too well no I I've been able to confirm that she did sleep in the lobby for a little so she gets a ride back in the tow truck gets dropped off at the motel and does sleep in the lobby and trying to gain access to the room I don't know if she went knocked on the door I don't know if it was like an on call situation at the front desk I don't think it was manned 247 it was just kind of like a a just a junky M right right so I don't know if she had a like ring a buzzer or call a number or I don't know how she got in touch with somebody to let her in and I'm not sure exactly how if that person gave her a key or let her in or if her name was on the room um but she gets in and we know that's the first time she had access to a cell phone so then she calls bill um and is crying and you know she was really upset that she crashed my dad's car um do I think she told my dad about that accident right when she got into the room absolutely not I wouldn't have either um she the middle of the night wake him up with that information yeah so he didn't she didn't tell him until later on in the morning okay and then this call that she made to bill was at 4:49 a.m. yep and and he answered uhhuh so I have to ask cuz I know there's people out there that are wondering we don't know what was the cause of the accident well we know that the police report says driver inattentiveness and that she slid on some debris in the road that's what's notated in the report yes okay interesting so it was a because it's notated that way I assume they did not suspect duy or anything like that then if they did they didn't give her they didn't pursue the testing for that no they didn't give her any medical treatment and they did not administer sobriety testing so a lot of people have said Mara got her second DUI she got zero DUIs because she didn't get cited for the first accident on Saturday and she was missing after the second accident on Monday so zero DUIs if she had been given a field sobriety test would she have passed I don't know maybe right maybe it is interesting though she got into an accident to the point where the vehicle is reported as total I would I would assume an officer if he is arriving to a scene of an accident the vehicle appears total that they' at least get paramedics come out and check her out just make sure she doesn't have any injuries before they just like all right tow the vehicle you know hop in the tow truck and just leave the scene yeah I I find that all very odd and I'm sure you do too yeah but there's just kind of this is all kind of like wrapped up very quickly I feel like for this type of scene I don't know and I've said many times I wish she got a DUI on Saturday cuz chances are she'd still will be here today right yeah right yeah that's a great Point yeah that's just very odd and maybe that's just kind of how they operate I don't know but that's definitely a question for me as many of you guys 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back later to check on her um and then your dad wakes up and she tells him about the accident and what was his reaction he was shocked he could not understand why how she could have done that much damage to the car uh like we said it was a lot of damage the car was total but he was relieved that she wasn't hurt and he said that there was not a scratch on her face so his next thought was how am I going to get back to my job in Connecticut because now I don't have a car at that point I don't think he knew that insurance would cover it um of course he was upset his car just got banged up but Mara was crying and distraught because she was her own worst critic and he knew that there was nothing that he could say to her at that time that would have been harsher than what she told herself MH and my dad wasn't the type to yell at us he never he never yelled at me ever so it's been reported that he he tells her that insurance is probably going to cover it all to kind of comfort her is that true he told her that when he found out that they were going to cover it and he' be out $500 yep dble yeah yeah and then his next Focus was okay I need to figure out a way to get this car in the shop or to wherever it needs to go and get a rental to get back to his job in Connecticut okay so he ends up getting the rental and then he takes Mara back to her D dorm and watches her walk inside um after he right before he drives home right um then later that night your dad and Mara talk on the phone and he tells her that he needs copies of the accident report so that he could give it to the insurance company she agrees says that she's going to get them to him and then um they had planned again planed to talk again on Monday night right okay so that brings us to Monday February 9th 2004 just after midnight on the 9th Mara searched online for directions between Amhurst Massachusetts and Burlington Vermont on map quest we were just kind of laughing at that over breakfast just because wow times have really changed I remember the days of map quest I mean I'm a little younger but I I even still used Map Quest back in the day otherwise it was get your map out yeah your map book I remember my parents had like the big map books and we' be on like road trips and they're like yep mhm turning Pages I'm like I don't even know how you you're doing this right now now at the time Map Quest was like revolutionary yeah yep so that morning Billy calls Mara several times and left multiple emails for her as well because they did plan to check back in on each other later so he was kind of confused about why he can't get a hold of her and that afternoon she emails him saying she got the messages and would call him back later the email specifically said I love you more stud I got your messages but honestly I didn't feel like talking to much of anyone I promised to call today though love you Mara Billy didn't answer this email um but he kept trying to call her and she just didn't pick up does it and does that make sense to you like she just really wanted space or but do you think she's possibly angry at him for some reason well it's clear that they were both avoiding or she was avoiding people and him in general because you can tell from the phone records that there's a Mis call and then there's a check of the voicemail so you know how when someone calls and you don't want to answer but you immediately check the voicemail to make sure it's nothing serious yeah that's kind of what I gather from looking at the cell phone records and back then to remind especially some of you who are younger you had to actually call your voicemail to hear the voicemails right um so at 12:55 she had a 3-minute call with the owner of a condo in Bartlett New Hampshire now your family spent a lot of time in Bartlett can you kind of explain your experiences there yeah Bartlett was a place right outside well it's in the White Mountains and it's one of the places we stayed especially if we went um during non-summer months and even when we went in the summer we we would spend some time in Bartlett but we had stayed at this condo um rental area people rent out their condos it was called the seasons and we'd stay there before so this is the place that Mar called to inquire about reservations but she doesn't book a reservation okay so do you think maybe she wanted to go somewhere familiar to her that's kind of comfort and and sort of clear her mind clearly she had a lot going on I think so however when you look at her earlier Map Quest directions they're to a completely different location so she's looking up Burlington Vermont and then calling a condo owner in Bartlett New Hampshire right two different places two two hours away they're not they're not close to each other so it seems like she didn't really have a plan mhm she's kind of contemplating her options of what to do but knew she needed some space and to kind of clear her mind maybe that that's possible that's I mean why else would she go there yeah MH does Burlington Vermont like ring a bell for you like is why she'd want to go there we hadn't spend much time in Burlington most of our time was spent in the White Mountains we had been to Burlington before but it only handful of times so it's not like we had familiar locations or memories up in Vermont no but she had been there before yes so okay sorry did you guys spend a lot of time skiing growing up or was she interested in skiing we she could ski but it was cost prohibitive for my family with all those kids so we didn't we didn't ski okay yeah so at 13 p.m. she calls a classmate who she had borrowed clothes from at some point and she wanted to return return them does this stand out to you as strange at all that she she made that a priority to return them or was she just that kind of person who you know wanted to make sure she followed through for people that had helped her that tracks with Mara being conscientious I could see her wanting to return those clothes mhm okay so then 1:24 p.m. Mara emails her nursing school supervisor and told her that she had a death in the family and would be gone for the next week um but she would let them know when she got back now there wasn't actually a death in the family correct right can you make sense of this at all or do you have any kind of take on that what I think is it was an excuse for Mara as a college kid to get out of class makes total sense yeah I mean I know tons of people that would do that because they are so strict about attendance and stuff and that's one of the few things that they will you know allow time for yeah of course um so but no one knows exactly why she emailed this to her supervisor and said that she was going to be gone for an entire week it's kind of confusing yeah it's confus so then at 205 Mara called 1800 go sto which is the Tourist number for sto Vermont and the line was down so she could only listen to you know the pre-recorded information they had about booking a hotel weather conditions and ski conditions um and so we believe she did listen to that most likely uh at 2:18 p.m. she finally calls Billy back and he didn't answer this time so she left a voicemail and said they would talk soon when she called Billy was actually on the phone with Kate trying to figure out what was going on with Mara and correct me if I'm wrong on this but we've seen it reported that according to friends Billy could be controlling and possessive with Mara and he would check up on her sometimes when she was out with friends so this wasn't like like totally unusual that he called Kate I I don't know I'd have to go look at the phone records I'm not sure if I can confirm that he was on the phone with Kate it could that could very well be true but I don't I I don't want to say that without checking okay so that hasn't been confirmed but it's been reported that it has well I can confirm it very easily um I just I I before I speak I want to make sure that it yeah yeah okay I gotcha um so then he tries to call Mara back three times 221 222 and 224 so he's just calling over and over again and she never answered um now many people discussing the case report that Mara had packed up her dorm room took the pictures off the wall and put all her stuff in boxes and it's also been reported which we had reported this at some point because it has been reported by really reputable sources um that she printed out an email from Billy and then then left it on top of the boxes and this email was about him cheating on her 3 years ago can you meanwhile packing her dorm room at the same time yeah yeah well here's what I know my brother Curtis and my mom visited Mara before she disappeared after she moved into the dorm and they went up into the dorm because Mara was excited to show my brother and my mom her dorm so they saw they were there and when shown the pictures after The Disappearance of the dorm room my brother Curtis says it looks more unpacked than when I had seen it shortly before she after she moved in so I don't think it I know it wasn't like Mara to immediately unpack everything that's me I do that Mara would not never do that so it I could see her taking time you know she's getting ready for classes she she's catching up with friends unpacking is not the priority for her at that time and also there they got hit with snow so she was probably hanging out with people because everyone was off school um so I believe my brother in his accounting of seeing the dorm room cuz I wasn't there um but he believed she was more unpacked after she uh disappeared the other thing is many of the Christmas gifts that were given Mara to include the jacket I gave her that Christmas was unpacked and hanging in the closet and um the printed email was um reported by police themselves as a personal note and the implication of that is obvious when it was in fact a 2-year-old email and it wasn't on top of the boxes it was inside a program inside a box so so not a freshly written personal note No and when people hear personal note you know they're thinking maybe it could possibly be a suicide note right yeah it was a 2-year-old email just I don't know if she kept it I don't know when she printed it but that's why language is so important because by calling it a personal note the implication is it was a suicide note when it was it wasn't even it was from Bill she didn't even write it yeah that's that is how did they get that so wrong that is that is absurd lazy work honestly or trying to play into a certain Theory to their benefit yeah that's crazy to because the way that that could be perceived is you know she had packed up the whole that it was a completely unpacked room that she packs everything up and then leaves this note there like it's all left on purpose it's like some sort of clue or that there's so much more to it than maybe there actually is yeah okay so then shortly after this she leaves campus in her Saturn and at 3:15 she stopped at an ATM and withdrew $280 leaving just $16 in her account and there's actually surveillance footage of it um you can see I mean what do you make of the the still images that were taken well they're they're really low quality yeah uh they're really grainy it's hard to even get the expression I mean she doesn't look happy I can say that yeah um but it also could just be she's getting money out of an ATM I don't know what I look like yeah what face do you do so through the ATM yeah totally so it's hard to get to get anything to get any clues off those photos trust me I've tried I've studied those photos for hours trying to see if I'm I'm missing something but they're just the quality is just so low I don't really get a whole lot out of them well she could be kind of frowning or scowling because she's withdrawing almost all of her money out of her account too but she can't even really tell if she's scowling no no I mean there's no way to tell it's just like you said it doesn't look like she's happy she's not like you know thrilled to be there but but again tell you know outright stressed or scared and and there's no one else with her and that's that's important to to note as well um but after withdrawing the money she went to the liquor store and spent $40 on alcohol um which I know there's been some reporting about what exactly that was do you know exactly what type of alcohol she bought mhm yep um the receipt for that purchase was found in her abandoned car mhm so it was the ingredients to make one of her favorite drinks which was a Black Russian so Kua vodka a nip of Bailey one of those small little um $2 ones uh and there was also a box of perania wine that she had purchased on the Saturday night that was found inside her abandoned car opened I that was from the party on Saturday and then there was Malt Beverages with a 12pack with eight gone okay so she also recycled 79 cans for $33.95 um this has been kind of talked about it seems like it's would be like an odd thing to do if you were planning to disappear yeah what do you make of it well it's a lot of effort to take all that time to get carry first of all carry 79 cans take the time to redeem him for just such a small amount of money $3.95 I mean Mara was she hated to litter and you know she was environmentally conscious but um it just seems like an odd thing to do if if she was planning to disappear and that's a data point that leads me to believe that wasn't her plan and another reason that kind of leads you to believe her plan wasn't to disappear is at some point that afternoon she goes and picks up those accident report forms that your dad asked her to get from the Massachusetts registry of motor vehicles um and so she had those on her signaling that she was planning to bring them to your dad at some point right you know so that's also strange um between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. she left Amherst and started driving North to New Hampshire just over the Massachusetts border at 4:37 she called the voicemail of her cell phone again and then at 5 her phone payed a cell phone tower within 20 mi of uh London Dairy New Hampshire am I saying that right yes London Derry so then at 7:27 p.m. a woman named Faith Westman hears a loud sound outside of her home in havil New Hampshire and Faith saw a black car up against a snowbank facing facing west in the eastbound Lane and she calls the police to report an accident she tells the dispatcher that she thought she saw a man in the passenger seat smoking a cigarette now this has been a very obviously a big point of contention here what do you make of that I think it's odd because what people don't realize is how close the westman's window was to the Saturn so yes Mara disappeared on a a small in in a small village up in haal New Hampshire but the location where she went missing there was quite a few neighbors and so for Faith to be so close and to to say that she saw a man smoking a cigarette um it's interesting to me um but it was also very very dark that night so we know that Mara always wore her hair up so maybe she saw saw the silhouette of somebody with their hair up and thought it was a man oh that makes sense yeah could she have been smoking too well Mara didn't smoke um so I don't think she picked up that habit in the time the last time I saw her over that Christmas maybe a oneoff stressed out like maybe yeah it's possible but it's odd yeah well it's now a common belief that it's possible that was her cell phone her cell phone did have a light on it it was flip phone um so maybe she saw that and thought it was a cigarette I mean it's still somewhat far to like easily misidentify something well her husband was also home Tim Westman was also home and he looked out the same window that Faith looked out and they disagree on whether it was a man smoking a cigarette Mr Westman thinks it was the light from a cell phone so they can't even agree on what it was to this day I I I do believe that Faith now thinks it was the light from a cell phone okay yeah okay which would make more sense yeah and they didn't go out to investigate so they they were just looking through the window yeah and obviously they had no idea no what this was going to turn into or what was truly going on here they're just reporting an accident so yeah they're not like super attention to detail here um but a second neighbor also saw someone walking around the crash car um so what do you think of that do you think someone could have actually been there well we know that there was a rag stuffed in the tailpipe and that rag would have come from Mara's trunk so at some point Mara would have had to access the trunk and so maybe that's what the neighbor saw okay it's it's called this flurry of activity at the trunk yeah well since you brought it up I I'd like to get get into the rail and the the rag in the tailpipe because that's been widely debated and people are all over the place with that so how what was the point of that how did that happen did your dad tell her to put it there and why it was bad advice or advice that my dad thought might possibly work would work but probably wouldn't he had never tried it before but he told her if you are in an emergency and you absolutely have to drive the Saturn that I don't think it's safe for you to drive and if it's smoking this badly what you could do and he even says I don't think it'll work but you could try to put a rag in the tailpipe and it might mask the smoke if you're trying to avoid police because if police see this smoke they're obligated to to pull you over and it was a wing and a prayer from my dad yeah it he did not want her to drive the car he did not think that she would ever use this as advice because she wasn't supposed to be driving the car okay cuz yeah so many people have read far into that um but when we covered it I remember there was a lot of comments saying that they had also heard of that in the past that they've been told that or have heard that it's kind of like a myth that it can help or something like yeah other people definitely do that yeah yeah it's not like to like he just made it up like this is a known thing um so just before 7:30 Mara was driving eastbound on Route 112 she ended up uh losing control of the car on a curve and slid off of the road just to give more context to how the accident happened can you describe you've driven this many times yeah will you just describe what this looks like and what this where she crashes like how steep is it a super steep curve like what's kind of the road in that area it's a sharp almost 90° turn okay and it's on a pretty narrow road and the night that Mar disappeared the roads were dry there was a snowstorm earlier in the week so there was snow accumulations over 2 feet but that night it was dry but it was very cold in the low 20s and it was very dark so there's this Big Red Barn on the corner and as you make that left going east you have to navigate this corner that it that Road's pretty treacherous I mean there's potholes Frost tees um and especially it seems more narrow with the snow Banks right that makes sense yeah but um dark dark and there had been accidents on that corner before so it wasn't uncommon for people to have trouble navigating not only that corner but other corners on that stretch of Road okay yeah so when a car came to a stop it was facing the wrong way and what is the extent of the damage to the car cuz there's also reports that have gone out there of like slid into a tree and that's not true so how much damage was there to the Saturn both airbags deployed which in her type of model could happen if there was only a driver and not a passenger okay the driver side windshield was cracked the front of the driver side bumper was pushed in but it was pushed in at such an angle that it didn't match up to the way the damage would appear if she hit a tree and so we had a accident vehicle Reconstructionist look over the vehicle and he said the damage to the front bumper is not consistent with hitting a tree because it was kind of angled so if you look at pictures of it the the headlights undamaged yeah that would have been busted by a tree yeah um so it looked like there was something that it it she hit something at an angle to where scraped it to where the the light um wasn't damaged and then and and it looks like on the hood it's like almost got impact going downwards onto the top of the hood where it kind of pushes the headlight back behind the top of the hood a little bit which is interesting so which again the Saturn's not a very I mean it's pretty low sitting car so you know talking about snowbank 2 feet two feet tall or so I mean definitely looks like could be running into that or so since there was a crack to the windshield do you believe that she possibly could have that that was caused by a head injury I believe it could have possibly been a head injury or it could have been the impact of the airbag or it could have been another object I've talked to a lot of people about it and people said it's similar to accidents they've had where it's the impact of the airbag and not necessarily somebody's head right okay well there would be likely blood and other things like that if it was your head smashing into the windshield like that and there was not right so it makes sense the airbags are popping out at a high rate of speed they go up pretty high too a big pillow you're you're hitting so it make sense it could hit cuz that's been a theory I've seen a lot is that maybe she got this head injury and then had some sort of Amnesia and then left the scene doesn't know who she is like does that have any validity to you I it's possible it's possible she could she could have had a head injury from the Saturday night accident that's true yeah and so this could have just added to that and and if she may have been drinking so MH imagining someone that could have been drinking suffering this blow to the face with an airbag maybe hitting your head that's a recipe for disaster in my opinion and do you believe that she was drinking I think it's possible um but I we we don't know for sure because no one saw her and the one witness that did interact with her her um Butch Atwood Butch Atwood the bus driver he he had has multiple different variations of his yeah encounter with her but he was asked outright by a reporter and he said she did not appear intoxicated okay but there was what was it a coke bottle that was filled with the frania and then there was alcohol splattered in the car as well we don't know what was actually in the coke bottle okay we we assume it was the red liquid the Fria wine um but without seeing the results of that testing I would just be speculating and my assumption is the red liquid aspersions on the driver side door in the ceiling were most likely wine but again I don't have the results of that testing so this is still before officers have arrived on scene or an A off has arrived on scene but at 7:33 p.m. a school bus driver named Butch Atwood saw Mara on the side of the road on his way home from work he stopped and asked if she needed help she didn't look hurt like we just mentioned uh but she was shivering it's very cold out and she's clearly distraught but again he doesn't think that she looked intoxicated many reports out there say that Mara had already told him she already called AAA and asked him not to call the police however we don't know this for sure she had AAA though correct yes which Bush he knew that she wouldn't be able to get coverage out there I mean this is a very rural area um can imagine cell service is not great out there so you know he's probably wondering well how are you going to do that um and tripa is no record of a call from Mara but once Butch got back to his house he decided to call the police anyway and Report the accident and he described the person as a young woman with her hair down which you brought up is very weird seems unusual for her very unusual she always wear a hair up yeah I guess every picture I've seen of her her hair was always up yeah is it possible from the accident her hair came down I think so I mean being hit in the face with the airbag yeah mess you up a little bit yeah right certainly and then at 7:46 p.m. haal police Sergeant Cecil Smith arrived to the scene and that's when he located the black Saturn but at this point Mara was nowhere to be found now Cecil Smith let's talk about him for a moment because I think a lot we could know a lot more about this case had we had perhaps somebody a little bit more competent uh show up at the scene but what's what's kind of your take on on Cecil Smith and how he handled this investigation like from the jump yeah I think the initial thought was it was a DUI walkway MH and so it wasn't taken serious from the minute that he showed up which does happen people will yeah you know be during and driving then leave flee the scene yeah and that that's something he probably had seen many times in the past but the difference with this is that it's an out ofate license it's a Monday night there's a UMass sticker on the side of Mara's car there's there's damag the airbags went off the windshields cracked and there's evidence of potentially drinking so it should have been taken seriously because they all knew in that area that there was no cell signal so here you have a vulnerable person with no communication out from out of state possibly probably a student because the UMass sticker on the car and may have been drinking so that's why I don't like this let's wait 24 hours before reporting a missing person because the window of opportunity to find Mara was that night and that was lost right well isn't he concerned that this person could just be out wandering through the woods and potentially die out there if he doesn't find the driver so just it just seems like why like what in his mind did he think happen like this person got a ride and then just like left flee the scene to avoid getting into UI and that's kind of the end of it and move on with things yeah but like I said the there was so many aties with the cars positioning the damage um and it just in my opinion it should have been taken seriously from that night some a at least a search should have happened that night and it and it wasn't yeah and the first search didn't happen the next day either the first search didn't happen until Wednesday morning 36 hours after Mar disappeared so much wasted time that's got to be so frustrating so frustrating yeah cuz I mean by that point cover a lot of miles in that time do you think that her case has influenced other departments to possibly make better decisions in situations like this and prevent this from happening to someone else absolutely I think if this happened in the the same circumstances happened today in the same town I think they would handle it differently and I think um I think this General thought that we we should wait 24 hours is something that law enforcement should take more seriously yeah so Cecil's doing his investigation uh he's running the license plate on the Saturday and find out that the car is registered to Fred Murray Cecil then goes to Butch's home and then Butch got into his personal vehicle and searched West down a dirt road near French Pond again the police assumed that Mara had been drinking and that's what caused the accident they figured she fled the scene of the accident in order to avoid getting into UI but would come back once she sobered up between 8 and 8:30 that night a contractor named Rick forcier was coming home from work and saw a young person walking quickly along Route 112 about 5 mil from from the crash person was wearing jeans and a dark coat with a light hood we look back at that ATM surveillance footage Mara was wearing a light color jacket so yeah it's possible this was her that he had seen then at 8:49 Mara's car was towed and the scene was cleared Mike Lavoy the owner of Lavoy Towing brought the car to his private home garage so rather than taking it to somewhere secure where it can be forensically looked at it goes the absolute opposite opposite way how do you guys feel obviously you probably feel like that was a mistake as well for that just be towed well I just don't get it I don't understand why that would be an option yeah um I have heard in all these years that that had happened before um but the interesting thing about the tow truck situation is that Mike Lavoy wasn't on the call rotation that night it was another toe operator his name was Dick mcken he was on call and he was listening to the scanner and when he heard the call come in for a toe he was upset that he didn't get the job so much so that he drove to the scene and confronted whether it be Cecil or Mike Lavoy oh wow about why I didn't get the call so I have still not gotten a clear answer from law enforcement as to why it was Mike Lavoy who wasn't on rotation why he got the call that night when it was Northland Towing dick mckeen's night they rotate to get call um and why it was taken to the personal garage of a tow operator I that doesn't make sense to me it doesn't seem like the right protocols definitely not that was definitely odd but they never gave you an answer answer as to why they did that I still don't know wow why the rotation schedule was mixed flipped what's crazy is that it's not until Tuesday February 10th the following day at around 12:30 p.m. that police finally put out a buolo uh be on the lookout for Mara and the car is then searched that morning and we know that you hadn't seen the search warn until a few months ago but what did you in there a lot of information I wish I had known uh the first week so what I learned from reading the search warrant was there was I think it was seven items it could there could have been more with Mara's name on the items identifying her as the likely driver and this happened at 10:20 a.m. on Tuesday yet nobody contacted my family until 6 hours later after they confirmed that it was probably more driving because you have to remember my dad had multiple kids so how did they know even if it was female how did they know it wasn't Kathleen or I was it from the UMass sticker I don't know maybe how would they know where I went to school though or if I was in school so again another missed opportunity there um but one of the most shocking things that I learned after reviewing the search warrant was there was a handwritten name and number on a note card a piece of paper in Mars car and I just assumed that law enforcement contacted that number because it was in her car and she's missing right so I was like what the heck I'll I'll call this number of course I had to do some research because it was a landline um but I did find the owner of the number and this was very recently very very recently and I contacted them and I said hey do you have any idea why why your name and number was found in a high-profile missing woman in New Hampshire and there they said no they didn't know initially and then I asked them if they had ever been contacted by law enforcement and they said no which made me fall off my chair yeah because here I am just assuming of course they called this number of course they called the condo owner too Linda Salomon one of the last calls Mara made that you could find on her cell phone they didn't call Linda Salomon the Bartlett condo owner until 9 months after The Disappearance her last one of her last known numbers that is maddening it's maddening um so then I did a little bit more research and I found that this the owner of this number had ties to our hometown in Hansen they had a rental unit at Lon Mountain which was about 25 mil east of where Mara's car was was found and in the direction she was traveling and they had ties to law enforcement and Burlington so me reading this I'm already on high alert and I'm thinking oh my God there's there's too many coincidences here um but when I looked at it further I haven't been able to link any of those coincidences together I of course passed this info to law enforcement um could it have something to do with maybe could it just be nothing maybe but I don't know well that's based off information almost 20 years later right versus had they followed up on everything they possibly could at the time your information is probably going to be a lot better yeah hopefully have you ever confronted law enforcement about why they never made those calls one time I did mhm with the older detective the the last Detective not older last What were what was their response just a lot of non- answers yeah I mean I'm sure they're just like what do you want me to do yeah basically yeah it's just really frustrating for all of these missed opportunities something that you know I'm not an investigator I'm a sister with a missing sister I know that it's important to call the missing person's last known numbers if even I know that I think most people would think about it yeah like that you know it makes it makes no sense it's incredibly frustrating when I say they did the bare minimum they did less than the bare Min yeah initially yep what else did they find in the search warrant or did you find in the search warrant um a couple other interesting things um one was they did have her triaa card that was in her car um and some of the alcohol but some of the alcohol was obviously missing which is another odd thing yeah and one or two other pieces that I don't I'm not talking about publicly that were interesting um but I don't want to jeopardize the investigation okay good so and just to name some of the other things they found in addition to the AAA card the blank accident report forms black leather glove um which have some significance to it but also aren't that significant makeup Diamond Jewelry CDs Map Quest directions to Stow in Burlington college textbooks a syllabus birth control pills with three missing an over-the-counter sleep aid like Tylenol PM her favorite stuffed animal monkey and a bag of clothes they also found a New Hampshire license reinstatement form because Mara had gotten a speeding ticket right that summer and her license was actually spend in the state of New Hampshire and so she had to file this form in person and you learned via the search warrant that it was in the vehicle yes okay and you found that out pretty recently yes yeah because we knew that we knew she had a speeding ticket we knew that she had to pay a fine and she did pay that fine I actually saw the check written out my Dad paid it for um written out to pay the fine but she had to in the state of New Hampshire you had to fill out this form to get it reinstated even after you paid your fine and you had to do that in person and I didn't know that that form was actually in her abandoned car until I saw the search warrant which could be a huge red flag or could be a reason why she was in New Hampshire I can't say for sure right but she did have it in the car and I don't know if she realized that her license was suspended and she had to complete this form I've thought that maybe when she was in the accident on Saturday the officer that cited her for um driver inattentiveness may have informed her hey you're he pulled a record hey you have a suspended license in New Hampshire did you know that that's just me speculating I don't know if that's how it happened or how she knew or when she knew but I do know that that form was in the car okay they also found the book not without Peril by Nicholas Howard which uh this book offers an extensive and intimate uh profiles of people who found trouble on New Hampshire's presidential Reign or the white range aka the White Mountains and um this is all the way from the 19th century through present day what do you make of this I know a lot of people have you know there's all types of theories about this book um like could she have been going to go hiking and you know yeah well I can tell you the backstory in the book so I was with Mara when we got the book we had just finished hiking Mount Washington which is the highest peak in New Hampshire and my dad had a goal to climb all the 4,000 foot peaks in New Hampshire and he he did that and everyone in my family at different times joined him for those hikes because we liked hiking too and on the hike up to New Hampshire we were coming back down after this grueling hike and we went to the gift shop and the author Nick low was in there signing books and we're like whoa this is super cool because the book talked about all those climbs that we had all done and misadventure and stuff like that so he signed the book for for us and um we we got it and it became one of Mora's favorite books she read it multiple times and it was in her car people have thought that that meant she was going up to New Hampshire to um whether it be hike or some some other reason um but she definitely wasn't equipped with any sort of warm weather gear to hike she had no winter gear no hat you know a couple pairs of gloves One Singular sock that's what she had with her she didn't have boots with her you know in the ATM she's not wearing boots so she didn't have the right gear to go hiking I don't think she was going hiking it was just one of her favorite books with a cool backstory yeah okay so people have read too much into that also to correct myself I said Nicholas Hower it is Nicholas how um okay so her wallet her license her car keys or uh yeah her car keys her credit cards and her phone were not in the car and they believed she took a black backpack with her too is that correct yes that's correct okay and then at 3:20 they called Fred and left a message that his car had been abandoned but he was working out of state at the time and didn't get the message around 5:00 p.m. um one of mar sisters called Fred to tell him was that Kathleen yes um you know tell him what was going on and the police officially reported Mara missing at that point um now how did you hear about the crash and Mara being missing I can't remember who called me I believe it was probably my dad that called me I was at Fort Brag North Carolina and I got the call Tuesday evening right around the same time and I had no idea what was going on or why she'd be in New Hampshire on a Monday night yeah it's definitely strange I mean what were your like initial thoughts did you feel like panicked right away or did you think it was confusion at first like what do you mean she's missing what how could this be why why is she in New Hampshire and that quickly turned to panic because we realized she went missing the night prior and she's still missing and so then it got it got real so was your what was your next like course of action well at that at that point I was slated to deploy to Iraq oh right right so I needed to find someone to replace me which was hard to do because those deployments were over a year long MH so it took me quite a while to find a replacement I I did and then I got emergency leave and headed to New Hampshire how close to when she disappeared were you supposed to deploy um it was a couple months okay yeah okay I didn't know that you could have somebody take your take your uh deployment spot it's it's rare you're not supposed you're not supposed to and here I come in as a bottom of the barrels you know I think I was a first lieutenant at that time my first my second real Duty station and on the surface it looks like I'm trying to get out of a deployment because no one wanted to go yeah so that was hard for me and did you try to explain to people what was going on yeah I mean once I explained how serious a situation was then you know my emergency leave was no problem and I think my commander even told me to you know I could go back and which I did multiple times okay so that brings us to February 11th 2004 um early Wednesday morning Billy gets on a flight from Fort S Oklahoma to New Hampshire to help look for Mara um while he was going through security he ended up getting a voicemail from an unknown number and when he listened to the message he hears soft breathing crying a whimper and sniffling have you heard this voicemail yourself I have not no and have you spoken him about it yes my dad heard the the voicemail oh he did my dad heard it and so did New Hampshire State Police okay or um haal police so when Bill arrived on Wednesday night he let my dad hear it and my dad just heard muffled muffled noises oh just static my dad did not hear what Billy interpreted okay have the police said what what they make of it they said that they determined it was a call from a Red Cross number a calling card from the Red Cross which is perplexing because why would the Red Cross call from a calling card yeah right and so i' I mean that's what law enforcement told us H it it's it's weird well how they even figure that out I wonder I don't know yeah I know I'm like that's so weird so Billy at the time was positive that it was Mara but how does he feel now he now my best guess is he agrees that it was not and agrees with my dad that it was just more wishful thinking sure on his part especially in a time like that when you get a call and you're going to hear what you know your brain has ways of making you think you hear things right yeah and my dad even said he desperately wanted that call to be Mara of course but he just it just sounded like muffled noises okay okay so she did use prepaid cards all the time because she didn't have her own self phone obviously super normal um for 2003 um and the Thanksgiving before Billy had given Billy's mom had given Mara two prepaid phone cards and Billy eventually added her to his plan and she got that smart smartphone um but detective sorry not smartphone Samsung flip phone no smartphones back then so around 8:00 a.m. official search was started for Mara and and your dad and other family members joined in with the search were you there on Wednesday no no okay were you still like in the process of trying to to get back okay um so a police dog did trace the scent of her glove a 100 yards before losing the trail leading investigators to believe that someone had maybe picked her up but there is a lot to be said about them using these gloves right she got the gloves that Christmas you know so roughly 3 weeks no more than three weeks however many weeks it was before she disappeared in February there were leather gloves and we can't say for certain whether she ever wore those gloves maybe she just had them with her in the car in case she needed them they were brand new as a gift okay yeah okay I never saw her wear those gloves when I was home over Christmas so your family feel that they would have had much better luck if they actually came to you and asked you for an item that would make more sense that they could easily Trace her scent um more effectively right we we wish we would have at least been consulted in the selection of the scent item because there were so many things within the car that they could have chosen that we could have more confidence in that she wore that and they didn't consult us even though my dad was right there right and to confirm this was fishing game right that was out there searching okay it just God I'm sure might have been different had they gotten those search dogs out there the night she went missing when the scent was fresh cuz again like how long does scent last outside for you know not not as long as you would think as far as I understand it the longer you take it's like more right yeah and it it was New Hampshire they were treating the roads so that could contribute to to it but we've we don't have much we don't put a lot of faith in this the scent item because we don't we don't believe that she ever wore those gloves okay so then around 5:00 p.m that evening Billy was interrogated by the police first alone and then with his parents do you know was is there anything significant that came out of that just the standard questions I assume yeah okay and then by 700 p.m. investigators had already concluded that Mara had driven to the area with plans to either run away or to kill herself and I'm sure that is honestly just so offensive it really is because everything that we were trying to tell the investigators was this something's gone wrong this is not like Mara she was not suicidal that isn't something that she would do and it was just like we were talking a wall mhm no no input was really considered from us the people that knew her MH which is super frustrating when you're not being heard yeah I can't imagine I would just lose my mind with anger yeah um one thing I wanted to jump back to I forgot to bring this up earlier but there are a lot of rumors and speculation that Mara could have been pregnant where does that come from and what do you make of that that comes from the fact that Mara looked up maternity terms in the we hours of the morning of February 9th but she was doing her homework assignment and her homework assignment was to look up maternity terms she wasn't nursing yeah see that's never reported yeah so it was literally her assignment to look up maternity terms which she did and she submitted at 3:32 a.m. on the day she disappeared wow okay I think that's doing their homework ex when they're about to go yeah so that's I think that's where it that got convoluted is the searches for maternity terms when that was the assignment wow okay see that that needs to be spread far and wide because that is something that so many people believe I'm I think at one point we have even reported that incorrectly in the past um because yeah there's there's reputable sources that report that without the context behind it and that's that's so frustrating yeah okay I just wanted to make sure we we covered that as well um so from the very beginning pretty much your father Fred not happy with the police response not happy with the way they're handling the case they're starting to go the opposite direction from what you guys feel happen tomorrow and you're requesting like hey if you guys aren't going to take this seriously if you're not going to investigate what we feel is Foul Play can we get the FBI involved but you had mentioned to me earlier that why wouldn't they get involved she's crossing state lines you know there's multiple factors here that you guys felt like would warrant additional support for local law enforcement and what was their local law enforcement's response when you asked for the FBI well we were frantic absolutely frantic we knew something had gone wrong we wanted the best resources we wanted all the help we could get at that point the first week the only people up there was the few people that we could pull together that could make the trip so we're talking single digits that's who was looking for Mar the first week other than the line search um and the the fishing game search on Wednesday it once that was done it was just my family and so we knew that we this small Police Department in hail four officers deep they needed more resources and we thought okay well since she crossed three states Massachusetts Vermont into New Hampshire that would warrant FBI assistance but New Hampshire had to invite them and they refused to do it now the FBI did participate in some interviews in New York at West Point and in Massachusetts but in a very limited capacity so New Hampshire would tell my family the FBI is involved and we're like well no no they're not yeah so was it was a fight from the beginning we were frantic we wanted we wanted all the resources we could get and we were just hitting a brick wall which makes sense for why they're bringing in fishing game which is kind of odd like you don't see that a whole lot was there any like search and rescue organizations in that area like independent from law enforcement that got involved or not available yeah not initially it was just New Hampshire Fish and Gra game who had a great track record up until that point the lead officer Todd bardis had only one unsolved case that he looked at for a missing person missing or murdered Mara was his second lifetime total unsolved cases wow wow yeah so pretty I mean pretty credible resume um and Mara was the second case that remained unsolved wow but they did bring in thermal imaging tracking dogs Cav dogs helicopter yep so all the resources that they had at their their disposal didn't find anything right now and the biggest tell is no footprints in the snow so if she left the roadway the lead Fish and Game officer said he they would have found those Footprints and at the end of their search he said all Footprints were accounted for meaning they weren't Mars so there were no footprints in the snow and he was adamant that if she had left the roadway we would have found her wow what do you make of that she didn't leave the roadway she she got into a vehicle is what I think someone picked her up yeah so it wasn't until July that investigators took items from her car in for forensic analysis and then they also did their first search of the area without snow and still never found any trip or any clue um of what could have happened to her um did your family what was how is your family feeling at that point still early on but you know a couple months in yeah we were we were still fueled off of adrenaline and panic and nervous energy the weight of it all and the um like we didn't have time at that point to have it set in to like really understand that this could be this could go on for one year two years 5 10 15 20 years we had no idea we thought it was going to be solved of course it was going to be solved we just had to wait for the snow to melt and then when the snow melted still nothing was found after a huge line search yeah I mean we we felt a little bit of a despair but one thing my family's been great about is never lose hope because the minute you lose hope you know that's a hard hole to bring yourself back out of yeah and at this point Mar needs us and so we can't we need to stay in the fight mhm it just seems like based on everything especially after searching when the Snows melted that she clearly left that that area in a vehicle and it just I'm like why didn't law enforcement just go that direction years and years ago and pursue that to the fullest extent to see where that path leads as opposed to kind of sticking to this other Theory like that to me is my biggest question for them is why why' you spend so much time on a theory that has seemingly been disproved multiple times multiple ways I just and I'm sure your dad you know feels the same way he's probably just like why why why are we wasting so much time yeah well that's why two years later my dad sued the state of New Hampshire to get the Case Files under Foya uh because he figured if they're not going to do anything with these files he's certainly not going to sit back passively and wait for them to inform us of a lead my dad wanted to be up there pursuing leads talking to people but if he's closed off from what the police are doing he felt he he was already having to do his own concurrent investigation because they weren't sharing anything and So eventually that case went to the New Hampshire Supreme Court and they denied our requests to see the files because it was investigatory in nature and releasing them could prevent um law enforcement proceedings in the future but at that time the Assistant Attorney General said that there was a 75% chance of law enforcement proceedings meaning they're they were close to getting some sort of justice and that was in 2007 and here I am in 2024 and there's been nothing no movement on that 75% chance and still very few records that have been released um and as a result of that court case the state of New Hampshire actually instituted adopted the Murray exemption named after my dad's case and it's still used in case law today up in New Hampshire to uh hold back files that may be investigatory in nature and you'll see it cited all over the place where oh wow yeah where it they cite the Murray exemption your father has been pretty outspoken about his frustrations with law enforcement from the beginning and treating the investigation as a disappearance and not a criminal case however by 2014 he stated publicly that he wasn't sure if his daughter was dead now how does he feel now well everybody in my family believes Mo MOA is no longer with us okay and that was a hard transition to make yeah and you could see even in our interviews we use present tense and then past tense so when I am in interviews I use past tense because I believe in my heart that she's no longer with us I believe that because there have been no credible sightings in 20 years nothing has ever been found and my mother passed away on Mars birthday after suffering with cancer and my sister Kathleen passed away from the same cancer they were both in the hospitals in and out in hospice if Mara was able to be here especially for that being studying to be a nurse she would have been here so it's it's hard that's a it was a hard transition for everybody in my family to make but we all I mean it's the worst it's the worst possible outcome for Mara in my family I don't want to believe that I want to believe she's out there somewhere but at this point 20 years later I have to live in this reality that I sit in every day so before you came to that conclusion were you hopeful that maybe she had left or was being possibly held captive somewhere like where what were you thinking in the early days Oh I thought the wor worst the worst it was not healthy it was not healthy because every day you're sitting there thinking um you know I'm sitting back drinking this cold soda and eating the sandwich what if Mar is in a basement somewhere and she needs me and I'm and I'm sitting here doing nothing and you just guilt yourself and it's not a healthy place to be and it was always the thought of I should be doing more I shouldn't be happy what what what are you doing watching a TV show you should be looking at files and at some point you learn that balance and uh you realize that's not a healthy attitude to have and then you you do find that balance and you're able to have a life as well as continue to raise awareness and advocate for your sister but it it was definitely a process yeah was there any part of you that thought maybe she willingly left and was out there somewh starting a new life I know that's a huge Theory I don't believe that one second even in the early days you didn't believe that absolutely not Mara loved us all yeah she would not put my dad my mother through this I think that's an interpretation that a lot of people have that something horrible happened there was some incident or something was going on in her life that she didn't want anyone to know about so she made this whole plan to run away to disappear I mean there's theories that she joined to cult like it is all over of course with I mean there's benefits to getting a lot of eyes on a case of course more awareness is better but it also brings out all the theories and these people coming out of the woodwork that are very confident with what they think happened and how is that been kind of navigating some of these uh somewhat just a lot of them disturbing theories yeah that's been that's been a challenge uh because of Mars case is so well known that you have people that become so obsessed and so just convinced that they're right and will not hear any yeah anything else even if there's new information better information they don't want to hear it um so I've learned not to go into comment sections it's not it's not healthy uh stay away from Reddit that's one thing I I it's not healthy for families of the missing to go into their subs and read all the stuff about oh it gets wild in there it's a breeding ground it's terrible I never go I call it a a troll Farm it is a troll farm for sure yeah so I I avoid that so you learn as you go through this I have 20 years experience in learning what's safe and not and what's helpful and not and I know that I have a limited amount of energy to spend each day and I have to be choosy on how I'm going to spend that energy and my choice is not to get into internet Wars with Anonymous trolls yep or even even people that aren't trolls be baited into an internet war that does nothing to further my sister's case it's just a distraction at the day yeah so I'm not you're not going to find me there what about the theories that people have and I mean we don't even have to spend any time on this I just wanted to give you the opportunity to kind of clear up some of these theories um there are people who think that she was experiencing schizophrenia major depressive disorder bipolar disorder obviously there's no evidence to suggest she was dealing with any of these I'm sure they're very hurtful to your family it's just unfair to Mara because Mara I talk about what Mara was struggling with and it was a mental health issue with the eating disorder and one thing that I can say is she was seeing a counselor whether it was the best form of counseling I don't know but she was and so I've actually reached out to that counselor and I asked her if there were any files that she had kept or were there any symptoms or signs of other potential illnesses or anything things that Mara mentioned and she said no no and so without evidence yeah we can sit here all day and speculate about what mental illness she had and armchair diagnos her yeah but it's just not fair to Mara yeah so agree I have to ask you what what do you feel in what's what theory or what what makes most sense to you at this point after thinking about everything over and over again for 20 years is there is there one Theory or idea that you've really landed on I think she got into a vehicle and I think whoever she got into that vehicle with did her harm do you think it could have been someone she knew or do you think it was just wrong place wrong time I don't close any doors I I don't know could be either it could be either yeah someone could have followed her up there and that's why the time that she's there and then gone is so quick yeah it just yeah I mean but there's what we do know is we have our cell phone records and police have access to to her online internet activity in chats so if it was someone that she knew there probably would have been some sort of footprint digital footprint whether it be in form of phone calls whether it be dorm phone records cell phone records instant Messengers emails there would have had to have been some sort of discussion you would think if organization of it some organization and there just doesn't seem to be any of that right so that kind of makes me think could it possibly be just a wrong place at the wrong time I think that's possible because there's no planning and evidence of her concocting a Meetup of some sort yeah unless it was face to face and again this was back in 2004 so that that could have been been true yeah and and just to to really close the book on it um obviously there are a lot of people out there that still believe that maybe she was that she had left to end her own life or decided to end her own life after having this accident um why do you believe that that is not true because we don't have a body yes yeah with all the searching yeah I mean those wordss have been searched and searched and searched and nothing has ever been found and I I get the argument that you know it's dense forest there's animals there could have been scattering of bones okay I get that but also scattering of belongings and so at some point someone probably would have found that something yeah um maybe I'm wrong I don't know and there I mean you guys have also been vocal about how you don't think there were any signs in her life that she would have wanted to end her own life yeah I mean of course she was going through a rough path that's undeniable but she didn't have any sort of suicidal ideation that okay I know of that I'm aware of she didn't write any type of note I feel like she would have done something like that she was so close with all of you and yeah she also had those plans to go to Dane Cook coming up yeah all the future planning yeah she had the she was going to go see Dane Cook who she loved she was going to come see me over spring break yeah I mean there was F she was going to get a job and be close to Bill there was a lot of plans for the future the accident forms the accident at the very minimum like who goes and does that if they're already thinking these things yeah I always go back to the you know I'm really curious has have you do dove into the crime in this area and like is there other similar types of abductions Mur murders obviously there's Larry and Claude Molton in the A-frame um you know criminals nearby who maybe just saw this as a a window of opportunity she's in this you know she just been in an accident she's wanding on the side of the road and somebody just was like oh perfect opportunity to to take advantage well there's certainly a ton of unsavory characters will put that way up in that area and you have to remember this is an area that people flock to because it is private it is off the beaten path in some ways it's it's quiet um it's not like living in the city and people want that um but also with those types of places there comes the drug problems and sexual predators and I mean that's everywhere but in that in the particular area where Mara went missing there are certainly their fair share of Bad actors okay yeah and as far as we know she was alone so it could made of her a prime target for somebody yeah that night alone in an unfamiliar area no cell phone signal right and for all we know she was followed and somebody you know what do you think about her being like run off the road or something like that obviously not a ton of evidence for it but is it possible one thing I didn't mention is the there was a white scuff mark on the driver side rear bumper and I'm I hadn't seen that before but that is that is something that interesting could have maybe she got into some sort of incident before the Weathered Barn corner I don't know I don't know where that white scuff mark came from H so definitely imposs possibility no you just brought up the the A-frame and Larry and Claude I don't know if we have enough time to go into all of that today is that something that you get into on the podcast okay yeah okay we we've talked about it too in detail before about we have you know that they I mean ultimately they said that kind of summarize real quick yeah so there was just rumors that they had killed Mara in that house Claude had a record Larry had a history of drug use and former police officer John Smith presented evidence for Mara's case claiming she was murdered by Larry and Claude Fred claimed Larry sent him a rusty stained knife that he found in claude's glove compartment uh Claude and his girlfriend were acting strange just basically a bunch of kind of bizarre activity and Claude and other family members said Larry's just trying to get reward money by Framing him for the murder and they ended up giving the knife to police and they confirmed that it was tested but haven't released any info on the results you want to speak to that a little bit more yeah I mean it's just an odd situation yeah so here we are one year after Mar disappears and we get the first tangible piece of evidence which is this Rusty knife that Larry Molton gives my dad and implicates his brother and having something to do with Mara's disappearance so we were hopeful that that that could have been it and so we turned it over to the police and we never heard anything back on it until recently when they confirmed that they did in fact test it um and then you have all the odd behavior with Claude himself who has a record a criminal record and charged with a number of different things and not the best reputation and so when you put those two things together and then you have a team that goes into that property and has cadav dogs alerting multiple different cab dogs alerting multiple different times um it seems like a re reasonable to look into it and I have asked law enforcement you know have you pursued this have you looked into it because of all this evidence you know we have a lot of just scattered theories but this is the one area where we've got multiple different things that are tangible and but at this point we my family is still kind of in the dark in terms of what they've done law enforcement that is really yeah they haven't talked too much about this but they definitely found discolored wood that was possibly discolored from blood and it was definitely animal or it was definitely human blood not animal blood and there's two different DNA profiles one male one unknown so but again the sample is too degraded for further testing but hopefully with future technology we'll be able to do some more testing on it but I mean I think there's enough sketchy stuff going on with these two and in this A-Frame house that if not Mara somebody else was potentially a victim here and I mean there's human blood in there so something something went down and just based on these two history wouldn't be wouldn't surprise me if there's some uh Foul Play going on but yeah I mean then there's like the police conspiracy you know people are like oh the police somehow in on this why are they trying you know do they try to cover this up so because they messed up I mean I mean it's getting very you know speculative but I do see why people perhaps play around with this Theory but I don't know know I mean you you know better than anybody like you're working with them now and you know they're why would they be still working with you guys if they were trying to cover up you know some yeah well the people that I'm working with now weren't there in 2004 or you know a decade after so I'm not talking about the same people they're different people the team I work with now is very cooperative and collaborative and empathetic that's very different from the team that was in place when Mora went missing and that's where my dad's frustrations are aimed at was the original the original the original investigation had some areas that could have been done better and you're feeling really positive about the team that you have now yes that's that's great news yeah really happy to hear that yeah yeah that's makes me helpful those small things things like getting an email that has a tiny bit of empathy sprinkled in as opposed to just being so transactional that goes a long way for families like mine that have been doing this for two decades absolutely yeah for the longest time my 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even have baby and kids so they've got the whole family covered with highquality affordable luxury Essentials indulge in affordable luxury today go to quinn.com mhar for free shipping on your order in 365-day returns that's qu i n c ./ mhire to get free shipping and 365-day returns quinn.com mhire well we could certainly sit here all day and talk to you I mean this case is just so so frustrating and if it feels like some I don't know maybe it's wishful thinking but I really do have hope that at someday that we will at least get some answers you know to these questions that we have it's just it's unbelievably frustrating I cannot imagine I don't know how you do it well I don't have a choice really if you think of it yeah um and the other thing is Mara would do it for me yeah she would yeah Mara seemed like such a cool person yeah like just all the stories about her and how that's why I love media pressures it's like just so cool to to hear all of these things that you never hear um in other coverage and to just how relatable she was just this young girl goofball but had huge huge dreams for herself big aspirations and incredibly smart incredibly talented it's just it's such a massive loss yeah um before I wanted to jump to a few other questions for you outside of the case but just to get this out there if anyone has any information as we already said you might have something that you don't think is significant even the smallest detail doesn't hurt her to call in a tip so if you if you know anything or you you know you want to get information to the police you can contact the New Hampshire State Police at 603 846 3333 or 800 852 3411 actually jumping back in I know we said we were going to kind of wrap up talking about the case but um I did want to there are some some updates that some of our viewers may not have heard before um recently aim Labs was given some soil samples for testing Unfortunately they couldn't extract any DNA from it is it possible that they could in the future as technology improves or is that kind of a closed door I don't think it's a closed door I I think I would we would just need to provide better more viable samples okay yeah um also you guys had a family computer as many families did back in the day um and this was a computer that Mara had access to the Christmas before she disappeared and you guys had the hard drive um analyzed did anything come out of it well we tried to have the hard drive analyzed but there was a problem with since it was so old extracting that much information that was useful so it was kind of a dead end but it was something that was worth a try yeah yeah yeah yeah that was that's disappointing what what computer was this from like what year was this computer made oh we would had we probably only had a year or two years so early 2000s so this would have been like running Windows XP I I don't know I was there back then but I don't know did they so they they said they couldn't pull any data from it or was it just like useful data as it relates to the case like could they find your pictures documents that kind of stuff or just nothing yeah I don't I I don't know if it's nothing but nothing useful okay for the case that's kind of what I'm thinking too CU I I assume they're speaking to cuz like I I was a I was a uh an it and I was actually a Geek Squad agent for a while so I used to do a lot of data recovery stuff so I'm familiar with the process so I'm just curious well on what data you could access because I used to pull hard drives for people all the time and pull data but my guess is they were looking for like web activity things like that and back in Windows XP and so it's probably a little bit harder to pull pull files like that and depending on how it was set up you know there's a lot of factors to that um but that's unfortunate uh also try to get access to her MySpace account which who knows who's even running Myspace these days uh Tom I don't know yeah well yeah she did have a MySpace account as many people did around that time and you guys requested access to that and just with a legal letter yeah yeah we sent a letter to their legal team the my I I'd have to look at the letter but I don't remember who we sent it to uh but it would have been reviewed by whoever runs Myspace legal asking providing usernames um potential passwords based on what we knew and we try to gain access to some of those um chats or you know PMS I don't even know what how you communicated messages I think they were called yeah it was like Myspace messages yeah but that we weren't able to get anything from that but I mean we'll try anything obviously right yeah that's frustrating because Janelle you were just telling me the other day that Myspace is like making a comeback or was it you that was telling who's saying that I haven't seen that well like a few years ago they were trying to like get people to use it but I don't think it's really making it comeback yeah huh okay well it's not Tom I think he sold his baret I don't any think it's I don't know if anything would unfortunately come out of that even if he could get access to it um in 2021 Mara's Blue Ribbon tree was actually cut down for unknown reasons you have no idea why this happened well the land owner said that they were going to cut the trees down to raise some sort of livestock yeah I mean it's it's private property they're right I asked them Begg them not to but it fell on deaf ears I even actually offered to buy the land really I offered to lease it for 50 years so that at least they would get something in return um but they were all declined so the next step was we petitioned for a historical marker um not particularly right at that location but somewhere where it would be safe to gather and I away from bothering the neighbors mhm because thousands of people come and pay tribute to her every year I understand well you not all at the same time but there's definitely people that are very interested in seeing the location and it is a dangerous corner and it is private property and so we encourage everyone to stay off private property and um respect the neighbors that had this tragedy happen right outside their doorstep but didn't ask for it right and so so I encourage people not to go knocking on doors and going on private just it's not helpful for anybody so you guys just had a vigil last week yep that how was that it was really moving this year we had a lot of people this year I think the end the end head count was about over 100 wow yeah and this was for the 20th anniversary yep rented a hall and had pictures and we played a tribute video and it was just it felt good to be surrounded by so many people who care yeah yeah God 20 years I can't believe it I know does it does that just feel so surreal to you it feels surreal in some ways my family feels Frozen back in 2004 totally and it's hard to move past that because Mar is frozen into 2004 you know there are no new pictures coming out there are no new memories being made um and so much of my life has revolved around 2004 that I feel it's it's impossible to go through a grieving process when there isn't resolution and so what happens is you find yourself just going in these cycles of different phases of the grieving process because for us it's not linear so it's not like you go through this phase and then you get to this phase and then you can move on from it because you have that resolution like in traditional loss with ambiguous loss it's a mess it really is emotionally no I I just cannot imagine what that would be like after 20 years to still not have really any solid answers it's just got to be so insanely frustrating how's your dad dealing with things like where's his mind at he's he's still fired up he's 81 now and um he keeps himself in tiptop shape and I know that's because he doesn't want to he knows he has more work to do and he doesn't want to let Mar down um but he's he's doing good healthwise uh we talk every day about Mara and the different Avenues we're going to approach we usually disagree on approach but we agree on the end goal and that is we need to find Mora and um yeah we're we're a good team we work well together we butt heads a lot but and a lot of it's that New England banter like that's just how we communicate we talk smack and that's normal so I think if you overheard a conversation with my dad and I you be like what is happening it's like we no guys mad at each other we love each other you know so much but this is just how we communicate it's normal I understand that yeah and then in real recent news yeah the Attorney General John Fela who came to the vigil well the Assistant Attorney General oh the assistant did came to the vigil which was huge that was really cool it's still great to have that acknowledgement it was so kind he didn't have to do that and I thanked him publicly for it um that meant a lot to my family so they released an age progress photo produced by the FBI February 8th mhm mhm yeah it's pretty what do you think of that it's pretty crazy to see I have mixed feelings about it I I told people when it first came out that I think I'm a better age progression for Mora than I can totally see that than the photo but I mean it's it doesn't hurt right yeah okay well is there anything else you would like to to go over regarding the case or anything you'd like to to say to people who have followed the case or um you know any final thoughts for now well I would just like to say thank you to everyone that's reached out over the years I've got a lot of people that have reached out recently with the media pressure podcast coming out and people that attended the vigil it's just comforting to have that love and support and it is one of the reasons that helps us keep moving forward after all these years knowing that we have this solid support system that just wants to find answers and wants resolution for Mara and that's really important and people ask me all the time what can I do to help what can I do to help and I tell them just keep talking about Mara share a missing flyer engage with content that's victim centered things like that go a long way uh and it's easy to do and it doesn't cost anything and it literally takes two seconds to share a missing flyer or engage with uh a social media post and that's helping it really is so thanks to everyone that's stood with me and my family all these years I just can't wait for the day that I get to maybe come back on here and tell you guys how we solved it yeah I hope for that day too yeah I think it's very solvable and I'm glad to hear that you have a seemingly good intention law enforcement team on on your guys's side now and you know I'm I'm glad you seem so positive about the direction things are going and that gives I think everybody hope that hopefully we'll get some sort of resolution in this case because yeah I think it definitely can happen but yeah we'll definitely be falling following the journey following the rest of the podcast media pressure out now everywhere you get your podcasts we'll have links for it below as well go check it out really great listen and uh more to come on that uh few more episodes coming so there is one more thing I want to get into um first of all I loved that you it was it was it's really nice to hear from me as a creator that you know making this kind of content is helpful and we really encourage encourage our audience to be what we call Active True Crime consumers and what that looks like and and to hear from a family member that something as small as sharing a missing person's flyer does go such a long way I don't think people realize the power that they have as a consumer of this content to take these small steps and and some people take really big steps it's cool that you know there's a a wide range of things that people can do but EV every little thing matters even if it's going to a family's website or page or reaching out email and just letting them know like I'm here with you I'm following the case I haven't forgotten I'm doing what I can like that those things go a long way yeah um so I wanted to ask you more about your campaign you've started called engage with empathy what the objectives are and what that means to you and why you started that well I've been in this space for 20 years now and one thing that I noticed was there is a lack of empathy in the the True Crime space definitely and what that allows for is for consumers to take these stories in more as entertainment and forget sometimes unwittingly forget that these are real life tragedies dealing with real life people and I think adding a little bit of empathy into the True Crime space is the missing key there and it's super easy to do I haven't heard a single argument against it there's no barriers to entry anyone can engage more empathetically um and so I started the campaign just to see if you know people would respond to it and they responded very positively and so I created this really simple acronym it's called care and it's kind of the pillars of what the awareness campaign is meant to to do and so the C is Center the victim if the content that you're creating isn't victim centered then what's the point and also understanding that as a Creator you have a responsibility to determine if the content that you're putting out is furthering the case or is it simply to entertain yeah and I think that's relatively easy to make that distinct distinction yeah um the a is avoid harmful misinformation and wild speculation again it's once something's put out on the internet you can't take it away and then it spreads like wild fire and trying to contain something like that especially for a family that's actively trying to get resolution in their missing loved ones case it's it's near it's possible yeah I can tell you from experience I've tried um and even when I correct some misinformation with accurate information people don't want to believe me because it doesn't fit their Theory you've already accepted this nontruth and so as consumers what you can do is vote with your clicks right you you know what contents out there that's slimy or is just salacious clickbait and you can vote with your clicks and I'm seeing shift in True Crime as we speak where people are rejecting the more sensationalized escapism type of True Crime yeah and they want to get back to the victim um and then of course the r is research responsibly uh this is a big one because a lot of times people read something on the Internet and just assume it's fact yeah well there's a responsibility for creators and consumers to do their due diligence and make sure that they're looking at the sourcing and the veracity of that sourcing looking at um you know what's the purpose behind it and you can it will take a little time and it's it's not a passive thing and it takes a little work but in doing so you're preventing harm and unfair public indictments of innocent people by spreading untruths I was going to say this is very interesting do you think this this clearly applies to unsolved cases cases that are ongoing and currently happening but what about cases that are solved done you know the perpetrator's been convicted they're in prison because there's a lot of True Crime content and creators that cover strict they stay away from the unsolved stuff for the very reasons that they don't want to run into these issues but then they stick to the solve stuff because they think they're safe because it's already been wrapped up you know it's kind of the you know they have beginning middle and end there's already Tri with RIS there what's your kind of thoughts on that and how this applies to solved cases well it's an interesting argument so in solved cases who has the most at stake victim's families the victim themselves doesn't change yeah right and so by retelling the story are you actually doing more harm to those trying to live their life and move past the trauma if you are then I think you know there's an argument to be made against covering solve cases because are you trying to further the case or you just trying to get clicks what what is your purpose are you trying to explore a different avenue are you trying to look at it from a psychological perspective to prevent future crimes like you have to ask yourself what is the intention of this coverage right if it's good and pure and is going to help people go for it but if it's G to hurt people and revictimized people I say you should think about that you should think about the impacts that your coverage is going to have that's something I think you learn over time too I mean we've certainly um learned a lot in our our Years and we're constantly trying to to do better and improve the way that we research and you know there's always room for improvement yeah um I it's very hard it's hard sometimes it is but our overall goal is to to be helpful and not harmful right right I think the research part of it is difficult no matter who you ask cuz it's like we have access to a certain limited amount of resources you know and you can do your best but there is a chance you're still going to get things wrong yeah even from a very reputable source and I think that's you know unless you go in independent L investigate every single case I do think there's always going to be that inherent risk of and hopefully the things you are getting wrong aren't like sending things in a totally different direction right there's like different I would say there's different levels of you know getting those things wrong but I think all these things are super important because there's straight up people out there that just disregard all these things and yeah they don't care well I don't think anyone's going for Perfection I think people are people and as long as you're willing to admit mistakes and take accountability yeah who can fault you for that yeah agreed that's very true how can other creators out there learn more about this movement um super simple it's on my website Maramar missing.org and there's a tab that lists all the uh information about it but it's it's an awareness campaign so it's you know identifying creators that are attempting to engage with empathy and you know put a hashtag on there just so the word gets out it's it's really simple um it's just a way to shine a spotlight on the fact that I believe with a little more empathy infused into True Crime it can be a more positive experience in [Music] um it's such a powerful source for good it is and I'm not I don't want to just always focus on the negative I mean I've been affected by creators who have engaged me with empathy and it's moved me uh and I saw the power in it and so I wanted to highlight it yeah I think I think what you're doing is so so needed this space needs a serious I don't even know what the word is tune up um empathy boot camp yeah boot camp but I think we are getting there I think we are seeing progress more and more every day and it's really awesome and I love the the name engage with empathy I think that's the perfect way to put it and it's easy to remember I love the acronym care it's it's really cool I I think that's you know with everything else you have going on for you to take the step to do something like this is is really powerful thank you well Julie it has been so nice to have you here um come back anytime you know we we are hoping there will be a day where you can come back and hopefully share some some positive updates yeah well I appreciate you guys giving me this platform and always being so kind and you're one of the empathetic creators that I I mention um always focusing on the victim and giving family members space and not being able or afraid to admit mistakes and just moving forward and do better as you learn you do better and I really appreciate it and my whole family does and I'm hoping that the next time I see you we'll be in a different circumstance and talking about you know what's next because we found more I do too and thank you for saying that that means a lot to me coming from you absolutely well yes be sure to check out media pressure again we will have all the information on how to listen below episode 5 will have will already be out and episode 6 will be coming soon so very exciting and if you are um interested in asking any questions we will link whatever you guys have set up for uh Q&A episode which will be the last episode of the podcast yes excellent job again thank you for coming all the way out we appreciate it's been so fun to hang out with you yeah thank you guys for having me I appreciate it of course of course that's going to be it for us today you guys thank you so much for tuning in we know that was a longer episode but very um interesting stuff lots of lots of information that we went over today so thank you for sticking with us uh we'll be back next week but until then I know never know the outro for any of our shows this is I like mixed them all up that was the intro for my show yeah I say the intro for this or the outro for this show on the S anyway I'm R anyways we'll see you guys next time thank you