Soil scanned on N.H. land in 2004 disappearance
WOODSVILLE, N.H. — A company that uses radar to scan for disturbances in soil is helping with the 14-year-old case of a woman who crashed her car on a rural road in northern New Hampshire and then disappeared.
WMUR-TV reports a crew from GB Geotechnics of New York scanned a property Sunday on the Bath-Woodsville line where a trailer once stood. It wasn’t immediately known if anything was found.
Maura Murray, 21, was a nursing student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. On Feb. 9, 2004, she left campus and drove into New Hampshire. She was last seen along Route 112 in North Haverhill. She had crashed her car, which was later found.
The case has been the subject of podcasts and a documentary. Project organizers arranged for the property scan.
“This is something that has never been done, and it’s in a place that absolutely has to be ruled out,” said Fred Murray, Maura’s father.
A prior owner was reluctant to have the area searched. The goal is to look for any disturbances in the soil.
“It’s about time, but we never had the resources,” Murray said.
In 2004, his daughter packed up her schoolbooks and drove to northern New Hampshire, eventually heading east on Route 112, a rural road that cuts through the White Mountain National Forest. She had told her friends and professors at college that she would miss a week of class because of a death in the family, but her family has said that wasn’t true. That night, police received reports of a crash along the desolate road. When they arrived three to four minutes later, they found her car with minor damage, but Maura was nowhere to be found.
Police had said she could have run away and is living elsewhere, a scenario her family does not accept. She also could have been injured in the accident, wandered off into the woods and died of exposure or run into someone who harmed her.