I just don’t know what to make of this. A little background – Erinn Larkin is a woman who went to UMass with Maura Murray. She worked the same security job as Maura Murray. And she ran track on the same team. Her “Big Sister” was Maura’s best friend – Kate Markopoulos. After the publication of my book, Erinn inserted herself into the investigation. She ingratiated herself with the Murray family and the admin of the official site, giving her access to information that filters in.
After I reported that Bill Rausch was under investigation by a Grand Jury in DC, she took aim at me, claiming I was lying and that the women he attacked were exaggerating. She posted my unlisted home address online, with a map to my house. Eventually I took down my blog just to have some peace.
Her blog makes every effort to direct the narrative of the investigation, going so far as to defame a man – allowing a guest on her podcast to literally accuse an innocent man of murdering Maura and using his name.
I’ve been confused by her actions for months and have had this inkling that I was missing or forgetting an important piece of it. So I went back to our first email exchanges. I found this email from Erinn in which she says she was at Bretton Woods skiing with her family and returned on Monday evening and may have driven past Maura’s accident.
I had completely forgotten this. Why? Because she never brought it up again. Now, as a memoirist and journalist, if I’m coincidentally at the same location at the same time as the case I’m writing about, that becomes a big part of the story. An easy way in. But she never mentions it again. But she does tell a different story to Tim & Lance just a couple months later. Listen for a minute here:
Quote:
Tim: “How do you recall the day so clearly?”
Erinn: “I had been skiing in Bretton Woods and Waterville Valley the weekend before with my family and they were still there. And I had decided to come back for practice and for classes and I drove back the opposite route she had taken on that Sunday night and the next morning was really the first official day of Spring track that Monday and it was a morning practice and it was absolutely freezing and really awful not very fun at all and I got injured and it was actually an injury I got the day before skiing but it got a lot worse that day and it ended up that I was done running competitively in college after that.”
It is absolutely clear that Erinn Larkin got caught in a lie here. But what was that lie’s purpose? To sound cool – having driven by the scene when Maura disappeared?
I would imagine she will try to explain this away as a faulty memory but she was VERY specific in both the email to me in which she says she was driving along Rt 112 at the time of Maura’s accident, and the interview with Tim and Lance, in which she has changed it to Sunday – because she reminisces about the cold weather and the first day of practice. Each are stated as fact. One or both of these must be a deliberate lie.
Now,
compare that to Chief Cecil Smith for a moment. Cecil Smith went on the
Oxygen special to explain the timeline of Maura’s accident. Erinn called
him a liar, picked apart his every word, said it was impossible for him
to simply have forgotten key details… when he was suffering from
Alzheimers. And then Cecil killed himself.
His son believes online harassment like hers may have been on his mind,
may have made matters worse for him in those last days/weeks, may have
contributed to his decision in some way. Even if it was a drop in the
bucket, how very sad.
This isn’t the first lie, but it’s the most egregious. In closing, here are few posts in which she claims that the Grand Jury never existed with the same confidence.
Nice. She comes across arrogant and I hope more is revealed soon. Thx
wow, just wow. Someone with close proximity to Maura and yet over-looked all these years
Erinn is very talented; expertly writing run-on sentences and beginning that run-on sentence with a conjunction. UMASS must be proud.
Interesting
So now we are supposed to believe that Errin went back to look at her Moms 2004 calendar and then she realized she made a mistake ??
She goes back and looks at her moms old calendar? What made her do this?
Does everyone carry a 12 year old calendar around with them or does it just seem outlandish to me?
Erinn knows antifreeze is green not red, right?
Seems mightily unlikely someone would still have a calendar from 2004 with what they where doing every day. I think your right James. If this event was important enough for Erinn to get involved the way she has, you have to think her memory would be pretty clear on the details. Maybe not the exact details but the rough outline of the events as you have experienced them to be.
I wish I could have faith in what Fred said at the beginning. That Maura was to pick up the accident report that day and call him around eight that night. The fact that she did get the paperwork and had them in the car, tells me that was important to her at the time. Given the timeline as we know it to be. If you figure Maura would have called him around eight and the accident happened around 7:15-7:30. Maybe her final destination was only half an hour to forty five minutes away from the accident scene. I know this is out there but that time frame can put you right around Brenton Woods. You might think that the directions don’t work. But here we have Erinn stating that she in fact went that way. I would like to know the odds of a killers off chance at running in to Maura. And the odds someone she knew passing on that same road 100 plus miles from where they both should have been back at school.
James I think you are unjustly attacked– I don't know why except I never thought Fred was involved and I never thought she went to Canada. I always thought the boyfriend should be investigated and I think like most families there were embarrassing details — Maura was beautiful, talented, and disturbed. I am sorry but I don't think this case is solvable at this point and some of the media players are exploiting this.
James, you may want to follow-up with UMass contacts and start asking questions about what they remember about Erinn and if she knew Maura. Can't really take her word for it now.
You have to wonder why she was so adamant about inserting herself into this investigation……..
Hi James.
This is your old friend John Green. It has been years since I commented in a public forum about MM stuff but I do follow your work, as you know. Reluctantly, I want add something here. In my opinion, Erinn is a little off the rails and for some reason ego identifies with this case. (Not an uncommon thing as we know.) She seems to be squaring off against you in order to heighten her sense of being important and a lot of what she says is not credible on its face. Just one example: anybody who ever ran collegiate track and field knows that spring practice does not start in February. Most of the championship meets are weeks later (Atlantic 10s in late February, IC4As and NCAAs in mid March). Moreover, the weekend following Maura's disappearance UMASS competed at an indoor meet held at Boston University. Coach LaFreniere told the team about Maura's disappearance that day. Why Erinn felt the need to contrive contradictory stories about that is anybody's guess, but, end of the day, who cares? You do great work, everyone sane who follows this case knows that you are a good journalist, and those same people don't take Erinn seriously. My advice to you is to just ignore her. She is getting what she wants/needs from her little battle with you. You, on the other hand, are simply being distracted from your real work by it.
First of all kudos to Maggie for calling ERinn out on her victim blaming BS. Nice! Secondly, while a second look at her is totally warranted, I think that ultimately what this will shake out as is a very insecure person that really just wants to feel more important and more secure than they really are – or at least feel that way.
What was the vehicle that Erinn was driving back to UMass on either Sunday or Monday the same time Maura went missing?