On Saturday, I received a message from a man named Michael, who claimed to have bumped into Maura Murray an hour prior to her disappearance, in Woodsville, in the company of two other women. He said he was passing through the area to meet up with his friend, whose birthday was that day.
I reached out to him via email and set up a call. We spoke later that day. His voice struck me as unusual but I chalked it up to some kind of speech impediment. He again explained his encounter and asked me to publish it.
I did not publish because I wanted to verify his story as well as I could. The name he gave me checked out – it was a real person at UMass in 2004. He also gave me the name and birthday of his friend – also a real person at UMass in 2004, whose birthday really was February 9. So far so good.
He had given me his phone number and said he’d be willing to speak to police. All this gave him more credibility. But when I had a PI look into the phone number, it suggested the number was a “Bandwidth” number. Apparently these are phone numbers you can get online to make it look like you’re calling from a certain location other than where you are actually calling from.
This disturbed me, as journalist Maggie Freleng received harassing texts from a Bandwidth number last week.
Additionally, I was unable to find any real social media presence for this person and was unable to reach his friend to verify this birthday party. By yesterday afternoon, I began to seriously suspect this was a well-orchestrated hoax.
Late last night, someone purporting to be the man I spoke to on the phone tried to post an apology on Reddit which spewed the same info he wanted me to publish in the first place. Luckily, the mods did the responsible thing and quickly took these down.
This person went to great lengths to conceal their identity and to try to get a false story onto my website. Their motives remain unclear. The New Hampshire police allegedly spoke to this individual yesterday but if they were able to determine the source, they have not released that person’s name or connection to the case. Due to the similarities between this and other recent behavior, I believe the person who orchestrated this ruse is a name familiar to Maura’s friends and family. Hopefully the police can piece it together.
This was almost certainly a _fake_ fake — that is, not somebody who was “trying to help” but a setup from the beginning meant to discredit you and anybody else who pushes back against the standard-narrative-pushers and the anybody-but-BRs.
Also, I doubt there was ever a contact from police (note the “but then police called” thing). A copy of a police report or call notes would be good, but it really wouldn’t be conclusive evidence that the whole thing wasn’t a fake. It’s not impossible that the fake got out of hand and police got involved, I guess. But it’s more likely the entire thing was a charade, including the “I saw the light of purity and truth after the police called and brought me to my senses” angle.
And as you say, it was likely somebody on the inside. We both have an idea of the limited number of people it could be. One to three, but probably one.
One of the most frustrating things here is that if it _was_ entirely a social-media charade, it’s doubtful police would have much interest in it. Nobody ended up measurably harmed, and at most it might be a technical violation of some kind of identity-representation statute. People lie online all the time. But I guess we’ll see.
Anyway, you caught it. I’d love to see the person outed, if this whole thing is as fake and malicious as it appears.
Would love to know who this is.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:
ANYONE messing with a missing person’s case should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Agree, but I’m not sure what law would apply or whether any prosecutor would make this a priority, especially in an incident where the only actual harm was that an online crowd with an interest in the case, and a writer who’s done a lot of work on the case, got punked. I hate it, it really sucks, but I’m just talking about how almost any prosecutor is going to look at it unless he/she takes a personal interest in it and decides to make it a mission.
At this point I’d just like to see the person totally busted and outed. Because this kind of amateurish cyberintrigue is just irritating.
The only actual harm was the online crowd with case interest? ARE YOU JOKING? I do this for a living, in NH and FYI, it’s screwing over the living victims already this far into it (which isn’t far at all, clearly). I have families upon loved ones, upon best friends, upon siblings and children who want to die one day with answers to their loved ones cases, and now thanks to Erinn and small minded people who don’t think on a global scale? I had to tell one family already that their chances of me getting anything now are slim to nothing. You’re right, it didn’t really do any harm to anyone outside of the online circus, right?