Recently I spoke to a couple people who knew Maura as a phenomenal high school runner from Hanson, Mass. The first was reporter Joe Reardon, who wrote for the Boston Herald.
“She was a doll,” he said. “She didn’t have natural speed. What she had was endurance. She’d set the pace and run the faster girls into the ground. When I first heard about the details of her disappearance I thought she may have wandered into the woods, that her body would be found in the Spring. But then… Her father was a real piece of work. He was always screaming at her at meets.”
Joe got me in contact with a man who helped run a track league Maura was once a part of. This man didn’t want his name used because he’s fearful of retaliation by Fred Murray.
“The father’s a psycho,” he says. “Never saw him smile. He was a drill sergeant. I think sports should be fun. But it seemed he never enjoyed his kids’ success. He didn’t make life easy for her. When she disappeared, my first thought was that she staged it to get away. I think she planned to have someone meet her, help her get away.”