Author’s note: This article was originally published on December 12, 2014. I am reposting now because I think it directly relates to new info that came in over the weekend. More to come. UPDATE: After a phone conversation, background check, etc. I am still unable to verify that the person who contacted me with this information is actually the person whose identity they are using.
About an hour before Maura Murray vanished, she stopped in at Butson’s Supermarket in Woodsville (now a Shaw’s), with two other women, according to the woman who ran up her purchase.
“I was a cashier,” she says. “That day, I was running late on getting out on time. It was probably 5:45-6 p.m. when I was supposed to have gone off register. My last customers were three attractive ladies. They had picked up some alcoholic drinks, as I recall the blue wine coolers cus that’s what I drank. They also picked up smokes. I ID’ed the three of them, and they were all 21-23. My supervisor was helping me to bag up their order.”
I hear your skepticism. I was skeptical, too. But her story held up the closer I looked. Here’s why:
1. She isn’t just remembering this, now. She reported this as soon as she heard Maura went missing because she believed it was her. But she didn’t report to police. She reported to her supervisor. The supervisor then told a random cop, who more than likely never filed the report. She has provided the name of the supervisor for verification.
2. She describes the young women who were with Maura in enough detail that she, without prior knowledge, described the person I believe was with Maura that night.
3. She told a member of the Murray family early on. She thought they could verify it by checking the cameras inside Buston’s. Fred checked on it, himself.
4. Again, we have Maura purchasing alcohol with friends. This is well-established pattern. And the drinks she purchased are the exact kind of beverages Maura and Kate Markopoulos were drinking that weekend.
When asked for more details, she goes on to say:
“The actions of the three…nothing stands out now. Just one that I say was maura kept nervously looking behind her. The other two just seemed normal shoppers that weren’t upset I ided them. At time, I wasn’t much older than them. I’m 37 now.”
In a follow-up, the cashier said that the women used out-of-state licenses:
“They were all out of state. Two were Mass, the third CT or NY. This is why I reported the sighting to the store manager.”
If the camera footage still exists … would the camera be able to zoom in on the IDs of the other women???
If it did exist, it’s probably low res D1 and would be very pixelated, you might be able to make out clothing, hair color, maybe some facial features, but to get a clear read would be tough.
I hate to say it but this type of footage probably no longer exists especially since the store changed over to Shaws. There was probably no point to keep that footage on file and was disposed of. The only hope is that CCTV was going digital around that time so there could be a digital copy somewhere but I highly doubt it.
The only issues I have here are as follows:
KM was born in May of 83, so she wasn’t 21 yet at all.
SA was born in April of 84 (I believe) but either way, was NOT AT ALL 21 yet.
This could make me think MM was nervous, thus, looking around alot not wanting to get in trouble if she was the ONLY 21 year old in the group, had a history that required a clean record moving forward in order to BECOME An RN 100% she couldn’t mess this chance up, so since she wasn’t dumb, but was a team player, if you will, I can see her getting alcohol for friends, but why she didn’t go in alone is beyond me.
This could make me also think two friends from HOME were there with her. One attended school in VT, one in RI, one in CT (I believe) and the rest were MA.
Since KM and SA were both from NY, you’d think, unless fake ID’s were used, that the cashier would have recalled that both ID’s were from NY.
I believe this person, without a doubt, but where is her statement that it was February 9, 2004 that she saw these 3?