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Transcript from Nancy Grace Show

January 27, 2006

"Good evening, everybody. I'm Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us tonight. Tonight, the mystery surrounding a 21-year-old nursing student intensifies. Maura Murray drove into a tree, stepped out of the car unharmed. Police there on the scene in just minutes. Maura Murray is gone, never seen again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Fred Murray wants to look at 2,500 documents, documents containing e-mails Maura sent the day of her disappearance, to information on what police found in her car the night of her accident two years ago, details Murray believes could solve this mystery.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell me what did you, tell me what you didn't do, and I`ll try to go back and see what you didn't do and take a fresh look at it and start it all over. It gives us -- it gives me my best hope. It gives me my only hope.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Murray's attorney claims the family has a right to the files under the state right-to-know law.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her family knows her better than any other party. A second set of eyes looking at information that is clearly nonexempt may ultimately lead to locating her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: After two years of hoping and praying, a father goes on the offense in the legal system. Two years ago, a beautiful young nursing student went missing after a minor car crash. She ran into a tree. Well, police got there just minutes after the crash and she is gone, never seen since.

Straight out to Gary Lindsley. He is a reporter with "The Caledonian Record."

Gary, are you with me? I know we've got problems with your IFB. Can you hear me?

GARY LINDSLEY, REPORTER, "CALEDONIAN RECORD": Yes, I can, Nancy.

GRACE: Great. Give me the facts, Gary.

LINDSLEY: Well, as it turns out, February 9th, somewhere around 7:00 or 7:30 p.m., Maura was headed on Route 112 in Haverhill, New Hampshire, and she had the minor car accident.

A bus driver came upon the scene, talked to her, asked her if she needed help. She said, no, she'd already called AAA. He went back to the house and called police.

Between the time he went back to the house and called police, a matter of seven to nine minutes, she was gone. No one's ever seen her since.

GRACE: Was there a record of her calling AAA?

LINDSLEY: No, there wasn't. She had not made a call.

GRACE: So she didn't call AAA?

LINDSLEY: Right. That was a very -- it's a very, very rural area. And cell coverage is very hard in some of those areas.

GRACE: Very rural area...

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: ... so you said "isolated route." How many people? I mean, this is not a very busy road. How many people would have been going along that road to snatch her?

LINDSLEY: Not too many, because once you get up past the crash scene, there are seasonal residences between the crash scene and Woodstock, New Hampshire.

GRACE: To Diane Dimond, investigative reporter, what else can you tell us to supplement Gary's report?

DIMOND: Well, it was two years ago, right before Valentine's Day actually -- and this young woman, who was a nursing student, she'd also been a cadet at West Point, a girl with her head on straight, you would think -- e-mailed her professors and said, "I'm going to be gone for a week because there`s been a death in the family."

Well, there had been no death in her family. She left the University at Amherst in Massachusetts. And instead of going home, she headed north up to Vermont and New Hampshire. And that`s where this accident occurred.

It struck me, Nancy, and everything that I've researched about this case, she has this accident. Within 10 minutes, the police are there. She's gone. And there's snow all around her car, but there`s no footsteps. It's like a "Twilight Zone" alien abduction thing. I mean, where did she go?

She had diamond jewelry in the car that her boyfriend had given her, a bottle of liquor, some clothes, a book, you know, just the normal things, like she was just going to go home. But she went the opposite way.

To me, it's just heart-wrenching to see that father asking for these documents from the court. I want to look at the police report, he said, so my private detectives can take over. And they won`t let him do it. A judge has now said, no, we will not turn those documents over to you. It could compromise the investigation.

GRACE: To Barbara McDougal and Patti Davidson -- they are joining us tonight. They are cousins of Maura Murray. Ladies, thank you for being with us.

Barbara, what did -- yes, thanks, Liz -- Barbara, what did you guys hope to gain from these documents you were in court fighting for?

BARBARA MCDOUGAL, MAURA MURRAY`S COUSIN: Well, we were hoping that there might be information in them that the police would overlook as meaning nothing but the family it may mean something to us, to have a different avenue to go down in searching for Maura.

GRACE: Right. Yes, it's been two long years.

To Patti, Patti, what do you believe law enforcement has missed in this investigation? Obviously something.

PATTI DAVIDSON, MAURA MURRAY`S COUSIN: I believe they waited too long to get a search team together. They waited 39 hours, and it should have been done immediately after they went to the scene and found her not there.

GRACE: Now, I know that you have joined together with the Molly Bish Foundation. We had Molly's parents on for a full hour around Christmas. Their daughter taken and killed.

Joining us now, Tom Shamshack, P.I. on the Murray search. He's also working with the Molly Bish Foundation. What`s your take on this, Tom?

TOM SHAMSHACK, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR IN MAURA'S CASE: Good evening, Nancy. John and Maggie send their love.

GRACE: Thank you. Thank you.

SHAMSHACK: All right. The investigative team, consisting of a dozen retired law enforcement investigators, is doing three things. We're looking to do investigative research on what has been written in the public domain. We're conducting interviews of percipient witnesses. And we're conducting a scene investigation, looking at the crash dynamics, and then again looking in the area, what possibly could have happened here.

GRACE: Renee, what else do you know about it?

ROCKWELL: To me, Nancy?

GRACE: Yes.

ROCKWELL: From what I can say, Nancy, is here is another situation where a family has had to hire a private detective. Why? Resources. In 2004, there were over 46,000 people missing in the U.S., 99 in New Hampshire. It's just a situation where I don`t know why the police department would have hid that or prevented them from getting those documents.

GRACE: Well, let`s look at the facts. No footsteps in the snow to indicate where she had gone. The police got there 10 minutes later, no sign of her. She had said there was a death in the family, told her professor she was leaving, no death in the family, and she went a different way. This was a minor crash; she went right into a tree.

Tonight, 603-271-2663, help us find Maura Murray. The reward up to $40,000 tonight."