The Other Way Around

Suppose it had been the other way around.

Suppose Maura Murray had been hit by a car on Triangle Street in Amherst and left hospitalized in critical condition, barely clinging to life for days or weeks.

Suppose Petrit Vasi’s car was found a few days later, abandoned in NH, with unexplained body damage that was very likely sustained before he mysteriously left Amherst in a hurry.

And suppose Petrit Vasi’s car had been discovered in NH before Amherst police had found even their first lead in their investigation of the hit-and-run of Maura Murray.

Would Amherst police then have dropped the investigation into the hit-and-run of an all-American white woman so fast?

Would Amherst police then not have immediately requested from NH authorities a more vigorous search for this non-resident suspect?

Would NH police then not have looked east on Rt. 112 for Vasi?

Would Amherst (and possibly UMass) detectives themselves then not have shown up in Haverhill NH – say, on Tuesday morning?

Would Amherst police then not have tried to get the FBI more involved?

Would Petrit Vasi have ever, after crashing his mother’s Corolla into a Hadley guardrail while drunk, been allowed to leave the scene un-arrested?

Would the New Hampshire League of Investigators ever have investigated the mysterious disappearance of a missing, non-resident, male UMass student?

Would the New Hampshire League of Investigators ever have given psychic/medium Maureen Hancock an award for her assistance in the disappearance of Petrit Vasi?

Would the disappearance of Petrit Vasi ever have ignited hundreds of thousands of posts and comments all across Social Media for thirteen years?

Would online curiosity about the possible connection between the hit-and-run of Maura Murray and the subsequent disappearance of Petrit Vasi have met such desperate resistance?

Would Social Media have ever paid even scant attention to the disappearance of Petrit Vasi?

Would the disappearance of Petrit Vasi have ever been granted even a tiny fraction of the same publicity, the same attention, that has been given to Maura Murray’s disappearance for thirteen years?


If it had been the other way around, if Maura Murray had been struck by an unknown driver and Petrit Vasi had disappeared a few days later, his car found abandoned in NH, then you can bet the case would have been investigated very, very differently right from the start, when it counted most.

If it had been the other way around, police would never have been able to cleverly turn the hit-and-run case of a male immigrant UMass student into an instance of Missing White Woman Syndrome.

Had police pursued Maura Murray right away, exactly as they would have pursued Petrit Vasi if their identities were reversed, then everything might now be quite different indeed.

Although it may be way too late to find out who hit Petrit Vasi and what really happened to Maura Murray, it is not too late to hold Massachusetts police accountable for their own failure in the hours immediately following the disappearance of Maura Murray.

If anyone wants to point a finger at the negligence of law enforcement, point it at the police departments of Amherst, UMass, and Hadley Massachusetts – for allowing rampant bigotry to throttle what could have been an impartial, and therefore successful, investigation.

And, not so incidentally, for their failure to inform New Hampshire State Police of the true reason Maura Murray was allowed to leave the Hadley Corolla crash un-arrested.