Maura Murray: Drunk at the Corolla Crash?

 

Same intersection, but different crash.

In his now-archived or deleted blog post of 08 January 2012, James Renner quoted then-lead investigator Lt. John Scarinza (now retired) of the New Hampshire State Police:

“That Saturday [07 February 2004], Fred Murray appeared in Amherst. ...They went out drinking, her and her father and her friend. Father goes back to the hotel. Maura has his car. Gets in an accident. Why she doesn’t get arrested then is beyond me.”

Arrested for what? Operating Under? Presumably.

Fred Murray’s statement, dated 22 February 2004, to UMass Police Department includes this about the Corolla crash:

“I asked her if she got a ticket she said no. I told her she was lucky she didn’t get a ticket for drunk driving. She told me she hadn’t had a drink in a while and was ok.”

There is no insurance coverage for motor vehicles damaged due to operator impairment.

When the first private investigator (PI) to handle the case for Fred Murray was asked why Officer Mark Ruddock (Hadley PD) allowed Maura to leave the Corolla crash scene unarrested, the PI replied, “Coulda, shoulda, woulda.”

In other words, Ruddock could have arrested Maura for OUI, should have arrested her, and would have arrested her... but didn’t?

The PI didn’t precisely say why Ruddock didn’t arrest Maura, but it was obvious that Maura was drunk at the scene.

If the PI knew that Maura was sober, which, given his connections to local law enforcement, he presumably did know, then he could have simply said that Maura was sober. But he didn’t.

It has been stated that Maura drank alcohol in her morning coffee when she visited the Ohio home of her boyfriend’s family.

Saturday nights in the early part of the semester, before the dread of mid-terms and finals sets in, are, at almost any college, one of the most common nights for students to consume relatively large amounts of alcohol.

If Maura was driving the Corolla when it crashed, then surely she had taken that route before and was familiar with the intersection and where to stop. Failure to safely negotiate that well marked, well lighted intersection indicates impairment.

Renner, according to his blog post of 08 November 2013, spoke with Mark Ruddock, who was the responding officer from Hadley at the Corolla crash site. Renner writes, “When asked why [Ruddock] did not charge [Maura] with DUI that night, Ruddock hung up on me.”

If Maura had been sober, wouldn't Ruddock simply have told Renner that she was sober?

Was Maura sober when she crashed the Corolla? Possibly. But the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that she was drunk.

So, why did Ruddock let her go?

It is way too risky for a police officer to allow a drunk driver to leave the scene of a single-car crash. After all, the operator may, after leaving the scene, drive another car. Or may engage in behavior dangerous to herself or others. Or may have sustained an invisible injury. Given his liability alone, it seems absurd to believe that Ruddock would have fallen for a sob story from a drunk UMass student who had just plowed a car into a guard rail.

As Billy Jensen pointed out on Episode 54 (54:37) of the Missing Maura Murray podcast, "Bottom line is, if she would have gotten a breathalyzer... we might not be talking about this now." "3:30 at night, a weekend, a young girl, who, who... C'mon, you don't give her a breathalyzer?! They give her the breathalyzer... she's cuffed and stuffed, then there's a whole support system that's around her and she doesn't go missing." Good point, but the chance that Ruddock decided on his own to let Maura go is, in my opinion, so small it cannot even be calculated.

I believe that Ruddock would never have allowed a drunk driver who had just crashed a car to leave the scene of the single-car crash unless he was strongly persuaded by someone else to let her go. The most likely candidate in my opinion? Another police officer.