The result of any possible agreement between the New Hampshire Attorney General's office and Amherst-area police in Massachusetts is that Amherst must stay quiet about the Vasi hit because they “can’t” interfere with the NH “investigation” of a missing person - a person who is more likely a suspect in an Amherst case, a case that NH cannot investigate, than she is a victim of a NH crime.
Amherst, by happily deferring to NH in what may amount to a phantom NH case, has conveniently tied its own hands for its own benefit. As long as Maura Murray’s disappearance remains an active and unsolved NH investigation, then the Vasi case will likewise remain unsolved.
And if Amherst police are not even acknowledging that the Vasi hit is an investigation of any kind, open or closed, then they are obviously not even slightly interested in any new information that, with no effort on their part, might come their way.
For example, say John Doe asks Amherst PD whether the Vasi case is still an on-going investigation. Wouldn't it be normal for detectives to get back to him and ask him whether he has anything he wants to say about the hit?
If detectives were even slightly interested in new information about the Vasi hit, they would get back to the person, just to ask whether they knew anything that might be useful. But they don't. Which tells me that they already have one person in mind and don't need to hear anything else about it.
And if the Vasi hit is a closed investigation, then they could, as they always do, just say it's closed. But they don't do that.
A law enforcement Mobius strip if ever I've seen one.
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UPDATE: It's now the middle of March 2019. Fourteen months ago, I sent Chief Scott Livingstone at Amherst Police Department a letter (certified mail with return receipt) asking whether the Vasi case was open or closed. No one from Amherst PD has replied. It seems very unlikely that they are interested in any new information about the Vasi hit. But the records they supplied to Renner show a very active investigation right up to about an hour before Maura Murray disappeared.
I have discussed this at length elsewhere in this blog. However, I think I need to repeat some of it here in order to better argue that an Amherst-area cop was involved in both the Vasi hit and Maura Murray’s subsequent disappearance. It’s not an air-tight argument, but I think it’s worth considering.
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Without identifying the Saturn’s ownership or history in any way, I showed five or six autobody repairmen, separately on the same summer day in 2008, a photo of the front of Fred Murray’s Saturn. I asked them how they thought the damage to the hood, especially its front left corner, had happened. BSG was one of the autobody repairmen.
1) BSG said he immediately recognized the Saturn – by its damage.
2) BSG, like all the other repairmen, said he thought the Saturn’s damage near the front left of the hood was the result of its having contacted an overhanging object.
3) BSG, unlike any of the other repairmen, said the Corolla had been closely inspected by police.
I posted on Topix:
1) All of the repairmen agreed that the Saturn’s damage was the result of its having contacted an overhanging object.
2) One of the repairmen (I didn't say it was BSG) told me police had closely examined the Corolla.
A few hours later, after dark, someone started to vandalize my backyard.
Even if speaking only statistically, there is no way around this: the vandalism was a direct result of my post on Topix. It was not a hungry bear, a malicious teenager, or an act of God - none of which had ever visited my neighborhood in the twenty-one years I lived there.
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Again, I never described to BSG the ownership or history of the Saturn in any way. Yet BSG transitioned seamlessly from his observation of the Saturn’s damage to his remark about Fred Murray’s Corolla without a single word or prompt from me. BSG had, therefore, referred to Fred Murray’s Saturn (not some other Saturn), something I never posted on Topix.
Because BSG had recognized the Saturn, by its damage, he therefore knew the Saturn was damaged before it left Amherst for New Hampshire.
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However, there was no reason for the ordinary Topix reader to infer - from the limited information I had posted - that BSG saw and recognized the exact Saturn registered to Maura Murray’s father.
Only a Topix reader with first-hand knowledge of the Corolla’s examination would have been in a position to correctly infer the larger picture: that I had discovered someone (BSG) who knew that the Saturn was damaged before it left Amherst.
Even more alarming, BSG had, for all the vandal knew, likely conveyed – intentionally or not - this very same information to me, a frequent Topix poster. Hence the vandal’s immediate need to warn me against saying anything more about the Saturn’s damage.
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Since the vandal could be only someone with inside knowledge of the Corolla’s inspection, he could be, realistically, only one of three people: 1) BSG, 2) someone else at BSG’s shop, or 3) a cop.
BSG knew nothing about me. He did not know who I was or where I lived. He could not have been the vandal.
It’s extremely unlikely that someone else at BSG’s shop would:
1) follow the Maura Murray case on Topix four and a half years after her disappearance;
2) know that “Beagle” had posted his own real name and address on Topix some weeks or months prior;
3) be somehow involved with the Saturn’s damage before it left Amherst;
4) have something to hide;
5) risk drawing the attention of police.
That leaves only a cop.
Only a cop would
1) have first-hand knowledge of the Corolla’s examination;
2) be in a position, like BSG, to know that the Saturn was damaged before it left Amherst;
3) have regularly watched the Topix discussion about Maura Murray;
4) know my name and address;
5) not worry about drawing the attention of police.
The only reason that someone, anyone, would vandalize my backyard a few hours after I commented on Topix would be to suppress public revelation that the Saturn was damaged before it left Massachusetts. This kind of action is taken only by someone who has something to hide. There is no other explanation for the vandalism.
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My conclusions so far:
1) The Saturn's damage occurred before it left Amherst.
2) My backyard was vandalized in order to keep secret the fact that the Saturn was damaged before it left Amherst.
3) The only reason to keep the origin of the Saturn's damage secret is that the car hit Vasi.
4) The vandal was a cop.
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I think there's an excellent chance this cop, or someone close to him, helped Maura Murray disappear.
A little under half way through his book, Shadow of Death, Philip Ginsburg writes about the newly formed task force investigating what became popularly known as the Connecticut Valley Serial Killer case.
Ginsburg cites the common practice of law enforcement, when working a multi-jurisdictional case, to limit public statements to one outlet:
The members of the task force were required to clear all public statements with the [New Hampshire] Attorney General’s office. Word of any developments, progress or achievement or simply effort, would come from Concord.
...there were reasonable goals behind the rigid information policy. It was intended to avoid prejudicing any future prosecution, to keep information from potential suspects...
Is this the reason the Amherst Police Department, as of this writing (09 March 2018), does not even acknowledge whether the Vasi hit-and-run case is either open or closed? Because the Vasi case may be related to the disappearance of Maura Murray? And therefore Amherst PD says little or nothing about it in deference to New Hampshire AG's office?
How convenient.
