Crime Junkies: Missing Persons Maura Murray and the West Mesa Serial Killer

In this blog post I will be covering the two part episodes on the disappearance of a missing woman, Maura Murray, and one episode on a serial killer in west Mesa, Arizona. The two part episode on Maura Murray cover a story about a UMass student who experiences a series of unfortunate events and starts acting strange before she goes missing on a rural road in New Hampshire. One day she emails her professors lying to them and saying there was a death in her family as an excuse to not attend class for a few days. She then withdraws all the money from her bank account, takes her old malfunctioning car that she was instructed not to use and starts driving north towards the White Mountains. She crashes her car into a tree on the way and some witnesses call the police but by the time they arrive she is gone, and has never been found to this day. Some suspect she went missing on purpose, while others believe she may have been a victim of foul play.

The other episode I listened to is about a serial killer who killed over 11 young women and buried their bodies in the West Mesa desert. Most of the women fit a profile of young and unstable. Detectives begin to investigate the pattern of young women with the same look going missing and eventually find the burial ground in the West Mesa. There are suspects but to this day the serial killer has never been found.

For this blog post I tried to choose a story that was published semi recently and an older story to see how the narrative features have changed. The two part on Maura Murray’s case reminds me a lot of some of the other two parts I’ve listened to. It’s not possible to just listen to one episode, the way the story is structured leaves the listener on a cliff hanger after the first episode. The first episode covers a lot of theories related to why Maura may have left and gone missing on purpose, which is also the theory the police strongly believed and published to the public. At the end of this episode, our host Ashley Flowers states that everything that people learned about the case at first is a lie, and there are much darker forces and ‘demons’ at play here that have been uncovered over the years. After hearing this, the listener is really inclined to listen to the second episode as a way to uncover the truth on Maura Murray’s case. There is a bit of bias here as well because it’s the hosts opinion that all the ideas we were fed are a lie, some people believe that it’s true and we will never know because the case is still open. In the second episode Ashley Flowers covers the evidence that supports the theory that there was foul play involved with Maura’s disappearance and she includes a lot of information she failed to cover in the first episode. By the end of the two episodes the listener has all the knowledge on the case but is still pushed to believe that Maura was a victim of foul play because this is what Ashley believes.

The episode I listened to about the West Mesa killer sounded like a slightly more unprofessional version of newer episodes, but I enjoyed that feeling more than the feeling that newer episodes have. This 2017 episode felt a lot more casual, and there was a much larger presence of the co-host Brittany Prawat. The fun banter between the two of them was much more present along with their personal opinions and biases’. The way Ashley narrated the story sounded less robotic and scripted and instead made me feel more like I was in the room with them as they uncovered this story. At times she even stumbled over her words more or took an extra second to say something and although this may seem unprofessional it added a touch of humanity to our hosts. There were also more instances where they related the events to their personal life, such as Ashley stating that at 14 years old she could barely take care of a pet and could never imagine herself taking care of a baby (they were talking about a 14 year old girl with a child who was a victim of the killer). Another example is how they spotlighted a female detective that was put on the case who believed that all the missing girls were connected before they even found the burial sites in the desert. Brittany then goes on to talk about how cool it is that this woman was onto the case before anyone else because of the lack of female representation in crime work (girl power!). Overall, I enjoy the non-chalant style of later episodes more than the informative scripted style of newer episodes.

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