10/12/2024: Dispatch from North Carolina
…and this week in True Crime
GOOD MORNING!
Competing narratives about the disaster left behind by Hurricane Helene dominated the last few weeks. We spent some time on the ground getting to the bottom of what’s really going on. Then, a look at some true crime stories making headlines this week.
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DISPATCH FROM NC
Blowing Rock Highway meanders through mountainous western North Carolina. The typical thoroughfares are blocked as crews continue to clean up from flooding and debris left by Hurricane Helene. Even into eastern Tennessee, highway signs remain askew and bent-over trees with dying brown leaves scatter the side of the road. But Blowing Rock Highway, with smooth black asphalt, takes bend after bend, no more than a few moments of a straight-line drive, even at a slow, 30 mile per hour pace.
On this early morning in October, a large semi leads our impromptu caravan of vehicles that has formed in this detour. For cars coming the other direction, this frequently means stopping and retreating so that the massive truck can make the turn, a complicated choreography sometimes involving multiple drivers. In most cases this kind of inconvenience would trigger frustrated road rage, but the wake of disaster brings perspective, a few moments of grace, helping a big long-haul truck get where it needs to go.
Many state highways and sections of interstate remain flooded or impassable from fallen trees and leftover debris. TV feeds and viral videos fail to capture just how much dirt a hurricane leaves behind. Parking lots look like clay pits, inches of muck covering up pavement. Cars at dealership lots that were not wrecked are covered in grime and dirt and dust, like a decades-old beater that’s been left in grandpa’s back shed. In a wet, muddy field somewhere in western North Carolina next to another winding, single-lane county road, a black VW beetle sits half-buried, carried from who-knows-where. Companies contracted by county and town governments to collect storm refuse still have much work to do, especially in the more rural areas, where heaps of junk sit on the front yard: couches, mattresses, dressers, tables, chairs, clothes, all ruined by rainwater and flooding in a heaping pile; heartbreaking, physical reminders of the lives and memories destroyed by this disaster.
These routes lead to Boone, North Carolina, where a charity, Samaritan’s Purse, has set up one of several bases to coordinate relief efforts into mountain communities still separated from city infrastructure. In a twist of fortune against horrifying tragedy, the group’s international headquarters is right in Boone, a stone’s throw from some of Helene’s hardest-hit areas, empowering the group to swing into action immediately, and in some cases assist some of its own, familiar volunteers who themselves have dispatched to disaster-hit areas in the past. A well-trained staff shepherds hundreds of volunteers every day who gather at a nearby church for dispatch orders, beginning with a morning orientation reviewing safety procedures for tasks like using chainsaws and avoiding dangerous snakes and insects. Some volunteers are locals, some have traveled miles; everyone just wants to help. Their assignments vary from assembling and distributing generators to cleaning up yard waste. Marching orders are doled out loosely, by the raise of a hand and instructions to meet a team lead, typically a trained volunteer for the group, who will give further guidance.
Despite the loose structure, or maybe in fact because of it, everyone proceeds calmly, respectfully, and kindly to gather in their groups, get details about where they’re headed, typically to a property with significant damage and need for yard cleanup. They head out in their own vehicles, strangers carpooling with strangers — day after day.
The efficiency and effectiveness are undeniable. A private charity moves swiftly, motivated by genuine neighborliness and Christian love for fellow man, organized by a staff that has been in the trenches before. Every dollar they mobilize has been given by donors who want to put their money to work on the ground where people need it to immediate effect.
Where Samaritan’s Purse and groups like it have the ability to move swiftly and deploy volunteers and staff driven by a mission, FEMA’s usefulness in these efforts is less clear. Charities have narrow marching orders; FEMA is a massive umbrella that, as has become clear in recent weeks, provides financial and resource assistance to not just homeowners crippled by natural disaster, but also municipalities, state governments, and even thousands of illegal immigrants, to find a place to live and get food to eat.
FEMA should have a role when disasters strike the United States but its broad mission makes it too big for its own good. It should not be seen as a resource for victims of tragedy directly, most recently embodied by the immediate $750 relief payments touted by top Biden-Harris officials. Instead, FEMA itself and its constituencies would be better served directing FEMA’s money and resources downstream, so those working closest to people and communities can spend it where it needs to go.
In the existing system, FEMA competes with charities to accomplish similar goals but is slowed by its own dense, bureaucratic regulations and procedures. Where communities and private enterprise find the shortest distance between a problem and a solution, FEMA and its myriad government agency counterparts at every level see problem-solving as the beginning of a process to be followed to the letter, not delivering the most effective and necessary results.
As a government agency, what FEMA does best is move money around. Here’s an example of public-private partnership done right: disaster relief charities meticulously track and record all the time worked by its volunteers and submit it to the agency which uses this time to calculate how much local governments will be reimbursed for expenses related to cleanup. The more people the local government can coordinate to help private groups in the field, the more federal money it will get afterward.
FEMA tries to do many of the things a group like Samaritan’s Purse tries to accomplish, but its employees are first responsible to bureaucracy and often arbitrary procedures, absurd rules like only purchasing or even accepting relief supples from specific vendors, many of whom are on the preferred list as a result of political favors, winks, and nods. FEMA doesn’t need to be disbanded; like so much of the federal government, it needs to be smaller and do less so it can accomplish more.
Left to its own devices, FEMA would not have been able to bring data service to western North Carolina in just a matter of days. Instead, Starlink and T-Mobile partnered to blanket the region with free data and cellular service: all it takes is setting a phone to Roaming mode before the satellite-powered data stream kicks in. These two massive companies set this up because it’s the right thing to do.
Hurricanes don’t care which candidate’s sign is in your yard and neither do volunteers. The political horse race squabbles sound even more foolish against the backdrop of a centuries-old tree that has split a home in half as a displaced family watches its credit card balances run up while living in a hotel during cleanup. They hope they’ll be reimbursed by insurance, which won’t pay the bill if FEMA does, which would rather the insurance company pays out first. They’re trapped in a circular firing squad between competing bureaucracies that treat them as line-items and data points.
While the chattering class points fingers and yammers in the abstract, real people need help. Only a new spirit of community, neighbors helping neighbors because it’s the right thing to do, will make the real difference.
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TRUE CRIME
New York-based software engineer STEPHEN SMERK pleaded guilty last week to killing 37-year-old mom ROBIN LAWRENCE three decades ago.
In the courtroom, Smerk admitted to fatally stabbing Lawrence, whom he targeted at random in her Springfield home in November 1994. Her two-year-old daughter was home at the time of the murder, but left unharmed.
Lawrence’s body was found days later by a friend who stopped by to do a welfare check after Lawrence’s husband, who was on a business trip, was unable to reach her. The friend says when she approached the home she saw a screen had been cut out, and upon entering came across the toddler wearing a soiled diaper and blood splattered on the bedroom walls.
The crime went unsolved until last September, when DNA matched Smerk to the murder.
In his confession, Smerk said: “I’ve not killed anyone else, but I could be a serial killer. If not for my wife and kids, I probably would be a serial killer.”
Sentencing is scheduled for March 7. Smerk faces up to 70 years in prison. [via Washington Post]
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BRYAN KOHBERGER’s murder trial has been pushed back from the originally scheduled date of June 2, 2025. An order issued this week by the new judge overseeing the trial, now has it scheduled for August 11 to November 7, 2025.
The trial has already been postponed for more than a year as defense attorneys accuse the prosecution of slow-walking the disclosure of evidence through discovery.
There is a hearing set for November 7 of this year for arguments regarding the death penalty. [via NBC]
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MISSING PERSONS: Maura Murray
One of the most head-scratching missing persons cases has to be that of 21-year-old nursing student MAURA MURRAY, who disappeared on the evening of February 9, 2004 after crashing her car along a snow-covered Route 112 in Haverhill, New Hampshire.
A high school track star from Hanson, Massachusetts, Murray attended West Point after graduation, where she studied chemical engineering. During her first year, she transferred to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst for nursing. It was during her junior year that she would go missing.
EVENTS LEADING UP TO HER DISAPPEARANCE:
At midnight on February 9 Murray did a MapQuest search for directions to Berkshires and Burlington, Vermont. That afternoon she emails her boyfriend, telling him she loves him and will talk to him later. At that same time she made a call about renting a condominium in Bartlett, New Hampshire; a place her family had vacationed in the past. The owner did not rent her a condo.
Shortly after that, Murray calls a fellow nursing student, though the reason why is not known. She also emails a supervisor at the nursing school facility, letting them know she will be out of town for a week due to a death in the family. Her family later stated there was no death.
Around 2pm, Murray calls a number with recorded info about booking hotels in Stowe, Vermont, followed by a call to her boyfriend whom she again tells they will talk later.
She leaves campus around 330pm. Classes had been canceled that day due to a snowstorm.
Ten minutes later, she is spotted on camera footage taking $280 out of an ATM. This is the last known sighting of her. From there she purchased around $40 of alcohol at a nearby liquor store.
It is estimated that sometime between 4pm and 5pm Murray left Amherst via I-91 N. During that time range she made a call to check her voicemail; it is the last recorded use of her cell phone.
THE ACCIDENT:
At 7:27pm a resident of Haverhill reports seeing what appears to be a sedan stuck in a snowbank.
A passing bus driver also comes across the accident and stops to check on the driver, whom he described as appearing uninjured, but shivering and cold. He claims she asked him not to call the police and said she had already contacted AAA; something AAA would later say they have no record of.
Haverhill police arrive on the scene at 7:46pm and report no sign of the driver. The officer notes at the time that the car hit a tree on the driver’s side, there is damage to the left headlight, and the car’s radiator has been pushed into the fan, rendering the vehicle inoperable. The windshield on the driver’s side is also cracked and both airbags had been deployed. Also, all of the car doors are locked.
After connecting the vehicle to Murray, police issue a BOLO for her on the afternoon of February 10.
On February 11, Murray’s dad, Fred, arrives in Haverhill, joining the search efforts. Tracking dogs were brought in to follow her scent, which they did until they lost it. This suggested to officers that at that point she had stopped walking and gotten into a vehicle. Murray’s boyfriend and his parents arrive that evening, and he is immediately brought in and questioned by officers. Around 7pm that same night officers state that they believe Murray is a runaway or left with intentions to commit suicide. Her family disputes this theory.
February 12 the first press conference is held.
February 19 the FBI joins the case, which gets extended to a nationwide search.
Then really nothing until, 2006 when the New Hampshire League of Investigators, a group of ten retired police officers and detectives, start working on the case.
TODAY:
The most recent update on the case came in February 2024 — 20 years since her disappearance — officials in New Hampshire released an age-progression photo of Murray. [via FBI, Maura Murray Official Site]
For more updates, follow Murray’s sister’s TikTok page.
WORTH NOTING: At the time of her disappearance Facebook was only 5 days old. There was no YouTube or Twitter yet.
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