The Maura Murray/Betty Lee Connection

What are the chances of Maura Murray running into a random killer?

That question perhaps is the most common response to those who vehemently feel that Maura was not murdered. They point out the improbability of her simply crossing paths with a murder. The short time frame in which she disappeared is noted and many disregard this possibility simply because it just isn't likely. She was seen one minute and gone the next. What are the odds?

Meet Betty Lee, 36 year old New Mexico native and mother of 5. She was found brutally murdered in a remote area on June 9, 2000. Investigators were able to piece together her last known whereabouts and begin to get an idea of where Betty was prior to her murder. The night before she joined two female friends at a bar. They spent the evening drinking and socializing, but by the end of the night Betty began feeling left out. Her two friends met two males at the bar and decided they were going to leave the bar with them. Betty, upset by this, pleaded with her friends not to leave as she had no ride home. The two females left with the men anyway. She was left there alone after a night of drinking, emotional and with no way back home.

Betty walked a short distance to a nearby convenience store to use the pay phone. The store clerk stated to police she witnessed a woman at the phone booth, crying. When she looked again a few minutes later, she was gone.

The police eventually tied her murder to Robert Fry, who has killed before. He was sentenced to death, and is currently awaiting execution in a New Mexico jail.

How this fits in with Maura Murray's case, isn't the murder itself, rather the circumstances leading up to it. Investigators say Betty Lee attempted to call her brother, a police officer to pick her up but wasn't able to reach him. Upset and crying and still without a ride, she hung the phone up and stepped out of the phone booth. Almost instantly, Robert Fry and his friend Les Engh pull up in their car and offer Betty a ride. Maybe because her guard was down after drinking that night, or because she felt she had no other options, Betty accepted the ride and they drove off. Fry eventually stopped the car and attempted to rape her. Betty fought back and was stabbed numerous times and beat to death with a sledgehammer, her body left in a desolate area.

So, we have two women who had been drinking. Both without transportation to their destination, alone and out of options. What likely drew Fry and Engh to Betty Lee was the fact she was alone, vulnerable and crying. While Maura may not have been crying, she was still alone and vulnerable.

With Betty Lee, this would still be an unsolved case if it wasn't for one single piece of evidence.

On the night of her murder, police found a cell phone laying on the ground in the same area of her body. It belonged to a tow truck driver who admitted he was there that night, towing a car that got stuck in rough terrain. The driver said cell service was poor in the area and after receiving a call and being unable to hear the caller, his wife, he angrily threw the phone on the ground, leaving it there. He was in fact towing Robert Fry's car that night after it got stuck. After the police made that connection, the case was quickly solved. However without that key evidence, this could have very well ended up as another cold case.

That night, Robert Fry acted under the guise of a good Samaritan, pretending he wanted to help Betty Lee by offering a ride. Instead, he tried to rape her and then brutally killed her. Betty was last seen at a pay phone, there one minute and gone the next. 

I think it's very possible Maura may have met a similar fate. However, unlike Betty Lee's case, we have no key piece of evidence to tie everything together. And so the mystery of Maura Murray continues...