At 7 PM on Thursday February 5th, Maura Murray sat down at her desk in the Melville dormitory building at UMass Amherst. It was your typical job that every college kid had to earn some extra beer money for the weekend. She helped staff the front check-in desk for students getting in and out of the dorms.

The details that follow are what investigators, armchair detectives, and podcasters have argued over for years.

The night for Murray begins with a flurry of cellphone activity. At 7:17 PM, Maura makes a twenty-minute call to her boyfriend, Billy Rausch. She called him again at 9:56 PM for six minutes.

Eight minutes later, at 10:10 PM, Maura calls her older sister Kathleen. According to her sister, who later told police, the phone call between the two sisters was completely normal and nothing out of the ordinary.

That call lasted twenty-eight minutes, ending at 10:38 PM.

Ninety minutes later, just after midnight, Petrit Vasi, an econ student set to graduate in just a few months, was struck by what police have determined was a hit and run, with injuries (to one side of his body) consistent with being hit by a moving vehicle.

At 12:07 AM, Maura made a seven minute phone call to her boyfriend Billy Rausch. Thirteen minutes after that call ended, at 12:20 AM, Vasi is found by police at the intersection of Triangle and Mattoon Street, .9 miles from where Maura worked at Melville Hall.

Around 1 AM, Maura has what followers of this case have come to know as the “break-down at work.” An anxiety attack apparently so bad that her supervisor, Karen Mayotte, was forced to relieve Maura of her shift forty-five minutes early. According to Mayotte and other co-workers, Maura stood blankly past the check-in desk, uttering the same two words over and over; “My sister. My sister.”

In an email to author James Renner, Mayotte recounts in detail what happened that night:

“That Thursday night, the receptionists had to work until 1:45 AM (2:45 on Fridays and Saturdays). After I visited the other areas of campus, when I got to Southwest I met up with the other coworkers at the eatery in Southwest. I didn’t eat, but another area supervisor told me that Maura was upset and that I should go check on her. At that point I did. One of them said, ‘Something’s up with Maura.’ She had been crying. I don’t know how to explain it. She was just completely zoned out. No reaction at all.”

After dismissing Maura of her duties, the two walk back to Maura’s dorm room, which was just a short walk away.

Mayotte would never see Maura again.