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Bonus - "Whose Afraid of LaDonna Humphrey? I Am" with Julie Murray
652 Plays1 month ago
Julie Murray, the sister of Maura Murray, and I discuss our shared experience with LaDonna Humphrey, a past guest and the subject of an investigation by Javier Levia's PRETEND podcast. LaDonna is suspected of altering emails with the Murray family that permanently altered the public perception of Julie's family and the case around Maura's 2004 disappearance. Julia discusses her fear of coming forward and what changed her mind.
This is an example of the bonus episodes you can find exclusively on our Patreon.
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Transcript
Introduction to Javier's Series and Patreon Preview
00:00:00
Speaker
Very soon, my friends Brett and Alice from the Prosecutors Podcast and Javier Leyva of the Pretend Podcast will be releasing an episode where they do an interview with Javier on the series he's been working on called Who's Afraid of LaDonna Humphrey.
00:00:18
Speaker
um I just wanted to release this interview with Julie Murray on LaDonna Humphrey that was released last month on our Patreon as a Patreon bonus episode. It'll give you an idea of what you can get for $3 a month by joining our Patreon, and it also explores LaDonna Humphrey's role in the more Murray case, one that was surprising to us and really has shifted our view of what had happened there.
00:00:45
Speaker
With that, I'm going to turn it over to Julie for this discussion.
Julie Murray Discusses Family's Efforts Post-Disappearance
00:00:50
Speaker
If you're interested in our Patreon, you can find us at www.patreon dot.com forward slash the Silver Linings Handbook. Hey folks, this is a Patreon only bonus episode with Julie Murray, the sister of Maura Murray who disappeared in 2004.
00:01:10
Speaker
Along the way, the Murray family has taken every measure humanly possible to find their sister. In that, they've come across some people who have been unbelievably helpful and supportive of them, and they've come back, many people who had different kinds of motives. In this bonus episode, we're gonna discuss one of my former guests, LaDonna Humphrey, who became entangled in the more Murray story very early on.
00:01:40
Speaker
Julie has recently spoken out about her family's interactions with Ladonna, and we wanted to share this Patreon bonus episode to touch a little bit on the dark side.
00:02:02
Speaker
So, Julie, what I wanted to ask you about, um I had noticed you had had a recent appearance on Javier Leves' podcast, The Pretend podcast, to talk about um this season, his seasons, Who's Afraid of LaDonna
LaDonna Humphrey's Early Involvement and Interactions
00:02:18
Speaker
Humphrey? and um you know Many of my listeners know that um I know LaDonna. I had met her in 2023 at CrimeCon. She had been described to me by fellow podcasters as an advocate for victims, somebody who ran a um true crime you know festival,
00:02:40
Speaker
a you know foster mom and you know just sort of like tirelessly ah fighting for for victims. and I think you know the beginning of, I think it was probably this year,
00:02:54
Speaker
I had had a conversation with her, and it was about missing and i and identified cases. And I consider myself a relatively savvy person, although anyone who knows me really well, Julie, will tell you that I'm actually secretly naive. um And as it turned out, you know, I was at CrimeCon in 2024, so this the end of May and, um you know, I had tickets to a dinner that I was going to bring a bunch of friends to that dinner. And um but apparently, LaDonna was having an event off site. And so when I came out of that event, I had a message from LaDonna saying that she was really disappointed that I didn't make it to her
Javier's Podcast and LaDonna's Assistance to the Murray Family
00:03:37
Speaker
event. And she was wondering whether I was mad at her, which all of a sudden sent my alert signals up. I'm like, what's going on?
00:03:43
Speaker
and um you know I started to ask around and someone told me about Javier's podcast. I reached out to him this that weekend and we connected and I began to hear about some of um the misdeeds. I did not know that your family was involved in it all until the recent episode. And, you know, I felt kind of fooled, right, as somebody who comes from a world of journalism and investigating things. And, you know, I also have a lot of experience in mental health work, so I'm used to sort of picking up on things. But I was just shocked when I heard about her involvement in your family's case and kind of the impact it had on you. I wanted to ask you just sort of a little bit about that.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, and so I've had very limited experience with LaDonna, and the the interaction that I did have and my family had um was sort of a one-off. So back in 2006, 2007, LaDonna had a nonprofit, and it was called Let's Bring Them Home, and it was based out of Arkansas.
00:04:55
Speaker
And she, I believe, saw my sister's story on the news and reached out and offered assistance. so And at that time, my family was in no position to decline some assistance because what she was offering was a reward for information. So we thought, wow, this is great. And no one had offered us that um avenue to pursue a reward and in this in my sister's case. so And so we jumped on it. And before we knew it, um we were working with her to get this $75,000 reward up and running. And during that process, we
00:05:42
Speaker
kind of saw a couple of red flags. Um, and one of them was we, we spoke to a lawyer and lawyer said that we should make sure that our family wasn't going to be held liable for, um, producing $75,000.
Legal Steps and Red Flags Raised by LaDonna's Actions
00:06:02
Speaker
Yeah. yeah And so the lawyer recommended that we get a letter of indemnification to protect us against having to pay out that reward because that's a lot of money. And that's sort of like the people who are giving the reward in association with you saying, hey, hey, we have we either have this money or we have the insurance policy for the money or whatever it is, yeah you will never have to pay this out of something goes wrong.
00:06:30
Speaker
Right. Yeah, so this was all new to us. So I'm so thankful that we we did consult the lawyer. And so we did do this letter of indemnification. And through this process, of course, my family had been in contact with other families in the true crime space. And one of the individuals that we had had close relationship to gave us a chilling warning about LaDonna.
00:06:56
Speaker
ah we Yeah. and But at that point, it was too late. The train was off. you know The train left the station and the reward was in the works. We felt comfortable and good because we had this letter of indemnification. And so the reward was posted in the early fall And it was to expire at the end of the year. So it was only about a five-month um span that tips could come in. And so we let it run and we received a handful of tips. I think there was seven or eight total tips.
00:07:36
Speaker
And then the reward expired, and we didn't really have anything actionable or tangible that came out of that. And so that was the last that we heard of LaDonna until 10 years later.
False Claims and Confusion Stemming from LaDonna
00:07:52
Speaker
And 10 years later, Madonna resurfaced and she um made a claim that my family was acting suspicious, um in particular my dad, and that he wanted to monitor all the tips that came in.
00:08:10
Speaker
um Which was kind of ridiculous because the way the tips came in was through a automated ah voicemail system that laonna was the only one that had access to or i should say her nonprofit. Let's bring them home.
00:08:26
Speaker
She would get the voicemails and then forward them to my aunt Helena. Sometimes she'd forward them directly to my dad. And at that point, it was relatively early on in the investigation. My sister went missing in 2004, so we're talking to three years later. So we're busy, you know, running around trying to talk to investigators, do our own research and and things like that.
00:08:52
Speaker
So um this claim becomes public that my dad wanted to control and monitor all the tips and an email was produced as evidence that my dad wanted to um screen all the calls.
00:09:11
Speaker
and um so good It's just sort of like stepping back here for a second. So yeah so the reward reward happens. It's for a matter of months. It's supposed to be for $75,000. A handful of tips come in.
00:09:26
Speaker
Then 10 years later, sort of out of the blue, no prompting, no interaction, no you guys in the news are saying anything about her. All of a sudden the story about your dad being controlling over the reward comes out for no reason that you can figure out.
00:09:45
Speaker
Correct. okay no No heads up, totally blindsided. and um So if the listeners are confused right now, you are as confused as they are.
Discrepancies in Evidence and Other Families' Experiences
00:09:56
Speaker
Yes. yeah Yes, I am. So thankfully, my dad's not that computer savvy and he is convinced that he needs to never delete anything ever. So um which ah helped in this situation. So I had all of the emails ah from that timeframe and I looked through all the emails and the exchanges. I also have access to my aunt Helena who passed away all of her exchanges. So I think this story was kind of
00:10:31
Speaker
put out there ah hoping that we didn't actually have all the original correspondence, but we did. i Yeah, so I pulled. Go ahead. And Helena was like the main point of contact with like the media and the people for the award. So she was in communication with LaDonna, and so was Jordan. Correct. Right, right.
00:10:55
Speaker
so i I tried to find this email where my dad says I need to see all the tips before they go to law enforcement, which is crazy because the tips would come to my aunt Helena and then she'd forward them to my dad and then they would forward them to law enforcement. That's how it happened. The tips the tip line never fed directly to law enforcement.
00:11:19
Speaker
and I don't believe that Ladana was forwarding those tips directly to law enforcement. She fed them to my family. um And then we would send them to the investigators. um So this idea that my family was going to be bypassed in this process was never the way that it was described to us when we first launched the reward. So that was confusing. So anyway, I find the email from that date From that date and the the exact email and it looks completely different than what was posted online and so that adds a whole another layer of confusion for my family because I Wanted to know where where is this email? I don't have it. There's no outbound emails. My dad never sent that um and
00:12:15
Speaker
so now It seems like it was a fabrication or an entity of a real email or something along those lines. Yeah, I'm not going to i'm not going to venture to guess how how it happened. All I can say is I don't have a record of that email, but I do have a record of the exact email from that date, from that time, and it looks different. so Make of that what you will.
00:12:40
Speaker
yep um so You know, I got in contact with Javier and he asked if I had any interaction with LaDonna, and I told him, very limited, but there was this one situation about this reward, and that was the only interaction that my family had with her. And so I just told Javier the story, matter of fact, and provided him with all of the correspondence, not just that one in question, but all of them.
00:13:11
Speaker
um so that he could look for himself. um And then I find out that there were other families that had somewhat similar experiences and we were all sort of siloed and had no connection whatsoever other than the fact that we had come across Miss Humphrey at one point in time. And so you know I just told Javier my experience and then of course I listened to the other ah stories on the Pretend podcast and I'm just blown away with what I heard. you You had mentioned when we were talking earlier that at first you were thinking you wouldn't appear on Javier's podcast. What changed your mind?
00:14:00
Speaker
Well, i will I'll tell you but because, again, you know, I go on... I try to decide what I'm going to use my energy and what I'm going to spend my time on if it's Mara centered, if it's going to further the case. In my mind, this had nothing to do with Mara because it's not even real. um And so I didn't want to...
00:14:25
Speaker
get pulled into any sort of sideshow circus. And I saw that the this had the potential to do that, so I provided Javier with my story and I respectfully declined to go on record.
00:14:40
Speaker
then I get a notification that the first episode come was coming out. It was dropping. And the title was Who's Afraid of LaDonna Humphrey? And I sat back in my chair and thought to myself, I'm afraid of LaDonna Humphrey. And I don't like it. And I don't like that about myself. And I shouldn't be afraid just to tell what happened and i can prove it and i have all the emails so i contacted Javier and i said.
00:15:15
Speaker
I am afraid of LaDonna Humphrey, but I hate it. And so I want to go on record and I want to just share my story in hopes that it gives somebody else the courage to come forward. Oh, that's awesome. i You know, i I had mentioned this to you before that, you know, I ah hadn't done a ton of research into your sister's case because during the time where um your sister initially went missing, I was going through a very difficult time in my own life so and and I never really sort of caught up with it along with the way, but I did do some research and and it made me wonder whether some of the negative things that Ladano was saying about your dad kind of poisoned
00:16:05
Speaker
for whatever motive it was, the views of your
Impact of False Narratives on the Murray Family's Perception
00:16:09
Speaker
family. And I'm i'm wondering whether those of us ah sort of, and I don't know whether this was your intent, but i'm I'm wondering whether having some of these conversations like Javier is or that we're having right now will help people see, well, 1A, that maybe some of those perceptions um we're wrong, but also to just be very, very careful in our consuming of ah of information. Yeah, I think confirmation bias is a huge factor in how consumers um base their perception of some of these stories. And that's certainly the case with my family. You know, there's so many articles, blogs,
00:17:00
Speaker
videos out there saying that my family acted suspiciously and we're odd and we didn't behave the way that they Normal people that experience tragedy behaves whatever that is um and so people latch on to this type of story and say, oh, there it is. I knew it. The Murray's are suspicious. and It's based on a false premise. That just adds to their confirmation bias that that that they are seeking.
00:17:31
Speaker
and It's very hurtful to my family and my sister's case because then people are less likely to feel like she's deserving of answers or resolution because you know her family is and involved or her family isn't telling the truth, whatever the case may be, but um it's a very real thing.
00:17:58
Speaker
yeah Well, I'm glad you pushed past your fear of LaDonna, which I'm kind of doing myself right now. the But one ah one of the things I was wondering about, like, is there any, um in looking back at that situation, I know you weren't heavily involved, your dad was, any like tips for people because I know when, whether it's because of true crime or something else, but when you get a lot of um media attention, some unsavory characters ah will pop
Advice on Handling Offers and Attention from Others
00:18:29
Speaker
up. Looking back, um is there any advice you'd have for people when it comes to sort of like people gravitating toward you when you're in the news or something along those lines? Yeah, I would say you have to do your due diligence. You've got to take the time to do your research, talk to other people that have interacted with the particular person that you're considering working with. um And
00:18:54
Speaker
it It's time consuming, but in the long run, you're going to save yourself a lot of headache um by doing that. And try to try to spend as much time with the person off record and try to understand them and their motivations before you um sign up for something that you can't ever take back.
00:19:17
Speaker
I'm Jason Blair and this is the Silver Linings Handbook Podcast Patreon only bonus episode. We'll see you guys all again soon.