Woman awaits word of missing boyfriend

Claire Mahoney, 24, of Quincy, said her boyfriend of two years, William Hurley, was tired after going from work in Weston to his first Bruins game, and she offered to pick him up when he called her during first intermission.

They talked on the phone as she drove to the TD Garden from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where she is a graduate student.

She overheard Hurley, unfamiliar with the area, ask a passerby his exact address. Mahoney heard someone yell "99 Nashua St." before Hurley's phone died about 8:45 p.m.

"I was right around the corner. But when I got there, Will was gone," Mahoney said yesterday in a phone interview.

Hoping her boyfriend decided to find his own way to their Quincy apartment, Mahoney left after searching the area for about an hour.

"I just kept thinking OK, maybe he took the T home. He'll be home in an hour," said Mahoney. "Then with every hour that went by, I kept thinking, he's got to be here sometime soon, he's got to be here sometime soon, and then I started to panic."

Mahoney called Boston and Quincy police, who told her to wait 24 hours. She then called hospitals and Hurley's friends. No one had any information for her. On Friday, she went to Quincy and Boston police stations to file a missing persons report.

"That's when they realized it was more serious than they had thought," said Mahoney.

On Saturday, Boston police spokesman Joe Zanoli said they had "found no indicators of any foul play, but that possibility can't be ruled out."

Yesterday, Boston police spokesman James Kenneally said authorities "are still in the process of trying to locate the individual. We encourage anyone who knows anything about Mr. Hurley's whereabouts to contact police."

According to several broadcast reports, authorities searched the Charles River for Hurley yesterday. His mother was said to be en route from North Carolina, where he is from.

Police described Hurley as a white male, 5 feet 8 inches tall, 155 pounds, and thin, with blond hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing white Nike sneakers, blue jeans, a green T-shirt, and a red North Face jacket, police said.

Hurley had moved to Quincy from Florida, where he had been stationed in the Navy, last December to live with Mahoney.

In April, Hurley was hired as a groundskeeper by Weston Gulf Club, along with Brendan Venti. The two became friends, and when Venti's father offered him Bruins tickets Thursday afternoon, he jumped at the chance.

"It was just a last-minute thing. So we decided to go," said Venti, 24, of Brighton, in a phone interview.

Venti said Hurley had one beer and said he was tired at the first intermission and that he was heading home. That was the last time he saw him, he said. The next morning, Venti received a text message from Mahoney, alerting him that Hurley was missing.

"Honestly, the whole thing is dumbfounding. He and his girlfriend go out almost every weekend with me and my girlfriend. I just keep thinking that we would have been watching the Red Sox game together. I just can't put it into words," he said. "From what I know of him, he would not just disappear like this."

Venti called Hurley a "soft-spoken Navy guy" who "lives for his family and his girlfriend." "It is always in the back of your mind that something negative happened. But we are just hoping for the best."