Evil Season (23 page)

Walker himself did not know Murphy. He had only been at the rooming house since March 2004, weeks after Murphy left. None of the tenants were the same as those who had lived in the house six months before. The investigators did assemble a list of people who had resided in the house at the same time as Murphy, but they found them scattered to the wind.

When Opitz talked to Kit Barker, she recalled how Murphy had grabbed her butt as she bent over the toilet. She gave the police the painted plate Murphy had given her as a gift. It had always scared her and she was eager to be rid of it. Murphy, she recalled, told her that he worked cutting hair in a place in Bradenton, and he commuted on his bicycle.

It was the beginning of August, a couple of weeks after he'd been released from solitary confinement at the state jail. Things were going smoothly for Murphy.

Murphy made a friend while in general population. The guy had robbed a bank. He met him in recreation, up on the roof. Murphy was walking laps around the perimeter—the big steel cage all around him, a happy home for pigeons, which took off and landed, took off and landed—when he was joined by another man, a larger-than-average guy.

“Mind if I walk with you?” the guy asked, walking beside Murphy, stride for stride.

“No, go ahead,” Murphy replied.

“I just got extradited from the state of Washington.”

“What are you in for?”

“I'm accused of robbing several banks.”

They started talking and the bank robber told Murphy his life story. He'd been in prison in Washington for robbing banks, and now they thought he robbed banks in Texas, too. His reputation followed him.

“Sounds to me like you've been busy,” Murphy said with a laugh. “What's the most money you ever got out of one bank?”

“Eighteen thousand dollars,” the guy said, although that one was exceptional. If you averaged them out, he'd netted about four grand per.

The guy taught Murphy the tricks of the bank-robbing trade. Rule One: “Have a home base close to the bank, and escape via bicycle.” Rule Two: Elmer's Glue on the fingertips, so you don't leave fingerprints.

A social animal in general pop, Murphy also befriended two other bank robbers. They looked like normal guys and their technique was simple. They walked into a bank unarmed and demanded money.

One of those guys was incarcerated for a different crime, but he had done time in the past for bank robbery, so he figured it all evened out in the end. He said his best friend was a bank robber, and he got arrested trying to board a bus drunk and without a shirt on.

Murphy asked the guy how he had gotten started. Did he start out robbing banks, or did he work his way up?

“I started out by robbing liquor stores. I'd walk in, grab a couple of bottles of expensive booze, and
dare
the guy behind the counter to do anything about it.”

Murphy wanted to know what was the guy's worst jail experience. Murphy's new friend had once done six months in a really rough Mexican prison. Luckily, he got connected with the right guys and they got him through.

 

 

Then life changed.

“I was called out of the dorm to meet a stranger from outside the prison,” Murphy remembered. The man was a law enforcement officer of some type; Murphy didn't recall which kind. “Before he spoke to me, he looked at a large photograph he had of me, to make sure I was the right guy.”

Satisfied that he had the right man, the cop took Murphy into custody and took him
outside the prison
to a waiting unmarked car. In the car was a woman, another law enforcement officer of some sort. They didn't tell Murphy who they were or where they were going. They took him to a sheriff's office in Houston. They sat him down in an interrogation room.

Murphy looked around for a camera and didn't see any. And there was no window, no mirror, no portal for them to watch him. He thought he wasn't being watched, that he wasn't being listened to. Only months later did he realize that everything that happened in that room was recorded. He was still mystified as to how they did it.

Murphy intended to get through the interview—just as he always did when he talked to the authorities. He would just “beat around the bush, be as vague as possible, lie, misinform, and concoct a story or two.”

Detective Jim Glover and Sergeant Norman Reilly had made the trip from Sarasota to Texas. Murphy was given his Miranda rights and agreed to speak with them.

The interrogators were interested in Murphy's activities before he got to Houston. Murphy said he'd arrived in the city when a friend of a friend, whose name was either Jim or Dave, gave him a ride. The guy, if Murphy remembered correctly, dropped him off and then continued on to Las Vegas. (All a lie, he'd actually taken a series of Greyhound busses under a variety of pseudonyms.)

Before that, when he was still in Sarasota, during January 2004, he'd lived in an efficiency apartment on Shade Avenue owned by Kit Barker, a sassy woman who spent much of the year living in North Carolina. The house had six rented rooms, lettered
A
through
F.
He stayed there for a couple of months. Rent was approximately $100 per week.

Murphy gave the cops his recent work history, which consisted only of a couple of short-term gigs at Sarasota barbershops.

He talked about his military career and both of his ex-wives. He said he didn't abuse drugs and considered himself sane.

He said he was an
artist.
To kill time in jail he drew pictures. “Fantasy art,” he called it.

He acknowledged that he'd seen press coverage of the Joyce Wishart murder. They told him his DNA was found at the scene. Murphy said he understood DNA evidence, that his DNA was linked to God's. It was that very connection to God that gave him his power, Murphy boasted. He could make cars crash just by looking at them. If someone pissed him off, he could give them a headache, “snap, just like that.”

Murphy answered questions willingly, but his openness changed when the subject of Joyce Wishart's murder came up. He said, “I've told you all I'm going to about that case. I am not going to fill in the blanks for you.”

They asked him to explain his DNA being there. Murphy said it was simple: He was framed. He was a barber, and he used cutting equipment. He cut himself all the time.

Who would frame him?

He had no idea. He had no friends. He was a loner. No one had visited him during his time in the Texas jail. He had “numerous followers,” he said, but he was unable to provide the name of a single person he was “close with.”

They asked him for a voluntary DNA sample. Just to confirm the results they already had. He said no.

 

 

The next day Reilly and Glover spoke to Murphy's jail warden, who said Murphy had been given no medication since his arrival. He had not been a disciplinary problem. Murphy followed instructions and did not exhibit abnormal behavior.

On August 11, Sarasota detectives Jim Glover and David Grant spoke to Murphy at the Harris County Jail. Before commencing the questioning, a detective named Hoffman came into the room with one purpose only. He told Murphy that he had a court order to take “buccal swabs”—i.e., a DNA sample. Detective Hoffman explained that the long Q-tip he was unwrapping was sterile, and Murphy obediently opened his mouth so Hoffman could rub the cotton swab against the inside of his cheek on either side.

“It's almost as good as going to the dentist,” Hoffman joked.

“Even better,” Murphy agreed cheerfully.

Hoffman left with the sample, and Murphy was alone in the room with Glover and Grant. They informed him that they were being recorded. After reading Murphy his Miranda rights, they briefly discussed Murphy's living arrangements at the jail, and agreed the place was huge.

“How many people are over there?” Glover asked.

“A few thousand. They keep coming,” Murphy said with a laugh. “The building is wild. There are seven floors underground!” The detectives were impressed. “There are underground tunnels. It's all under the bayou!” He described the jail as a “slaughterhouse.” Prisoners were beating the hell out of each other. Guards were beating the hell out of prisoners.

“I got punched in the mouth.” He accused a guy of stealing his stuff; and later, while Murphy was headed for the shower, the guy punched him. “I needed four stitches,” Murphy concluded.

Glover explained that they had brought with them some photographs of Murphy's art, and he hoped they could discuss it.

“All right,” Murphy said.

Glover then looked for the photos of Murphy's artwork, but he couldn't find them. Because of that, he continued the interview without his visual aids.

“If I recall, they were plates with images painted on them. My question would be, what are they supposed to be?”

“That's up to the person,” Murphy replied. “Each person can interpret them as they will. The plates want each person to do something, to enjoy the work the way I felt,” Murphy said. “I am not going to give them to anyone else. You interpret them your own way, and each person sees something different.”

“How many of those plates did you do?” Glover asked.

“About thirty.”

“And where did all of those end up?”

“I'm not going to answer that one.”

It was true, he added, that he did give some paintings to a girl to sell for him. That artwork had not been plates. The girl's name was Ann Marie. He didn't recall a last name.

Detective Grant asked, “Was the painting you gave to the girl to sell in the same style as the plates?”

“Different. Different,” Murphy replied. “The first ones were manipulated. The paint just moved around, so they work two different types together.”

“Okay, yeah, but it was all pretty much abstract, right?” Glover asked.

“Interpret what you think. I say you draw your own conclusions.”

Glover pointed out that a lot of the stuff was abstract, but he had seen Murphy's artwork done in jail that involved very fine line drawings.

Murphy said he'd been drawing his whole life, although there were gaps, years when he created no artwork at all. There was a gap during both of his marriages, he said, apparently forgetting about the “Boneyard Gallery” that he created when married to Paula. He maintained to the cops that he needed to be
single
to be an artist. He didn't know why that was.

Glover said he knew of both wives, Elaine and Paula, but wondered if Murphy had cohabitated with any other women without being married. Had he ever shacked up?

Murphy said there was one he almost married. He tried to think of her name and either couldn't recall or decided not to say her name aloud, so he moved on to another woman.

“No, I lived with Jane Wingate.” He started to tell the cops about her, when Glover interrupted his story to ask if Murphy was right-handed. He was, and he used right-handed shears to cut hair. He could use a comb in both hands, however. “I'm always switching,” he said.

Murphy's hairstyling training was not limited to just the course he took at the barber school at Sunstate Academy, but also many weekend seminars. More than a hundred seminars. The seminars were routine when he worked at Regis. They did education classes once a month, so everyone was up on the latest stuff. After a while Murphy taught as many seminars as he attended. He didn't really need the classes anymore, but he went because he wanted to. He enjoyed them. You can't kid a kidder. Murphy knew that many of the seminars were thinly disguised infomercials. The pitch “usually boiled down to a new product you needed to get.”

There was also a course regarding AIDS and cutting hair that Murphy had to attend once a year.

Then the lightbulb went on over Murphy's head.

“Mary Border! That's the name of the other girl. I was engaged to her when I was twenty-two or so.” She was so gorgeous. They'd stand on their balcony that overlooked the water.

Glover snapped the prisoner out of it with a question about religion.

Murphy said he hated the word “religion.” He hated talking about it. He preferred the term “spiritual.” To him it was just a quiet thing—no conversation necessary.

“I can sense people really well,” Murphy boasted. “I know where their spirit lies. I don't talk to people unless they connect. . . .”

“Where do you see me?”

“You're not here on my level.”

“I'm very open-minded.”

“Uh-huh. I don't know of anybody who has the same beliefs as me, to tell you the truth. I don't know a single person with my exact beliefs, and I've talked to hundreds of them.”

Detective Grant told Murphy that he used to study religion, and the spiritual part that Murphy was saying reminded him of Myrtle Fillmore and the Unity Christian Church.

“I don't pay attention to Myrtle Fillmore. I don't worry about it. I don't worry about Main Street religions. I don't worry about any of it. It's my own thing.”

Murphy said when he met people—in a bookstore, on the street, or in a gas station—he only talked to them for five minutes or so. No long conversations. He didn't believe in them. He very seldom talked to anyone for more than an hour.

Murphy admitted that he met his first wife in church, but he didn't go to church anymore. He didn't believe in any of the “affiliated religions.”

Glover asked if his spirituality had anything to do with the Bible. Murphy said part of it, but part of it also had to do with all books. Glover noted that a lot of artwork was associated with various religions. The detective wondered if Murphy had ever studied that type of art. Murphy said sure, he'd studied all art. His favorite religious artist was Michelangelo.

Glover got around to geography. How familiar was Murphy with Sarasota? Had he spent any time there, as a kid or as an adult?

Murphy said not really. He didn't remember ever going to Sarasota before he was old enough to drive. After that, maybe just once.

The detective decided to introduce an element from the crime scene and see if Murphy bit. “There was an artist who had a gallery down on the South Trail in Sarasota and his last name was Stahl.”