Evil Season (29 page)

Franklin said he'd been taking a shower when he met Murphy. The name was familiar and Murphy said he'd probably heard about his case on the news. Franklin made the connection.

“I said to him, ‘You the man that killed the lady on Palm Street? At the art gallery.' He said, ‘Yeah, they say I did that.' I asked him why he did it. He said he didn't mean to do it, but she had pissed him off. It wasn't supposed to happen that way.”

Franklin recalled that Murphy liked to clean and spent a long time cleaning in front of Franklin's cell. It creeped Franklin out, and he told Murphy to clean someplace else.

According to the jailhouse snitch, Murphy replied, “Fuck you, nigger. I wish I could pluck your eyes and kill you the way I did that lady.”

Later, Franklin saw some sketches Murphy had drawn: woman-like demons, one of a dead lady with her tongue hanging out. Murphy said he was drawing his nightmares, drawing the “shit I see every night.”

Franklin said Murphy told him he'd been in a Texas jail since February. Franklin asked him how he knew the lady in the art gallery. Murphy told him he “used to do odds-and-ends work for her, like handiwork or whatever.”

Franklin apparently didn't know about the stun gun incident. Franklin noticed that Murphy had marks on the backs of his legs. He asked how he'd gotten them. Murphy refused to answer, telling him he was asking too many questions, and adding that he'd “said too much already.”

Murphy never said how he killed her or what she'd done to irritate him. After that, all he heard Murphy talk about was “being a hybrid, an alien.”

Franklin said that on the day before, he had told Murphy that he hoped Sarasota gave him one hundred years. Murphy replied that he would kill Franklin if he got the chance.

The investigation into Joyce Wishart's murder and Murphy's background continued for many months, although new info came now in dribs and drabs.

During the spring of 2005, in compliance with the rules of discovery, Assistant State Attorney (ASA) Debra Johnes Riva officially authorized Murphy's attorney, Adam Tebrugge, to make copies of all written and audio/video recordings pertaining to the case.

By 2006, prosecutors were plenty pleased that the DNA match was so positive, because other elements of the case against Elton Brutus Murphy were not up to snuff. There were problems matching Murphy's prints to those found at the crime scene.

The grainy surveillance recordings of the front of the Provenance Gallery from the days and weeks after the murder were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Technology Services Unit in Quantico, Virginia.

A man had come and looked in the front window. If a viewer were to judge from his size and shape, the man could have been Murphy, but there was little facial detail. The state attorney's office sent a copy of the surveillance tape to the FBI, but the Feds rejected it, saying they would need the original in order to do their thing. The original was sent then, processed by Amanda Broyles, of the FBI; facial recognition, however, was still impossible. There was “insufficient image detail.”

Murphy claimed that he never visited the scene of the crime; and despite modern science the prosecution would be unable to prove otherwise. Sergeant Jack Carter maintained that the man looking in the window was Stephen Garfield, the Bay Plaza security guard.

 

 

During April 2006, the SPD's Criminalistics Lab examined the items found in Murphy's backpack when he was arrested in Houston. It was discovered that the keys Murphy had on him did not fit the Provenance's lock. The purse Murphy had apparently stolen was checked inside and out for fingerprints, again with negative results.

But, while fingerprints were getting the authorities nowhere, DNA matches kept coming. A second set of swabs and samples, originally confiscated by technician Valerie Howard, were now sent by Howard via FedEx to LabCorp. Though they already had enough to place Murphy at the scene of the murder, testing continued. The DNA found in blood samples from the interior lock and light switch of the art gallery matched that of Murphy's DNA.

Plus, blood found on the gallery's fax machine by technician James Tutsock had a profile consistent with a mixture of Murphy's and Wishart's blood.

 

 

So the physical evidence was both sparse and conclusive. This wasn't going to boil down to whether or not Murphy did it. He did it, all right. But was he criminally insane when he did it? That was the question that needed to be answered.

For months at a time, the presumption was that there would be no trial. The presumption was that Murphy would always be unfit to stand trial.

The only time Murphy was allowed to get out of confinement for any length of time was when a shrink needed to talk with him. The state was trying to figure out how nuts he was, and if they needed to try him for murder—a big expense to the taxpayers that would be unnecessary if he was deemed criminally insane.

The first shrink Murphy remembered speaking to was Dr. Wade C. Myers III, who was both a college professor and a forensic psychiatrist. He had an office in Tampa and had been a shrink for more than twenty years. “He was tall and had movie-star good looks,” Murphy said. He showed up wearing an Indiana Jones hat. Murphy told him about his powers.

In his box Murphy built a noose and hung it from the vent in his ceiling. For three days he stared at it, “trying to build up the courage to use it.” Then a jail deputy saw it; that finally got Murphy some new digs. He was moved to a cell that had a deputy and a desk located right outside, so there would be someone keeping an eye on him twenty-four hours a day.

On May 5, 11, and 19, 2006, Murphy was evaluated by Dr. Mary Elizabeth Kasper, who specialized in psychology and clinical psychology. She earned her degree in 1996 from the University of North Texas Health Science Center. He found her attractive and intelligent. She later recalled that she thought she and Murphy developed a “rapport.”

Dr. Kasper later said, “I spent many, many hours interviewing him, as well as countless hours reviewing and memorizing his background. His case is an excellent study of a descent into madness.”

The third mental-health professional to poke around Murphy's screwed-up psyche was Dr. James McGovern, who found Murphy delusional and schizophrenic. Murphy liked Dr. McGovern's military bearing, his crew cut, and neatly trimmed moustache.

 

 

On July 31, 2006, Murphy's barber's license expired. He didn't apply for a new one. He didn't even know it had happened, locked as he was in a ward for violent mental cases.

Murphy passed the time by trying to remember all of the girls he'd had sex with, in chronological order. There were many. He'd been quite the hound in his day. He didn't remember all of their names, but he recalled more than sixty lovers.

 

 

On August 4, 2006, the court hearing was held to determine if Murphy was competent to stand trial. Presiding over the hearing was tall Judge Owens.

Murphy's defense not only argued that Murphy shouldn't go to trial, but if they did, that tapes of police interviews with the defendant should not be allowed in as evidence. Tebrugge filed a motion that argued that Murphy's bizarre statements to police—while being interrogated by the police about the murder—were not admissible at any upcoming trial because they were irrelevant, and because they were made without Murphy understanding his rights.

On those recordings Murphy could be heard to say: “What's your choice, and Joyce
rejoicing
about? Are we rejoicing today as somebody's heaven?”

Judge Owens decided that the best way to judge a man's mental capacity was to talk to him directly. He asked the defendant to state his name.

“I am the Lord God Elton Brutus Murphy. The Joyce Wishart murder trial must not be delayed,” Murphy said. The courtroom attendees could hear the scratching noise as reporters simultaneously jotted down that quote.

 

 

From the prosecution's standpoint, however, the cause was not hopeless. Two psychologists who'd examined Murphy testified at the hearing that, given the proper medication and education, Murphy could be made competent to stand trial. Murphy, the psychologists noted, already understood the court system and was able to talk about it.

Dr. James McGovern said Murphy understood how the court system worked for normal people. The problem was that Murphy did not consider himself a normal person. He believed he was godlike and therefore the rules of the court system did not apply to him.

Dr. Mary Elizabeth Kasper testified that Murphy understood that if he was convicted of first-degree murder, he might be subject to the death penalty. This did not concern him, however, since he knew he could never be convicted. “He told me he had the power to control the people involved in the process,” Dr. Kasper testified, adding, “That is not rational.”

In addition to the results of the exams by the two psychologists, Murphy's mental history was taken into account: He had been diagnosed with a bipolar disorder before the murder; and at the time of his arrest, he had engaged in behavior that was characterized by the investigating detectives as “bizarre.”

 

 

Judge Owens found Murphy incompetent to stand trial, despite the defendant's protests. The judge ruled that Murphy lacked a rational understanding of the factors of the law.

After Judge Owens's ruling, Murphy was ordered to a state mental hospital in Chattahoochee, where attempts would be made to restore his mental capacity so he could stand trial.

That transfer didn't happen immediately, however. The Chattahoochee facility was full and Murphy remained in jail for two months waiting for a bed to open up.

During the wait Murphy was examined by the jail psychiatrist, “a brief evaluation,” Murphy called it. For the first time in years, Murphy was put on “psychotropic medications”: Vistaril for anxiety, Depakote for mood swings, and an antipsychotic called Geodon.

The drugs didn't have an immediate effect on Murphy's psychosis. However, after using them for a couple of months, he stopped having hallucinations for the first time since 2001.

In December 2006, the jail deputies drove Murphy to the Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee, about a five-hour drive from the Sarasota County Jail. He was back in the “crazy house,” the state mental facility, the place everyone just called Chattahoochee.

Unit 25. Ward G. His new home. The first thing he noticed was that the place was coed! There were even opportunities to spend time with women. Not necessarily quality time, if you catch his drift, but time nonetheless.

Some of the females were good-looking, and they got to eat meals together and have recreation together. Usually, instead of any vigorous recreation, Murphy and the women just talked.

Chattahoochee food was both nutritional and delicious. Murphy put on forty pounds. The pharmaceutical cocktail Murphy received in that facility may have had something to do with his weight gain as well.

Forensic psychologist Dr. Joseph D'Agostino came to Chattahoochee and evaluated Murphy during the spring of 2007. Murphy remembered him as a giant Ivy Leaguer, tall and hefty, maybe 270 pounds, with a full beard and a shrubbery of unkempt curly hair.

While at Chattahoochee, Murphy took classes on courtroom and trial procedures. The classes lasted for several months. When it was over, he was given an oral exam, which he passed.

In September 2007, deputies from the Sarasota County Jail arrived and took Murphy back to jail. Murphy didn't want to go. The whole five-hour ride he figured he was going to get his old adjustment cell back.

“I had a big surprise,” Murphy recalled. “They placed me in general population, a six-man cell.” He had constant company. The prisoners lived in eighteen-man dorms, with a moderately big dayroom and a TV. Since he behaved himself, that was where he got to stay during the remainder of his time in Sarasota County.

He received second evaluations from Dr. Kasper (who came twice) and Dr. McGovern. Murphy said he was feeling much better, thanks.

 

 

Assistant State Attorney Lon Arend had done his undergraduate work at Florida State; he earned his law degree at the University of Florida. He'd been a prosecutor for fourteen years, including eight as chief prosecutor in the DeSoto County Office, and was reassigned by the state to be the Sarasota region's chief homicide prosecutor, replacing Debra Johnes Riva, who had become a judge. Arend reported to his new office, and the first case thrown on his desk was the Joyce Wishart murder.

“At first blush I looked at this case, and a lot of Murphy's behaviors, and I thought, ‘This guy is insane,'” Arend recalled. Even later on, Arend never stopped believing that Murphy was mentally ill. “The argument wasn't whether he was mentally ill or not. The question was ‘What are we going to do with him?'”

Even though the Elton Brutus Murphy case lingered and lingered because of competency issues, it was never far from Arend's thinking. He wanted to put Murphy in prison—even if it meant butting horns with a formidable insanity defense. Arend looked at the facts of the case and the psychologists' reports and concluded that Murphy, although seriously mentally ill, was not legally insane. He was fairly certain a jury would see it the same way, too. In the state of Florida, a killer can be schizophrenic and still be able to tell and appreciate the difference between right and wrong. Many of the things Murphy had done at the crime scene—cleaning up, locking the door in a special manner so as not to leave fingerprints, and his other attempts to avoid detection—could be used to argue he was sane.

As he prepared his prosecution, Arend read
Whores of the Court: The Fraud of Psychiatric Testimony and the Rape of American Justice
by Dr. Margaret A. Hagen, a professor in the psychology department of Boston University.

The book made many points that Arend took to heart. One thing, for instance, Hagen pointed out that the world of psychology and the world of the criminal justice system are mutually exclusive. There was very little overlap.

“It is a fascinating book that dissects what psycho-expert testimony is doing in our court system. I read that book, cover to cover, and outlined the whole damn thing while getting ready to prosecute Murphy.”

Hagen's book put forth the theory that a prosecutor should not have to hire his own expert to refute defense expert testimony supporting insanity— that a lawyer should be able to refute that testimony himself, just by asking the defense doctors the correct questions.

“Forget the man on the street. Forget the folks in the jury pool. You'd be surprised how many Ph.D.'s don't know what ‘insanity' means,” Arend said. “They don't get it, because they live in their own world, a world in which insanity equals mental illness. In common usage ‘insane' and ‘crazy' are synonyms. But in a legal sense they are very different.”

 

 

Teaming up with Arend for the eventual prosecution of Murphy would be Karen Fraivillig and Suzanne O'Donnell. When Lon Arend replaced Riva as lead attorney on the Wishart case, Fraivillig asked if she could stay on as part of the prosecutorial team. Arend said sure.

Fraivillig was a large woman, with long blond hair, who moved regally, deliberately, and erect—as if balancing an invisible book atop her head. She completed her undergraduate work at New College of Florida; then she went to Stetson University College of Law in St. Petersburg. She graduated in 2002 and had been prosecuting cases ever since. She enjoyed taking on the bad guys. Sometimes she wondered about the human condition, but she felt better when tenaciously combating its darkest corners.

Arend believed that there was room for three attorneys on a prosecution team. Spreading out the tasks was better because it allowed each attorney to focus on one subject for longer, and that brought the best results. Having two assistants would allow Arend to concentrate all of his attention on the insanity issue. Arend wanted to do most of his prep work on cross-examining the defense's medical experts, and in methods of educating a jury as to what “insanity” is and how it is different from “crazy.” His expertise would need to be plenty sturdy, especially since the state was having a hard time getting their own shrinks to say Murphy wasn't insane.

“I knew those issues were going to be a full-time job,” Arend concluded.

So Suzanne O'Donnell became the third member of the prosecution team, handpicked by Arend “because she is just so stinkin' smart.” O'Donnell was a graduate of the University of Florida College of Law and, unlike some lawyers who'd seen things from both sides of the courtroom, O'Donnell always wanted to be a prosecutor. After school in 1999, she started as a prosecutor in St. Petersburg, Florida. Shortly after that, she came to Sarasota. Her forte was forensic evidence. For four years O'Donnell had been the state attorney's specialist in sex crimes against children.

 

 

During the trial the defendant was never sure which one was Fraivillig and which one was O'Donnell, but he found them both attractive. They were attired like they were in a fashion show, he remembered, in “very nice dresses.”

What Murphy did distinguish was the common voice he heard from the prosecutors. Murphy said they were all “desperately aggressive.” One wonders if Murphy comprehended the meaning of his words when he said, “They triple-teamed me, as if with a vengeance.” He came just shy of calling them mean.

At the trial Fraivillig and O'Donnell would present the
evidence
for the jury. He knew they would be good at it. Arend would focus on the
doctors.

 

 

During the fall of 2007, circuit judge Deno G. Economou officially declared Murphy was now fit to stand trial. Judge Economou was a thin man, with salt-and-pepper hair that grew in thick waves.

The same psychologists who had ruled Murphy incompetent to stand trial had reexamined him. Now they said that, due to the proper medication and education, he was competent.

There was testimony to the effect that Murphy had received instructions in courtroom and trial procedures and had passed the oral exam with flying colors.

Murphy came away from the hearing with the impression that it mattered little what his state of mind was, as long as he could correctly answer what role the judge played during a trial and how many people served on a jury.

Now that there was going to definitely be a murder trial, Adam Tebrugge announced that he was stepping down as Murphy's counsel to tend to other matters, most urgently his new role as counsel for the man who had killed little Carlie Brucia.

Tebrugge was replaced as Murphy's attorney by another specialist in capital murder—Carolyn Schlemmer, of the public defender's office.

Tebrugge and Schlemmer came to the jail together to see Murphy and explain the switch. Murphy found Schlemmer to be an attractive blonde. He learned that she was a recent widow. Murphy saw a photograph of Schlemmer's late husband on the cover of one of her notebooks, and he sensed she was still mourning his loss.

She was a mother, too, a factor that affected Murphy's future in the sense that court hearings and his eventual trial could never go too late into the afternoon and evening because Schlemmer had to leave to pick up her children at a child care center. (Although it was agreed that if the court's schedule was very tight, co-counsel might carry on in Schlemmer's absence.)

Schlemmer attended Stetson University College of Law. Her career had not turned out at all as she anticipated. When she was attending law school at Stetson, she had wanted to be a prosecutor, but fate pushed her onto the other side of the aisle.

“I had to take the public defender clinic while in law school because the prosecution clinic was full,” she once explained. She graduated in 1991 and began her career working for a friend's firm in St. Petersburg. After that, she worked as a public defender in the traffic division in Tallahassee. In 1993, for the first time, she defended a client facing the death penalty; capital-murder cases became her specialty.

How did she handle defending the worst of the worst?

“I do feel that, no matter guilt or innocence, everyone is entitled to good representation and a fair trial,” she said. “Maybe that is why I can so easily represent the people accused of the worst crimes. I have a knack for separating feelings and work. You either have it, or you don't.”

With Tebrugge off the case, and Schlemmer on, Murphy's co-counsel became Jerry Meisner, another assistant public defender. One notch on Meisner's belt was that he had a few years earlier accomplished something very rare: He'd successfully argued that a client was not guilty because of insanity. Jurors rarely buy insanity defenses; they don't like them. However, in February 2005, Meisner's client Larry Smith, of North Port, was acquitted of second-degree attempted murder charges because a jury found him insane. Meisner sold his theory that Smith was temporarily insane due to “involuntary intoxication,” an adverse reaction to a prescribed antidepressant.

 

 

It was during that initial meeting with Schlemmer that Murphy finally admitted that he had, indeed, killed Joyce Wishart.

“I confessed because I realized that an insanity defense was my best opportunity for eventual freedom,” Murphy said, “even if it meant a stay of a half-dozen years or so at Chattahoochee.” That was a hell of a lot better than prison.

“I did it,” he now said. “But I was
insane
when I did it.”

At first, prosecutors included capital murder among Murphy's charges. However, during October 2008, they announced that they had changed their mind. They would not seek the death penalty. The switch came in anticipation of an insanity defense that might have been more apt to sway a jury if the death penalty remained on the table.

 

 

During February 2009, Detective Ken Halpin was contacted by a small group of jailhouse snitches. One was Jack Cash (pseudonym), who had been Murphy's cell mate in 2008. He said Murphy asked him: “Could you help me beat my case by playing the psyche card?”

Cash said sure, and gave Murphy advice as to how to pull it off. “Act crazy and do stupid stuff,” Cash told Murphy. “Tell them you hear voices. Sit around. Talk to yourself. Stare at walls.”

A second jailhouse snitch, Dave Stauss (pseudonym), told Detective Grant that Murphy told him that insanity was the best chance he had of avoiding the death penalty or a life sentence.

Other men in Murphy's cell block described a quiet prisoner, who kept to himself, and took a compulsive pleasure in cleaning. Murphy, the snitches agreed, often could be seen cleaning the community section of the block.

Murphy soon learned that many of his cell mates had been interviewed by the police. According to a new snitch, inmate Ralph Faye (pseudonym), Murphy said, “Fuck those cops. That bitch deserved what she got, and I wish I could do more.”