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Speaker 2: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 2: Killers in True crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 2: written about them Gaesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 2: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 2: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 2: journalist and author Dan Zupansky. Good evening.
Speaker 6: This is your host, Dan Zupanski, for the program True Murder,
Speaker 6: the most shocking Killers in True crime History and the
Speaker 6: authors that have written about it about them. I want
Speaker 6: to apologize for the late beginning of our program technical
Speaker 6: difficulties on my end. Welcome to the program, Back back
Speaker 6: on the program, Michael Benson. Hi you doing Dan fine,
Speaker 6: Thank you Sorry for the screw up in the beginning.
Speaker 6: Welcome back to the program and the book that we're profiling.
Speaker 6: This evening for our audience is Evil Season with my
Speaker 6: special guest, bestselling author and journalist Michael Benson. So welcome
Speaker 6: back to the program and congratulations on another scary book.
Speaker 3: Michael. Thanks number one.
Speaker 6: I want to ask you a question, how do you
Speaker 6: come about these stories in terms of does the editor
Speaker 6: as traditions sometimes where they ask you to cover a
Speaker 6: story or are you independence you picked the stories that
Speaker 6: you were interested in.
Speaker 3: I have picked most of my own stories myself. A
Speaker 3: couple of times the editor at I think would give
Speaker 3: me a call and say, this looks like it's a
Speaker 3: nice fit for you, and we've done it that way.
Speaker 3: In this particular case, I was working on a book
Speaker 3: called A Killer's Touch, which some of your listeners might remember,
Speaker 3: was the story of a Florida mother named Denise Lee
Speaker 3: who was kidnapped for her home in front of her
Speaker 3: baby boys, raped and killed by a creep named Michael King.
Speaker 3: I was interviewing one of the prosecutors on that case
Speaker 3: and she told me that I should really consider writing
Speaker 3: a book about the art gallery murder because the killer
Speaker 3: was a piece of work. And it turned out to
Speaker 3: be an excellent tip for me, because I found Elton
Speaker 3: Brutus Murphy, the killer in Evil Season, to be an
Speaker 3: articulate teller of his own story. In fact, his ability
Speaker 3: to describe what it was like to develop schizophrenia is
Speaker 3: one of the best I've ever heard. I'd say that
Speaker 3: not only is this a good book for people who
Speaker 3: enjoy a juicy murder story, but it would make it
Speaker 3: an interesting and informative read for all mental health care professionals.
Speaker 3: Murphy told me sometimes, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 6: No sorry. What I wanted to say too, that it's
Speaker 6: very very important too, because I was just speaking about
Speaker 6: this to someone in America and the issue of in Canada,
Speaker 6: and I talk about it a lot of times in
Speaker 6: terms of the difference between American and Canadian law, and
Speaker 6: I won't get into all of that again, but the
Speaker 6: major difference is that insanity defenses are not so uncommon
Speaker 6: in Canada, and they're successful in Canada and primarily in America.
Speaker 6: It doesn't matter if if there's stark, raving crazy, almost
Speaker 6: no one gets in an insanity defense and is successful
Speaker 6: with that. So I think it's important that this is
Speaker 6: what you have clearly an insane person, but then you have, like.
Speaker 3: We're going to get to that. I would think we
Speaker 3: have clearly we have a crazy person, but not one
Speaker 3: who is insane, and a distinction there was key to
Speaker 3: this case exactly.
Speaker 6: Okay, Now, we didn't talk about it very at the beginning,
Speaker 6: but I asked, how sometimes you come to these stories,
Speaker 6: this story, the murder happened, and then later Elton Brutus
Speaker 6: Murphy comes into the picture. How did you hear about
Speaker 6: this story? Tell us about the where you were and
Speaker 6: how it came to this story came to and what
Speaker 6: was your impression when you first heard about the actual
Speaker 6: murder itself.
Speaker 3: Well, I was down in Florida at the time it happened,
Speaker 3: and I was with my family at one of the theme parts.
Speaker 3: It was Universal or Disney. I don't remember which one,
Speaker 3: but the first time I heard about the art gallery
Speaker 3: murder was on local television from Orlando, and this happened
Speaker 3: in Sarasota, which is fifty fifty miles away.
Speaker 6: Okay, And what was your first impression of the case itself?
Speaker 6: I mean, were you instantly interested? I mean, obviously Murphy
Speaker 6: doesn't come into the picture right away, but what was
Speaker 6: your impression about this? Was it something that you said,
Speaker 6: I think I'm interested in this story or you were
Speaker 6: just interested in and were following it.
Speaker 3: Well, I wasn't initially interested in the case because I
Speaker 3: didn't know that much about it. Police kept a very
Speaker 3: very tight feel and information people in the neighborhood were occurred,
Speaker 3: and there's something that Ghastly had happened inside that art gallery,
Speaker 3: but they didn't know the details, and some of them
Speaker 3: didn't learn the details until my book came out, because
Speaker 3: they've done that tight of a job of keeping that secret, right.
Speaker 3: But I mean it terrorized, It just terrorized the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: Something suple of spirits.
Speaker 6: Now, for our audience, let's go back to who Joyce
Speaker 6: wish Art is at this time. She's an older, older
Speaker 6: woman fifty nine years of age, I believe sixty. So
Speaker 6: take us back to who Joyce wish Art was and
Speaker 6: her background, and sure paint a portrait of Joyce Wishart
Speaker 6: for our audience.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, the victim in this case was a lovely
Speaker 3: woman from the Midwest. When she was nineteen years old
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty one, she married a twenty two year
Speaker 3: old truck driver named Robert. They lived in Cincinnati, had
Speaker 3: four kids, two boys, two girls. When the youngest was seven,
Speaker 3: she filed for divorce and choosing her husband of adultery
Speaker 3: and abuse. She went on to earn her master's degree
Speaker 3: in executive management from Ashland University. She had her future
Speaker 3: all mapped out. Her master's thesis was in the economics
Speaker 3: of running an art gallery. She started her own marketing
Speaker 3: consultancy called Portfolio Place in nineteen ninety and became president
Speaker 3: of the Columbus chapter of the American Marketing Association. While
Speaker 3: she was still in the Midwest, she was asked what
Speaker 3: her dream job would be, and she answered, I'd like
Speaker 3: to be the owner of an art gallery and a warm,
Speaker 3: sunny climate. So she went down vacation one year to
Speaker 3: Sarasota and said, this is the warm sunny climate for me.
Speaker 3: She got a couple of nice jobs down there. She
Speaker 3: was doing contract work with Nova Care Employee Services. She
Speaker 3: was a marketing director for the Solo Repertory Theater in Sarasota,
Speaker 3: and she saved up her money and she bought a
Speaker 3: gallery on Palm Avenue, received a little strip in downtown Sarasota,
Speaker 3: and that was where her life was so really cut
Speaker 3: short in two thousand and four.
Speaker 6: Now, it's also interesting that at this time this when
Speaker 6: this happened, it was a weekend. And what you talk
Speaker 6: about in your book too, is that she was a
Speaker 6: real community member, and she was a proud member of
Speaker 6: the community, and she was involved in a lot of things.
Speaker 6: But we had the separate groups of people which led
Speaker 6: to no one reporting her for quite a few days
Speaker 6: after this. I'm kind of jumping ahead, but tell us
Speaker 6: about the art days and really, maybe not ironically, but unfortunately,
Speaker 6: what was planned for this very artsy area of fine
Speaker 6: dining and boutiques and art galleries in this wonderful sunny
Speaker 6: place of Sarasota. Tell us what was planned, and then
Speaker 6: we can talk about just leading up to the just
Speaker 6: before this murder and this weekend it happened.
Speaker 3: The murder coincided with a film festival in Sarasota, and
Speaker 3: approximately forty fifty thousand people from out of town were
Speaker 3: coming in for the film festival, so there were a
Speaker 3: lot of strangers around, and as you said, it was
Speaker 3: a holiday weekend. One of the things about the little
Speaker 3: shops on that strip is they had a front door
Speaker 3: but no back door, so if someone did come in
Speaker 3: while well the proprietor was in there alone, uh, the
Speaker 3: only way out was to the front door, So it
Speaker 3: was easy. It was easy to trap a woman in
Speaker 3: that sense. And the doors were left open because it's
Speaker 3: a shop. You you int you invite people in. You're
Speaker 3: probably a little bell on the on the door, but
Speaker 3: that's about it. Never locked up, and our killer timed
Speaker 3: his entrance to the gallery right at closing time, and
Speaker 3: nobody thought to look for Joyce until she would have
Speaker 3: returned to work on Tuesday, and her body was found
Speaker 3: on Wednesday.
Speaker 6: But like a lot of times, there are people that
Speaker 6: have plans or at least are in contact with her,
Speaker 6: and they found it unusual. Yet no one again reported
Speaker 6: or missing. But she had some plans for that Saturday evening,
Speaker 6: didn't she?
Speaker 3: Okay, you were in a ballet.
Speaker 6: It was the ballet and and some friends.
Speaker 3: People thought that it was odd that the closed sign
Speaker 3: wasn't on the door, that they thought it was odd
Speaker 3: that she hadn't shown up for a couple of social
Speaker 3: engagements over the weekend. I don't think any major arms
Speaker 3: went off though, until somebody reported a foul odor and
Speaker 3: then this, oh my god, we haven't seen her in
Speaker 3: a few days. Something bad must have happened.
Speaker 6: So we're there's the police speculate or you can tell
Speaker 6: us it's a weekend, But then they don't find the
Speaker 6: body with unless till they have the foul oder complaint.
Speaker 3: And that was like Wednesday, right, that's correct too.
Speaker 6: Now, tell Us tell us, the tell Us tell Us
Speaker 6: the events that occur once that maintenance man opens up
Speaker 6: the door and they tell us what they actually discover
Speaker 6: at this crime scene.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know, I don't know if this is the
Speaker 3: most brutal crime scene I've ever encountered in like, you know,
Speaker 3: ten years running through crime, but it certainly is closed.
Speaker 3: The body was discovered after the holiday weekend by a
Speaker 3: maintenance man at the Bay Plaza apartments. The gallery was
Speaker 3: on the ground floor of an apartment building. He went
Speaker 3: in there and took one glimpse of the body and ran.
Speaker 3: Police showed up. They found the body of an older
Speaker 3: woman with red hair laid out on her back. Legs
Speaker 3: obscenely spread eagles, and the body was stretched out on
Speaker 3: a carpet and an alcove out of view from the
Speaker 3: street on the north side of the building. The head
Speaker 3: was lying in the direction of the northwest corner, and
Speaker 3: the alcove contained artwork, both hanging on the walls and
Speaker 3: lying on the floor, some leaning against this. She didn't
Speaker 3: believe in negative space. It was just jam packed with artwork,
Speaker 3: and the artwork on top of artwork. She fit as
Speaker 3: much in there she could. The body was discolored and bloated,
Speaker 3: from the decomposition, and it had one arm stretched outward.
Speaker 3: Left leg was partially covered with her clothing which had
Speaker 3: been cut off, and immediately visible were multiple stab wounds
Speaker 3: to the chest, slash wounded the throat, They went all
Speaker 3: the way to the bone, you know, attempt to behead
Speaker 3: the victim. Killers often tried to behead their victims with
Speaker 3: a knife and they realized that it just doesn't work
Speaker 3: any an axe or a hatchet. The medical examiner would
Speaker 3: later count twenty three stab wounds. Now, the most disturbing
Speaker 3: part wasn't what was there, but rather what wasn't there.
Speaker 3: The victims vagina and lower abdomen had been surgically removed.
Speaker 3: There was just a large raw hole there between her
Speaker 3: legs and the legs because they were spread apart and
Speaker 3: pointing eastward, sort of demanded attention. I mean, that's the
Speaker 3: first thing. But the thing nobody wanted to look at
Speaker 3: was the first thing they ended up looking at. Her forehead, shoulders,
Speaker 3: and back were also deeply cut, and she had defensive wounds.
Speaker 3: She bravely fought back. There was almost no blood on
Speaker 3: the body. There was plenty of blood under the body
Speaker 3: where soaked the rug and the in her clothes, but
Speaker 3: the killer had wiped her off and had pretty clearly
Speaker 3: posed the body. You know, she'd been wearing a green
Speaker 3: pants suit, scarf around the neck. Her shoes had been
Speaker 3: removed and had been turned around to been set between
Speaker 3: her legs. To stand in her shoes would be to
Speaker 3: look down upon the body. Her scarf had slits in it.
Speaker 3: It had been still on while he was stabbing her
Speaker 3: in the neck.
Speaker 6: Let's see what was in the shoes?
Speaker 3: She ahha, Well, and in the shoes there was a
Speaker 3: single droplet of blood, which had turned out to be
Speaker 3: very key in solving the mystery. The clothing had been
Speaker 3: cut off with a sharp bladed instrument. Uh. The the
Speaker 3: killer turned out to be a barber and had hair
Speaker 3: cutting equipment with him. There were indications that the killer
Speaker 3: had played in his victim's blood, and in some cases
Speaker 3: the artwork was stained by what appeared to be a
Speaker 3: combination of blood and it's a flesh. In some cases,
Speaker 3: there was wiping across the spatter, as if a half
Speaker 3: hearted attempt to clean up had been made, or perhaps
Speaker 3: the killer just wanted to finger paint. He lingered at
Speaker 3: the scene after the murder. Not only had he performed
Speaker 3: surgery on the victim, but there was blood in many
Speaker 3: places in the gallery, indicating that he'd wandered around after
Speaker 3: the murder.
Speaker 6: And what about reports that there was a painting that
Speaker 6: was exactly the same, I mean, well, when I first
Speaker 6: saw these reports, Actually it's.
Speaker 3: Actually two paintings. The one was a painting that the
Speaker 3: victim had been holding at the time she was attacked,
Speaker 3: and the other was a painting that overlooked the crime scene.
Speaker 3: And and the one she had been holding it was
Speaker 3: a nude of a woman lying on her back with
Speaker 3: clothes draped over one leg, and she had been posed
Speaker 3: to imitate that. And the painting that was on the
Speaker 3: wall showed a woman with one arm stretched out and
Speaker 3: pointing with her finger. And the victim's arm had been
Speaker 3: stretched out and was pointing with a finger, and a
Speaker 3: magazine had been laid underneath the hand so that her
Speaker 3: finger was pointing at a line that set a fine madness.
Speaker 3: So anyone who was seeing the crime scene photos is
Speaker 3: going to agree that, you know, an attempt was made
Speaker 3: to imitate artwork that was there, as if the as
Speaker 3: if the killer is saying, this is my art. Uh,
Speaker 3: But you know, I've I've made my sculpture out of
Speaker 3: human flesh. He later admitted to me that he he
Speaker 3: denies that he staged the crime. He's his ego or
Speaker 3: something will not allow him to admit it. But he
Speaker 3: did admit to me that he stole his victims slush.
Speaker 3: He bagged it, took it home. He says that he
Speaker 3: didn't pick that magazine or that artic on purpose, but
Speaker 3: if he had done it subconsciously, that was cool, he said,
Speaker 3: because a fine madness perfectly described. Uh, you know, there
Speaker 3: was a magnificent description of his state of mind at
Speaker 3: the time that he committed the crime. Wow, So let's
Speaker 3: go have no idea what it is about his particular
Speaker 3: psyche that won't allow him to fess up to that
Speaker 3: particular thing, but he.
Speaker 6: Well, he confesses almost everything else. So it's interesting. Let's
Speaker 6: let's let's go backwards though, because this case really spins
Speaker 6: the minds of Sarasota Police and other law enforcement agencies
Speaker 6: that are aware of this. So tell us how the
Speaker 6: police everybody knows that the family member, the ex husband,
Speaker 6: somebody that's around there is going to be questioned and
Speaker 6: then eventually ruled out. How did the police proceed here?
Speaker 6: Do they have any idea? Who comes in? Did the
Speaker 6: FBI come in initially? Tell us how police proceed, and what,
Speaker 6: if any ideas do they release to the media assumptions
Speaker 6: or ideas? Tell us how the police respond? Ok.
Speaker 3: I was lucky in this case, and I got kissed
Speaker 3: about the complete police files, so I was able to
Speaker 3: follow the investigators on a day by day basis. And
Speaker 3: like good cops, their first assumption is that the victim
Speaker 3: knows her killer, so therefore the answer to who did
Speaker 3: it is somewhere in her past and she does. She
Speaker 3: has an husband that she had a nasty relationship with,
Speaker 3: but other than that, she doesn't really have She doesn't
Speaker 3: have that many enemies. Uh. She has people that she's
Speaker 3: had little spats with, but certainly nothing that would they
Speaker 3: would indicate a violent outcome. She uh that one of
Speaker 3: the things about the art gallery strip, and she's not
Speaker 3: the only art gallery on that block. There's six or
Speaker 3: seven of them, and they're used to having artists wanta
Speaker 3: bees dropping in and trying to get the proprietors to
Speaker 3: sell their art for them.
Speaker 6: So there's an assignment sorry, because she's assignment.
Speaker 3: Gallery, right, and she's she had some dating experience. She's
Speaker 3: known to hang around with some guys, and uh there
Speaker 3: everybody was quite In fact, everybody that every mail that
Speaker 3: she had had any contact with over the last month
Speaker 3: of her life was asked for a DNA sample because
Speaker 3: of the drop of blood that they found it wasn't hers.
Speaker 3: And yeah, slowly but surely, the detectives realized that the
Speaker 3: answer is not is not in her past. The answer
Speaker 3: is going to be in matching the d a DNA
Speaker 3: that blood sample, and eventually the match is made, but
Speaker 3: not until I mean, the poor ladies along that strip
Speaker 3: are just completely terrified. I talked to a lot of
Speaker 3: them now, and I'm sympathetic to that. I mean, I
Speaker 3: grew up in a neighborhood that was just a kind
Speaker 3: of a paradise in the country and it turned into
Speaker 3: a crime scene and a nightmare overnight. So I know
Speaker 3: how that feels, that the black cloud comes over your
Speaker 3: neighborhood and it stays. The people of downtown Sarasota did
Speaker 3: receive summary from their you know, their haunted house syndrome
Speaker 3: when the killer was captured, But then again, there's a
Speaker 3: strong argument that you know, catching the killer does not
Speaker 3: completely alleviate the fear. Once a person has been enlightened
Speaker 3: to violence, his proximity and its brutal effect, you know,
Speaker 3: Pandora's box has been opened and its contents can ever
Speaker 3: be stuffed back in. During the course of my research
Speaker 3: on this case, I spoke with several of the ladies
Speaker 3: and they and they were mostly ladies who ran the galleries,
Speaker 3: and they they said that even after several years had passed,
Speaker 3: they still felt the effects of a kind of scary
Speaker 3: future shock. Their lives had gone from one of comfort
Speaker 3: and security to one of nervousness and danger. And they
Speaker 3: all describe the same symptoms. Their lives been changed forever
Speaker 3: since the day of the murder. They never allowed themselves
Speaker 3: to be in their store alone. They begged their husbands, sons, friends, whoever,
Speaker 3: to keep them company. They were escorted to them from
Speaker 3: their cars before and after work. And because there were
Speaker 3: no back doors, the store started to seem a little
Speaker 3: bit like traps. Yeah. They was like they were in
Speaker 3: a tunnel, you know, and with one way out, one
Speaker 3: way in and one way out.
Speaker 6: Well, there's a little more to the story, because they
Speaker 6: there was people. There were people of persons involved. The
Speaker 6: I don't know, not gallery owner, but the gallery, the
Speaker 6: style critic, the journalist, that there was a friend that
Speaker 6: also was interrogated or at least questioned everybody. The cops
Speaker 6: were clutching at Straws, so they were questioning anybody that
Speaker 6: any involvement. They went they had to rule out some
Speaker 6: connection to the magazine, the article, the article writer, and
Speaker 6: the and the gallery owners thought for a long time,
Speaker 6: maybe even to this day, that there was some kind
Speaker 6: of connection. And because as it ends up, the guy
Speaker 6: that's also a barber also believes he's an artist. So
Speaker 6: we'll that again we're jumping the gun a little bit here.
Speaker 6: But so with police, the the ex husband's ruled out,
Speaker 6: a bunch of other people are ruled out, and they
Speaker 6: should be able to do this with putting it in
Speaker 6: a DNA database or where other people criminals DNA is stored.
Speaker 6: But there's a little bit of a delay. Tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about what happens there that it isn't
Speaker 6: immediately put in that database. What seems to be the problem.
Speaker 3: Uh okay, again, remind me what you're talking about here.
Speaker 3: The uh, well, there was by the time by the
Speaker 3: time they by the time that Murphy uh is has
Speaker 3: a DNA sample taken from him after his arrest in Texas. Uh.
Speaker 3: From that point on, the match is made immediately. So
Speaker 3: I mean there's no delay in identifying the killer because
Speaker 3: of because of the database problem. Okay, so the DNA
Speaker 3: if the DNA from the crime scene in Sarasota was
Speaker 3: put in lake in the long run, it didn't.
Speaker 2: Matter, m hm.
Speaker 6: Okay, So sorry. So Elton Brutus Murphy is arrested in Texas,
Speaker 6: tell us what those charges are and then how all
Speaker 6: police proceed with that DNA match?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay? He Uh, you know, his life had been
Speaker 3: sliding steadily downhill. I don't know where, at what point
Speaker 3: in his life you want? You want to start? He
Speaker 3: he gave me his entire bio. But he is after
Speaker 3: the murder, He's on the run, he takes off, he's
Speaker 3: living on burglary and pickpocketing. He's got about four or
Speaker 3: five fake IDs on him, four or five wallets, and
Speaker 3: he's he breaks into a dentist's office in Houston and
Speaker 3: is rummaging around looking for stuff when the police show
Speaker 3: up and arrest him. And then that's that's the end
Speaker 3: of his days as a free person. And they end
Speaker 3: up taking a DNA sample and it goes into the
Speaker 3: data bank and boom, you know, with the the investigators
Speaker 3: in Sarasota get a very happy phone call from the
Speaker 3: from the crime lab and you know, we have we
Speaker 3: have a match. So that they immediately had to head
Speaker 3: to Houston to talk to their man and try to
Speaker 3: get a confession.
Speaker 6: And what are the results? What what happens from that questioning?
Speaker 3: Well, he Murphy doesn't want to admit any to any
Speaker 3: of it, but he can't resist toying with them a
Speaker 3: little bit. Uh on one of the one of the
Speaker 3: key indications to his guilt, I mean, other than the
Speaker 3: fact that they know he must have done it because
Speaker 3: they've got the science. But every time they mentioned the
Speaker 3: name Joyce Wishart, he does a little comedy act. It's
Speaker 3: not funny, but you know, Joyce rejoice, who's Joyce? He seems,
Speaker 3: you know in kwai why you're mentioning her again? But
Speaker 3: completely out of tone with the rest of his responses.
Speaker 3: You know, he's not He's not cool enough to be
Speaker 3: able to talk about his victim without soundly just a
Speaker 3: little bit giddy.
Speaker 6: Overall they think is his behavior is bizarre, but does
Speaker 6: he exhibit this bipolar symptoms of bipolar or schizophrenia during
Speaker 6: that interview? Isn't that evident?
Speaker 3: You know, he's he's he's in and out of his
Speaker 3: of his mental state. He can as long as he's
Speaker 3: taking the proper medication, he can seem pretty normal. But
Speaker 3: I mean, he spends a lot of time talking about
Speaker 3: how he doesn't think he's a mortal man. He believes
Speaker 3: that he shares DNA with God. That's the reason that
Speaker 3: his DNA is at the crime scene, because he's the
Speaker 3: Lord God, Elton Brutus Murphy. He has disciples who are invisible.
Speaker 3: He can cause people to have heart attacks just like
Speaker 3: pointing his finger at them. So they're aware that they've
Speaker 3: got a little bit of a whacko here. But you know, again,
Speaker 3: they're not sure whether or not he's lingering or if
Speaker 3: this is him being as loose city as he can
Speaker 3: possibly be.
Speaker 2: Right right.
Speaker 6: Now, he doesn't really they don't make any real headway
Speaker 6: in terms of an actual confession with him. When's the
Speaker 6: trial set for and tell us a little bit about
Speaker 6: what happens between that time and the trial, any developments
Speaker 6: in between that time.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, yeah, it takes forever for him to come
Speaker 3: to trial. First of all, the trial when it, if
Speaker 3: it does occur, is not going to be a matter
Speaker 3: of whether or not he did it. He did it,
Speaker 3: all right, but was he criminally insane and when he
Speaker 3: did it? And that was that was a question that
Speaker 3: needed to be answered. So in two thousand and six,
Speaker 3: thirty two years after the after the murder, there's a
Speaker 3: course sharing to determine if Murphy was competent to stand trial,
Speaker 3: and Judge Owens says, well, the best way to find
Speaker 3: out if this guy's insane, I'll talk to myself. So
Speaker 3: he says, state your name, and Murphy says, I am
Speaker 3: the Lord God, Elton Brutus Murphy, the Joyce Wisher murder
Speaker 3: trial must not be delayed. So the judge says, no,
Speaker 3: that's not competent.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Subsequently, two psychologists examined Murphy and they say that, look,
Speaker 3: you know, we get this guy's meds right, we can
Speaker 3: get him competent to stand trial because he understands the
Speaker 3: court system. And in the meantime he sent to a
Speaker 3: high security mental facility. Then then then something happens that
Speaker 3: sort of changes the ballgame. UH. A prosecutor by the
Speaker 3: name of lou Air says, you know, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to let this go. I want this guy in prison.
Speaker 3: I want him in prison for you know, the rest
Speaker 3: of his life. And lou Errand is the hero of
Speaker 3: the book. You know, he made some moves that might
Speaker 3: have flown in the face of conventional legal wisdom, but
Speaker 3: you know, he got his man. He took one look
Speaker 3: at the Murphy case and saw a winnable prosecution. His
Speaker 3: strategy had to do with educating the jury, which is
Speaker 3: a tough thing to do sometimes, but he fell up
Speaker 3: to the task. He told me to forget jury pools
Speaker 3: and average Joe's. He'd been surprised at how many PhDs
Speaker 3: he knew who didn't understand the legal meaning of insanity.
Speaker 3: You know, we live in a world in which insane
Speaker 3: and crazy are synonyms, but in a legal sense, they're
Speaker 3: very different. If he could get a jury to understand that,
Speaker 3: he was pretty sure he was gonna be able to
Speaker 3: put Murphy away, the fact that Murphy had obvious mental issues,
Speaker 3: but the death penalty came off the table. You know,
Speaker 3: he knew he wasn't going to get a Jeth Punnalley,
Speaker 3: but he felt he could get life, and at least
Speaker 3: I would guarantee that Floridians would never again have to
Speaker 3: worry about running into this guy. In the fall of
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven, Murphy was declared competent for trial
Speaker 3: and a new hearing, new judge, and at the trial,
Speaker 3: in front of twelve jurors who've been taught and quized
Speaker 3: this to the legal meaning of the world Ordon thing,
Speaker 3: Aaron argued that in order to be criminally insane, the
Speaker 3: defendant would have to be unable to distinguish and appreciate
Speaker 3: the difference between right and wrong, and this defendant's actions
Speaker 3: proved conclusively that he could think that that distinction. You know,
Speaker 3: he covered up, he ran.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it's so. So it was it a multifaceted explanation,
Speaker 6: I mean? Or was it just the right and wrong?
Speaker 6: Or was it like as you're explaining as well, there's
Speaker 6: there's some planning, some deliberation, some running from the scene, concealment.
Speaker 6: Tell us about the whole because I don't think again,
Speaker 6: our audience might want to hear exactly what insandy is
Speaker 6: defined and how he did that well.
Speaker 3: Aaron argued that Murphy planned the crime since he'd showed
Speaker 3: up with tools, and he planned to get away with it.
Speaker 3: When he left the gallery after the murder, he managed
Speaker 3: to lock the door behind him in such a fashion
Speaker 3: that he left no fingerprints.
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Speaker 3: I hadn't been able to distinguish and appreciate the difference
Speaker 3: between right and wrong, he would not have told his
Speaker 3: victim not to scream. H And when she did scream,
Speaker 3: he would not have put his hand over her mouth.
Speaker 3: And when he did that, she fit him on the knuckle,
Speaker 3: which is why he bled into her shoe later. So
Speaker 3: by biting her killer on the hand, she, you know,
Speaker 3: provided the key evidence to solve the crime. So here
Speaker 3: here was a man who stole his victim's wallet, and
Speaker 3: and to effectively cover up his crime, he didn't do
Speaker 3: the simple thing, which would have been to just throw
Speaker 3: away the keys in the wallet in the nearest receptacle. Instead,
Speaker 3: he threw each key away individually and cut up the
Speaker 3: contents of the wallet before throwing those pieces away in
Speaker 3: a variety of locations, so that you know, it betrayed
Speaker 3: a guilty conscience. Murphy knew that society's rules of right
Speaker 3: and wrong. He knew what they were, He just didn't
Speaker 3: think they applied to him. He thought himself above those laws,
Speaker 3: and such a man, the prosecutor argued, was guilty of murder.
Speaker 6: Right, and tell us how the jury decided.
Speaker 3: Ah, well, you know that the jury took less than
Speaker 3: an hour to convict Murphy and he was sentenced to
Speaker 3: life in prison, which was the situation he was in
Speaker 3: when when I first wrote him a letter and said,
Speaker 3: asked him if he was in just in cooperating with
Speaker 3: a book of his.
Speaker 6: About his story, And how was his response to your letter?
Speaker 3: Well? He was all my favorite. You know, I always
Speaker 3: tell people, and not just killers, but anybody, always cooperate
Speaker 3: with the writer who wants to tell your story, because
Speaker 3: it's better to tell your own story than to have
Speaker 3: other people tell it for you. You know, as you
Speaker 3: noted before, there are a couple of differences between the narrator.
Speaker 3: It was me, I guess, the narrator of the book's
Speaker 3: version of events and Murphy's. Murphy will not admit to
Speaker 3: feeding his victims flesh to his neighbors. He says that
Speaker 3: he didn't do it, but if you look at the facts,
Speaker 3: his neighbor, Albert Franchez, says that Murphy had cooked and
Speaker 3: served his neighbor's stew. Murphy said that he only cooked
Speaker 3: one swall at that address and served a stew made
Speaker 3: of boiled pork. Admits he cut off a big piece
Speaker 3: of his victim's flesh, tasted it, took it home, and
Speaker 3: while at home, cut that flesh into little pieces. And
Speaker 3: he admits that he was angry at his neighbors because
Speaker 3: they've been stealing his food out of the communal refrigerator.
Speaker 3: So you know what, what do you think happened?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you can make the inference pretty easily.
Speaker 3: Sure, Now you side for the poor guy who ate
Speaker 3: the stew.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's another brother here, probably doesn't like stew anymore
Speaker 6: or boiled pork, yeah, or anything. Yeah, Now, tell us
Speaker 6: more about this correspondence, because I think this is one
Speaker 6: of the unique aspects of your book. Very few, as
Speaker 6: you know, very few authors really get close to a
Speaker 6: subject like this, and then for them to be candid.
Speaker 6: Not everybody gets one hundred percent. And these he as
Speaker 6: a notorious you know, storytellers. But tell us more about
Speaker 6: your correspondence.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I was, but I was told by one of
Speaker 3: his psychiatrists that he was a fellow who liked to
Speaker 3: talk about himself. So he immediately agreed to help me
Speaker 3: write the book. We exchanged letters for close to a year,
Speaker 3: and I explained to him that this wasn't the first
Speaker 3: time that I had used the killer's own words to
Speaker 3: tell a story. I did it in Killer Twins, but
Speaker 3: in that case, Robert Spoholski's narrative is as vivid as
Speaker 3: it was was obviously self conscious. Spoolsky was a guy who,
Speaker 3: you know, he wanted to punch it up. He wanted
Speaker 3: to describe his actions as if he were a legendary criminal.
Speaker 3: In reality, he was just a run of the mil
Speaker 3: dirt back killer and the thing that made him exceptional
Speaker 3: was the fact that he had an identical twin who
Speaker 3: was also a killer. Now, in this book, Murphy tells
Speaker 3: his story. It's thick with regret for remorse. You know,
Speaker 3: he spends maybe too much time blaming all of his
Speaker 3: mistakes he made on the voices in his head rather
Speaker 3: than his own poor decisions. But it's clear he wants
Speaker 3: readers who might be suffering from their own mental difficulties
Speaker 3: to seek medical help. Now, don't do as I did
Speaker 3: and let him go until you know your voices are
Speaker 3: saying rape and kill. So yeah, his point is, if
Speaker 3: you let the voices of schizophrenia have their way, there
Speaker 3: will be irreparable damage. And there are in spots places
Speaker 3: where evil seasons, narrative and Murphy's version of story don't match.
Speaker 3: But for the most part he seems me telling the truth.
Speaker 3: And when I could corroborate what he said, I did.
Speaker 3: And he did a pretty good job of describing himself
Speaker 3: without looking at himself through rose tinted glasses. He saw
Speaker 3: himself warts and all, which was refreshing. I thought, yeah,
Speaker 3: he did. He didn't try to work me as a
Speaker 3: sociopath would.
Speaker 6: Right, all right, Now he talks about you've gotten this
Speaker 6: decline into schizophrenia or his slide into this mental illness,
Speaker 6: and he describes that for you. It's it's very very interesting.
Speaker 6: How long after he was convicted so we can know
Speaker 6: how long he was on or how long was he
Speaker 6: on medication before you interviewed him. That's maybe my question.
Speaker 3: Okay, he started on medication around two thousand and seven,
Speaker 3: I would say three years. You know, he'd been they
Speaker 3: had fine tuned his medication, and he'd been acting relatively normally.
Speaker 3: I mean, I should add that I've gotten letters from
Speaker 3: him more silly, and this seems to have been some slippage. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that that the new stuff is is a little bit kookie, but.
Speaker 6: Sorry, Uh, he's.
Speaker 3: He's become a religious zealot. And it always strikes me.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of David Berkowitz, who went from being
Speaker 3: a devil worshiper to being a Christ worshiper. And there
Speaker 3: was there was his parallel between the two states. He's
Speaker 3: just sleep.
Speaker 6: Sure, well, I mean part of the characteristic of schizophrenia,
Speaker 6: or at least some of the same. Themes are the God, Satan,
Speaker 6: end of world, you know, so those are those are
Speaker 6: kind of common. Did you have any idea that he
Speaker 6: may be malingering, that he may be faking it, that
Speaker 6: he was he was smart enough, certainly maybe to be
Speaker 6: able to do that.
Speaker 2: It was there, well, there.
Speaker 3: Was there was a jailhouse snitch who testified at the
Speaker 3: trial that he had recommended to Murphy that would be
Speaker 3: a good idea if he started acting crazy, because that
Speaker 3: was probably the only way out. But the thing is
Speaker 3: that Murphy does things that are so odd that just
Speaker 3: do them means you have a mental problem. For example,
Speaker 3: he would sleep in a swamp even though his apartment
Speaker 3: was only a couple of blocks away, and he was
Speaker 3: punishing himself for you know, and they would find him,
Speaker 3: you know, half dressed out in the swamp. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know how you that's not MOLLI he had.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he had the Yeah, that's what I was going
Speaker 6: to say. He was diagnosed bipolar many years before, so
Speaker 6: it wasn't like a new defense, you know, So it
Speaker 6: was c.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was that click click on all cylinders. The
Speaker 3: fact that he was loosen enough during the time when
Speaker 3: we were corresponding to get the story out the way
Speaker 3: he did. It's, you know, a little little bit of
Speaker 3: a miracle of which you know, we're all beneficiary. Now.
Speaker 6: The crime scene was fantastic, incredible, very very unusual, very unusual.
Speaker 6: It's almost like a black Dahlia kind of situation where
Speaker 6: there's some homage to some it seems to art artists
Speaker 6: or artwork in general. Some statement. Tell Us, when you
Speaker 6: asked him about this posing, you said, he denied.
Speaker 3: Tell Us, despite he admits to being an artist who
Speaker 3: want to be He's going around trying to sell artwork.
Speaker 3: He's constantly going along the side the road looking for
Speaker 3: things he could turn into strange sculptures. Uh, the similarities
Speaker 3: between the crime scene and the artwork in the in
Speaker 3: the gallery is indisputable. And and yet he won't fess
Speaker 3: up to to creating that scene on purpose. You can
Speaker 3: understand why he what he would not want to admit
Speaker 3: to being a cannibal or forcing cannibalism on other people
Speaker 3: because he has to worry about his own standard of living,
Speaker 3: which is already pretty dug on low because he's in
Speaker 3: prison for life. But he could he could be mistreated
Speaker 3: in prison because of that. But when it comes to
Speaker 3: his artist want to be in his killer self being
Speaker 3: one and the same, you know, he yeah, he clearly
Speaker 3: wants to keep that separate. You know, maybe maybe I
Speaker 3: did it subconsciously, He'll allow, all right, but that consciously
Speaker 3: and I don't.
Speaker 6: Well, it's also interesting too because you're talking that he
Speaker 6: has this opportunity in your book to talk about regret
Speaker 6: and remorse and of course blame his mental illness. So
Speaker 6: certainly he's not going along with the court's decision and
Speaker 6: contention that he knew right or wrong. He is clearly
Speaker 6: wants to benefit from sympathy and those sorts of things.
Speaker 3: Well, sure, because the mental health facility is a nicer
Speaker 3: place to be than the prison. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: along with blaming the voice in his head for what
Speaker 3: he did, he blames himself for not listening to the
Speaker 3: advice of his family and loved ones to see seek
Speaker 3: out professional health before he did. Sure, you know he
Speaker 3: he You know, his advice is, you know, if this
Speaker 3: stuff starts happening to you, you know, go to a
Speaker 3: doctor right away. You know, I was his pride would
Speaker 3: not allow him to, uh, to admit that he was
Speaker 3: having real mental health issues. And here's a guy who
Speaker 3: wanted to be a Navy seal. I mean he really
Speaker 3: you know, he was a guy who saw himself as
Speaker 3: a man of substance, who's successful with women. He had
Speaker 3: careers that he was good at. He was a photographer,
Speaker 3: he was a scuba diver or instructor, learned how to
Speaker 3: cut hair, became apparently a very good haircutter. And here
Speaker 3: he was with a problem that's a little bit shameful.
Speaker 3: You know. Even in today's society, it's like losing your hearing.
Speaker 3: People will not get hearing aids because they don't want
Speaker 3: anybody to know that they're deaf. They're embarrassed by it.
Speaker 3: He was embarrassed by his growing mental health difficulties and
Speaker 3: didn't do anything about it until it was way too late.
Speaker 6: So did he have the traditional bipolar patient that says,
Speaker 6: I know there's medication, but I have side effects from
Speaker 6: the medication, because you did talk about this fine tune.
Speaker 6: I don't know exactly what that was.
Speaker 3: If he was ever resistant to taking the medicine he
Speaker 3: was given, I'm not aware of it. I know that
Speaker 3: he felt that the bipolar diagnosis wasn't even close to
Speaker 3: what his problems were, and that that medicine didn't do anything.
Speaker 3: I think there was when they finally got to the uh,
Speaker 3: the anti schizo medicines, that that's probably give him some
Speaker 3: relief because she was she was just constantly plagued by hallucinations.
Speaker 3: He woke up one morning and everybody's eyes looked like
Speaker 3: military flashlights, and their lips were moving bizarrely fast and
Speaker 3: turning into butterflies, and paranoia, you know, started to flood in,
Speaker 3: and he came to believe that, you know, the entire
Speaker 3: world was made up of a gigantic conspiracy you know,
Speaker 3: aimed at him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so pretty overwhelming, pretty overwhelming symptoms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mind.
Speaker 3: And I also think that just just judging, just judging
Speaker 3: from what I know of him, the reason he is
Speaker 3: able to describe his descent into schizophrenia so well is
Speaker 3: because it's real. I mean, part of my lingering is
Speaker 3: getting over a lie, you know, putting over a lie
Speaker 3: that's huge and complex, and that does not seem to
Speaker 3: be particularly in his skill set.
Speaker 6: I was gonna ask a question, and I'm going to
Speaker 6: ask it now before I forget. Okay, did you view
Speaker 6: the crime scene photos? And if you did, why did you?
Speaker 6: Just for audience, did you look at the crime scene photo?
Speaker 6: And if you did, why did you?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? I absolutely looked at the crime scene photos. Well,
Speaker 3: that's my job. My job is to know as much
Speaker 3: as possible about the crime and the criminal and then
Speaker 3: the victims, so that I can tell the story, uh,
Speaker 3: in as much detail and depth as you know I can.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm I'm in the wrong business if I'm
Speaker 3: going to start censoring stuff for my own comfort. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you I looked at them exactly once. I
Speaker 3: took notes, and then I put them away and never
Speaker 3: looked at them again. But yeah, I mean I have to.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm the writer.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's just a part of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yeah, on an amateur basis, I might pass.
Speaker 3: But as long as I'm working, I have to look
Speaker 3: at the pictures, as horrible as they may be. And
Speaker 3: I've ye know, I've seen worse, and I don't want
Speaker 3: to compare, you know, the tragedy, the tragedy, but you know,
Speaker 3: crimes involving children are for me at least harder to
Speaker 3: look at than this one.
Speaker 6: Sure, this is this is an incredible for sure, certainly.
Speaker 6: Now what about Murphy being a suspect in his own
Speaker 6: mother's death.
Speaker 3: Yeah, briefly, he was living with his mom. He'd already
Speaker 3: was having problems. He was in halfway houses and he
Speaker 3: sleeping on his brother's couch and getting picked up because
Speaker 3: he was sleeping in dumpsters and things like that. He
Speaker 3: was living with his mother for a while, and his
Speaker 3: mother died. She fell in the kitchen and hit her head,
Speaker 3: And for a time, Murphy's brother Dean thought that mom
Speaker 3: felt because Brutus called him Brutus pushed her, and he
Speaker 3: didn't get over that notion until the medical examiner ruled
Speaker 3: the woman's death and accident and that was pretty much
Speaker 3: the end of that. But it's interesting that you his
Speaker 3: only brother, who knew him very well, would have thought
Speaker 3: him capable of mattresside years before he became an actual killer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean I think people are are more afraid
Speaker 6: of the insane killer. And I think that's why you
Speaker 6: have this super resistance in America letting this person go
Speaker 6: into a mental institution because I think somehow or other
Speaker 6: someone's gonna let them out and they're going to run.
Speaker 6: I think they're more fearful of the cycle killer than
Speaker 6: the runner, the World Garden hit man.
Speaker 3: But you said it before about Yeah, it's true American
Speaker 3: juries do not like the infanity defense. But I also
Speaker 3: think that one of the reasons that more infanity defenses
Speaker 3: are successful is because in cases where the killer is
Speaker 3: genuinely insane, the case never comes to trial. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: just doesn't. It doesn't go to a jury trial.
Speaker 6: Right, right, But again, I mean one precipitates the other
Speaker 6: as well, when you know you don't have any real grounds.
Speaker 6: When when you talked about how this prosecutor did the
Speaker 6: you know, put it basic on basic basis, on planning,
Speaker 6: and then he just knew the difference between right and wrong.
Speaker 6: I've seen that decision in a bunch of states where
Speaker 6: it just comes down to showing some proof to that
Speaker 6: jury that this person did know the difference made, that
Speaker 6: distinction made the you know, so being in Canada again,
Speaker 6: I won't go into it, but you can't believe some
Speaker 6: of the insanity defenses that have worked and the person
Speaker 6: walking around.
Speaker 3: What is the difference to the long Canada?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, You've got a case where a doctor,
Speaker 6: cardiologist kills his two children, stabs him to death. He
Speaker 6: finds out that his wife, who is divorcing, is having
Speaker 6: an affair with one of his colleagues. Part of his defense,
Speaker 6: or his cover up or part of the evidence was
Speaker 6: that he looked on the Internet on ways to kill himself,
Speaker 6: create the cocktail, drank the cocktail, of course, didn't die,
Speaker 6: but stabbed his children because in his mind he felt
Speaker 6: they you know, he was gonna kill himself, but he didn't.
Speaker 6: He killed his two children. He had a defense, they
Speaker 6: had a psychiatrist testified that he didn't have enough serotonin,
Speaker 6: he was depressed, Oh boy, temporarily insane. Temporarily insane, no
Speaker 6: prior evidence. Uh and in two years two years and
Speaker 6: mental institution, released from the men's from the hospital yeah,
Speaker 6: so he's walking around license have we.
Speaker 3: Have defense experts who try that stuff. There's a guy
Speaker 3: who makes a pretty good living uh saying that the
Speaker 3: killer UH had limited ability to UH limit his impulse
Speaker 3: control because of a blow to the front of the
Speaker 3: head as a child. Sure, and then they take they
Speaker 3: take color photographs of the guy's brain and show how
Speaker 3: it's now spark properly. And boy do American jurys hate that. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 3: they can't wait to put the something there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But you know, it's it's tried, and sometimes it works.
Speaker 6: In some jurisdictions it works, And I'm not saying that
Speaker 6: it's in Canada though. It's very much like precedent. Once
Speaker 6: something is goes through, then it can go through again
Speaker 6: based on someone using that same precedent, using that similarity
Speaker 6: to that case. So it's a dangerous president.
Speaker 3: I know what you're saying.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of things too that are a psychiatric
Speaker 6: diagnosis after the fact. Is to me, I'm a little
Speaker 6: leery about it. You know, he's thirty forty years old,
Speaker 6: but we talk about all the odd behavior that he
Speaker 6: had when he was youngster after he fell off the swing,
Speaker 6: but none of us thought I.
Speaker 3: Mentioned King earlier the case down there. He was in
Speaker 3: a fledding accident. Stephen Stenko was hitting the forehead with
Speaker 3: a coke bottle teenager, and these all came up as
Speaker 3: part of their defense. And you know, Jerry's just disregarded it.
Speaker 6: Well, you have to, because otherwise every hockey player and
Speaker 6: football player and athlete fits off eight times. That's right,
Speaker 6: that's right, amazing, amazing.
Speaker 3: Now, there was.
Speaker 6: There was a murder of Carl Brucia, and maybe you
Speaker 6: just call us briefly the significance of that in Sarasota too.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, the community fear and shock was was compounded when,
Speaker 3: only two weeks after the art gallery murder, an eleven
Speaker 3: year old Sarasota girl named Karli Brucia was abducted and murdered.
Speaker 3: She was walking home from a friend's house in broad daylight,
Speaker 3: was abducted by a man in a car, and she
Speaker 3: was raped and strangled to death. The body wasn't discovered
Speaker 3: for four days, and the case broke when it was
Speaker 3: discovered that Carly's abduction was caught on video by a
Speaker 3: camera mounted on the rear of car wash. The murder
Speaker 3: took place exactly five miles southeast of the Provenance Gallery
Speaker 3: Joyce Wichard's gallery. The abductor's family members identified him from
Speaker 3: the from the film. I can remember seeing them. They
Speaker 3: showed it again and again, the poor little girl being
Speaker 3: abducted behind the car wash. But the killer's family saw
Speaker 3: it and said, you know, that's that's our Joe and
Speaker 3: Joseph P. Smith, thirty nine year old Autobotanic was arrested. Now,
Speaker 3: you know, the Sarasota police couldn't wait to take this
Speaker 3: guy's DNA, but they were disappointed to find out that,
Speaker 3: you know, he wasn't the guy who had been nice
Speaker 3: to have killed two birds with one stone there. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 6: Now let's get back to evil season just for a moment,
Speaker 6: in terms of what do you think from everything that
Speaker 6: you were as close to this person as humanly possible,
Speaker 6: and you had all the information you have written twenty
Speaker 6: something books, you're one of the more experienced true crime
Speaker 6: author journalists. What do you think was the real reason
Speaker 6: despite his denial, what was the reason why he did
Speaker 6: what he did to Joyce?
Speaker 3: I think he was he set out that day to
Speaker 3: commit rape. He was a man who's had a growing
Speaker 3: need for devian sex. He kept breaking up with women
Speaker 3: because he would want to have group sex, or he
Speaker 3: would want to experiment this way or do something weird
Speaker 3: that way, or whatever it was. I think that he
Speaker 3: wanted to rape a woman. And what happened was he
Speaker 3: got nervous, so he went to a bar and had
Speaker 3: quite a few drinks just before entering the gallery, and
Speaker 3: when it came time to you know, commit his rape
Speaker 3: that he's been trying to build himself up for all day,
Speaker 3: he couldn't do it, so his knife came out instead.
Speaker 3: I think that's what happened. I think that the whole
Speaker 3: notion of turning it into a you know, an artist
Speaker 3: want to be thing was something that probably occurred to
Speaker 3: him after the fact. I think Joyce is already dead
Speaker 3: at the point he says, oh, I know, I'll make
Speaker 3: her look like this painting over here, and I'll have
Speaker 3: her point like that painting over there. Then this will
Speaker 3: show the cops now whether or not he wanted to
Speaker 3: commit rape that day, because there was a voice in
Speaker 3: his head saying you had to do it, and he
Speaker 3: says it was the voice of you know, the voice
Speaker 3: of Jesus Christ came to him and said to rape
Speaker 3: a woman, which strikes me as unlikely, but he seemed
Speaker 3: to think it was real. That part I don't know about.
Speaker 3: I don't know how those two things work together, but
Speaker 3: it was a pretty obvious that he lusht. It was
Speaker 3: a lust murder, right, And what he did is he
Speaker 3: drank himself impotent before it and it turned into into
Speaker 3: a mutilation.
Speaker 6: Well, I was kind of surprised by that conclusion a
Speaker 6: little bit. You know, I know, the lust murderer. I mean,
Speaker 6: there's there's very many, there's very many of these culprits,
Speaker 6: for sure, these type of killers. So basically you're saying,
Speaker 6: he's an insane person that was out for rape and
Speaker 6: this was a total unfortunate, random act of murder.
Speaker 3: Yes, although I don't think he was insane, lou Eron
Speaker 3: and I we don't think he was insane, mentally disturbed,
Speaker 3: absolutely right. And the choosing joy swishert was a matter
Speaker 3: of convenience. She was vulnerable, she was in a situation
Speaker 3: where she couldn't run. Uh, he knew he would easily
Speaker 3: overpower her, so she, I mean she was she was
Speaker 3: chosen because of her vulnerability and in that and in
Speaker 3: that sense not random, but I mean it could have
Speaker 3: been anybody, any any woman in that story at that
Speaker 3: time would have been his victim, you know, nothing personal.
Speaker 6: Yeah, very tragic tale.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 6: And so you say, then, you say, now that he
Speaker 6: has sent you some letters, and it seems he's had
Speaker 6: almost a turnaround, would you say, in terms of his
Speaker 6: thinking and his deluded thoughts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that, Uh, maybe I got lucky, Maybe
Speaker 3: I hit a window of lucidity on Murphy's part. And
Speaker 3: and it's not that he's he's completely nonsensical in his letters.
Speaker 3: It's just that they're showing signs of of obsession and compulsion.
Speaker 3: He's repeating things, he's he's almost chant like syntax, and
Speaker 3: that was according to according to his family, that's very
Speaker 3: much the way he was writing at the time when
Speaker 3: when his mental state was going south. So either the
Speaker 3: medicine is not isn't working the way it once was,
Speaker 3: or just the fact that he's spending every day in
Speaker 3: a cell is still driving him crazy.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, I found I found it very interesting
Speaker 6: because the idea of it's very rare to be able
Speaker 6: to get the viewpoint from a schizophrenic killer, it really is.
Speaker 6: And so he's done an admirable job. Was very fascinating
Speaker 6: to be able to have that, and then the lucidity,
Speaker 6: like you say, again, that's again for the few times
Speaker 6: that I've ever I've interviewed one schizophrenic killer and he
Speaker 6: was lucid when I spoke to him, but he really
Speaker 6: was not so helpful explaining his thought process at that time.
Speaker 6: He kept saying, you know, you know, and I kept saying, no,
Speaker 6: I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Huh.
Speaker 6: So I think I think you've done this incredible job
Speaker 6: of taking us into this mind of this person that
Speaker 6: again is lucid enough to be able to describe his
Speaker 6: thoughts as a deluded person, and I agree with you
Speaker 6: that he's not. I don't believe in the insanity defense
Speaker 6: because I think you still have to it ends up
Speaker 6: to be the same result. I don't really care where
Speaker 6: you go. I don't want to punish you, but I
Speaker 6: just want to keep you separate from the public, and
Speaker 6: so it doesn't matter where you go. In my it's
Speaker 6: just so long as you don't get out. That's my
Speaker 6: only stipulation.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that there should be a verdict guilty
Speaker 3: butt insane, which would be like life in prison without
Speaker 3: parole except for a mental facility. I mean, the way
Speaker 3: it is now, you're either going to going to prison
Speaker 3: for the rest of your life or you're going to
Speaker 3: the mental facility until you are cured.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Well, so I think there's there's room for there's room
Speaker 3: for a verdict in between there they couldn't maybe be
Speaker 3: more humane and still keep society safe.
Speaker 6: And I think a lot of people, prosecutors and I've
Speaker 6: talked to a lot of true crime authors, I think
Speaker 6: that would be the option that they would they would
Speaker 6: they would choose in terms of incarceration in a mental
Speaker 6: institution forever, just in terms of humanity, just being humane,
Speaker 6: a little bit of credit, not much credit, it's the
Speaker 6: same end result, and still you're a danger to the public.
Speaker 3: So yep.
Speaker 6: Anyway, anyway, thanks for this interview. It's been very good
Speaker 6: checking people that have been listening to the program. They've
Speaker 6: been even talking about the book Evil Season, the latest
Speaker 6: buy Michael Benson and about Elton Brutus Murphy. Very very
Speaker 6: interesting story. Thank you very much for this interview, Michael,
Speaker 6: and hope to talk to you again in the near future.
Speaker 6: Thank you tell us about do you have a website
Speaker 6: that anybody might bruise and take a look at all
Speaker 6: your backlog over the background on a page.
Speaker 3: On Amazon dot com. If you if you go to
Speaker 3: Amazon dot com and put in Michael Benson, you it'll
Speaker 3: take you to my page and it has all the
Speaker 3: books I've written, true crime, sports, yea, I've had several careers,
Speaker 3: and you get to see, you know, a nice picture
Speaker 3: of my mug.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's for free. So that's good.
Speaker 3: Absolutely no charge.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much, Michael. It's uh, I had
Speaker 6: a little off evening here. It's about one hundred degrees
Speaker 6: in my apartment here, So thank you very much for
Speaker 6: taking the time and coming on and talking about your
Speaker 6: latest and greatest Evil season. Thank you, Michael, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Goodnight.