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