Evil Season (31 page)

According to Burns, “I approached him and asked what he was doing, and he said he was sent there to fix my roof. I asked him who sent him and he said people from another planet.”

The prosecution's cross-examination made it clear that Murphy might have merely been pretending to be crazy, that this was his standard method when he was caught trying to rob a house. If you get caught, act crazy—that was just part of Murphy's method, right?

 

 

The defense then called four psychologists who had examined Murphy. The psychologists said Murphy was psychotic and had convinced himself that he was related to God, that he was part alien, and that he had acted with God's grace on a mission to find believers. Murphy claimed to have more than a thousand followers who were under his control. He told one psychologist that he had replaced the soul of one of his lawyers by surrounding him with books and magazines—a line that tied in with the murder because Murphy had indeed left a magazine under Joyce Wishart's left hand.

First up was Dr. James McGovern, who had originally been asked to evaluate Murphy's competence to stand trial by the state, but was now appearing as a defense witness.

“In the construct of his universe, everything he did was acceptable,” said Dr. McGovern. “Anything he did to hide his action was aimed more at continuing his mission than on evading responsibility,” the psychologist testified.

Lon Arend argued that yearning to stay free so Murphy could continue his mission—that mission being to kill and rape women—was hardly a heartwarming defense.

Arend was going to agree with everything the doctors said, as long as it concerned Murphy's mental illness. But he was going to disagree with just about everything that dealt with insanity.

 

 

Psychologist Mary Elizabeth Kasper said, “He felt the laws would not apply to him.” Murphy, for example, felt that he had gotten permission directly from God to rape and kill Joyce Wishart.

Arend hammered away. The only thing that mattered, when it came to Murphy's mental state, was if he could distinguish and appreciate the difference between right and wrong.

Everything else was irrelevant.

Arend was particularly effective when cross-examining Dr. Kasper. One spectator in the courtroom recalled Dr. Kasper flailing her arms and growing uncomfortably loud as she tried to answer his questions. She was so
annoyed
with Arend, and—according to eyewitnesses—she had difficulty maintaining her composure. (Her performance was so dramatic, and helpful to the prosecution, that one juror remarked upon it after the trial.)

“What is the definition of ‘wrong,' Dr. Kasper?” Arend asked at one point.

There was a pause as the question caused the witness to temporarily tilt.

“Not right?” was her eventual response. Arend was making her look bad. She was furious.

When the lawyers were through questioning the psychologists, the jury was allowed to submit questions. The jury asked, “What is psychosis?” They were told that it was a loss of contact with reality. They were told that no, there were no brain scans or biological tests that could prove insanity, and that at no time during his examinations did Murphy show remorse.

 

 

Dr. D'Agostino was the state psychologist who'd evaluated Murphy in Chattahoochee when he was deemed incompetent to stand trial.

Arend asked Dr. D'Agostino about Murphy's social skills: “Could he follow the rules if he were in a school or something like that?”

“If there were rules in place, the defendant would follow them,” Dr. D'Agostino testified.

Arend thought that was a powerful response. One of the symptoms of knowing right from wrong is the ability to follow society's rules. To know right from wrong, you need to know what the societal norms are.

“That was the key point,” Arend later said. “You can talk all you want about hearing voices. I wasn't arguing against mental illness. I conceded to the fact that the guy had mental problems.”

Arend impressively cross-examined all four doctors, made them admit that Murphy could distinguish right and wrong, but didn't care.

Still, the prosecutor was kind to the doctors: “I thought they all did a good job. They discussed mental illness, which was their expertise. When I asked about the legal definition of insanity, they recognized that the jury was going to have to make that call.”

Arend believed that psychologists, especially forensic psychologists, should better gear their examinations of defendants with the law in mind. If they were going to say someone didn't understand the difference between right and wrong, there should be a baseline for comparison purposes, a test featuring questions such as “Is this right? Or is this wrong?” A test of the defendant's scruples. There should be a way, Arend believed, for the shrinks to
quantify
insanity as a measurable entity, based solely on questions relevant to insanity. The four doctors spent many hours with Murphy and there was little or no discussion regarding “What are the rules? And why don't they conform to you?”

 

Looking back on the trial, despite Arend's effective cross-examination, Murphy felt that the mental-health professionals were still the strongest part of his defense. Despite the prosecution's negative spin on everything, the shrinks—Dr. Kasper in particular—testified that Murphy didn't really understand the difference between right and wrong. He could distinguish it all right, but he didn't get it. It wasn't so much that he didn't know the difference, but that he didn't
appreciate
the difference. Dr. Kasper held on to her opinion that Murphy suffered from a severe schizophrenic disorder and was criminally insane at the time of the murder. All of this might have been more valuable to the defense if she'd better composed herself during Lon Arend's frustrating cross-examination.

The doctors' consolidated message to the jury was that Murphy had been schizophrenic when he killed Joyce Wishart. And during subsequent questioning, he was not malingering. He was not exaggerating his symptoms.

 

 

After her day in court Marcia Corbino had nothing but nice things to say about the prosecution. The way Lon Arend handled the defense psychologists was masterful, she said.

The defense psychologists, Corbino noted, all had similar opinions as to Murphy's insanity, but they didn't have any proof. They hadn't taken a brain scan. They hadn't given him a lie detector test. They sat on the witness stand and relied just on the notes they had taken. She found it strange.

She also didn't have many nice things to say about Murphy's defense.

“It was like they weren't really trying” was her assessment.

 

 

The following day closing statements were delivered. Both sides claimed victory. The defense acknowledged that Elton Brutus Murphy knew the difference between right and wrong, but that did not necessarily make him legally sane. The law said that the defendant needed to both know and appreciate the difference in order to be sane. Murphy showed every sign of
not
appreciating the difference. He believed that the laws were all fine and good for mere mortals, but that those same laws did not apply to him. His DNA was different, he said. He was a god.

 

 

Lon Arend had an answer for that. If Murphy really believed that he was above the law, and the laws did not apply to him, then there was no point in him cleaning up after himself. If he really believed that he shared DNA with God, he would not have hidden the victim's flesh in a plastic bag when he left the Provenance Gallery. He would have held that bloody human flesh in one hand and the knife in the other and he would have proclaimed for the world that he was the Lord God Elton Brutus Murphy. But that wasn't what he did. He covered up. He fled. He was afraid that something bad would happen to him—just like a sane man who both knew and appreciated the difference between right and wrong. He didn't just dispose of evidence. He disposed of it in a wide variety of locations, just to further befuddle investigators. He locked the gallery door with the edges of his fingers so he wouldn't leave fingerprints!

Would a god hide anything? No, a god would have walked right out that gallery door without a care in the world for what other people, including law enforcement, thought.

Arend went over the recordings that they had heard of Murphy being interrogated in Texas. “‘Joyce? Joyce? Are we rejoicing?'” He thought he was funny. Again and again those recordings showed that Murphy was sane, proud of his perversity. It wasn't that this creepy man didn't understand the law; it was that he thought he was
above the law.

 

 

Following closing arguments, Judge Roberts gave the jury their instructions. He thanked the alternate jurors for their time and dismissed them.

He told the remaining panel that the first thing they needed to do was elect a foreperson, whose job it would be to supervise deliberation. All of their deliberation needed to take place in the deliberation room, which had its own bathroom.

A bailiff would be posted out in the hall, right outside their door, at all times. If a juror had a question, he or she was to write it down on a piece of paper and then knock on the door. The bailiff would open the door, take the written question, and Judge Roberts would determine if he was allowed to answer it. If he could, he most certainly would. All of the evidence would be sent back to the jurors' room. They had a right to see all of it.

The jury room was theirs. No one who was not a juror could be allowed inside ever. Some people worried about surveillance cameras. There were none in there, he could assure them. It was time for them to retire to their duty and return a verdict. The jury solemnly filed out the nearby door.

They were assured utter privacy. When it was over, those who chose to identify themselves to the press and make statements had every right to do so, as did those who wanted to remain anonymous and wished to return home the instant the verdict was read.

That jury deliberated only one hour before returning with a guilty verdict.

 

 

At the subsequent sentencing hearing, Murphy noticed something missing in the courtroom. The usual people were all in their places, but there was no Mark Klothacus. Murphy's former best man attended the entire trial, but he would not be there for the sentencing.

Murphy didn't like to think that his friend might have given up on him. Later, Murphy noted that the sentencing hearing was very brief. Mark wasn't always the most punctual guy. Maybe he'd simply missed it.

At that brief hearing, Elton Brutus Murphy was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. If he had been found not guilty because of insanity, a second hearing would have been held to determine if Murphy should be committed to a mental hospital, given outpatient treatment, or released. But that was a moot point now.

Only once had the trial gone late into the afternoon, so late that Carolyn Schlemmer had to return to her full-time job as a mother, and in that case Meisner took charge of the defense seamlessly.

Murphy recalled, “Even though we lost the trial, I told both Schlemmer and Meisner that I was pleased with their performance and I thought they had done their best.”

 

 

ASA Lon Arend thought that despite his victory the Murphy trial had raised an issue. It was a shame that Florida did not allow a verdict of “guilty but insane.”

“Under the law,” he explained, “you are either sane, and you are convicted and go to prison, or you are insane, and you go to a hospital. Which means that the second you are deemed cured, you can be released and would be free to repeat a violent crime. If Elton Murphy had been found not guilty by reason of insanity, this very, very dangerous person, who had committed the most heinous of crimes, might have spent five years in a mental hospital and then been released.”

That was especially true, Arend noted, because of the budget cuts of recent years and the closing of several state mental hospitals.

Arend said, “There are some states and some countries that have this other verdict, guilty but insane, which would then allow the defendant to be sent to a mental hospital for the rest of his or her life.” In that system mentally ill killers could receive the treatment they needed, but society didn't have to worry about them being released back into the population. “I think the fact that we did not have that option is too bad,” Arend concluded, “because that's what I believe it would have been.”

Because of the research efforts involving this book, we now know more about Elton Brutus Murphy's behavior than did the principals at his murder trial. Though Murphy still will not address the subject, there were elements of his behavior on January 16, 2004, that smacked of cannibalism.

Murphy says he stole Joyce Wishart's vagina and put it in his rooming house's freezer to keep as a souvenir, but his acts mimic those of men who have dabbled in eating human flesh. And we do know that at least on one occasion during that time period, Murphy cooked stew and shared it with another man living in the boardinghouse. According to Murphy, the stew was made of “boiled pork” and he admitted that it was the only time he cooked a meal while living at that address. (Incidentally, he also admitted to tasting the vagina while it was still attached to the victim's lifeless body.) Even if Murphy didn't put some of Joyce Wishart into his stew, who is to say that while he sat in his Shade Avenue room, cutting up the vagina into little pieces that fell onto a paper plate and paper towel, that more tasting did not occur?

 

 

It is no longer considered rare for murderers to cannibalize their victims. There is a theory that killers believe, as do some primitive cannibal tribes, that consuming human flesh releases black magic that can, in turn, provide the killer with tremendous power—that a “life force” can be consumed, as well as the flesh. Considering Murphy's belief system, this notion must have appealed to him.

Belief and execution of cannibalism go back to the very prototype of the modern psycho killer, to “Jack the Ripper,” who, in 1888, murdered and claimed to have eaten parts of at least five prostitutes in the Whitechapel section of London.

Murphy did not steal just any body part. He took his victim's vagina. Necrophilia and cannibalism have been known to go hand in hand. The serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed at least fifteen male victims in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the 1980s, performed sexual acts upon and ate parts of his victims. When he was arrested, body parts were found in his refrigerator and freezer, being kept fresh for future consumption.

The most famous of the recent cannibal killers was Arthur Shawcross, “the Genesee River Killer,” who killed at least twelve women in and around Rochester, New York—primarily prostitutes—during 1988 and 1989. The bodies were found, usually in an advanced state of decomposition, with various sex organs removed. He was arrested in January 1990 after aerial surveillance caught him masturbating at one of his dump sites. While he was in custody, Shawcross claimed to have eaten parts of three of his victims. He said that he became aware of his desire to consume human flesh only after he
accidentally
ate the nipple of one victim. During interrogation by a psychiatrist, Shawcross switched to a woman's high-pitched voice and claimed he had once been a cannibal in medieval England.

 

 

Long a staple of murder-mystery fiction and board games, murders in the art world are very rare, but not unheard of. Perhaps the most famous one was the 1985 murder of twenty-six-year-old Eigil Dag Vesti, a Norwegian male model and Fashion Institute of Technology student, on an estate in New York's Rockland County.

The victim was found shot twice in the back of the head, wearing only a leather mask. The murder was committed by twenty-two-year-old Bernard J.

LeGeros, whose father owned the estate that was the crime scene, and who worked at the Andrew Crispo Art Gallery in Manhattan.

The murder weapon was recovered in the Crispo gallery.

The story became headline news and the subject of a best-selling book because it revealed a dangerous sadomasochistic sexual lifestyle among the Big Apple's cultural elite.

Crispo had a rags-to-riches bio, having started out as an abused child in a Philadelphia orphanage, and working his way into New York's high society. Among his friends was Deborah Harry, lead singer of the pop band Blondie. He developed a serious cocaine habit and a bizarre, sadistic homosexual lifestyle. Among his assistant LeGeros's duties were the picking up of men for his boss to abuse and then the disposal of them after his boss was through.

One such sex slave was Vesti, who was bound and beaten by Crispo before LeGeros “took him for a ride.” Causing somewhat of a furor, LeGeros alone took the rap for Vesti's murder.

 

 

In January 2011, thirty-one-year-old Tajeme Sylvester, a master carpenter, was found murdered—shot twice, once in the head, once in the torso—inside the psychedelic Lotus Temple of Visions Gallery in Brooklyn, a gallery that the victim had been renovating. Police recovered nine-millimeter casings at the scene, but no firearm. The gallery existed to “promote all facets of conscious or cultural visual and living art expressions.” Neighbors, who said the gallery had a reputation as a crash pad for traveling artists, heard gunshots in the early evening. There were no signs of forced entry. After hours, the victim was a fixture on the party circuit, dancing to house music. He had also been an activist for environmentalism and holistic health. The gallery's owner—Divine Elohim, a self-described “Space Age herbalist”—was out of town when the murder occurred, and the case remained a mystery.