Evil Season

by Michael Benson

  “Your brother violent?”

  “Never known him to be. No, I don’t believe he is.”

  Dean described Brutus’s delusions: the aliens, the followers, the big payday right around the corner. The deterioration came after he broke up with his wife, and his two teenaged children lived with their mother.

  “That shook him up,” Dean said.

  DelValle and Opitz wondered what religious stew had resulted in Brutus’s peculiar beliefs. Dean said they had grown up Baptist, but his brother was influenced by Seventh-Day Adventists while in the navy. He stayed at a religious halfway house after he was released from jail. The investigators didn’t hear anything odd in that mix.

  Opitz asked, “When your brother is acting like God, does he ever make sacrifices or hurt any animals?”

  Dean was firm: “No.” His mind was briefly invaded with an image of someone slitting a lamb’s throat on a stone altar. Again, like the questions about tools, the fact that the investigators asked the question made Dean uneasy.

  “Brutus was wacky, but he was great with computers. He could even build computers. Anytime he was in the vicinity of a computer, there was a chance he used it. He was athletic, too. He ran and took vitamins, enjoyed lifting weights.”

  They asked Dean about his parents. Dean said his dad was an alcoholic, but there’d been no abuse problems in the house. (On this point, Dean disagreed with Brutus, who recalled his father pointing a shotgun at his mother.)

  Were there any abuse issues with any of his brother’s ex-wives? No, not that Dean knew of.

  Weapons? Dean said his brother might have owned a small-caliber pistol at some point, but he suspected it was long gone. He didn’t collect guns or knives or anything like that.

  Dean never knew his brother to be a consumer of pornography, although he supposed he looked at Playboy every now and again. Every guy did.

  On their way out the detectives were stopped by Alane Solomon, who said she had reconsidered something she’d said earlier. Looking back at it, she did not think Murphy had ever borrowed or used any of hers or Dean’s computers. She was 99 percent sure that Murphy never used their computers, especially not during his most recent visits.

  After they had spoken with Dean and Alane, the investigators interviewed Howard Solomon, who’d owned the land around Solomon’s Castle for the past thirty-two years. Solomon said he’d known Brutus and Dean since they were teenagers—and he’d never had problems with Brutus.

  Solomon demonstrated a remarkably open mind. He thought Murphy had some artistic talent; and if he wanted to believe in aliens, that was okay. Solomon had a lot of friends who were artists, and Brutus was no stranger than a lot of them.

  Solomon showed the investigators two of Brutus’s metal sculptures that were nearby. Solomon had once owned five of his sculptures, but Murphy had bought three of them back.

  “I tried to mentor him, and I believe he admired me,” Solomon said. They were not chummy, however. “If you put all of our conversations together for the past four years, they would sum up to less than an hour.”

  What was Solomon working on now?

  The sculptor said he was working on an art display that would be in Naples, Florida. No, he had no art contacts in Sarasota and had never displayed his art there.

  “I haven’t had a show of any kind since the 1970s,” Solomon said, “and that was in St. Petersburg.”

  Finished at Solomon’s Castle, DelValle and Opitz took off in search of Murphy’s Geo Metro. Investigators had not ruled out the idea that Murphy was still driving the Geo at the time of the murder.

  The cops located Tory Fenimore in Altoona, Florida. Fenimore said that she bought the Geo from Dean Murphy on February 1.

  “Go ahead and process the vehicle,” she said, signing a form, but she’d appreciate it if they could finish up quickly because she needed to get to work.

  Criminalist James Tutsock was sent to Altoona to do the processing. DelValle and Opitz spoke to Fenimore and her sister Karrie Bootsma, who said that they first remembered seeing the Geo on Dean Murphy’s property on January 24. Fenimore said she bought the car to save money on gas, but she hadn’t driven it much. She vacuumed it out good before driving it. There was a knife in the trunk and a box cutter under the driver’s seat, which weren’t hers.

  “All right if we take the trunk liner with us?” DelValle asked.

  “Sure,” Fenimore said.

  “If we need to take the whole car back to Sarasota, would that be okay?”

  “Okay, but I would need it back by October.”

  “We don’t need to take it today, but there’s a chance we might later.”

  Though the DNA identification of the killer was irrefutable evidence that Elton Brutus Murphy had been present at the killing of Joyce Wishart, SPD detectives were not satisfied.

  All they needed was one juror who was skeptical of DNA technology, the possibility of contamination, and there went their case. If possible, they wanted to tie their suspect with the crime in another way, verify the scientific with something jurors could more easily grasp.

  Taking one of the plates that Murphy had painted his art on, Detectives Jack Carter and Ken Halpin went around on July 31, 2004, to Sarasota’s galleries to see if anyone recognized Murphy or his art.

  A man named Louis DiVita said he remembered receiving a visit from an artist who behaved oddly in his mannerisms and who didn’t have a portfolio. The guy was five-eleven and thin. The detectives showed him a photo of Murphy, but DiVita couldn’t identify it. Bill Bowers, DiVita’s coworker at the Plum Door Art Gallery, said the photo of Murphy “looked familiar, but he couldn’t be sure.” Everyone else was pretty certain they’d never seen him before.

  Detective Carter was also in charge of pursuing Murphy’s credit records to see if he could find any links with Sarasota. He learned that Murphy only had one credit card that was still functional—and it hadn’t been used in more than two years.

  Carter also canvassed local motels, places where Murphy might have stayed while he was in town during January. Comfort Inn, Quality Inn, Residence Inn, Sleep Inn, Courtyard Marriott, Knight’s Inn, Springhill Suites, and so on. The detective always checked under Murphy’s real name, as well as under all three of Murphy’s known aliases: Moore, Marks, and Dupuis. No luck.

  It turned out that one of Murphy’s assumed names belonged to a real person: Edward Alan Dupuis, who was in the National Guard. His girlfriend, Nancy, had had her bag stolen from a bus station in Lake Charles on January 25, 2004. She verified that the bag contained car keys, two books, and a Bible—all items found in Murphy’s possession when he was arrested in Houston.

  Later that day Detectives Rick Lewis and Jack Carter followed up on an incident report from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) from the end of January 2004. The manager at Great Clips on Clark Road claimed that Murphy might have worked there at that time. They spoke with Candia Roberts, who said Murphy worked at her other store at South Tuttle, but his employment only lasted a couple of days. She recalled that Murphy had presented an active barber’s license and that she had interviewed him twice before hiring him. During one of those interviews Murphy claimed that he had previously worked at the Great Clips in Tampa, but the location had gone out of business. Roberts tried but was unable to verify that portion of his work history.

  “I remember he rode his bicycle to work,” Roberts recalled. She found his job application, which listed his address as Shade Avenue.

  She remembered telling him he should try the Great Clips in Bradenton. He only worked for a couple of days and his manager was Amanda Noack.

  On August 2, 2004, Detectives Woods and DeNiro canvassed Palm Avenue with various photos of Elton Murphy in their hands. The owner of a hair salon, Ana Molinari, said she recognized the man in the photo. He came to her place maybe a month after the murder.

  He’d asked for her by name, but she lied and said, “Ana wasn’t in.” The guy was suspicious and she didn’t want to
have anything to do with him.

  The man said that God had sent him; he was the Chosen One. Everything he did, he did because God told him to do it. God had spoken to him when he was asleep and had told him to go to her salon on South Palm Avenue.

  He said he lived at the Salvation Army. Molinari was so upset by the visit that she called the police. By the time the officer arrived, though, the man had already departed down the street on foot.

  She described the man as being in his late thirties, about six-one. She told Detective DeNiro that she had a good memory for faces and she was certain the man in the photograph was the guy. He said his name at one point.

  “Robert or Cody,” she thought he said. “He wasn’t right. He scared me,” she concluded.

  Meanwhile, Detectives DelValle and Opitz spoke to Detective Wendy Davis-Zarvis, who had investigated Murphy after he was fired from his last job. She gave the investigators the address where Murphy had been staying at the time.

  “He was tall and thin,” Davis-Zarvis said. “Reminded me of a beach bum. He was smart but lazy—eccentric, like most artists are.”

  The detectives returned to Sarasota and visited the rooming house on Shade Avenue. The owner, Kit Barker, was away. In her absence Daniel Walker managed the property. He allowed police to photograph and search the room where Murphy had stayed.

  “I don’t know if you’re going to find anything useful,” Walker said. “Several tenants have come and gone since Murphy was here.”

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

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

  Chapter 35

  Brutus Talks to the Police

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

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

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

  “No, go ahead,” Murphy replied.

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

  “What are you in for?”

  “I’m accused of robbing several banks.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Then life changed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Who would frame him?

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

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

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

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

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

  “Even better,” Murphy agreed cheerfully.

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

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

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