Evil Season

by Michael Benson

  Keanu Reeves was the star of one of Murphy’s two favorite movies of all time, The Matrix. His other favorite film was Contact, with Jodie Foster. Murphy commented, “Both movies provide real escapism from our everyday reality.”

  Truth was, TV had become a bore. He’d rather pray or watch a Christian movie. He never watched news that much, and crime news wasn’t an interest.

  He did, however, admit that—as a “wannabe serial killer”—he did have some knowledge of the serial killers who’d come before him.

  “If I had to pick one, the serial killer I find most interesting is Ted Bundy,” Murphy said. “I found him fascinating. The thing wrong with Bundy was he was cruel in the way he killed those women.”

  What advice would he give to people who, as he once had, heard voices ordering them to do ugly things?

  “If you wake up and find your world seems too surreal, it probably is!” he said. “Seek professional psychological help immediately before it’s too late. Even if your intuition tells you that nothing is wrong with you.”

  Did he ever get down in the dumps because his days of freedom were forever behind him?

  “They’ve taken away my freedom, but they can’t stop my dreams,” he said—and at night, asleep in his cell, he dreamed of those sixty acres behind his house when he was a kid, the ill-fated orange grove and the dense woods, and how he wandered for hours, alone and free.

  Murphy remained a reader in prison. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, for sure, and he’d readjust about any crap. But every once in a while, he would read a book that struck him as pretty good. He recently enjoyed The Last Juror by John Grisham, Digital Fortress by Dan Brown, and Tom Clancy’s Shadow Warriors.

  Noting that the author of this book had previously coauthored a book about submarines, Murphy explained that one of his favorite books of all time was U.S.S. Seawolf by Patrick Robinson.

  As a kid he loved books about boys who visited faraway planets in rocket ships that they built themselves, but as an adult Murphy read almost exclusively nonfiction. He loved books about the military or scuba diving, or how-to books. It wasn’t until his incarceration that he read his first novels for grownups. He enjoyed mysteries.

  He enjoyed a photographer’s autobiography. Surprisingly, he enjoyed the “Christ Clone” trilogy, by American novelist James BeauSeigneur, about the end of days. He didn’t think he was going to like it because he assumed it was anti-Jesus, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that it was done with skill and brought the New Testament to life. He would recommend those books to Christians and atheists alike.

  He had never been a big James Patterson fan. You read one; you’ve read them all, he thought—until he read The Murder of King Tut. It blew his mind. He could hardly believe Patterson wrote it.

  But his favorite book was the Bible—and his favorite book of the Bible was the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans. “The theme of Romans is the gospel,” Murphy said. “That is the Good News, that salvation from sin is available through Jesus Christ. Romans teaches us how to deal with our sinful attitudes and behaviors and how to get back on the right track. I have turned my life and will over to God so he can transform me into the godly person he wants me to be.”

  Maybe. A better bet is that Elton Brutus Murphy, a unique fiend and ghoul, has a special spot reserved for him in the deepest, hottest ring of hell.

  Postscript

  Karen Fraivillig said she hoped she would never have to work on a prosecution team on a case as disturbing as this one again, but unfortunately that was not the case.

  On January 17, 2008—on a dim, drizzly day in North Port, Florida—an unemployed loser named Michael King abducted a young mother of two named Denise Amber Lee. He took her to his home, where he repeatedly raped and sodomized her, drove her into a desolate area, put a single bullet through her head, and buried her in a shallow grave.

  Fraivillig, again teamed up with Lon Arend and Suzanne O’Donnell, prosecuted the case. There were familiar faces on the other side of the aisle at the King trial as well: Carolyn Schlemmer and Jerry Meisner were defending King.

  King’s defense team claimed that a childhood sledding incident had left King with a damaged frontal brain lobe, which resulted in him being criminally insane. King was convicted on August 28, 2009, and now resides on Florida’s death row.

  That case became the subject of this author’s book A Killer’s Touch.

  In March 2010, Judge Andrew Owens, after many years of dedication to the First Step program—which helped provide substance-abuse rehabilitation and counseling to pregnant women—was honored as the “Caring Heart of the Year.” Judge Owens, who presided over many of Elton Murphy’s first court hearings, founded the “Drug Court” programs in Sarasota and Manatee Counties in 1997, which each year led to the substance-abuse treatment and counseling of three hundred individuals.

  In 2011, Michelle Andersen, of Admiral Travel on North Palm, said it was funny the author should call, because she’d been talking to someone about Joyce Wishart just the other day. There were still enough old-timers on the block, and they remembered.

  After all this time, it could still come up twice in a row. On that strip of storefronts, many things changed the day of the murder, many of which never switched back. Women were no longer alone at work. Never. No one worked at night.

  In the years since the murder, the travel agency Andersen worked for changed spaces and was closer than ever to the crime site.

  The Provenance Gallery was now a beauty salon. She was friends with the new proprietors and considered them friends, but she still couldn’t enter that building without thinking about what had happened there. Andersen went into the salon only a few days before and had talked with the owner. He asked Andersen if she was around at the time of the unpleasantness. Andersen said, “Oh yeah.” He asked that she keep it quiet. He didn’t want his clientele thinking his parlor was a haunted house.

  Just as it had been before, that end of Palm Avenue was still the quieter part, although a new modern parking garage had increased pedestrian traffic, and additional streetlights meant it was no longer the darker end of the street. A lot of money had been pumped into sprucing that stretch, creating a modern, seemingly safer nocturnal vibe.

  The turnover, life’s turnover, was always under way, and several of the businesses from Joyce Wishart’s day were gone, new businesses in their place. That was just a normal symptom of the tough times everyone had been going through for the past few years. Maybe, after enough time passed, the block could be completely renewed, and doors again could be left open.

  The people who remember still do it in their own way, largely alone, and life goes on.

  Sally A. Trout, whose interior design firm was only two doors away from the Provenance Gallery, said she had been changed forever by the murder. She still found the subject hard to think about, even though years had passed. She couldn’t walk past “that space” without being overwhelmed by creepiness.

  She shivered every time.

  It wasn’t the fault of the people who operated that space now, of course, but that kind of bad energy stayed. Then again, maybe she had it wrong. Maybe traumatized people carried the bad energy inside them, and it wasn’t at the crime scene at all. The people who went there now, and didn’t know what had occurred there, couldn’t feel it. But Trout could feel it—because she remembered.

  Her office still had a “panic button,” in case she and her workers were ever accosted by an intruder—a security measure that would have seemed bizarre during the innocent days before the murder. She still supplied her largely female staff with Mace so they could feel safer going to and from their cars at the bookends of each day. She had a retail office in a different location now, but it remained policy that no one was allowed to work alone.

  Marcia Corbino, the Sarasota art historian, completed a second fictionalized version of Wishart’s murder and Murphy’s trial. As of March 2011, she was having the work edited in hopes of getting it pu
blished.

  Bob Ardren, the writer for Sarasota Magazine who volunteered a DNA sample during the days after Wishart’s murder, died at age sixty-seven of cancer on January 1, 2008.

  Reedy Photoprocess, which employed Murphy for six months back in the early 1980s, made a tough but efficient transition to digital photography. There came a time when all equipment had to be thrown away and replaced with new equipment, but the business survived. The location in Pasadena where Murphy worked was sold many years ago and is currently a Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) post.

  Murphy’s brother Dean and his wife Alane still operate the Boat in the Moat Restaurant near Solomon’s Castle.

  Elton Murphy bragged, “My brother also books all the tours of the thousands of people who visit Solomon’s Castle yearly.”

  As it turns out, in the twenty-first century, Murphy’s delusions regarding the SEALs police—squads of avengers seeking out those who falsely claimed to be SEALs—turned out to be not so far off the mark.

  There was in reality a small band of veterans and civilian volunteers scattered across the country who have dedicated their existence to exposing phony ex-SEALs.

  The problem, barely a blip until 2011, became an epidemic after a Navy SEAL killed Osama bin Laden. All of a sudden every con artist in the country was adding the SEALs to their résumés.

  One guy, Steve Robinson, a former SEAL from Forsyth, Missouri, even wrote a book called No Guts, No Glory: Unmasking Navy Seal Imposters.

  Bibliography

  Corbino, Marcia. “A Fine Madness.” Sarasota Magazine, November 2003. Available online at www.sarasotamagazine.com/Articles/Past-Issues/2003/November-2003/A-Fine-Madness.aspx

  Kipling, Kay. “Death of an Art Dealer.” Sarasota Magazine, November 1, 2005. Available online at http://sarasotamagazine.com/Articles/Past-Issues/2005/November-2005/Death-of-an-Art-Dealer.aspx

  About the Author

  Originally from Rochester, New York, Michael Benson is a graduate of Hofstra University. He is the author of Betrayal in Blood, The Burn Farm, Killer Twins, Mommy Deadliest, and Watch Mommy Die. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  Joyce Wishart was murdered in this art gallery—killed and horribly mutilated late on a Friday afternoon. Her remains were not discovered until five days later. (Sarasota Police Department)

  The view of the Provenance Gallery′s interior, as seen from the front door. (Sarasota Police Department)

  The Provenance was one in a series of art galleries all in a row along Sarasota′s toney North Palm Avenue. (Sarasota Police Department)

  Police could determine the approximate time the killer entered the art gallery by the fact that the security system had not been activated. The sign in the window reads: PROV-E-NANCE 1: ORIGIN, SOURCE 2: THE HISTORY OF A VALUABLE OBJECT OR WORK OF ART. (Sarasota Police Department)

  Thinking at first that the killer might be someone Joyce Wishart knew, police went over her belongings for clues as to who he might be. Joyce′s car was found in its regular parking spot in the parking garage near the gallery. Everything appeared normal. (Sarasota Police Department)

  Police tape stopped pedestrians from walking directly by the Provenance Gallery, to prevent any inadvertent contamination of the crime scene. At the far right is Admiral Travel, the agency where Michelle Andersen worked. Police asked her if she′d seen anything unusual during the week before the murder. Her first reaction was that she′d never seen anything unusual ever. (Sarasota Police Department)

  The killer used his interest in this painting of a nude as an excuse to return to the Provenance Gallery. Joyce Wishart was holding the painting when her killer attacked. (Sarasota Police Department)

  The body was found with its head in a far corner, spread-eagled, with multiple stab wounds to the breasts. Most disturbing, her vagina had been removed. Notice the careful placement of the shoes. Though Murphy denies it, perhaps feeling it flies in the face of his insanity defense, it seems apparent that the killer was trying to create his own obscene artwork. (Sarasota Police Department)

  Joyce Wishart′s body was positioned so that her head (extreme lower right) was almost touching a geometrical abstract work, comprised of several media and various angles and shapes. (Sarasota Police Department)

  The crime scene from another angle. The victim′s legs can be seen at the bottom left. (Sarasota Police Department)

  The victim′s body was posed so that the left hand rested upon a copy of Sarasota Magazine, opened to an article by Marcia Corbino called ″A Fine Madness.″ The feature profiled Sarasota in the good old days when it was a colony of eccentric artists, writers, and circus folk. The man with the moustache and hat is Fletcher Martin, a Sarasota artist

  who died in 1979. (Sarasota Police Department)

  Joyce Wishart′s right shoe, a key component in the killer′s posed crime scene, had a single droplet of blood inside it (arrow). (Sarasota Police Department)

  Heavy blood spatter struck the artwork in the vicinity of the murder. Sweeping marks through the blood indicated a quick and careless attempt to wipe the blood away. In several spots the killer seemed to have attempted cleanup activity, but wasn′t very good at it. (Sarasota Police Department)

  A spatter expert could look at the bloodstained artwork in the vicinity of the murder and determine from which direction the blood came and how fast it was traveling when it struck. (Sarasota Police Department)

  Blood and tissue encrusted the artwork. (Sarasota Police Department)

  There was blood spatter on the tiled walls of the gallery′s bathroom. Again, a halfhearted attempt to clean up had been made, accomplishing little more than to smear the blood over a larger surface. (Sarasota Police Department)

  Police found several palm prints in the gallery, easy to see because they were in the victim′s blood. (Sarasota Police Department)

  A palm print was also discovered in this glop of blood spatter. (Sarasota Police Department)

  The key piece of evidence, ″possible tissue from carpeting,″ was sent by the Sarasota Police Department to the FDLE′s Tampa Crime Laboratory for analysis. (Sarasota Police Department)

  The toilet in Murphy′s Shade Avenue rooming house, where he said he disposed of the vagina he stole from Joyce Wishart′s body. (Sarasota Police Department)

  The eyes of a mutilator. (Sarasota Police Department)

  On February 25, 2004, Elton Murphy was arrested and charged with burglarizing a dentist′s office. (Sarasota Police Department)

  When arrested for burglarizing this building, Murphy was armed with a hatchet and a jackknife. He was in possession of prescription medications. (Sarasota Police Department)

  The break Sarasota Police Department had been looking for came when Elton Murphy was arrested in Texas and a sample of his DNA was confiscated. (Harris County Sheriff′s Office, courtesy Sarasota Police Department)

  When Sarasota police officers went to Houston to arrest Murphy for the murder, they photographed him while he was dressed and undressed—here without his shirt. (Sarasota Police Department)

  While capturing Elton Murphy′s large hands, the photographer also gives us a view of the killer′s ankle chain. (Sarasota Police Department)

  Murphy as he appears today. (Florida Department of Corrections)

  The many faces of Elton Brutus Murphy. (Sarasota Police Department)

  The Honorable Deno G. Economou, circuit judge, ruled in 2007 that Murphy was fit to stand trial. (Courtesy Judge Economou)

  Prosecutor Suzanne O′Donnell handled the forensic evidence at Murphy′s trial, so Lon Arend could concentrate on Murphy′s sanity. (Photo by Dawn M. Buff)

  Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals connected to this story.

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  Copyright © 2013 by Michael Benson

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