Jennifer Murphy as a child.
I was working in the newsroom last fall when we got a call that police in Lawrence had arrested a 27-year-old woman who had just robbed and beaten a 59-year-old woman in a supermarket parking lot. She was a live one, we were told. Photographer Paul Bilodeau and I headed over to the station. The video I shot of her drug-induced and profanity-laced struggle with police was an instant hit online. At more than 20,000 views I believe it’s the highest viewed video on our YouTube channel. It was news — a slice of Lawrence life and what police often have to deal with. It didn’t sit right with me, though. I went home that night feeling ill. Four months later a reporter put a newspaper clipping on my desk. She’d been found hung in her cell in prison.
I’m not sure what compelled me to seek out Murphy’s family. I wasn’t even sure they’d talk to me. I was, after all, the guy that shot a video of their niece in one of the lowest moments of her life. But that’s much of what news does — we cover the highs, the lows. There isn’t always time for back story. But there’s always a back story. In this Sunday’s Eagle-Tribune I take a look at Murphy’s back story. It started with the death of her mom at age 10 and the pain and depression that would increasingly push her down a destructive path.
Is she just a victim? No. No more than any of us are victims of the crap life throws at us — some to a far greater extent than others. Whatever pain she struggled with, though, she picked her friends; she made her choices. But there was a moment when she looked at me — just after she tried to spit on me and police were leading her away. I saw something in her eyes. Desperation? Someone hiding beneath a haze of drugs and a protective layer of rage? Maybe. I don’t know. I’m wary of reading into things.
When her family showed me a picture of her as a little girl sitting on her front porch (pictured above), it grabbed me. How does someone go from that to what I saw? When does the innocence die?
Sure, it’s a cautionary tale of the dangers of drugs. But for me, I guess it’s also a reminder that not everything is black and white. Not every criminal we video or splash across the front page entered the world that way. Some of them started out as innocent little girls who lost their mothers.
Jennifer Murphy struggles with Lawrence Police as she's led from the station last October.
Noah R. Bombard is the new media editor for The Eagle-Tribune in North Andover. He is a former award-winning newspaper and magazine editor who has been covering news in Massachusetts since 1997.