Mark Morri: After 33 years, the smirk on Cobby killer’s face has gone
I was there the day Gary Murphy smirked after being found guilty of the horrific killing of nurse Anita Cobby but when I saw him again today — 33 years later — that grin had disappeared, writes crime reporter Mark Morri.
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The last time I saw Gary Murphy he was smirking in Darlinghurst court having just been found guilty of one of the most horrific murders in Sydney's history.
It sickened everyone to watch this snivelling animal giggling when they had spent weeks hearing what he and his brothers Michael and Les had done, along with John Travis and Michael Murdoch, to nurse Anita Cobby in 1986.
There was not an ounce of remorse as they were all sentenced never to be released for the abduction rape and murder of Anita, who was also a charity beauty queen.
Today as Murphy was being wheeled out of Randwick’s Prince of Wales Hospital in a wheelchair, there was none of the smirking that so infuriated me and others in the courtroom on the day he was found guilty.
All I could see was an older, balder version of the coward in the paddock and the court, who I knew had taken the life of a totally innocent and beautiful person.
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Thirty-three years ago, when he was arrested after a three-week manhunt, Gary Murphy literally pissed his pants.
The next day the police took him back to the paddock where he and the others had so callously left Anita to die, making sure he was still in his urine-soaked pants to humiliate him.
They deliberately wouldn't let him get changed. They wanted to show that this snivelling little man was nothing more than a coward who went to water once caught by the cops.
One of the detectives took me aside and said “make sure you put that picture on Page 1”.
“When the other crims see he has pissed his pants they will flog him. It shows his weakness and they will pounce,” he said.
From what I heard later he wasn't far wrong and that image caused Gary Murphy plenty of grief inside.
And I know his brother got a piece of painful prison justice soon after he was jailed.
A group of prisoners held him down while a piece of clear plastic tubing with barbed wire was inserted up his rectum.
The plastic tubing was then ripped away leaving the barbed wire to do enormous amount of internal — although not lethal — damage. Some called it barbaric, others poetic justice.
Thirty-three years after Anita’s death, there still appears to be some prison code of justice. Last month while in a shower block at Long Bay, Murphy was beaten by six to eight prisoners. They broke ribs, ruptured his spleen and inflicting severe head injuries.
He’s certainly not laughing now.
Originally published as Mark Morri: After 33 years, the smirk on Cobby killer’s face has gone
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