Gary Murphy, brutal murderer of Anita Cobby, pictured leaving a Sydney hospital

One of the men who brutally raped and murdered Sydney nurse Anita Cobby has been photographed for the first time in public in 30 years.

It’s been three decades since Australia glimpsed the face of pure evil, belonging to notorious murderer Gary Murphy.

The 61-year-old was photographed leaving Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney’s inner-south this morning, a month after he was brutally bashed by a gang of inmates.

Murphy remained silent as he was wheeled to a waiting prison van, his hands shackled and torso restrained by a secure belt.

He ignored questions from waiting media, who asked if he had anything he wanted to say to the family of Anita Cobby, the 26-year-old nurse he and four others raped and murdered in 1986.

But he said nothing as he was loaded into the vehicle that transported him back to Long Bay Correctional Complex, the place he will spend the rest of his days.

Anita Cobby was raped and murdered in a crime that shocked Australia.

The frail and bearded killer has spent the past four weeks outside of the prison’s four walls, after being rushed to St Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst on June 25.

A group of up to eight men are believed to have attacked him inside the prison’s shower block, leaving with him a string of significant head and facial injuries.

When guards found Murphy at about 10.20am, he was in a critical condition and a helicopter was summoned, but paramedics on board declared he could be transported by road.

He was treated at St Vincent’s, where it was said he was clinging to life, before stabilising and moving to Prince of Wales.

“A number of possible assailants have been identified,” a Corrective Services NSW spokeswoman said in a statement at the time.

“Corrective Services NSW is assisting NSW Police with their investigations.”

Murphy maintains that his injuries were the result of slipping and falling in the shower — apparently an excuse to avoid reprisals for ratting on inmates.

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Anita Cobby's murderer Gary Murphy being released from Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick. Picture: Tim Hunter.

Last month, Ms Cobby’s husband John told The Daily Telegraph: “I’d like to know who they are so I can buy them a bottle of champagne.”

“I’m not one to celebrate people being hurt but in this case I hope they broke a lot of bones.”

Australians of a certain age will recall with a chill Murphy’s name.

He and brothers Michael and Les, along with John Travers and Michael Murdoch, spotted Ms Cobby walking along a road in Blacktown on the night of February 2, 1986.

She was alone having just gotten off a train, following a dinner with friends.

Ms Cobby was to have phoned her father from the station to pick her up, but the pay phone there was out of order, so she set out on foot.

Five men grabbed Anita Cobby off the street and pulled her into stolen car, and drove her to secluded a paddock where she was raped and murdered.

The five men grabbed her and dragged her into the stolen vehicle.

She was driven to a field in Prospect where the gang repeatedly raped and beat her. Travis then slit her throat and they left her to die.

Two days later, a farmer found her naked body face down in the paddock.

It’s said that Australia lost its innocence on the day Ms Cobby was found, with the details of the crime so brutal that they sent shockwaves across the country.

“Anita Lorraine Cobby suffered two hours of sustained degradation, brutality and unbridled lust,’’ Crown Prosecutor Allan Saunders told a Supreme Court jury in 1987.

She was working as a registered nurse before her death and a few years prior had been crowned the winner of the Miss Western Sydney beauty pageant.

The five were found guilty and sentenced to prison, never to be released.