October 2, 2024 • 38 mins
Matt Murphy is a former homicide prosecutor with over 20 years of experience at the Orange County District Attorney’s office. He is currently a legal analyst for ABC News and an avid shark diver and surfer. His new book, The Book of Murder, chronicles his career and the lessons he learned from prosecuting some of the most notorious cases in Southern California.
Listeners can learn more about Matt Murphy at his website, or on IG @mattmurphylaw
Resources:
The Book of Murder : A Prosecutor’s Journey Through Love and Death
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, talks with Matt Murphy, a renowned legal analyst, former homicide prosecutor, and shark diver. With over 20 years of experience in the Orange County DA’s office, Matt shares his unique insights into solving cold cases, tackling notorious serial killer cases, and the emotional toll of bringing justice to victims and their families. The conversation also covers his new book, The Book of Murder: A Prosecutor's Journey Through Love and Death, and how his career has shaped his outlook on life.
Show Notes:
- (0:00) Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum
- (0:10) Sheryl introduces guest, Matt Murphy to Zone 7
- (2:00) Matt Murphy's cold case approach
- (5:20) “The only thing worse than losing a loved one is losing a loved one to murder. And the only thing worse than losing a loved one to murder is when the killer gets away with it.”
- (10:00) Matt’s personal hobbies - shark diving
- (14:00) Teamwork and collaboration in solving cases
- (20:00) Life as a homicide prosecutor - impact on personal life
- (23:30) The importance of teamwork and mentorship
- (30:30) The significance of bringing justice to murder victims’ families
- (38:00) “Monsters can mask their true nature, especially in settin’s, where you get limited exposure to their full selves.”
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review!
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Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
- Instagram: @officialzone7podcast
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Y'all. Tonight, we have a legend. Matt Murphy is with us.
He is a legal analyst for ABC News. He's a
former homicide prosecutor, and y'all, he's spent over twenty years
prosecuting homicides, violent sex cases, all with the Orange County
(00:33):
DA's office. He's, you know, prosecuted some pretty notable cases,
some were cold cases. He's done famous serial killer cases,
no body cases, you name it, if it came out
of that office, he had his hands on it.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
You know him from.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
ABC obviously, but you've also seen him on twenty twenty
Good Morning America I Crime with Elizabeth Fargas.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
He's also is an.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Avid surfer and one thing I want to talk to
him about. He's a sharp diver, because you know, his
life wasn't risky enough going to crime scenes, running up
down the street with you know, detectives on homicide cases
and mafia cases and you know, different things with serial
killers and all y'all. He loves to also paint, which
(01:24):
I did not know about him. Several of y'all have
been with me at crime con where he has taken
the stage and flat shown off.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I'm a huge fan, not just a friend.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I'm a huge fan, So y'all help me welcome Matt
Murphy to his own seventh Thank.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
You very much.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Well, I've been looking forward to this because you know,
there's one thing I left out.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And we're gonna get to it in a minute, y'all.
But I left out a real important thing that he's
got on his resume too. But if we could.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I always liked when I talked to prosecutor or veteran detectives,
I like to know your process.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
How do you take.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
On a cold case, Matt, Like, what is your first
thing when you get in on your desk?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Well, I think that when when I was working those cases.
So Orange County is a vertical system, so it's it's
a little bit different than most DAIS offices. So I
had a patch in the county basically, So I had
the cities at the coast of Mesa, Laguna, Newport Beach,
and Irvine. So any murders that happened in any one
of the cities was automatically assigned to me and I'd
(02:33):
roll out, you know, with my assigned da investigator to
whatever whatever crime scenes. You know, we got the calls
calls on But after about five years, I became one
of the two cold case deputies, so that gave me
the whole county. And the first step in working a
good cold case is getting a good detective on it.
(02:55):
So when you have a detective who really is interested
in the case or in in the from the DA side,
I worked with the guy for years named Larry Montgomery,
and he was just the man who was born to
soft cold cases. And from there, what you do is
you go down to the police department with your investigator
and whoever the lead detective is from that agency, and
(03:16):
you roll up your sleeves and you go to work.
You pull out these old boxes and they're kind of
like time capsules, and you never know what you're going
to find in those boxes. In fact, we had one
case where we opened the box from a nineteen seventy
five murder out of Santa Monica and we popped the
box open and there's there's the ligature that was around
(03:37):
the victim's neck sitting right there in this cardboard box
which we submitted for DNA and lo and behold our suspects.
DNA was all over it.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
That is amazing.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yeah, you never know what you're going to find. When
you do that, and for a lot of those cool cases,
you're you're looking for things to test like that ligature.
Sometimes there might be a piece of evidence that you
know that if the case predated, you know, modern forensic
science and DNA and all that sort of thing. Everyone's smiled.
(04:08):
You'll get lucky because you'll find, you know, an article
of clothing or maybe a weapon that was never swabbed
for DNA. Those forensic scientists are amazing and the stuff
that they can that they can find is amazing. And
then after that, sometimes you don't get that hit, and
then you it's just sort of a new set of eyes.
You're looking for any sort of new evidence you can
(04:30):
generate and see what you know, what you can do
on a case that's been passed over. You know that
it's previously been submitted and refused, and it's it's an
incredibly satisfying experience to you know, look at some murder
that was you know, five, ten, fifteen years later or
fifteen years earlier, and somebody will have gotten away with it.
(04:52):
And it is if you can build those things and
put them together and charge those killers, it is awesome.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It's a great fel Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Great feeling and it may sound cornery, but it's all
about bringing justice to the victims' families. It really is
the only thing we're some losing a loved one is
losing a love under murder, And the only thing worre
some losing a love under murder is when the killer
gets away with it. So it's incredibly important to those
families to have somebody on their side.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
You know, the thing that I left off your resume
was you are now an author, and you know I
got your book and it's called for everybody listening, The
Book of Murder, a Prosecutor's Journey through Love and death.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Now, Matt, I got.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
To tell you something. I found this thing spellbinding. And
here's why you paint such a clear, accurate picture of
our world. I mean, I'm still an active CSI and
some of those scenes you were describing when you first
got there and you're walking through with your detective and
(06:00):
then the courtroom scenes, I was right.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
There with you, Honey. This book is so good. But
I want you to.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Talk about one thing in particular, and I'm paraphrasing, but
you say in the book, each murder also offers us
the opportunity to reflect on our own lives, how fortunate.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
We are to still have them.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
When surrounded by death, you quickly develop a desire, a
screaming need to actually live.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Amen, brother, I.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Mean, I cannot tell you enough, and I tell my
own children because sometimes they're like, Mama, you see such
bad stuff I do. But I promise you it has
made me a better mother, It's made me a better wife,
it's made me a better sister. It's made me a
better friend. Because when my children were little, if they
ever said, you.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Know, Mama, can you play with me?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I stopped what I was doing that second because I
know some people were robbed of the next second, and
I'm not going to have that happen to me. So
talk a little bit about the surfing and anything else.
Do you want to talk about about how you truly
live your life wide open?
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Baby?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah, thank you for saying that. No, it is. It
is one of those things, and you can certainly relate
to it if you're you know, when you're going out
there and you're doing CSI, it's like you see over
and over again, you see somebody that they had just
they had no idea that when they woke up that
day that was going to be their last morning. You know,
my first scene. And I talked a little bit about
(07:38):
this in the book, My very first homestead scene. You know,
I I looked at this guy and he had a
he's honest, back in the kitchen of a of a
town home. And as you know, the majority of cases
you respond to if you're working murder cases are domestics.
Domestic violence is a very it's probably the kind of
the bread and butter. So this guy is, he's on
(08:01):
his back in this kitchen, and I, you know, it's
my first, my first murder scene. I'm thirty three years old,
and I'd seen all those scenes on TV, you know,
where people are, you know, the the new guy always
what does he do? The new guy always throws up right,
So I didn't know if that was real. I don't
know if that was a thing. So I'm already I
(08:22):
looked like I'm twelve, talk my way past the perimeter
guy with the you know, yellow tape, the officer on
the perimeter, and I go in and this guy had
a had a knife in his left hand, but a
wallet chain going back to his right back pocket. So I,
you know, I get escorted in and he had moved
the body yet, and I'm you know, I'm thinking, don't puke,
(08:44):
don't puke, don't puke. And then as soon as I
kind of looked down at it, it was like, wait
a minute, that makes no sense. Why would have left
he have a wallet in his right back pocket or
a righty hold a knife in his left hand. So
it instantly struck me. And then my very next thought was,
I wonder if those were the last, if you had
(09:05):
any idea those were the last shoelaces he would ever tie.
You know, It's just the sort of the stony thoughts
that go through your head and and I, you know,
I wanted to share some of that with the jury.
So the first thing, I mean, with your your audience,
the first thing that you you know, working those cases
(09:25):
is you you really you You see these people whose
lives were cut short suddenly and they had no idea.
So it really does make you, you know, want to
appreciate the opportunities that you've got. And yeah, I got
into I've been surfing my whole life, but I've gotten
into diving with sharks, and number one, I want to
die with them, you know, before it's too late, you know,
(09:49):
because their their shark populations are threatened everywhere. But but
there is nothing that focuses your attention than being scuba
diving without a case and a big shark is swimming
up to you, or even a little shark if it's angry,
and you just have complete focus. You're not thinking about
anything else. And it's for me that has always been
(10:12):
a really relaxing thing. It's like surfing big waves. You
can't afford to let your mind wander too much. You've
got to really concentrate on what you're doing. But shark
diving is just a thrill. And in fact, I'm in
the process of booking a trip to Cuba in November
on a liver Board Dot trip that is supposed to
be a shark city and I can't wait.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Oh that sounds amazing.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
We also have the Wildlife CSI Academy in Atlanta, and
you know one thing that we learned when we went
over to South Africa and trained with the Wildlife Forensic
Academy is you know that shark population you're talking about,
I mean, it is dwindling because of poachin and.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It's just a shame it's just a shame in this world.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Yeah, shark finning. Shark finning is an ecological crime against
It's truly, it's literally a crime against nature. You know,
nickil about one hundred million of them a year and
it's absolutely horrific.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
It's going to change the ocean, which is going to
change the earth.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Yep, that's right, that's right. Really, all for one single.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Dish, All for one single dish, yep for shark shark
fin soup.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, insane.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
But you know one thing about the book, you know
this podcast, It is called Zone seven, and the reason
that became the name of it is because Atlanta has
six police zones. So back in the day before cell phones,
if we wanted to all get together afterwards, we would say, hey,
let's five nine at Zone seven, which was Manual's tavern,
(11:43):
our cop bar. So Zone seven started very social, a
lot of fun. But what started to happen for me, Matt,
was the old guard that would come and tell their stories,
that would take you aside and say, hey, don't let
your temper get the best of you. I know that
this is what the sop says, but you better do
this too.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Like really help you. So those people that you began
to trust and if they.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Told you something, it was gold. I mean you could
literally take it to the bank. And there's a part
of your book where your zone seven is so clear
to me. And I don't want you to talk about
this actual part. I'm just prompting you because y'all, this
is called a teaser. So if you want to know
about it, you got to go get the book. But
in the book, you have somebody that you trust and
(12:31):
you take their advice the way it's meant to only
help you. But this person tells you, Hey, Matt, you're
off the case, and instead of getting angry or fight
for that case, he tells you, I promise you it'll
be the best possible thing for your career, like later
down the road.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
And I think that is so important.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
When you accepted that and didn't just, you know, fight
for the wrong thing, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
I had. I was really lucky. And then I got
I got sort of recruited and mentored by There was
a man named Lou Rosenbloom who was he was my
immediate supervisor, and I talked about him a lot in
the book. And then his boss at the Times, a
guy named Brian Brown, and these guys are just they
were legends in their in their own right. I used
to watch them both when I was a baby da
(13:20):
and go watch them and trial because they're just so
good at it. They're like my professional fathers in a way,
you know. And they guided me and sort of looked
out for me and protected me from the internal politics
of that place. And I just I owe them. I
owe those guys everything. It's another one named Rick King,
who is my supervisor and sexual assault, and I just
these guys have remained, you know, sort of my mentors
(13:43):
at work kind of became my mentors in life, and
they're just amazing people. So I was I was really lucky.
So when those guys say the swirling politics on this
case and it just happened on one, but when they said,
you know, we're gonna we're gonna give this one to
one of the more experienced people, you know, I had
(14:05):
to have complete faith. I had no choice, number one,
but I'd have complete faith in those guys because they'd
been they'd had my back and been pulling for me
for my entire career at that point, and they were
absolutely right. I just, you know, and also it's like
you know, you it wasn't anything I had done. It
was the politics got it. Just it was a huge
(14:26):
case and I hadn't done a death penalty case yet,
and I was, you know, I was thirty four when
I had that thing, and the elected DA wanted somebody
with more capital case experience, which I completely understand that,
and he was. He was also really good to me
over the years. So there's there's times, you know, professionally,
especially when you're a young professional, where I think that
(14:47):
the best thing you can do oftentimes is sort of
take the hit and and be supportive of the guys,
of the people that are looking out for you. And
I'm using the word guys, but my first mentor in
that office was when named Kathy Harper, who essentially recruited
me out of law school. And I wouldn't have had
any of these experiences if it wasn't for her. So, yeah,
(15:09):
you take the hit, you chalk it up to experience,
and you make sure that on the next one you
try to learn, try to learn from it, you know,
And that's what I did in that case, and I
never had another one taken away from me.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Again, You've said a couple of things that are so
important in my career, and luck is one of them.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
And the second thing is.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
That ego, because a lot of people would not have
just taken the hit. They would have argued they might
have even have burned a bridge over it. I mean
I've burned some bridges. There's been a couple I might.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Have blown up.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Well. You know it's interesting, right because I think it
sometimes and I think you can nail on the head
with the ego right when it's when it's more about
your ego than anything else. Like that was a case
that the detectives did such good work. The case was
not going to suffer for the changing of the guard
(16:04):
on it, and I knew that. And the guy they
gave it to went up becoming my boss in the future.
His man named Dave Brent, who crushed that case. I
mean he did. He was an outstanding lawyer and he
did everything right. So you know, being part of a
team is like, Okay, we're going to give this to
one of the veterans because it's just gotten too big.
You know, that's one of those things that, yeah, you
(16:26):
can't let your ego because there's good there. You know,
there's going to be more opportunity. There's going to be
more cases, especially at that age I was so young.
But there are other times, you know, where you do
have to stand on principle and you talk about burning
bridges versus blowing up bridges. Believe me, I've blown up
a few bridges and and you look, you know it's
(16:51):
it's about and it wasn't about ego. It was about
right and wrong in my in my view, and some
people might disagree that. People on the other side start
I'm sure they do. They're wrong, but I'm sure they
do disagree. But especially in this business. You know, Franklin
Dellan and Roosevelt had an awesome quote. It was all
(17:11):
I ask from history is that I be judged by
the quality of my enemies, you know. And I thought
that was a great one, you know. And there's some
there's some awesome there's some awesome poems out there about
oh gosh, and I'm blanking on the Cameron for it
was Shelley. Anyway, there's a there's a great poem about
how if you haven't made enemies in a professional context,
(17:34):
that means that you're you know, you haven't worked hard
enough to fight for what's right. And I you know,
and it's true. And there are times in the being
a being a prosecutor where you know, there you know
there might be a judge who doesn't get it, and
you know, you I've I've yelled at more than one
judge over the course of my career, and you know,
(17:55):
I don't think I think that might be a light
scorching of those bridges. I never never burned any bridges
with judges, but I've burned I've burned a couple with
uh with you know, elected officials over the years. And
I would torture those things again because they were wrong.
And you know, it doesn't make your life any easier
(18:16):
when you've got somebody that's very powerful who's mad at you.
But you know, part of my job, especially since leaving,
is I've been representing victims of sexual assault pro bono
and I've gone into court and I've had to fight
some DA's that didn't that that were weak, that didn't
understand the strength of certain cases. And you know the
problem is it's you can't vicariously prosecute one of those things.
(18:39):
But you know, you go in, you fight as hard
as you can, and some people, some people don't like that.
I never want to make enemies. You know, you don't.
You don't. You don't wake up in the morning and
say today I'm going to make an enemy. But sometimes
there's a there's a very clear right and wrong, and
you know, I think the reverse is just as dangerous,
where it's like, Okay, well I don't want to make
(19:00):
an enemy. They might hurt me, so I'm going to
back down from this fight. Sometimes the most important thing,
especially for victims of sexual assault or violent crime, is
having somebody in their corner who's just throwing haymakers and
sometimes they land and sometimes they don't, but just having
somebody fighting what's wrong. You know. I've been comfortable in
(19:20):
that role. You know, even you're fighting city hall and
it's not going your way, the fight itself is if
that's all you can give those poor people. For me,
I'm willing to burn some of those bridges, and believe me,
I've I've burned a few, and you know, and I
regret the circumstances that led to it, but I can
(19:40):
honestly say I would have done the exact same thing. Again.
I don't regret the choices that I made that took
me there. So yes, it's I guess it's double sided
right now.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I'm with you one hundred percent, and I think that's
what we're made of. I mean, we fight for the underdog.
That's while we're in the position we're in. And you know,
I had a victim of domestic violence that her husband
beat her nearly to death. I mean it was literally
the hand of God that saved her. And I spent
(20:12):
months trying to convince her to testify against him.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And one of the examples that.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
I would use is, even verbally, you don't deserve what
he was saying to you, much less the physical and financial.
And so I finally got her to where she was
going to testify. We go into court and I'm trying
to explain to the judge all the facts of this
case that I know them to be, and this was
(20:38):
this particular judge. But the upshot was she told me
to shut up and sit down. Now I had judged it, yes,
And I had spent all of this time telling her.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
You should not be disrespected, you should not be taught to.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Like, you know, in any kind of way that would
be perceived as negative or you know, rude or ugly
or any of that so I had no choice but
to stand up and start talking.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
So that's one of those times where you're not going
to win it.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
But again, to your point, that's a bridge that I
would burn over and over and over and over. I
was correct in that situation. Now we got to change
gears a little bit because I tell you something else
you did in that book, Honey, when you set out
to tell the truth, you told the truth. This business, y'all,
is tough.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
On your love life.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And you know, you open this thing up and you
paint such a clear picture of what the long hours
are like when you finally get home but you're still
on call in you're home ten minutes and got to
turn around and leave, or you've got to leave a
party or your anniversary or the surprise birthday party for
your partner, whatever it is. It is tough on the
(21:52):
people you love because you're constantly running to somebody you
don't know to help them.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So I appreciate you addressing this and in the way
that you do it. So talk a little bit about
those long hours.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Well, yeah, so the funny thing about that unit when
you get into homicide, so the way works in Orange
County is you just carry a case out of homicide
cases and so you're you're especially when you go to
the crime scene and you you know, I've been there
for notifications, which is when the family essentially comes home
and learns that their love one has been murdered. And
(22:34):
you know, the great word is just it's apoplectic grief
that these people are are going through. So you you
really you understand the enormat of your responsibility as a
prosecutor when you meet when you meet like the mother
of a murder victim, when you're involved in one of
those cases, it's like you have you've got fun stuff
(22:55):
that you want to do. And since I didn't have kids,
you've got you know, like Thanksgiving dinner, that's that that
you want to go to, or maybe a birthday dinner
or a birthday party, and when the phone rings, you
know you have to go. And it is it's really
tough for people who aren't in the business, who don't
(23:20):
do this professionally, to understand how important it is that
you're there. And and then you know, the last serial
killer I did you know, we were in that trial
for six months. It's a kind named Andrew Ordelis. It
was a six month long jury trial. So for for
your listeners, that imagine finals in school, except instead of
(23:41):
lasting three weeks, if they last for six months. That's
kind of what it's like. There's you don't have enough
time in any given day to get all the prep
work done and and get everything taken care of that
you need to go and you'll need for the next
day in court and you're there. There isn't enough time
in the day to do all the work that needs
(24:01):
to be done, and there's always more, especially when the
defense starts, you know, giving you expert expert reports that
they're going to put on the stand because there's the
amount of research you could do on one expert is endless.
So you're you know, when you when you're in a relationship,
you know, when I talk about this in the book,
one of them was I was I was dating a
(24:22):
woman at the time who was a deputy DA and
in a different office. She's actually Los Angeles to Day's office,
and it was her birthday dinner and we had what
turned out to be a double homicide, and then on
top of that, it turned out to be an absolutely
horrific double homicide that uh, you know, in the middle
(24:43):
of the middle of dinner, I got the call and
it was my detectives at Coast MESA that I've been
working with for I don't know, over ten years at
that point, and they they needed me, you know. And also,
when you're there as a prosecutor, you know, you're you're
ensuring that the that the due process rights of the
suspect are you know, are scrupulously adhere to. And that's
(25:07):
good long term for the case because you can help
your detectives with things like search warrants and things to
make sure that the case doesn't get reversed on appeal,
which puts the family through it again. You know. So
there's it really is an important thing if you can
be there as a DA to do everything you can
(25:27):
to be there, and you know, I yeah. So like
the woman that my my predecessor, her name was Debbie Lloyd,
just a fantastic lawyer, but she was she was rotating
out after twelve years when she gave me the caseload.
And Debbie was was smart and funny and interesting, the
(25:47):
phenomenal trial talent, and but you know, she she was
you know, and she's very private, but she wasn't she
was unmarried, and I didn't. I didn't realize that the
job could take that much of a toll on relationships,
but it sure did. And you know, some people that
(26:09):
you know, potential romantic partners are more understanding than others.
And and look, I get it. It's it's not for everyone.
And then you know, I dated one woman for a
while that it just you know, it was not her
cup of tea. And you know, and there's another another
one I diated, you know, not that long ago. Who
(26:34):
uh you know, she she flat out had no like
it wasn't that she had no stomach for it. It
was that she could not relate at all to like
to a bereaved famili's desire to get justice. And she
was pretty judgmental about it, as a matter of fact,
And it was it was that that was more on
my end, Like she was very dismissive that, like, well,
(26:56):
they should, you know, kind of move on. And they
need to understand it, you know, the the you know,
the people who commit murder often are victims of trauma
in their own life. And it's like, oh, really, a
murder victims mother needs to understand the trauma that the
killer has gone through, Like you know, So it's you know,
(27:16):
you also you see things, you know, so it's not
just that they couldn't handle the job like you see
things as a prosecutor, like you do as a CSI
that you know, there are I have I would have
a very hard time, you know, romantically getting serious with
anybody who can't can't understand, at least to a degree
(27:40):
and at least sympathize with what victims are going through
in those cases, because it's such a huge part of
your life as a prosecutor. There and there are, There
are people in California. My homestate is full of them
who their their allegiance and their sympathy and their empathy
is reserved almost exclusively for the people that commit the crimes.
And we see that with every new legislative session in California,
(28:01):
they passed some new crazy law that makes it easier
on you know, the murderers uh in prison or you know,
and it makes it easier for them to get out.
We got to get name George Gascone. It's the DA
of Los Angeles County right now, who is awful for victims,
absolutely the worst. He treats victims and their families horribly
and I represented the families of two murder police officers,
(28:23):
fighting against George Gascone and his policies, trying to bring
justice to those families, and you know, so romantically, you know, I,
you know, I had a I've had a couple of
those where you know, there they don't they don't get
it there they want to feel really sorry for the killers,
and and then it's it's really it's my problem, you know.
(28:45):
I I realized that that's just not a good match.
So it's tough on relationships for sure. But but again
this may sound a little, a little twisted, but I
wouldn't change the thing. If I had it to do
all over again, I would have I would have done
it again and hurt people.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
We were sitting at the squad table about a week
or so ago, and one of our buddies was talking
about his wife was so mad at him because he
had forgotten to bring strawberries home. She had texted him
like at one o'clock, Hey, can you pick some strawberries
up on the way home? The kids won't chocolate covered strawberries.
He said sure, and then some major things happened that
(29:24):
we're all horrible, and he just forgot about it, and
then driving home, he's trying to you know how you
try to put it wherever you can put it so
that when you walk in the door, you're not looking
like you just saw what you saw. And he was
still mad about it the next day because she had
just fallen off the handle about it, and he's like, yeah,
you know, a killer threatened to murder me yesterday, but
(29:46):
you know, let's worry about the strawberries.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
So for him, his world is so different than hers. Hers.
Was the biggest thing that happened to her that.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Day bad was the kids are going to be disappointed
or either I now have to go to the store.
The biggest thing that happened to him was he saw
a murder and then by proxy, he was threatened. So
it is difficult. And the more sympathy your partner has
for other people in general, I think it does make
your life easier because they know what you're doing. They
(30:16):
know somebody needs you, just like an emergency room nurse
or doctor. I need that person right now, not in
an hour, So it does make a difference. And you
go into the scene, you go into the scene absolutely
saves cases. I don't know if you know this, but
(30:37):
the very first prosecutor for me when I was assigned
to his own three that ever ever came to the
crime scene, and you're talking about ninety two, ninety three,
somewhere in there was Nancy Grace. She's the first person
I ever saw leave the courthouse and come meet us
and make sure everything was like it was supposed to be.
(30:58):
So I know what a God said that is for people,
So again, thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Thank you for saying that. It is a kind of
a calling really, and also it's it's not tough. It's
the golden rule, right. You think, if how would I
want to be treated from somebody who has the legal
power to influence this, how would I want to be treated?
And what I would always do after these murdercis is
(31:24):
I'd always meet with the victims family and give them
my personal cell number so they knew and I never
had I never had a bad experience doing that, and
I would introduce them to my team, and I worked
with wonderful people in the DA's office. And you know,
I think that that has a huge impact in its
(31:46):
own right, making sure that people understand that there's somebody
there who's going to fight for them, and yeah, it's
And I'll tell you what on a case, when you
when you that jury comes back and hold somebody accountable
(32:07):
for what they did to a mother's love on when
that woman gives you a hug in the hallway when
the trial is over, it is it is the probably
the the best you can feel, because even though you
can't bring their love on back, you can, And it
sounds weird to say, you do have the power to
give them some sense of justice. And you know, you
(32:32):
go through a lot with those families and you know,
I I you almost you almost, you know, you really
get to know them, and you just your heart breaks
for them. So when you can bring it home, it
makes it all worth it.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
You and I do something in common, and I think
most of us in this business do it. But the
things that mean the most to us, that signifies something
in our career that was either unique or heroic, or
justice was some or the most sentimental, we put it
on the wall no matter what it is. And I
know you do that because you mentioned a few items
(33:09):
in the book, But when you look at your wall,
it's almost you mentioned time capsule. But my career I
can watch it when I see the things on the.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Wall, you guys, challenge coins? Is that a big deal? Yeah?
Those are some of my proudest possessions. Actly, when you
get a challenge coin from a detective or a da
from another another office. You know, being recognized by your
(33:40):
you know, your your colleagues for for good work, that
that that that means a lot. I've got a I've
got a little collection. I think everybody does that, does
it long enough? And for the peer listeners who don't know,
I think it started in Vietnam, I think. So it's
a came from the military where different units would have
what are called challenge coins, and they'd have these things
(34:02):
made up and it would have like a unit insignia
on it, and it was their own internal little reward
like for the guy who did did good you know,
the guy who you know that. So you're being recognized
informally by your by your peers, and it's a really
cool thing. So it's not like it's not a formal accommodation.
(34:24):
It's more like a it's almost more intimate than that.
It's the guys that you know, who you positively impacted,
who were with you in the trenches, and it's a
little coin that that they'll give you. And then, as
legend has it, I guess that once you got a
challenge coin, you're supposed to carry it everywhere, and if
you didn't, it's called a challenge going because if you
(34:44):
didn't have it with you and you were in a bar,
you had to buy brinks for everybody's.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Right, that's right, And I'll tell you I'd rather have
a challenge going than a metal.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Oh for sure. Yeah. A challenge coin means the the
people actually doing the work. We're grateful. The people in
the trenches with you at night in the cold, had
gratitude for you, you know, for something good that you
did over the course of the case. And I agree
one hundred percent. Those are very special. Got them displayed
(35:18):
them on a shelf in my house.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
With the challenge coins.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
I rotate mine some and I will put different ones,
like right in the center, because when somebody says, tell
me about this one, or where did you get that one?
The stories behind them are important, just like the photographs
and the maps and the things they don't understand, like
your piece of metal, Like they're not going to know
until you ask.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
And to me, that's the whole point.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
That's one of the things about the you know, I
really wanted to write this book because I wanted I
wanted to include some of the behind the scenes heroes,
like the CSI folks. You know. I mean, like honestly,
at three o'clock in the morning, when it's freezing cold
and you know, you're you're tired, and you're there those detectives.
(36:02):
It's like I've I've probably attended about one hundred scenes
over the you know, one hundred murder scenes during the
seventeen years I was in homicide. I never heard a
single complaint, not in the rain, not in the cold,
not from a detective. I never heard even a grumble
from any of the CSI texts that I worked with.
(36:24):
And it you know, you see horrible things when you
respond to a scene, and as a prosecutor, you're going
to see way more. You're going to meet with the family,
you're going to you're going to be in the presence
of that visceral grief, right and your faith in humanity
is challenged each time you see a murder victim, and
it is instantly restored because of all the wonderful people,
(36:48):
the professionals that are there to try to make it right,
to bring justice to it, to figure it out, to
make sure that a guy doesn't get away with it
or it doesn't hurt anybody else. And you see these
these dedicated professionals behind the scenes, you know. And it's
one of the working titles for the book was behind
the Yellow Table, because I wanted to tell tell people, like,
(37:09):
you know, there are unseen heroes and and that was
one of the one of the things I really tried
to get out out, you know, in the book was
the things that I saw weren't just the bad things,
It was the good things too, And these people that
worked so hard to to make sure that you know,
justice comes for the person who did this, and more importantly,
(37:30):
that it comes for the victims family. So hopefully that
that came across I. You know, I've never written a
book before, so I hope, I hope people like it.
I would love to write another one. We're looking on
at Serial Killers, uh for the next one, And yeah,
I would love to try to get another another book written.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Well, I encourage it because you did such a beautiful
job with this one. And you did that you showed
absolutely one person committed this murder, but forty showed up
to do.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Something about it.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
You did that fantastically, so I appreciate that. And another
thing you did. You were kind of sneaky with it,
but you gave a lot of good advice about how
to stay safe, even though you didn't come right out
and say that, y'all.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way I always
do with a quote.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Monsters can mask their true nature, especially in sentence where
you get limited exposure to their full sells Matt Murphy.
I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is one seven
Y'all. Tonight, we have a legend. Matt Murphy is with us.
He is a legal analyst for ABC News. He's a
former homicide prosecutor, and y'all, he's spent over twenty years
prosecuting homicides, violent sex cases, all with the Orange County
(00:33):
DA's office. He's, you know, prosecuted some pretty notable cases,
some were cold cases. He's done famous serial killer cases,
no body cases, you name it, if it came out
of that office, he had his hands on it.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
You know him from.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
ABC obviously, but you've also seen him on twenty twenty
Good Morning America I Crime with Elizabeth Fargas.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
He's also is an.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Avid surfer and one thing I want to talk to
him about. He's a sharp diver, because you know, his
life wasn't risky enough going to crime scenes, running up
down the street with you know, detectives on homicide cases
and mafia cases and you know, different things with serial
killers and all y'all. He loves to also paint, which
(01:24):
I did not know about him. Several of y'all have
been with me at crime con where he has taken
the stage and flat shown off.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I'm a huge fan, not just a friend.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I'm a huge fan, So y'all help me welcome Matt
Murphy to his own seventh Thank.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
You very much.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Well, I've been looking forward to this because you know,
there's one thing I left out.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And we're gonna get to it in a minute, y'all.
But I left out a real important thing that he's
got on his resume too. But if we could.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I always liked when I talked to prosecutor or veteran detectives,
I like to know your process.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
How do you take.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
On a cold case, Matt, Like, what is your first
thing when you get in on your desk?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Well, I think that when when I was working those cases.
So Orange County is a vertical system, so it's it's
a little bit different than most DAIS offices. So I
had a patch in the county basically, So I had
the cities at the coast of Mesa, Laguna, Newport Beach,
and Irvine. So any murders that happened in any one
of the cities was automatically assigned to me and I'd
(02:33):
roll out, you know, with my assigned da investigator to
whatever whatever crime scenes. You know, we got the calls
calls on But after about five years, I became one
of the two cold case deputies, so that gave me
the whole county. And the first step in working a
good cold case is getting a good detective on it.
(02:55):
So when you have a detective who really is interested
in the case or in in the from the DA side,
I worked with the guy for years named Larry Montgomery,
and he was just the man who was born to
soft cold cases. And from there, what you do is
you go down to the police department with your investigator
and whoever the lead detective is from that agency, and
(03:16):
you roll up your sleeves and you go to work.
You pull out these old boxes and they're kind of
like time capsules, and you never know what you're going
to find in those boxes. In fact, we had one
case where we opened the box from a nineteen seventy
five murder out of Santa Monica and we popped the
box open and there's there's the ligature that was around
(03:37):
the victim's neck sitting right there in this cardboard box
which we submitted for DNA and lo and behold our suspects.
DNA was all over it.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
That is amazing.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yeah, you never know what you're going to find. When
you do that, and for a lot of those cool cases,
you're you're looking for things to test like that ligature.
Sometimes there might be a piece of evidence that you
know that if the case predated, you know, modern forensic
science and DNA and all that sort of thing. Everyone's smiled.
(04:08):
You'll get lucky because you'll find, you know, an article
of clothing or maybe a weapon that was never swabbed
for DNA. Those forensic scientists are amazing and the stuff
that they can that they can find is amazing. And
then after that, sometimes you don't get that hit, and
then you it's just sort of a new set of eyes.
You're looking for any sort of new evidence you can
(04:30):
generate and see what you know, what you can do
on a case that's been passed over. You know that
it's previously been submitted and refused, and it's it's an
incredibly satisfying experience to you know, look at some murder
that was you know, five, ten, fifteen years later or
fifteen years earlier, and somebody will have gotten away with it.
(04:52):
And it is if you can build those things and
put them together and charge those killers, it is awesome.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It's a great fel Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Great feeling and it may sound cornery, but it's all
about bringing justice to the victims' families. It really is
the only thing we're some losing a loved one is
losing a love under murder, And the only thing worre
some losing a love under murder is when the killer
gets away with it. So it's incredibly important to those
families to have somebody on their side.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
You know, the thing that I left off your resume
was you are now an author, and you know I
got your book and it's called for everybody listening, The
Book of Murder, a Prosecutor's Journey through Love and death.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Now, Matt, I got.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
To tell you something. I found this thing spellbinding. And
here's why you paint such a clear, accurate picture of
our world. I mean, I'm still an active CSI and
some of those scenes you were describing when you first
got there and you're walking through with your detective and
(06:00):
then the courtroom scenes, I was right.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
There with you, Honey. This book is so good. But
I want you to.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Talk about one thing in particular, and I'm paraphrasing, but
you say in the book, each murder also offers us
the opportunity to reflect on our own lives, how fortunate.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
We are to still have them.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
When surrounded by death, you quickly develop a desire, a
screaming need to actually live.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Amen, brother, I.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Mean, I cannot tell you enough, and I tell my
own children because sometimes they're like, Mama, you see such
bad stuff I do. But I promise you it has
made me a better mother, It's made me a better wife,
it's made me a better sister. It's made me a
better friend. Because when my children were little, if they
ever said, you.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Know, Mama, can you play with me?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I stopped what I was doing that second because I
know some people were robbed of the next second, and
I'm not going to have that happen to me. So
talk a little bit about the surfing and anything else.
Do you want to talk about about how you truly
live your life wide open?
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Baby?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah, thank you for saying that. No, it is. It
is one of those things, and you can certainly relate
to it if you're you know, when you're going out
there and you're doing CSI, it's like you see over
and over again, you see somebody that they had just
they had no idea that when they woke up that
day that was going to be their last morning. You know,
my first scene. And I talked a little bit about
(07:38):
this in the book, My very first homestead scene. You know,
I I looked at this guy and he had a
he's honest, back in the kitchen of a of a
town home. And as you know, the majority of cases
you respond to if you're working murder cases are domestics.
Domestic violence is a very it's probably the kind of
the bread and butter. So this guy is, he's on
(08:01):
his back in this kitchen, and I, you know, it's
my first, my first murder scene. I'm thirty three years old,
and I'd seen all those scenes on TV, you know,
where people are, you know, the the new guy always
what does he do? The new guy always throws up right,
So I didn't know if that was real. I don't
know if that was a thing. So I'm already I
(08:22):
looked like I'm twelve, talk my way past the perimeter
guy with the you know, yellow tape, the officer on
the perimeter, and I go in and this guy had
a had a knife in his left hand, but a
wallet chain going back to his right back pocket. So I,
you know, I get escorted in and he had moved
the body yet, and I'm you know, I'm thinking, don't puke,
(08:44):
don't puke, don't puke. And then as soon as I
kind of looked down at it, it was like, wait
a minute, that makes no sense. Why would have left
he have a wallet in his right back pocket or
a righty hold a knife in his left hand. So
it instantly struck me. And then my very next thought was,
I wonder if those were the last, if you had
(09:05):
any idea those were the last shoelaces he would ever tie.
You know, It's just the sort of the stony thoughts
that go through your head and and I, you know,
I wanted to share some of that with the jury.
So the first thing, I mean, with your your audience,
the first thing that you you know, working those cases
(09:25):
is you you really you You see these people whose
lives were cut short suddenly and they had no idea.
So it really does make you, you know, want to
appreciate the opportunities that you've got. And yeah, I got
into I've been surfing my whole life, but I've gotten
into diving with sharks, and number one, I want to
die with them, you know, before it's too late, you know,
(09:49):
because their their shark populations are threatened everywhere. But but
there is nothing that focuses your attention than being scuba
diving without a case and a big shark is swimming
up to you, or even a little shark if it's angry,
and you just have complete focus. You're not thinking about
anything else. And it's for me that has always been
(10:12):
a really relaxing thing. It's like surfing big waves. You
can't afford to let your mind wander too much. You've
got to really concentrate on what you're doing. But shark
diving is just a thrill. And in fact, I'm in
the process of booking a trip to Cuba in November
on a liver Board Dot trip that is supposed to
be a shark city and I can't wait.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Oh that sounds amazing.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
We also have the Wildlife CSI Academy in Atlanta, and
you know one thing that we learned when we went
over to South Africa and trained with the Wildlife Forensic
Academy is you know that shark population you're talking about,
I mean, it is dwindling because of poachin and.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It's just a shame it's just a shame in this world.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Yeah, shark finning. Shark finning is an ecological crime against
It's truly, it's literally a crime against nature. You know,
nickil about one hundred million of them a year and
it's absolutely horrific.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
It's going to change the ocean, which is going to
change the earth.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Yep, that's right, that's right. Really, all for one single.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Dish, All for one single dish, yep for shark shark
fin soup.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, insane.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
But you know one thing about the book, you know
this podcast, It is called Zone seven, and the reason
that became the name of it is because Atlanta has
six police zones. So back in the day before cell phones,
if we wanted to all get together afterwards, we would say, hey,
let's five nine at Zone seven, which was Manual's tavern,
(11:43):
our cop bar. So Zone seven started very social, a
lot of fun. But what started to happen for me, Matt,
was the old guard that would come and tell their stories,
that would take you aside and say, hey, don't let
your temper get the best of you. I know that
this is what the sop says, but you better do
this too.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Like really help you. So those people that you began
to trust and if they.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Told you something, it was gold. I mean you could
literally take it to the bank. And there's a part
of your book where your zone seven is so clear
to me. And I don't want you to talk about
this actual part. I'm just prompting you because y'all, this
is called a teaser. So if you want to know
about it, you got to go get the book. But
in the book, you have somebody that you trust and
(12:31):
you take their advice the way it's meant to only
help you. But this person tells you, Hey, Matt, you're
off the case, and instead of getting angry or fight
for that case, he tells you, I promise you it'll
be the best possible thing for your career, like later
down the road.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
And I think that is so important.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
When you accepted that and didn't just, you know, fight
for the wrong thing, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
I had. I was really lucky. And then I got
I got sort of recruited and mentored by There was
a man named Lou Rosenbloom who was he was my
immediate supervisor, and I talked about him a lot in
the book. And then his boss at the Times, a
guy named Brian Brown, and these guys are just they
were legends in their in their own right. I used
to watch them both when I was a baby da
(13:20):
and go watch them and trial because they're just so
good at it. They're like my professional fathers in a way,
you know. And they guided me and sort of looked
out for me and protected me from the internal politics
of that place. And I just I owe them. I
owe those guys everything. It's another one named Rick King,
who is my supervisor and sexual assault, and I just
these guys have remained, you know, sort of my mentors
(13:43):
at work kind of became my mentors in life, and
they're just amazing people. So I was I was really lucky.
So when those guys say the swirling politics on this
case and it just happened on one, but when they said,
you know, we're gonna we're gonna give this one to
one of the more experienced people, you know, I had
(14:05):
to have complete faith. I had no choice, number one,
but I'd have complete faith in those guys because they'd
been they'd had my back and been pulling for me
for my entire career at that point, and they were
absolutely right. I just, you know, and also it's like
you know, you it wasn't anything I had done. It
was the politics got it. Just it was a huge
(14:26):
case and I hadn't done a death penalty case yet,
and I was, you know, I was thirty four when
I had that thing, and the elected DA wanted somebody
with more capital case experience, which I completely understand that,
and he was. He was also really good to me
over the years. So there's there's times, you know, professionally,
especially when you're a young professional, where I think that
(14:47):
the best thing you can do oftentimes is sort of
take the hit and and be supportive of the guys,
of the people that are looking out for you. And
I'm using the word guys, but my first mentor in
that office was when named Kathy Harper, who essentially recruited
me out of law school. And I wouldn't have had
any of these experiences if it wasn't for her. So, yeah,
(15:09):
you take the hit, you chalk it up to experience,
and you make sure that on the next one you
try to learn, try to learn from it, you know,
And that's what I did in that case, and I
never had another one taken away from me.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Again, You've said a couple of things that are so
important in my career, and luck is one of them.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
And the second thing is.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
That ego, because a lot of people would not have
just taken the hit. They would have argued they might
have even have burned a bridge over it. I mean
I've burned some bridges. There's been a couple I might.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Have blown up.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Well. You know it's interesting, right because I think it
sometimes and I think you can nail on the head
with the ego right when it's when it's more about
your ego than anything else. Like that was a case
that the detectives did such good work. The case was
not going to suffer for the changing of the guard
(16:04):
on it, and I knew that. And the guy they
gave it to went up becoming my boss in the future.
His man named Dave Brent, who crushed that case. I
mean he did. He was an outstanding lawyer and he
did everything right. So you know, being part of a
team is like, Okay, we're going to give this to
one of the veterans because it's just gotten too big.
You know, that's one of those things that, yeah, you
(16:26):
can't let your ego because there's good there. You know,
there's going to be more opportunity. There's going to be
more cases, especially at that age I was so young.
But there are other times, you know, where you do
have to stand on principle and you talk about burning
bridges versus blowing up bridges. Believe me, I've blown up
a few bridges and and you look, you know it's
(16:51):
it's about and it wasn't about ego. It was about
right and wrong in my in my view, and some
people might disagree that. People on the other side start
I'm sure they do. They're wrong, but I'm sure they
do disagree. But especially in this business. You know, Franklin
Dellan and Roosevelt had an awesome quote. It was all
(17:11):
I ask from history is that I be judged by
the quality of my enemies, you know. And I thought
that was a great one, you know. And there's some
there's some awesome there's some awesome poems out there about
oh gosh, and I'm blanking on the Cameron for it
was Shelley. Anyway, there's a there's a great poem about
how if you haven't made enemies in a professional context,
(17:34):
that means that you're you know, you haven't worked hard
enough to fight for what's right. And I you know,
and it's true. And there are times in the being
a being a prosecutor where you know, there you know
there might be a judge who doesn't get it, and
you know, you I've I've yelled at more than one
judge over the course of my career, and you know,
(17:55):
I don't think I think that might be a light
scorching of those bridges. I never never burned any bridges
with judges, but I've burned I've burned a couple with
uh with you know, elected officials over the years. And
I would torture those things again because they were wrong.
And you know, it doesn't make your life any easier
(18:16):
when you've got somebody that's very powerful who's mad at you.
But you know, part of my job, especially since leaving,
is I've been representing victims of sexual assault pro bono
and I've gone into court and I've had to fight
some DA's that didn't that that were weak, that didn't
understand the strength of certain cases. And you know the
problem is it's you can't vicariously prosecute one of those things.
(18:39):
But you know, you go in, you fight as hard
as you can, and some people, some people don't like that.
I never want to make enemies. You know, you don't.
You don't. You don't wake up in the morning and
say today I'm going to make an enemy. But sometimes
there's a there's a very clear right and wrong, and
you know, I think the reverse is just as dangerous,
where it's like, Okay, well I don't want to make
(19:00):
an enemy. They might hurt me, so I'm going to
back down from this fight. Sometimes the most important thing,
especially for victims of sexual assault or violent crime, is
having somebody in their corner who's just throwing haymakers and
sometimes they land and sometimes they don't, but just having
somebody fighting what's wrong. You know. I've been comfortable in
(19:20):
that role. You know, even you're fighting city hall and
it's not going your way, the fight itself is if
that's all you can give those poor people. For me,
I'm willing to burn some of those bridges, and believe me,
I've I've burned a few, and you know, and I
regret the circumstances that led to it, but I can
(19:40):
honestly say I would have done the exact same thing. Again.
I don't regret the choices that I made that took
me there. So yes, it's I guess it's double sided
right now.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I'm with you one hundred percent, and I think that's
what we're made of. I mean, we fight for the underdog.
That's while we're in the position we're in. And you know,
I had a victim of domestic violence that her husband
beat her nearly to death. I mean it was literally
the hand of God that saved her. And I spent
(20:12):
months trying to convince her to testify against him.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And one of the examples that.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
I would use is, even verbally, you don't deserve what
he was saying to you, much less the physical and financial.
And so I finally got her to where she was
going to testify. We go into court and I'm trying
to explain to the judge all the facts of this
case that I know them to be, and this was
(20:38):
this particular judge. But the upshot was she told me
to shut up and sit down. Now I had judged it, yes,
And I had spent all of this time telling her.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
You should not be disrespected, you should not be taught to.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Like, you know, in any kind of way that would
be perceived as negative or you know, rude or ugly
or any of that so I had no choice but
to stand up and start talking.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
So that's one of those times where you're not going
to win it.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
But again, to your point, that's a bridge that I
would burn over and over and over and over. I
was correct in that situation. Now we got to change
gears a little bit because I tell you something else
you did in that book, Honey, when you set out
to tell the truth, you told the truth. This business, y'all,
is tough.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
On your love life.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And you know, you open this thing up and you
paint such a clear picture of what the long hours
are like when you finally get home but you're still
on call in you're home ten minutes and got to
turn around and leave, or you've got to leave a
party or your anniversary or the surprise birthday party for
your partner, whatever it is. It is tough on the
(21:52):
people you love because you're constantly running to somebody you
don't know to help them.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So I appreciate you addressing this and in the way
that you do it. So talk a little bit about
those long hours.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Well, yeah, so the funny thing about that unit when
you get into homicide, so the way works in Orange
County is you just carry a case out of homicide
cases and so you're you're especially when you go to
the crime scene and you you know, I've been there
for notifications, which is when the family essentially comes home
and learns that their love one has been murdered. And
(22:34):
you know, the great word is just it's apoplectic grief
that these people are are going through. So you you
really you understand the enormat of your responsibility as a
prosecutor when you meet when you meet like the mother
of a murder victim, when you're involved in one of
those cases, it's like you have you've got fun stuff
(22:55):
that you want to do. And since I didn't have kids,
you've got you know, like Thanksgiving dinner, that's that that
you want to go to, or maybe a birthday dinner
or a birthday party, and when the phone rings, you
know you have to go. And it is it's really
tough for people who aren't in the business, who don't
(23:20):
do this professionally, to understand how important it is that
you're there. And and then you know, the last serial
killer I did you know, we were in that trial
for six months. It's a kind named Andrew Ordelis. It
was a six month long jury trial. So for for
your listeners, that imagine finals in school, except instead of
(23:41):
lasting three weeks, if they last for six months. That's
kind of what it's like. There's you don't have enough
time in any given day to get all the prep
work done and and get everything taken care of that
you need to go and you'll need for the next
day in court and you're there. There isn't enough time
in the day to do all the work that needs
(24:01):
to be done, and there's always more, especially when the
defense starts, you know, giving you expert expert reports that
they're going to put on the stand because there's the
amount of research you could do on one expert is endless.
So you're you know, when you when you're in a relationship,
you know, when I talk about this in the book,
one of them was I was I was dating a
(24:22):
woman at the time who was a deputy DA and
in a different office. She's actually Los Angeles to Day's office,
and it was her birthday dinner and we had what
turned out to be a double homicide, and then on
top of that, it turned out to be an absolutely
horrific double homicide that uh, you know, in the middle
(24:43):
of the middle of dinner, I got the call and
it was my detectives at Coast MESA that I've been
working with for I don't know, over ten years at
that point, and they they needed me, you know. And also,
when you're there as a prosecutor, you know, you're you're
ensuring that the that the due process rights of the
suspect are you know, are scrupulously adhere to. And that's
(25:07):
good long term for the case because you can help
your detectives with things like search warrants and things to
make sure that the case doesn't get reversed on appeal,
which puts the family through it again. You know. So
there's it really is an important thing if you can
be there as a DA to do everything you can
(25:27):
to be there, and you know, I yeah. So like
the woman that my my predecessor, her name was Debbie Lloyd,
just a fantastic lawyer, but she was she was rotating
out after twelve years when she gave me the caseload.
And Debbie was was smart and funny and interesting, the
(25:47):
phenomenal trial talent, and but you know, she she was
you know, and she's very private, but she wasn't she
was unmarried, and I didn't. I didn't realize that the
job could take that much of a toll on relationships,
but it sure did. And you know, some people that
(26:09):
you know, potential romantic partners are more understanding than others.
And and look, I get it. It's it's not for everyone.
And then you know, I dated one woman for a
while that it just you know, it was not her
cup of tea. And you know, and there's another another
one I diated, you know, not that long ago. Who
(26:34):
uh you know, she she flat out had no like
it wasn't that she had no stomach for it. It
was that she could not relate at all to like
to a bereaved famili's desire to get justice. And she
was pretty judgmental about it, as a matter of fact,
And it was it was that that was more on
my end, Like she was very dismissive that, like, well,
(26:56):
they should, you know, kind of move on. And they
need to understand it, you know, the the you know,
the people who commit murder often are victims of trauma
in their own life. And it's like, oh, really, a
murder victims mother needs to understand the trauma that the
killer has gone through, Like you know, So it's you know,
(27:16):
you also you see things, you know, so it's not
just that they couldn't handle the job like you see
things as a prosecutor, like you do as a CSI
that you know, there are I have I would have
a very hard time, you know, romantically getting serious with
anybody who can't can't understand, at least to a degree
(27:40):
and at least sympathize with what victims are going through
in those cases, because it's such a huge part of
your life as a prosecutor. There and there are, There
are people in California. My homestate is full of them
who their their allegiance and their sympathy and their empathy
is reserved almost exclusively for the people that commit the crimes.
And we see that with every new legislative session in California,
(28:01):
they passed some new crazy law that makes it easier
on you know, the murderers uh in prison or you know,
and it makes it easier for them to get out.
We got to get name George Gascone. It's the DA
of Los Angeles County right now, who is awful for victims,
absolutely the worst. He treats victims and their families horribly
and I represented the families of two murder police officers,
(28:23):
fighting against George Gascone and his policies, trying to bring
justice to those families, and you know, so romantically, you know, I,
you know, I had a I've had a couple of
those where you know, there they don't they don't get
it there they want to feel really sorry for the killers,
and and then it's it's really it's my problem, you know.
(28:45):
I I realized that that's just not a good match.
So it's tough on relationships for sure. But but again
this may sound a little, a little twisted, but I
wouldn't change the thing. If I had it to do
all over again, I would have I would have done
it again and hurt people.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
We were sitting at the squad table about a week
or so ago, and one of our buddies was talking
about his wife was so mad at him because he
had forgotten to bring strawberries home. She had texted him
like at one o'clock, Hey, can you pick some strawberries
up on the way home? The kids won't chocolate covered strawberries.
He said sure, and then some major things happened that
(29:24):
we're all horrible, and he just forgot about it, and
then driving home, he's trying to you know how you
try to put it wherever you can put it so
that when you walk in the door, you're not looking
like you just saw what you saw. And he was
still mad about it the next day because she had
just fallen off the handle about it, and he's like, yeah,
you know, a killer threatened to murder me yesterday, but
(29:46):
you know, let's worry about the strawberries.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
So for him, his world is so different than hers. Hers.
Was the biggest thing that happened to her that.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Day bad was the kids are going to be disappointed
or either I now have to go to the store.
The biggest thing that happened to him was he saw
a murder and then by proxy, he was threatened. So
it is difficult. And the more sympathy your partner has
for other people in general, I think it does make
your life easier because they know what you're doing. They
(30:16):
know somebody needs you, just like an emergency room nurse
or doctor. I need that person right now, not in
an hour, So it does make a difference. And you
go into the scene, you go into the scene absolutely
saves cases. I don't know if you know this, but
(30:37):
the very first prosecutor for me when I was assigned
to his own three that ever ever came to the
crime scene, and you're talking about ninety two, ninety three,
somewhere in there was Nancy Grace. She's the first person
I ever saw leave the courthouse and come meet us
and make sure everything was like it was supposed to be.
(30:58):
So I know what a God said that is for people,
So again, thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Thank you for saying that. It is a kind of
a calling really, and also it's it's not tough. It's
the golden rule, right. You think, if how would I
want to be treated from somebody who has the legal
power to influence this, how would I want to be treated?
And what I would always do after these murdercis is
(31:24):
I'd always meet with the victims family and give them
my personal cell number so they knew and I never
had I never had a bad experience doing that, and
I would introduce them to my team, and I worked
with wonderful people in the DA's office. And you know,
I think that that has a huge impact in its
(31:46):
own right, making sure that people understand that there's somebody
there who's going to fight for them, and yeah, it's
And I'll tell you what on a case, when you
when you that jury comes back and hold somebody accountable
(32:07):
for what they did to a mother's love on when
that woman gives you a hug in the hallway when
the trial is over, it is it is the probably
the the best you can feel, because even though you
can't bring their love on back, you can, And it
sounds weird to say, you do have the power to
give them some sense of justice. And you know, you
(32:32):
go through a lot with those families and you know,
I I you almost you almost, you know, you really
get to know them, and you just your heart breaks
for them. So when you can bring it home, it
makes it all worth it.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
You and I do something in common, and I think
most of us in this business do it. But the
things that mean the most to us, that signifies something
in our career that was either unique or heroic, or
justice was some or the most sentimental, we put it
on the wall no matter what it is. And I
know you do that because you mentioned a few items
(33:09):
in the book, But when you look at your wall,
it's almost you mentioned time capsule. But my career I
can watch it when I see the things on the.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Wall, you guys, challenge coins? Is that a big deal? Yeah?
Those are some of my proudest possessions. Actly, when you
get a challenge coin from a detective or a da
from another another office. You know, being recognized by your
(33:40):
you know, your your colleagues for for good work, that
that that that means a lot. I've got a I've
got a little collection. I think everybody does that, does
it long enough? And for the peer listeners who don't know,
I think it started in Vietnam, I think. So it's
a came from the military where different units would have
what are called challenge coins, and they'd have these things
(34:02):
made up and it would have like a unit insignia
on it, and it was their own internal little reward
like for the guy who did did good you know,
the guy who you know that. So you're being recognized
informally by your by your peers, and it's a really
cool thing. So it's not like it's not a formal accommodation.
(34:24):
It's more like a it's almost more intimate than that.
It's the guys that you know, who you positively impacted,
who were with you in the trenches, and it's a
little coin that that they'll give you. And then, as
legend has it, I guess that once you got a
challenge coin, you're supposed to carry it everywhere, and if
you didn't, it's called a challenge going because if you
(34:44):
didn't have it with you and you were in a bar,
you had to buy brinks for everybody's.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Right, that's right, And I'll tell you I'd rather have
a challenge going than a metal.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Oh for sure. Yeah. A challenge coin means the the
people actually doing the work. We're grateful. The people in
the trenches with you at night in the cold, had
gratitude for you, you know, for something good that you
did over the course of the case. And I agree
one hundred percent. Those are very special. Got them displayed
(35:18):
them on a shelf in my house.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
With the challenge coins.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
I rotate mine some and I will put different ones,
like right in the center, because when somebody says, tell
me about this one, or where did you get that one?
The stories behind them are important, just like the photographs
and the maps and the things they don't understand, like
your piece of metal, Like they're not going to know
until you ask.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
And to me, that's the whole point.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
That's one of the things about the you know, I
really wanted to write this book because I wanted I
wanted to include some of the behind the scenes heroes,
like the CSI folks. You know. I mean, like honestly,
at three o'clock in the morning, when it's freezing cold
and you know, you're you're tired, and you're there those detectives.
(36:02):
It's like I've I've probably attended about one hundred scenes
over the you know, one hundred murder scenes during the
seventeen years I was in homicide. I never heard a
single complaint, not in the rain, not in the cold,
not from a detective. I never heard even a grumble
from any of the CSI texts that I worked with.
(36:24):
And it you know, you see horrible things when you
respond to a scene, and as a prosecutor, you're going
to see way more. You're going to meet with the family,
you're going to you're going to be in the presence
of that visceral grief, right and your faith in humanity
is challenged each time you see a murder victim, and
it is instantly restored because of all the wonderful people,
(36:48):
the professionals that are there to try to make it right,
to bring justice to it, to figure it out, to
make sure that a guy doesn't get away with it
or it doesn't hurt anybody else. And you see these
these dedicated professionals behind the scenes, you know. And it's
one of the working titles for the book was behind
the Yellow Table, because I wanted to tell tell people, like,
(37:09):
you know, there are unseen heroes and and that was
one of the one of the things I really tried
to get out out, you know, in the book was
the things that I saw weren't just the bad things,
It was the good things too, And these people that
worked so hard to to make sure that you know,
justice comes for the person who did this, and more importantly,
(37:30):
that it comes for the victims family. So hopefully that
that came across I. You know, I've never written a
book before, so I hope, I hope people like it.
I would love to write another one. We're looking on
at Serial Killers, uh for the next one, And yeah,
I would love to try to get another another book written.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Well, I encourage it because you did such a beautiful
job with this one. And you did that you showed
absolutely one person committed this murder, but forty showed up
to do.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Something about it.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
You did that fantastically, so I appreciate that. And another
thing you did. You were kind of sneaky with it,
but you gave a lot of good advice about how
to stay safe, even though you didn't come right out
and say that, y'all.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way I always
do with a quote.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Monsters can mask their true nature, especially in sentence where
you get limited exposure to their full sells Matt Murphy.
I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is one seven
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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