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The Case of Michelle Murphy
📻 Episode #43
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 Nov 27, 2017
About This Episode
On September 12th, 1994, 17-year-old Michelle Murphy found her 15-week-old son stabbed to death in her kitchen. After being questioned without a parent or guardian present, which was prohibited under Oklahoma law, Michelle falsely confessed to the crime. Her 14-year-old neighbor William Lee testified during the preliminary hearing that he had walked around her house…
The Case
On September 12th, 1994, 17-year-old Michelle Murphy found her 15-week-old son stabbed to death in her kitchen. After being questioned without a parent or guardian present, which was prohibited under Oklahoma law, Michelle falsely confessed to the crime. Her 14-year-old neighbor William Lee testified during the preliminary hearing that he had walked around her house that evening and reportedly saw Michelle with the dead infant but did not report it to the police. Testing of blood at the scene of the crime excluded Michelle Murphy as a suspect, but at trial prosecution falsely implied that it matched Michelle’s blood type. In 1995, she was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. She was forced to give her only living child up for adoption, daughter Michelle. In 2014, the Innocence Project joined Michelle’s defense team and conducted more DNA testing, yielding results that the bloodstains at the crime scene revealed that there was an unidentified male present that night. On September 12th, 2014, Michelle Murphy was declared innocent, after having spent 20 years behind bars.
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In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:05:54“Speaker 1: kind of abuse and everything else, So I guess you Speaker 1: were sort of prepared. Speaker 5: You know, I knew it all, but I was seventeen. Speaker 5: What seventeen year old doesn't think that they know everything? Speaker 5: And they're ready to take on the world. All I”
00:24:01“Speaker 1: that people are not adequately represented by their defenders. And Speaker 1: you're certainly a textbook case of that as well. I mean, Speaker 1: this was a case where even though there was prosecutorial misconduct, Speaker 1: gross prosecutor miscrossed, including lies about the blood evidence, which”
00:41:14“Speaker 1: that's got a twenty year hold in it, and you Speaker 1: haven't had a chance to develop skills when everybody else Speaker 1: has been out building their career or their family or Speaker 1: their and you get nothing. Here we are three years later, Speaker 1: and now you have to still wait until April to”
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Also on the podcast: #450 Michelle Morrison