Mary Murphy (reporter)

Mary Murphy (born in Woodside, Queens) is an investigative reporter at WPIX-TV New York City. She has covered breaking news in New York for more than three decades, including the late 1980's crack cocaine plague, the first truck bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993, the September 11th terror attacks on the Twin Towers, Super Storm Sandy in 2012, the March 2013 election of Pope Francis in Vatican City, and many criminal trials. Her journalism work has been honored with 25 New York Emmy awards and more than 20 Associated Press honors. She also has an Edward R. Murrow award for writing. One of Murphy's Emmys is a special achievement award for Journalistic Enterprise, which she won in 2015. The American Women in Radio and Television organization also recognized Murphy for a documentary she co-produced for WPIX TV in 1994 called "Schindler, the Real Story."

The daughter of an Irish-born bus driver, the late James Murphy, and a County Galway-born homemaker, also Mary, Murphy is the oldest of four children. She attended Our Lady of Lourdes school in Queens Village, Delehanty High School in Jamaica, and then Queens College in Flushing. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Queens with a double major in English and Public Communications.

As a college senior, Murphy secured an internship at WCBS TV (CBS 2 New York) in 1981. She started in the business answering newsroom phones at CBS 2 and changing ribbons on the AP wire service machines. She worked as a researcher and then took her second news job at WPIX TV in late 1981, as a production assistant. She wrote and produced one of the early news series on AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) called A.I.D.S Without Answers. As a young reporter, she covered the 1986 New York Mets World Series win and ticker tape parade.

In 1986, WCBS New York hired Mary Murphy back as a general assignment reporter. This is where Murphy made her mark as a hard-charging journalist who often handled the lead story of the day on the noon, 5 and 6 pm broadcasts. Murphy's first big story at WCBS was the Howard Beach racial attack, involving white teens chasing three, black men out of their neighborhood. One of the men, Michael Griffith, ran across the Belt Parkway and was fatally hit by a car. Another man, Cedric Sandiford, was brutally beaten. Three Howard Beach teens were convicted of manslaughter and assault in the case.

Murphy won Emmy awards at Channel 2 for covering the Joel Steinberg and John Gotti trials. The Gotti case was just one of many stories on La Cosa Nostra Murphy has done in her career. She did extensive reporting on organized crime influences in the Fulton Fish market, private garbage hauling industry, and the New York City garment center.

Murphy returned to WPIX in 1993, where she spent 14 years anchoring the weekend news and has continued her investigative reporting. She has won 23 of her 25 Emmy awards at PIX 11. On the weekend anchor desk, she oversaw coverage of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, the Paris car accident that took the life of Princess Diana, and the plane crash that killed John. F. Kennedy Junior, along with his wife and sister-in-law.

Among the stories Murphy has been recognized for: the 1994 terrorism shooting on the Brooklyn Bridge, the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, the September 11th attacks and their aftermath, and the 2005 'Black Sunday' fire, where six Bronx firefighters were forced to jump from the top floor of a burning building--an act that eventually killed 3 of them. Another fireman died in Brooklyn that same day. Murphy also interviewed one of her childhood friends from Woodside, Louis Pepe, who was stabbed in the eye by two, terrorism suspects, while carrying out his duties as a federal corrections officer in lower Manhattan.

In 2013, PIX11 launched a segment called Mary Murphy Mystery. Murphy has investigated many Missing Persons cases and unsolved homicides. One of her most rewarding moments came in February 2015, when a woman in Pennsylvania saw one of Murphy's "Mystery" reports on the web, leading to a reunion with the daughter she had left behind in Brooklyn 38 years before.

In 2016, Murphy was honored with an Emmy for Outstanding Public Affairs programming for a 6-part series she wrote and produced in November 2014 called "Heroin, A to Z." The series looked at the explosion of heroin use in middle class communities in the tri-state region. The heroin plague was actually a reflection of a national opioid crisis that was spawned by the abuse of prescription painkillers.

External link

• Mary Murphy at WPIX

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