Michael Murphy, one of five men convicted over the brutal 1986 rape and murder of Sydney nurse Anita Cobby, has died in prison. He was 66.
News.com.au reports Murphy died of liver cancer while in palliative care at Long Bay jail hospital, where he was serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole.
He is the first of the five men convicted over Cobby’s killing to die while behind bars.
Murphy, his younger brothers Leslie and Gary, John Travers, and Michael Murdoch received life sentences in 1987 after a Sydney court found the men guilty of abducting, torturing, sexually assaulting, and eventually killing the 26-year-old woman.
The group were found to have pulled her into their vehicle as she walked to her Bankstown home at around 10pm on February 2, 1986.
The court heard the five men physically and sexually assaulted her in the car, before transporting her to a Prospect dairy farm where the men perpetrated further sexual assaults.
It was there Travers slit Cobby’s throat. Bill Hosking QC, who appeared as Michael Murphy’s public defender during the trial, wrote “so severe was the cut, it almost left her decapitated.”
Public reaction to the killing was so intense that demonstrators outside the courtroom called for the reinstatement of the death penalty. Justice Alan Maxwell went on to recommend “the official files of each prisoner should be clearly marked, ‘Never to be released’.”
A coronial investigation will be conducted on Murphy’s death.
If you would like to talk to a counsellor about rape, sexual assault or domestic violence, give the people over at 1800 RESPECT a call on 1800 737 732.
