Robin Murphy, a woman convicted for the ritualistic murder of Karen Marsden, in February, 1980, has appeared before the Massachusetts Parole Board.
Released in 2004, she was returned to prison in August last year for parole violations.
Robin Murphy is back in prison.
The former leader of a Satanic cult, who admitted to murder for the death of Karen Marsden on Feb. 8, 1980, was ordered returned to prison after a parole officer determined Murphy violated the parole she won on May 3, 2004.
Carl Drew was convicted of the 1980 ritualistic murder of Fall River teenager Karen Marsden.
Drew and Robin Murphy were both accused of dragging Marsden into the Westport woods, decapitating her and performing satanic rituals on her body.
She was 17 when she was put behind bars. Today she is 41, and next week when convicted cult murderer Robin Murphy returns to the community to live at a halfway house, she returns to a different world, a new world. One such home at which Murphy may soon be residing is in Fall River. She has applied to a halfway house in the city to begin her reintegration back into society. Although there is no official word on where Murphy will spend her first six months to a year, she has applied to stay at Fall River’s St. Francis
The reaction to Robin Marie Murphy‘s pending release from prison after 24 years, although wide-ranging, has been mostly negative. The State Parole Board recently granted Murphy parole. Along with codefendant Carl Drew, she was convicted of the ritualistic slaying of Karen Marsden in 1980, but was also believed to have taken part in two similar killings — of young prostitutes Doreen Levesque and Barbara Ann Raposa — in and around Fall River in 1979 and 1980. Marsden’s surviving sister, Wendy Alves, was so upset by Monday’s news that she had to leave work early to deal with the trauma of
FALL RIVER — Convicted murderer Robin Marie Murphy, the woman at the center of a Satanic cult controversy that has spanned nearly three decades, will be released from prison later this month after serving 24 years behind bars for the grisly murder of city prostitute Karen Marsden. Murphy, 41, a former city prostitute and pimp, was granted parole by the State Parole Board recently, signaling an end to 24 years of failed attempts at retrials and appeals. The woman dubbed one of the two “cult murderers” will be transferred to a halfway house on May 15, prison officials said Monday.
BRIDGEWATER — During her latest State Parole Board reconsideration hearing Tuesday, convicted “cult murderer” Robin Marie Murphy portrayed herself as an innocent woman who lied on the stand and eventually gave up her freedoms in the interest of justice by helping to convict Carl Drew of Karen Marsden’s 1980 murder. Murphy, 41, of Fall River, has been serving a life sentence since accepting a plea bargain for the second-degree murder of Marsden, a former Fall River prostitute who was among two others to be brutally murdered over a two-year time span from 1979 to 1980. Marsden’s body has never been
BRIDGEWATER — Nearly a year after her bid for a new trial was denied by a superior court judge, the Fall River woman who has spent the past 23 years in prison for her role in the infamous “cult murders” will have her third chance at being released on parole today. Robin Marie Murphy, 41, will have her chance to present her case for release this afternoon during her parole board hearing at the Old Colony Correctional Institution, said State Parole Board spokeswoman Tina Hurley. Murphy was initially denied parole when she first became eligible in 1996. Murphy has been
The Herald News, May 11, 2003 http://www.zwire.com/ GREGG M. MILIOTE, Herald News Staff ReporterMay 10, 2003 FALL RIVER — Tricia Franco was once a friend of convicted murderer Robin Marie Murphy and her gang of prostitutes, pimps and Satan worshippers, but the Rhode Island resident says she is glad to have left the city before it was too late and feels terrible about the murders she has tried to forget for the past 23 years. Franco said reading the recent news of Murphy’s request for a new trial in the cult murder of Karen Marsden in 1980 brought back a
The Herald News, May 1, 2003 http://www.zwire.com/ GREGG M. MILIOTE, Herald News Staff Reporter FALL RIVER — Paul Carey, the former detective sergeant who led the investigation into the “cult murder” of Karen Marsden 23 years ago, has spent the past four years working to exonerate her convicted murderer, Carl Drew. Drew was sentenced to life in prison without parole. His co-defendant, Robin Marie Murphy, accepted a plea bargain for second-degree murder. After serving 22 years in prison, Murphy recently requested a new trial because she believes she was not given an ample explanation of the charge she was pleading