One kid murdered, one put up for #adoption. Mother in prison. All with no reason.

Released after 20 years in prison, Michelle Murphy trying to rebuild her life

released!

ArrestedMichelle Murphy: The teen mother of two was arrested in the death of her infant son.

 

What happened to Michelle Murphy's other child?

The family who adopted Murphy’s 2-year-old daughter had already been approved for adoption by the Cherokee tribe in September 1995 when they received the call.
“They called and said, ‘We have a little girl and we’d like to put her in foster care with you,’ ” said the woman who adopted the curly-haired toddler. The adoptive family asked to remain anonymous to protect their daughter’s privacy.
“I fell in love with her the minute I saw her,” she said.
When the girl was in her mid-teens, her parents gave her the newspaper clippings from her birth mother’s arrest and trial. She knew from an early age she had been adopted, but learning about her family’s violent past helped explain things like her persistent nightmares.
The adoptive mother said she decided to visit Murphy in jail as she awaited trial. She gave Michelle pictures of her daughter and the women swapped stories about the toddler, with Michelle boasting about how early her daughter began walking.
“She was in her orange jumpsuit and shackled to a chair. ... I thought, ‘You are just a girl.’ ”
The adoptive mother said her daughter is now 22 and expecting her first child.
“She’s happy and had a wonderful life.”

Monday, October 13, 2014 

 

By CARY ASPINWALL World Staff Writer and ZIVA BRANSTETTER World Enterprise Editor | 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is the second in a two-part series examining the conviction and exoneration of Michelle Murphy.
 
Related: Discredited lab test was key to woman's wrongful conviction
Read Part 1: Records show mistakes, questionable evidence in woman’s overturned murder case

Twenty years to the day that Michelle Murphy found her son’s lifeless body on the kitchen floor, she heard Tulsa County District Judge William Kellough say the words she had been waiting for: “This court finds you, Miss Murphy, innocent.”
She cried in the courthouse hallway as her attorney, Sharisse O’Carroll, explained the date’s significance to reporters.
Though she’d been out of jail on bond for three months, it wasn’t until after Kellough’s declaration that Murphy was ready to do something she had never done: visit her son’s grave.
Murphy didn’t want to go to Travis’ grave until her name was cleared, O’Carroll said.
Murphy, 37, was released from prison on bond in May, when the judge vacated her life without parole sentence and murder conviction, based on newly uncovered DNA evidence.
And on Sept. 12, District Attorney Tim Harris decided to drop the murder charges and dismiss the case, saying he lacked the evidence to convict her again.
Murphy was 17 when she was imprisoned for the brutal slaying of her infant son. The same prosecutor who convicted Murphy also took away her 2-year-old daughter, placing the girl with another family.
Twenty years behind bars has given Murphy a lot of time to contemplate what happened to her.
“It meant the world to me to finally hear that it’s been acknowledged, something I’ve been trying to prove for 20 years,” Murphy told reporters after the charges were dismissed in September. “Something I’ve known in my heart.”

Murphy wrote letters to her daughter while she was in prison. She never got a response.
Her daughter, now 22, told the World she is not interested in getting to know her mother.
“They let me come to it on my own. ... There was never anybody who told me that she did it or she was a monster. For me, God put me in that position to really appreciate what I have today,” said the young woman, who wanted her name withheld.
Raised by her adoptive family, she said she enjoyed a happy childhood with plenty of love and support. She is expecting her first child, a girl.

Read the rest here: http://www.tulsaworld.com/homepagelatest/released-after-years-in-prison-michelle-murphy-trying-to-rebuild/article_0dbc825d-734b-5322-8710-02254038268f.html