Mary Murphy’s Lasting Impact On New York News
The veteran TV reporter recently retired after a 40-year career
By Kerry Murtha
Mary Murphy can still remember the Eyewitness news segment that sparked her passion for journalism.
“I was watching the news one day with my mother when Rose Ann Scamardella came on the screen and did a story about grocery prices and inflation,” Murphy said.
Seeing Scamardella in the grocery store gave Murphy’s mom–who was well aware of her teenage daughter’s love for writing and performing–an idea. “My mother looked at me and said: ‘You can do that,’” Murphy proudly recalled. “And her words sort of planted a seed.”
As it turned out, Murphy’s talents were a natural segue to broadcast news. Her distinguished career as a television reporter has spanned four decades, earning her 32 Emmys and a reputation for excellence in investigative journalism.
In January, she retired from WPIX-TV, where she’s worked for more than 30 of her 40 years on air. “I felt that…40 years was a very long time and I was leaving a good body of work behind,” she said. “I wanted some flexibility in my life so I decided to leave full-time local TV news but that doesn’t close the door on potential projects in the future.”
Murphy’s relentless pursuit of the facts and knack for storytelling have come to embody New York City journalism. Her reporting resume includes coverage of nearly every major event since the mid-1980s, from her early stories on AIDS to the Gilgo Beach serial killer, and has left a lasting impact on the world of local news.
“It has been the most remarkable privilege for me to spend my entire career in my hometown, which I love so much,” said Murphy. “I feel great about the fact that I was a working class girl from Queens who didn’t come from much money but was able to cover so many events of historical significance…just so many stories I’ve covered. My jaw drops when I think about them.”
An internship at CBS got Murphy’s foot in the door of television news when she was in her last semester at Queens College in 1981.
She started working as a production assistant at WPIX shortly after she graduated and began writing for the newscast in between running tapes to the control room. She was eventually promoted to writer, and later became a weekend reporter before she landed a five-day a week position in 1985.
She was one of the first journalists on the scene that year when Paul Castellano, the Gambino godfather, was killed in a mob hit outside Sparks Steakhouse on East 46th Street in Manhattan, just four blocks from the television station.
“I was sent there and certainly I was green,” Murphy said. “I had never seen anything like this in my life–there were two bodies under tarps and FBI agents along with local police and detectives. It was a first and the start of me doing a lot of organized crime reporting over the years.”
She returned to CBS in 1986 when she was hired as a general assignment correspondent.
“At that point, I had the street cred,” Murphy noted. “I spent the next 7 years there covering breaking news and learning how to do live reporting, which was nerve-racking at first, but I managed to pull it off and got better with time.”
While she was at Channel 2, Murphy covered the racially motivated killing of 23-year-old Michael Griffith in Howard Beach, the Central Park jogger attack and the 1992 sensational trial of John Gotti.
When the news broke that a rusty freighter that was smuggling 286 Chinese migrants in its cargo hold ran aground off the Rockaway Peninsula, Murphy had just returned home from anchoring the Saturday night news. A half an hour later her cameraman picked her up and the two were soon running in the dark through Gateway National Park, with only a beam of light from an overhead helicopter to guide them to the site.
“It was pretty extraordinary,” Murphy said. “There were rows of people who had blankets around their shoulders and they were the ones who had survived jumping into the water. We could see others who were still coming out and there were at least 10 people who had drowned that night.”
Murphy happened to be downtown when the first World Trade Center bombing occurred in 1993. She rushed to the scene, where she met Vito DeLeo, a WTC mechanic who just crawled out from the rubble and managed to give Murphy a dramatic on-air interview. They became friends and it was Murphy that DeLeo’s wife frantically called on 9/11 when she couldn’t reach her husband. “We assume he was trying to help others get out when he died,” said Murphy. “They found a little bit of his remains later on and had a funeral. But I will always remember Vito.”
Connecting on a personal level with those she interviews has been a hallmark of Murphy’s success.
“In order to tell an effective story that will engage viewers and make them care, you have to speak to the insiders…the people most impacted by a story–and that often means a family member if you’re doing a murder case or the parent or wife of someone who lost a loved one in the line of duty.”
To that end, her 9/11 footage featured an interview with the widow of Firefighter Timothy Stackpole, who Murphy had done a story about three years before when he survived burns over nearly 50 percent of his body. Stackpole returned to the FDNY when he recovered and was promoted to captain just days before he lost his life in the towers.
Her coverage came full circle in 2011 when Osama Bin Laden was killed by a team of U.S. Navy SEALS.
“The very first interview I wanted to do was with Bob Beckwith, the firefighter who stood on a truck with President Bush three days after the attack as the president declared in a bullhorn that the people who knocked down the towers would be hearing from the United States very soon,” she said.
Murphy had talked with Beckwith following his visit to the White House when he presented President Bush with the bullhorn in the Oval Office. Ten years later, she was standing in front of the retired firefighter’s home at 4:30 in the morning, waiting for his reaction to Bin Laden’s death.
Other segments that Murphy researched and wrote for Channel 11 set out to positively impact the lives of her viewers. Her Mary Murphy’s Mysteries, which launched in 2013, helped reunite a Brooklyn woman with her biological mother after a 38-year separation.
“The Missing,” which stemmed from the widespread media coverage of the Long Island Gabby Petito case, addressed the concerns that black and brown communities had about the lack of attention their missing loved ones were getting.
“We were giving a voice to the communities that were underserved,” said Murphy. “And I felt good about that.”
In 2020, her detailed reports on the pandemic aimed to give her audience a better understanding of the virus. “For someone who had made a career largely reporting on criminal justice, I had to learn the science of the coronavirus–which I did–and I was able to keep the public informed by telling the story through the faces of the people going through it.”
Last year, she broke new ground with her reporting on Xylazine, an animal tranquilizer that is a driving factor of fatal overdose rates in Philadelphia and has been detected in New York City drug stash houses. The story added to her 15 years of coverage on the opioid crisis, work that garnered four Emmys, elicited a letter of commendation from The Drug Enforcement Administration, and is used in the training conducted by the Suffolk County Emergency Services Division.
“My reporting on opioids and my two decades of work on terrorism and counterterrorism efforts are things that will always stand out to me,” said Murphy.
The veteran newswoman said she’ll continue to research stories that interest her, but now she’s learning to take time for herself. “When I first retired it was a whirlwind and I went through a phase of thinking I had to come up with independent projects right away,” she said. “Now I’m trying to spend time with my family and do things around the house. I’m not sure of my next step and if there is no next step, that’s fine too, because I’m happy with my 40 years.”
