If you work at a job long enough, you start making assumptions – especially in cases like Tom Murphy’s.

I’m Angela Richman, a death investigator for Chouteau County, Missouri, a patch of white privilege some 40 miles west of St. Louis. I work for the county medical examiner. At a homicide, I’m in charge of the body and the cops handle the scene.

Tara and Tom Murphy lived in a nice ranch house on the working side of town. Tara was a skinny little thing in her late 50s. She worked as a cleaning lady and her arms were corded with muscle.

Tom, her husband, was an unemployed construction worker.

Tara told Detective Jace Budewitz that her husband was “cussing up a blue streak, and tried to punch me in the face. He ran to pick up the kitchen chair – and I knew he could really hurt me with that. I grabbed that skillet and swung hard. Grease is splattered all over my new wallpaper. I meant to stop him, not kill him. But I’m afraid of him, Detective. He weighs one-eighty-two and I’m ninety-seven pounds.”

Great tears ran down her wrinkled face. “It was self-defense. We’ve been married twenty-seven years. After he broke his arm and couldn’t work, he got hooked on pain pills and started drinking heavy.”

I knew opioid abuse affected the rich and the poor.

“The kitchen looks like a slaughter house,” Jace said.

“Typical domestic abuse case,” I said. “Except Mrs. Murphy looks pretty small. Could she whack her husband hard enough to kill him?”

That was the question.

My guess was that Tara Murphy had walloped her husband several times with a hot skillet filled with oily potatoes.

I began my examination. Tom Murphy was on the kitchen floor, lying in his own blood. He wore a wifebeater shirt and boxer shorts. His undershirt was hitched up and I saw an enormous bruise on his abdomen from his collarbone down past his navel.

Murphy’s right arm had a healed surgical scar one-inch above his elbow. There were fading yellow bruises on the undersides of both arms. Both arms had bright red burns, probably from the grease. There were significant areas of blood on his arms, chest, neck and jaw. I measured them all.

When we rolled the heavy body onto a clean white sheet, one strap on the man’s undershirt slipped down. Murphy’s shoulder had a burn mark in the shape of an iron. It was scabbed over and covered with some kind of cream.

I showed Detective Budewitz Murphy’s injuries on his chest, arms, back and shin. Someone had been hitting him.

“That corroborates what the neighbors told the uniforms,” Jace said. “They described Thomas Murphy as ‘a big old teddy bear’ and said his tiny wife beat him up. He refused to fight back. At Thanksgiving, the fight was so loud the neighbors called the police. Mrs. Murphy has no cuts, bruises or blood.”

The saddest part was when we talked to Tom Murphy’s father.

“I knew she was beating up on him,” he said. “She’d attack him with anything she had in her hand. He got that broken arm when she hit him with a vacuum cleaner.

“Tom refused to testify against her. He said he loved his wife and it was his fault and they’d both been drinking. Missouri’s got some good domestic abuse laws. The prosecutor can file charges – even if the battered spouse won’t testify. The prosecutor had a talk with Tom and the responding cop and Tom begged them not to charge her. He said they’d get counseling and work it out. My son broke down and cried.”

Now Angela could hear the tears in the older man’s voice.

“The prosecutor said he’d hold off, but if there was another incident, he’d have her arrested and charged. Those two were lovey-dovey for a month and then she started up with her mean ways. That big bruise on his chest was a Christmas present. She hit him with a floor polisher. When he was asleep, she burned his shoulder with an iron. She kicked and tormented that poor man and he did nothing. I should have had the guts to kidnap him and take him to a shrink.”

The autopsy findings confirmed the older man’s words: Tom Murphy was a victim of domestic violence.

Assistant ME Dr. Katie Kelly Stern said, “This happens more than you think. About 830,000 men a year are victims of domestic violence. Women are almost twice as likely as men to get beat up, but men are more afraid to admit it. They’re ashamed.”

“Of being hit?” I said.

“Society expects a man to control his wife,” Katie said. “Men are wimps if their wives beat them up. And this guy was what – a construction worker?”

“Yep.”

“I rest my case. He tried to take it like a man. That’s what guys do.”

A Star Is Dead is the fourth book in the “Angela Richman, Death Investigator” traditional mystery series, released April 7, 2020.

Hollywood diva Jessica Gray is on the last leg of her one-woman show when she suffers a sudden and fatal illness . . . but Angela Richman thinks there’s more to it.

“Ageless” Hollywood diva Jessica Gray is finishing the last leg of her one-woman show in St Louis, Missouri, and the nearby town of Chouteau Forest is dazzled. During the show she humiliates three homeless women onstage, fires her entourage – not for the first time – and makes a bitter enemy of the town’s powerful patriarch.

After she collapses at an after-show party and is rushed to the hospital, she ignores the advice of her doctors and discharges herself in order to return to LA. On the way to the airport she suffers a deadly coughing fit. It was poison. When Angela Richman’s friend, Mario, is arrested for the murder and faces the death penalty, she is compelled to investigate.

With so many grudges held against the actress and Mario’s life on the line, the stakes are higher than ever.

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About the author
Elaine Viets returns to her hardboiled roots with her Angela Richman death investigator series. A Star Is Dead is the latest in the series, following Ice Blonde, Fire and Ashes and Brain Storm. New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris calls Brain Storm “a complex novel of crime, punishment, and medical malfeasance.” Elaine has 33 bestselling mysteries in four series: hardboiled Francesca Vierling, traditional Dead-End Job, cozy Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper, and Angela Richman, Death Investigator. Elaine, a St. Louis native, took the Medicolegal Death Investigator Training Course for forensic professionals at St. Louis University. Her collection of short stories, A Deal with the Devil and 13 Short Stories, is published by Crippen & Landru. Elaine’s won the Agatha, Anthony and Lefty Awards. Learn more at elaineviets.com.

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