A detective sabotaged his own cases because he didn’t like the prosecutor

That evening, Chigurupati left Murphey another voicemail. “If it makes any difference, this guy’s a really bad guy,” Chigurupati said, according to the message, which Murphey provided for this story. “What he did was pretty ridiculous. So, I mean, can you put your differences aside and focus on getting this guy?”

Again, Murphey didn’t respond.

Weeks later, a jury found Brian Vincent not guilty, and he went free. Murphey said he believes his refusal to testify helped scuttle the case — a claim corroborated by at least one juror from the trial.

A number of American cities have elected prosecutors who promised progressive law enforcement, focusing as much on police accountability as being tough on crime. In St. Louis, that prosecutor was Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who was elected in 2016 following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in the suburb of Ferguson. Gardner came into office pledging to reduce mass incarceration and promote rehabilitation over punishment.

But from San Francisco to Philadelphia, prosecutors like Gardner have faced pushback from the police and, in several cities, from their own courtroom assistants. Politicians and voters have tried to remove some of these prosecutors from office — and, in a number of cities, they have been successful.

Murphey’s resistance to Gardner — Chigurupati’s boss when Vincent’s case went to trial — was unusual and, perhaps, extreme. By his own account, he was willing to help murder suspects walk free to make a point, even if he arrested them and believed that they should be behind bars.

In 2019, Gardner added Murphey to a list of police officers who would not be allowed to apply for criminal charges because of questions about their credibility, and she said her office would evaluate whether those officers could testify in court. Although the identities of those officers were not made public, one of Murphey’s supervisors notified him that his name was on Gardner’s list.

Weeks later, a prosecutor in Gardner’s office notified Murphey that the office not only would actually let him testify in the cases he had led that were heading to trial — it expected him to.

Murphey, who retired in September 2021, said he felt stuck in a Catch-22. If Gardner was going to impugn his character and question his credibility, he decided, he wouldn’t cooperate with her prosecutors. He believed that if he went to court, defense lawyers would use his inclusion on Gardner’s list to attack him on cross-examination, making the trials more about him than the defendants.

Since that time, he has refused to testify in at least nine murder cases in which he served as lead detective. He said he told prosecutors that, if they subpoenaed him to testify, “I’m going to sit on the stand and I’m not going to answer any questions.”

His refusal, according to prosecutors, contributed to their decisions to offer defendants in at least four of the murder cases plea deals with reduced charges and lighter sentences. Prosecutors were still able to get murder convictions in three cases.

In one case, prosecutors dropped the charges altogether, saying the office “did not have witness participation.” Though it wasn’t clear if Murphey’s refusal contributed to the decision, he said the prosecution would have been hamstrung without him because he had collected evidence and conducted interviews in the case.

Vincent’s case was the only acquittal at trial.

Murphey never faced discipline from the police department for refusing to testify, a fact that criminal justice experts find astonishing. They said his refusal undermined not just the integrity of the cases but also the police department’s commitment to justice.

Gardner battled the police and their union over her platform throughout her nearly six and a half years in office. But she also struggled with a host of internal issues, from the departure of dissatisfied prosecutors to a growing backlog of cases that the office could not manage. Those issues contributed to stinging criticism of her leadership — initially from law enforcement but then from even her own prosecutors.

It wasn’t until this May that staff departures became so numerous and pressure on her to resign so fierce that she stepped down. In exchange for her resignation, Republican lawmakers agreed to drop a bill that would have allowed the state to take over the circuit attorney’s office. The Republican attorney general also dropped a lawsuit seeking to force her out.

Robert Tracy, the St. Louis police chief, did not respond to an interview request. Gardner did not respond to requests for comment, and she has retreated from public life. The office is now run by Gabriel Gore, a former federal prosecutor appointed by Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, to serve until an election next year. Gore has issued updates about his supervision of the office, including hiring dozens of prosecutors and reducing a backlog of pending cases.

Murphey, who sees himself as a righteous renegade in St. Louis’ beleaguered law enforcement system, wishes other officers had taken similar stands against prosecutors like Gardner. But he said he understands why they haven’t. “They have wives, they have kids, they have tuition, medical bills,” he said. “But me — it’s just me and my wife, and my wife is like, ‘Go for it.’”

At least 10 other officers refused to cooperate with Gardner’s team, according to interviews and court records. But Murphey stood apart because of his crucial role in some of the city’s most significant, and most violent, cases.

While expressing some sympathy for the family of the victim whose fatal beating Vincent was tried for, Murphey stood by his decision not to cooperate.

“Brian Vincent should be sitting in a penitentiary right now for the rest of his life,” he said. “But he’s not.”

The report of a suspicious death came across Murphey’s desk just after sunset on a cold November evening in 2018. A man named Larry Keck had been found in his bed, partly covered by a sheet, his face and body severely battered.

Murphey pulled up to a four-family flat in Shaw, a neighborhood of red brick homes on the city’s south side. As he stepped into Keck’s apartment, a painting in the living room caught his eye. It depicted an Italianate-style mansion in Lafayette Square, and it stirred a memory from his childhood. The mansion had once been owned by Keck, whom Murphey had known when he was young. Keck had spent his working life restoring some of St. Louis’ grandest homes, fixing windows and other architectural elements. Murphey had once helped him move furniture.

Murphey and other officers quickly zeroed in on Vincent, 40, as a suspect. Police reports and interviews show that Vincent and Keck, who was 68, had been in a romantic relationship, and that Vincent had been staying at Keck’s apartment on and off after getting out of prison earlier that year. A friend of Keck’s told police she had seen them together at his house late the night before.

Vincent had at least 31 felony convictions at the time and had served five stints in prison over the previous two decades; the longest was six years. His most recent conviction was for a 2014 home burglary, where he stole hundreds of dollars’ worth of electronics and jewelry, according to police and court records.

Six months before Keck’s death, neighbors called the police one night as Vincent loudly banged on Keck’s door for 45 minutes. An officer provided Keck with a form to request a restraining order against Vincent, but there’s no record of Keck filing it. Keck’s friends told police they had noticed bruises on him in the past, leading them to suspect that Vincent was abusing him. Keck had also told the friends that Vincent was stealing from him.

Murphey brought Vincent to police headquarters for questioning and placed him in a small, windowless room. According to a video of the interrogation, which Murphey provided, Vincent told Murphey and another detective that he and Keck had been out with friends the night before Keck was found dead and that some of them had gone back to Keck’s apartment at about 10 p.m. to smoke crack cocaine. Vincent said that afterward he slept in the alley behind the house and woke around 2 a.m. He said he then walked downtown — a distance of 4 miles — to see his probation officer.

Murphey questioned Vincent’s account, pointing out that his clothes, which Vincent said he was still wearing from the night before, were remarkably clean for someone who had slept in an alley. He noted, too, that the overnight temperature was 19 degrees, making it difficult to believe that Vincent had slept outside. Vincent seemed indignant, telling Murphey that he should be looking at Keck’s drug dealers as possible suspects.

“Some of them are probably dangerous,” he said in the video of the interrogation.

Murphey told Vincent that he believed Vincent had killed Keck. When Vincent asked for a lawyer, according to the video, Murphey ended the interrogation, arresting Vincent on a first-degree murder charge.

Murphey later tracked down two maintenance workers who had been at the building. One of them picked Vincent out of a photo lineup, according to police reports, and said he saw Vincent go in and out of Keck’s apartment a short time before Keck’s body was discovered.

Murphey said in a sworn deposition, taken by Vincent’s lawyer as part of pretrial proceedings, that the lack of a plausible alibi was “what sealed it for me,” according to the deposition.

Vincent, in a brief interview, said he was innocent and described Keck as a close friend: “We worked together and had our differences but he was a good man.” He called Murphey a “crooked cop” who…