Redemption Arc: Ed "Skull" Murphy (Ep. 60)

Ed "Skull" Murphy went from treacherous gay blackmailer to community activist and icon. How? Well, just listen, it's why you came here, what - do I gotta do everything for ya? God, I hate Christmas. 

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Chapters

• 0:11 There's a fake cop down at the Western Union office
• 1:35 Happy holidays, here's some free stuff cuz' J. Harvey loves you.
• 2:34 Here's one about an evil blackmail ring targeting gay guys RUN by a gay guy so he sucked
• 7:34 Meet Ed "Skull" Murphy. Don't mess with his shinebox.
• 9:45 Meet Skull's evil friends
• 10:52 Here's how the blackmail ring worked
• 15:51 The victims were many and varied.
• 17:47 People stonewalled the police/feds, see what I did there - stonewall, it's a gay podcast, clever, huh?
• 19:24 Liberace might have been a victim but don't quote me, such beautiful rings
• 19:58 Someone dies :(
• 20:55 The cops actually handled this case with compassion. Mostly.
• 22:06 Evil people do time.,
• 23:26 How Skull went from demon to deity
• 27:15 Wrap it up, J. Happy holidays, everyone!

Transcript

July 1965, New York City

Detective James McDonnell rushed to the Western Union office beneath Grand Central Station, chasing down a tip about a smooth-talking man posing as a cop while escorting a 14-year-old runaway. The suspect looked the part—handsome, calm, sharply dressed—but when he stumbled over basic police talk, McDonnell knew the guy’s badge was fake. Moments later, backup burst through the door and McDonnell cuffed 34-year-old John Aitken, a repeat offender with a past in child exploitation who now seemed terrified of the charges he faced. Desperate, Aitken begged for leniency—and desperately claimed that he could trade something far bigger than one runaway: a blackmail ring with powerful victims, big money, and salacious secrets the NYPD could only imagine. Aiken kept mentioning something about “chickens” and “bulls” and it would turn out he meant something far different than barnyard animals. 

You’re listening to Wicked Gay, a true crime podcast about gay people doing awful things.

Hello! I’m your host J. Harvey. It’s December, and first I have a gift for you, my loyal listeners. You know how Wicked Gay has a patereon? It’s over at patren.com slash wicked gya. And happy hohos because hte previously behind a paywall first episode is now absolutely free to listen to! Its one youve never heard if you dont subscinbe to the Patereon and its free for the rest of out lives! Enjoy! Its about a guy who straked the Oscars and then got brutally muyrdered after benign a total gay chaos agent, Youlllove it. 

And whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, The Winter Solstice, St. Nicholas Day, Las Posadas, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Bodhi Day, or Ōmisoka - you probably need a break from all the pressure and forced jocularity, so please try to relax to my dulcet tones as I spin a tale takes place across the early 1960s here in the United States. It’s about a vicious extortion ring that exploited young men, some of them underage, to prey upon closeted gay men from all walks of life for financial gain. Their cruelty destroyed lives in all sorts of way - financially, professionally, personally, and in at least one case - fatally. And in an unpleasant twist, one of the ringleaders of what the FBI would call Operation Homex and the NYPD and the DA’s office would call The Chickens and the Bulls case was a gay man himself, acting against his own community. Who then went on to serve the community. It’s a strange maybe even a little uplifting story demonstrating change happens and redemption might even be real. That’s why I’m calling Wicked Gay’s 60th episode Redemption Arc: Edward “Skull” Murphy.

My source for this episode is a 2012 Slate article titled The Chickens and the Bulls by William McGowan. 

If you’re a longtime Wicked Gay listener you know or you have a half a brain in your skull casing, you can probably guess that being gay prior to like last week and definitely pre-Stonewall wasn’t always a treat. Lots of people took issue with queer people, and there was little to no protections, legal or otherwise, against discrimination. So, a lot of gay people opted for the closet, especially if they wanted to move forward in their professional lives, oftimes getting married and having kids to give off the appearance of normality, whatever that is. This made them ripe for the picking when it came to potential blackmailers. There, scene set.

So, its a Sunday morning in July of 65, Detective James McDonnell is at Manhattan’s 17th precinct, and gets a call about a guy at the Western Union office in Grand Central Station who appears to be impersonating a cop, and is currently with a 14 year old runaway and maybe trying to extort money from the kid’s dad in Texas to fly the kid home, seeing as he’s asking the guy to wire him twice the amount of a ticket.

There had been a spate of recent phony policeman cases, so Detective McDonnell is especially curious. The dude, who he described later as calm, good looking and sharply dressed, looked the part, but was slow to flash his badge back to McDonnell when he showed him his. He also demurred from telling mcDonnell what squad he was from and didnt know copspeak, like a 5 was short for an incident report. He surreptitiously had the Western Union clerk call for backup, and when four officers arrived, arrested 34 year old Non officer John Aiken. Who got progressively less calm, especially since he had a prior arrest for child molestation and if he got charged with corruption of a minor now he could be going to jail for a long time, Aitken finally confessed he had planned to use the kid for a robbery but the kid was too innocent,so he was just trying to get his cut for doing a good deed by getting him home, he then tried to barter for his freedom by telling Detective McDonnell that he had info on something big, with prominent names and tied to lots of money

Back at the squad room, he spun a tale of an extortion ring that preyed upon prominent closeted homosecuals across the country, most of them married with families. McDonnell later said that everyones mouths were gape at the names he was dropping and the amount of money he claimed was involved.

And a little investigating showed that Aiken might not be a total liar, because the info led the arrest of the security director of the New York Hilton, and indications that this extortion ring was very real and indeed nationwide. McDonnell then ended up working with the Manhattan DA’s office.

The NYPD and the FBI would eventually uncover and break a massive extortion ring. Their method was to imprtsonate corrupt vice squad detectives, who were known as “bulls” on cop speak, and they would use young often underage men, chickens in cop speak, to blackmail successful closeted members of the community, and we’re talking 1,000s in number including a navy admiral, two general,s a US congressman, a prominent surgeon, an Ivyu League professor, a prep school deadmaster and several well known, actorsm singers, and television perosnaltiies. Threateningt o expose them as gay unless they paid, and paid deep. In the annals of American crime, its been all but forgotten despite being what the writer of this slate pice callwed the most far flungm, most organzed, and most brazen example of homoseial exrotirtion in the nations history, but in addition to being an interresitng and iniusual ewxameple of the law engforement establishment actually working on behalf of gay men for the first time insrtead of ignoring antagomnzing or pnoshment them, its also fairly remarkable for one of its perpetrators.  A man who went by the colorful nickname of Skull.

Edward “Skull” Murphy was the guy they arrested at the New York Hilton, the head of security no less. He was from Manhattan;s lower west side, and had a colorful background. He’d been expelled from a Catholic Grammart school as a kid for breaking a milk bottle off a cops head for breaking his shoe shine box. He served in the army in franc during world war 2 and in the late 40s became a doorman at some gay bars on Eigth Ave when he wasnt robbing dentists of the gold they were using in fillings, Told you he was colorful. He went to state prison for 10 years, most of it he spent in isoltatoon because he kept assauilting guards and fellow inmates. 

When he got out of jail, he went back to wortkin the door at divey gay bars, but also compete as a profressioan wrestler, known for his shaved head, which earned him his moniker Skull as well as fo throwing chairs at anyone in the audience who booed him. But when he wanst bouncing and wrestling and hurling folding chairs at people, he was knowna s Mother to a collection of young male runaways and sec wotkers whom he cared for, sime of them pimping. Somehow, despite his cirminalk record, and Im assuming Cori wasnt a thing abc then, he ended up as the very corruo security director of the New York Hilton. Oh despite embarking on a truly detesable career enterprise targeted against gay men, Ed Skull Mother was gay jimself, and at the time of hus bust at the Hlton, was partnered with a male beauticiian. Thats disappointing Skulluy Mother.

When they arrested Ed, he had fake detecrive badge in is possession. Cops dont enjoy coivolans passing themselves off as cops,and they especially didnt emjoy it when a gay guy does in 1965, so they were about to take him bejhind closed doors to beat the stuffing out of him bevore Det McDonnel intevented. Ed was grateful andMcdonnel and he developed a rapport. As you can tell by his being a gay guy preying on other gay men, Ed Murphy wasnt the most loyal sort, and he ended u becoming McDOnnells informating in the Chickens and Bulls case, or Pperaton Homex as the feds came to call it. 

It was eventually learned that Ed had two co-ringlesders in the scheme. Ed ran the NYC racket, and In Chicago, a former copy in his 50s named John Pyne was in charge. He had been a member of the city’s confidential squad, learning the tricks of the blackmail trade from the shakdwon guys he put in jail. Pyne had connectoons everywhere, which supplied him with dozens of different polie badges, as well as arrest forms, warrants and extradition forms from tons of juridictions across the country. Remember these guys were posing as cops, so having a former cop among them gave them the knowhow and the props to make it seem very real to their victims.,

Going between Chicao and NYC was 38 year old Sherman Chadwick Kaminsky, a “salesman” thats in quotes, with a mysterious past. Kaminsky claimed he was born and raised in NY, but some accounts said he had served in the Israeli army at some point. He worked in tandem wirth a guy named John Fellabim, a wifghtlifter and bodybuilder in his late 20s. When Kamisky wasnt using one of the young runways or sex workers, everyone referred to as chickens, it appears as though Kaminsky used Fellabaum’s good looks and body to lure in his victims. 

Ed’s group operated out of the Tangiers nicghtbcol, with chickens being sent to work at the Hilton, where Ed worked, or the Astor Hotel in Times Square, which was notorious for the young men who frequenbted the “meat rack” outside of it. The chickens employed by the ring were famous for their gaydar. “They could tell who was game, and who wasn’t after just a few remarks at the bar’ marvelled one of McCDonnel’s colleagues, Oh straight men.

Once the trap was sprung, the chicken would either accompany the mark to his hotel room or suggest another one where they coule go instead, preferably at the Hilton, where Ed basically ran the place. Once in the room, one of two scenarios would happen:

In some cases, the bulls, the dudes posing as vice squad dicks, would wait until the chicken and the poor bastard being rooked were in the middle of sexy times, then bust into the room, sauing they were cops, sporting the appropriate hardware or a reasonable facsimile and completely traiumatizing the victim in what they rewferred to as “the play”. At the Hilton, where Ed kull Murpju, was head of security, Skull wold shave an inch from certain room doors, so he could insert a small dental mirror taped to the end of a cane so he knew exactly when to spring the trap.

Fake Detective Skull would then gruffly explain how sodomy and corrupting a minor were illegal, and ask for a bribe, or as they did in the case of one Princeton Professor, suggest that he pay bail money as a way of avoiding making his arrest public or going to prison. 

The other scenario was when they would sometimes fake like they were going to make it all official and they would take a second to put the victim together with another man they pretended to have arrested for the same thing elsewhere in the same hotel. The other man, who was in on it, would playact that he couldn’t afford to be arrested so he was going to offer the bulls the money, which could make the victim offer the money before the bulls even demanded it which was a better look if the bulls ever ende dup in court. And in addition to having all of the arrest forms, warrant, and paperwork, the bull soften had rela badges and rela guns too. But mos ttimes,it was  fake badge and a toy gun, cuz the penalties dfor police impersoantion and criminal posession of a wepaon where big. 

Something to keep in mind, sometimes actual cops were pulling this shit,t oo, they called it “fairy shakling” and they would use these same tecjnoiquies, which made the bulls lookl even more beleivanble. 

These guys were insidious but really slick. In some instances after an “arrest,” the bogus cops would park their “unmarked” vehicle outside a station house, ostensibly to check whether the duty captain might OK dropping the charges if a payment was arranged, which tended to encourage the victim to comply. In other more resistant cases, the blackmailers would bring their victims right into night court in lower Manhattan, with one of the bulls sitting the victim down in the back of the courtroom while his partner chatted the clerk up making it look like they were really discussing this poor bastard’s fate.

In at least one case, the phony cops bluffed a sleepy desk sergeant into putting a victim into a holding cell overnight when the bogus detectives, who said they were from another precinct, told the sergeant they had another call to handle.

After the victim broke, everyone would return to the hotel to wait until the banks opened. As the victim squirmed or sat in shock, the bulls might blithely pass the time playing cards. At 9 a.m., they would be standing in line with the mark, in case the teller asked any suspicious questions or the victim signaled for help. Often the sums were so large, the teller would have to bring a supervisor over for authorization, heightening the tension. “Sometimes they took everything the victim had,” recalls one DA. “They wiped people out.”

That was the chief scenario, but there was an even easier one where the chicken would just leave with the dude’s wallet. The chicken would keep the cash but the bulls got the IDs, credit cards, or employment IDs to run background checks, often with the assistance of crooked cops on their payroll. THis was how they would figure out if the guy was someone worth exploiting further, if he was in a vulnerable positomn personally for professoionall, and could afford to really pay up.

If he fit the bills, theyd contact him with his ID or wallet as proof they knew what hed been up to withj the chicken, and post as cops investing a robberry/gay prositioon ring, and that they planned ot call him as a material witness to provide testimony unless he posted money at which time they could find another victim to testify instead of him. The Chicago ringldeaer would sometimes have a henchmen post as a wire service reporter from the Chicago Tribune and call the victims, threatneing to print stories epxosing their homosexual actitives, which made them even more terrifie do fpnbloic expose, and more apt to pay. 

And these guys were successful, and they snagged a lot of guys, and a lot of guys in high places. On two occasions they marched a New Jersey congressman who sat on the House Foreign Affairs commoittee right out of is captial jhill office and onto a private plane to fly back to Jersey where he could pay them $50K in total eventually, which is over 500K in 2025 dollars. They got the equivalent of 50K from the admiral who was in charge of the New York Naval Yards and an army general for 20K. They flew oversees to bilk a closeted British movie and film producer for 30K and made a prominent surgeon leave the OR in the middle of a surgery to pay them. His colleague had to take over. Malpractice! What the hell was so important? Unless some legbreaking bookie was breathing down someone’s neck or holding a ho hostage…let him suture, you impatient fuck! 

And for non-violent criminals, these guys were fairly heartless. There was one midwestern schoolteacher whom they bled dry of 120K over four years. And a businessman in Kansas whom they took for 150K and who ended up begging them to kill him because he couldn’t afford to pay anymore. I don’t know who I’m more irritated with, the blackmailing trash or the societal circumstances that led these men to this sorta desperation. Eff the world. 

And they would make good on their threats. Marriages and engagements and careers were destroyed when the blackmailers didnt get paid. 

one abortion doctor in Kansas, who wasnt gay, but was misidentified as a target, took out a shotgun and chased the tbulls away. Bitch ill kill a fetus what makes you think i wont kill you? Im kidding i can make abortion jokes actually i cant make abortion jokes men should shut up and not that i tmatters cuz i am a man but i support your right to choose, women should have agency over their bodies and kids are annoying especially in December. No you cant have the 1000 labubu you brat

The investigation was extensive because each branch of the ring had multiple operatives for lack of a better word. But as they got evidence on a guy, it was proven there is little to no honor among thieves and he usually rolled over on his accomplices for better jail time. It was more difficult getting the chickens to talk. Most were transients or runaways from bad family situations who were difficult to track down cuz they between grimy motels, or being unhoused, and doing sex work to survive at the piers,or in porn theaters on 42nd st. Some were drug addicts, and controlled by their dealers or their pimps, guys who were often blackmailers in the ring.

But the hardest part for the cops and the feds was getting the victims to talk. Makes sense, these dudes are paying through the nose for people NOT to know they’re queer, now law enforcement, traditionally not the kindest to gay people, want them to put it in writing if not take the stand. They also didnt know if the blackmailers were capable of going after them or their families physically if they found out they were talking to police. There was also mistrust of the police. One nuclear scientest in California was completley convinced that the two bulls who were blackmailing him were real cops that he refused to even talk to the police until they showed him mugshots of the two dudes. One law enforcemebnt official in the Times had to go on record to say : “Extortion of money from well known persons who are homosexual or bisexual is a persistent problem. We want to alert these people who come from all walks of life that such extortion schemes exist and we want to impress upon them also that New York City detectives are no part of this disgusting racket.”

Some victims, once identified, fled from the cops to Europe or went undegrond. Some of the victims were wealthy enough that throwing money at the problem was the easiest solution., One musician who had made numerous television appearances and reads like might have been Lberace, declined to testify before a New York grand jury. “I can afford to lose the money,” he was quoted in the Times as saying. “I hope they die of cancer.” Entertainers back then, in addition to losing their fanbase, also normally had was what was called a morals clause in their contracts, so they were in danger of losing far more money than what their blackmailers were demanding. This guy who might have been Liberace told the DA that he would not be able to identify anyone anyway, and that he had “nothing to gain and everything to lose” by testifying.

One of the more tragic victim stories as that of the Admiral I mentioned. The one in charge of the New York Navy Yards. Admiral William Church was shaken down several months after being robbed of his credentials by a chicken at the Astor Hotel. According to cops he  was initially “arrogant and abrupt,” when they approached him in his Pentagon office, but grew “very taken aback and withdrawn,” only agreeing to talk to investigators and prosecutors in New York after being shown what he was told was an impending subpoena with his name on it.. It was agreed that he would drive up by himself from DC the next day, which would spare Church from testifying before a grand jury, which would have resulted in him losing his commission.

Later that night however, Admiral Church drove to a motel in Bethesda, Md., and shot himself in the head. The worst part is that the heavy handed cops had lied, and, the “subpoena” they showed him was merely an official-looking piece of paper with Church’s name written on it. 

But I will give credit where its due, for the most part, that misstep aside, and it was a big nistep seeing as it kiled a man, the police and feds were mostly and uncharacteristically sensitive to the victims in this, and managed to bring the extortion ring down while protecting a majority of them.  “I felt sorry for them,” the chief dick said later, “I did everything in my power to make sure their families and the business associates did not get involved.” added the DA: “We treated them as victims of crime. We didn’t want to cause them any personal embarrassment.” 

For example, Financial records, which were crucial for making cases, were approached with caution, to avoid stoking rumors among bank employees. In some cases, the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay right oranizations in the US and  whose members included lawyers with connections in high places, served as a go-between so that the victims would feel less exposed.

They also tried to get the perpetrators to plead out so they wouldnt have to go to trial so they could avoid putting the victims on the stand. 

The ring was brought down gradually, with the cases tried one by one and not as a big sensationalistic package, and the cops tried to keep as many names as possible out of the press. When the newspapers did report on it, well the big story the Times did, the headline was Nationwide Ring Preying On Prominent Deviates. But they showed some discretion too. For instance, they knew the name of one victim whow as a congressman but kept him anonymous just writing he was from an Eastern state. 

One of the more positive outcomes of Operatoon Chickens and Bulls was thay the NYPD ended their ongoing entrapment operations, meaning they stopped sendiung cute patrolmen in plainclothes to public restrooms to hit on dudes and then arresting them when they took the bait, oftimes beating the shit out of them or instead of arresting, asking for a kickback, so ending the blackmail all around.

And the proeectuon of these evilf fucks did seem to reflect maybe some progress was being made by inches but progress In Chicago, the Assistant U.S. Attorney called ringleader John Pyne “a menace of the most depraved kind.”and ne was given two 20-year federal prison terms, to be served consecutively. In New York,a  federal Judge denounced weightlifter bait boy John Fellabaum as being “so steeped in filth that as I read the (investigation) report I cringed, and my flesh crept as I read the depth of iniquity to which you have allowed yourself to sink.” Vivid!

This judge was disgusted at Fellabuam for making the witness, described as a gentlemanly antiques dealer from Maine, take the stand and publicly “out” himself, only for Fellabaum to plead guilty immediately after the opening trial session. What an asshole. Thats a petty queen,.

They mysterious Sherman Kaminsky agreed to plead guilty on federal charges, but when Admiral William Church committed suicide, the New York DA raised the prospect of prosecuting him on manslaughter charges. Kaminsky tried to strike a deal with federal prosecutors and jumped bail when the feds said no. He was on the lam for 11 years, some of which he might have spent in Israel.

In January 1978, however, the FBI got a tip and pinched him at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on his way to denver, where he had lived for most of his time, under the name of Calvin Paley, and had operated a rabbit-raising business as well as a company that distributed hair replacement products. People live weird lives and does that mean he was selling dudes rabbit fur wigs?

Because Kaminsky had deliberately fled, the federal statute of limitations on his extortion conviction was voided. The judge told Kaminsky that what he had done before was “a dirty, slimy, almost inhuman bit of deportment.” That guy ended up dying in witness protection as he ultimatleu avoided jail by snitching on a cellmate who had blown up a Chilean diplomat with a car bomb. Kaminsky had a crazy story, rabbit wigs and all.

But to me it’s treacherous gay Edward Skull Murphy who is the most interesting fella in this story. So, after he was arrested for running a blackmail ring while working as the very working at cross purposes security chief of the New York Hiltoin he ratted out his accomplices and avoided any additional jail time for ruining and terrorizing many lives as well as earning himself what sounds like more than a million.

No, Skull went to work as a doorman again at the Stonewall Inn of all places. Where Im sure he threw the second brick. MUltiple reports say he kept it shady for awhile. Back then, La Cosa Nostra aka the mob was pretty heavily involved with the gay bars, cuz its really easy to suck protection money off of establishments who are on the outs with law enforcement anyway. Skull would facilitate the payments between the bar and the mob. 

And yes, trashy Ed Skull Murphy was arrested during the famed riots in 69 which is considered the beginning of the modern gay rights movement., but this such an NYC story, but he escaped police custody handcuffed to a drag queen named Blond Frankie. Murphy and Blond Frankie allegedly hopped a cab to another bar further downtown called Keller’s, which was popular with by seaman by day and with gay men by night, where an S&M drag queen got them out of their restraints. So, Skull was there at the advent of the modern gay rights movement, despite being a villainous type.

And thats when he pulled a madge and reinvented himself. And when I say reinvented himself, I dont mean he like got a normal job or a degree or settled down with a nice guy named Bob and Shit Tzu in the long isnland suburbs. No, Ed Skull Murphy embarked on a full blown redemption arc and became a community activist and sort of local icon. Maybe he had some sort of self reckoning or dark night of the soul while running from the bigot cops while stuck to Blond Frankie. He was mother to some of those chickens after all. 

Those who knew of his role in the Chickens and Bulls case got old or died off, and he began to sorta kinda airbrush his role in it and would so for the rest of hise life, claiming he had been a confidential informant for the FBI all along and had inflilitrated the ring for them. From what I read, this take is NOT supported by police and court records. So tell us another one Story Lady

Murphy ended up working with people with AIDS, runaway teens, young sex workers, homeless kids, addicts, and the developmental disabled.

So this bitch’s His Christmas party fundraisers became  “a holiday fixture,” according to someone who was a Ed Skull Murphy admirer,,  and apparently he was especially adept at getting bakeries and dairies to donate to AIDS hospices and old age homes. In fact, he was so persuasive that he even got the detective who busted him to do some volunteer work when he retired and surprised the same officer at an awards dinner with a plaque to honor his work. He might have a moral compass that looks fucked up by magnets but you cant say he wasnt slick or didnt get things done. 

He also got into political on behalf of the community - He got a 1978 profile in the village voice which portrayed him as leading a march on behalf of a gay rights bill before the New York City Council, with a lavender marshal’s hankie knotted around his wrist as he led protesters in a rousing chorus of “Hey, hey, ho, ho, discrimination’s got to go.” 

Murphy looked like “a character from Guys and Dolls who’d just stepped away from the craps table,” the reporter wrote. He also did his part to say fuck off to respectability polutucs by referring to his gay brthren as “queens, fags, and cocksuckers” did not go down well with “the (Dewar’s) White Label liberationist crowd.” But Murphy was a “phenomenal resource” whom everyone respected, another activist ws quoted as sayung. According to the article, Murphy’s redemption really began when he turned against the mobsters who he’d long worked for, becoming a witness in hearings into mob control of the gay bar scene held by the New York State Select Committee on Crime. Im tlelling you, either blind franie or the BDSM queen with the hanfcuff keys talked some sense into his formerly evil ass.

And the former blackmailer pimp became so beloved that he earned the moniker, the Mayor of Christopher St (that’s NYC;’s big gay st, at least back in the day), and became a central figure in organizing what would become the city’s Gay Pride festivities. very year, Murphy and a crew much younger men would ride in a convertible Cadillac in the gay pride parade itself. A picture from the 1984 parade shows Murphy looking dapper, in a trimmed beard and a blazer, wearing a blue sash bearing the words: “The Original Stonewaller.”* But where was Blond Frankie I ask you? And why wasnt the Kansas abortion doctor out there with his shotgun demanding a formal apology and calling bullshit on that confidential informant story.

Murphy died of AIDS in early 1989 at the age of 64. At his standing-room-only Roman Catholic funeral, the priest said that “If Ed Murphy is not with God, then there is no God.” As pallbearers carried him to the hearse, a police escort stopped traffic and a tenor sang Danny Boy. An obituary in the New York Native called Murphy “a patriarch to his own,” and said that “bigotry appalled him.” He was, the obituary declared, “a humanitarian with few peers whose like may not pass our way soon.”

So, people can change. And I’d like to think that he spent the rest of his life making up for all the shitty things he did in his younger age. People deserve a second shot. And not to discount what he did, which was egregiously evil, but rehabilition is a thing, giving people opportunities and chances and not giving up on them are a thing. Change is difficult. Change like that must be enormously so. going from a predator to a protector. I dont know - what do you think?

And that is Wicked Gay’s heartwarming holiday tale for the end of the year. Remember theres a free Wicked Gay episode on Patreron now to listen toi, and try not to strangle your family at whatever gathering garthers you, and be kind to yourselves and youre ginna have a sparkly 2026, cuz I just know this ehings, nite.