When reporters called Edward Stephany to ask him how he felt about the release of “Murf the Surf” from prison, two decades after Stephany successfully tried him in the high-stakes case over the gruesome murders of two young women, all the former prosecutor said was, “that’s the law.”
As Broward Assistant State Attorney, Stephany had led the prosecution of Jack Roland Murphy, a Miami-born champion surfer and playboy famous for stealing the Star of India from the American Museum of Natural History and hiding it in Biscayne Bay, in the 1969 murder case.
Stephany died Friday in his apartment at the Meridian at Waterways Senior Living community in Fort Lauderdale, his daughter, Pam Stephany, confirmed. He was 92.
Stephany worked at the State Attorney’s office for over a decade before the trial in Fort Lauderdale thrust him into the public eye. But unlike Murphy, who psychologists described during the trial as pathologically in need of attention, Stephany rarely sought out the spotlight. After the trial, he refused to be interviewed for a documentary about Murphy, saying he did not want to glorify a murderer.
“He was not an aggressive, loud man,” Pam Stephany said. “He wasn’t soft either, but he wouldn’t walk into a room and barnstorm it. He just moved through life in a way I hope I duplicate.”
A religious, disciplined man who lived by the golden rule, Stephany tried the case to the best of his ability out of a sense of duty to others, as he did in many other areas of his life, his daughter said. That didn’t make it any less thrilling for him.
“I think he got a kick out of it,” Pam Stephany said. “I think he was tickled that he had the opportunity to be in a position to have such a meaningful impact on the community. I think he couldn’t believe his good luck that he was standing in those shoes and sitting in that office. And he felt obligated to deliver, and he did.”
The trial
The mangled bodies of Terry Rae Kent Frank and a coworker, Annette Mohn, were found in Whiskey Creek in Hollywood off the Intracoastal Waterway in 1967, tied to concrete blocks. They had been stabbed and bludgeoned on a boat, then thrown overboard.
The two women were former employees at a California brokerage firm and suspects in the theft of nearly $500,000 worth of stocks. They had quit their jobs and traveled to Florida, where they moved in with Murphy.
Murphy and an accomplice, Jack Griffith, were charged in both deaths, but were never tried for Mohn’s. Murphy also was facing trial for the jewel theft, which some considered biggest jewel heist in New York City history. Tabloids romanticized the crime, and Murphy, a handsome surfer in his 20s, was already becoming something of a legend.
The trial for Frank’s death began in February of 1969, but Stephany had prepared for months in advance, his daughter recalled. As a 13-year old at the time, she didn’t fully understand what was going on. Her father would get up at dawn each day and return home late at night. The next day, the family would read about what he had done in the newspaper.
Around the courthouse, Stephany was a quiet man who always had a new joke to tell, according to reports from the time. He drove to work in a convertible wearing a plaid hat and cowboy boots.
During the trial, he always seemed one step ahead of the opposition.
Stephany first had to prove that Murphy was sane enough to stand trial. His defense attorney, Jack Nageley, argued that he was not.
“He communes with nature. He says he speaks with God,” said Dr. David Rothenberg, a psychologist, while testifying as a witness for the defense one day.
“What is this called– talking to God?” Nageley asked, looking for the psychiatric term.
“It’s called prayer,” Stephany interjected coldly.
“It’s not prayer,” Nageley replied. “God talks back to Mr. Murphy.”
The prosecution ultimately succeeded: the judge ruled that Murphy was legally sane and competent to stand trial. In the following weeks, Stephany sought the death penalty for Murphy and Griffith, while Nageley continued to argue that Murphy was insane. Griffith and Murphy blamed each other for the murders.
In an impassioned plea one day, Stephany asked that the jurors show the two men the same mercy that the men were accused of showing to the two victims.
“You know he’s not crazy,” he said, referring to Murphy, while waving a picture of Frank’s body in front of the jury. “You know he killed that girl.”
On March 1, the jury found both men guilty of Frank’s murder. Murphy was sentenced to life in prison, and Griffith to 45 years.
‘Right and wrong’
Despite all of the attention the trial received, Pam Stephany said she rarely spoke with her father about his job or the case afterwards.
“My interest was my father as my father, not my father as a lawyer,” she said.
While Stephany loved his career, he never pressured Pam or her brothers to pursue law, and none of them did. Outside of the courtroom, he worked in the garden, flew small planes, and rode his bicycle daily, probably putting around 200,000 miles on it.
He kept himself in shape “so he could deliver to his family, friends and community,” Pam Stephany said. And he was a “strict, but flexible” father who cared about fairness and hard work. He was also religious, heavily involved in the First Presbyterian church on Las Olas and 15th Avenue, which he helped to rebuild.
“Growing up, there were rules of the road as it relates to right and wrong,” she added. She and her two brothers, Edward and Kurt, all had to work and do household chores.
After the trial, Stephany was widely seen as the first choice for State Attorney. The sitting state attorney, Russell Clarke, had already endorsed him. But the governor, Claude Kirk Jr., appointed someone else instead. Clarke said Kirk “double-crossed” him.
Instead, in the years after the trial, Stephany opened his own firm, where he worked on cases involving small corporations, real estate and some divorces, his daughter said.
Meanwhile, in the years after Murphy was imprisoned, he only seemed to become more famous. He became a born-again Christian with a passion for preaching to his fellow inmates. In 1986, he was released for good behavior and became a television evangelist, attending prayer breakfasts with the likes of Ronald Reagan, the New York Times reported. Up until his death in 2020, he denied responsibility for the murders.
“…the murders of Ms. Frank and Ms. Mohn became footnotes to the supposedly more alluring tales of his prison ministry and the heist at the American Museum of Natural History,” the New York Times obituary read.
Stephany kept articles related to the case in his scrapbook, including some from after Murphy was released on parole. But if her father had opinions about Murphy’s release or reputation, he never shared them with her, Pam Stephany said: “he would always revert back to the law.”
When Stephany retired, he traveled the state with his wife, Dolores, before settling in the small town of Mount Dora for 20 years. Stephany was never the same after Dolores’ death in 2018, his daughter said. He moved into his apartment in the senior living facility in Fort Lauderdale, where he could watch the boats all day along the Intracoastal, not far from where Frank and Mohn had died decades before.
Pam Stephany wants her father to be remembered for the way he lived his life with “goodness and propriety” and dedicated himself to others. His role in the Murphy trial was only one piece of that, she said.
In a 1969 Fort Lauderdale News article titled “Stephany to Star in Court Scene?” a reporter asked Stephany about how he would manage the role of state attorney in addition to having a private practice.
“I’ll devote as much time as necessary to do the job,” he said. “If it takes more time than I’m giving it now, I’ll give it.”
Information from the New York Times and the Sun Sentinel Archives was used in this report.
Shira Moolten can be reached at or on Twitter at @shiramoolten.
