Catching up with Mary Murphy, who covered crime for WCBS, WPIX

After thousands of stories, hundreds of scoops, 33 Emmys and just two stations — WPIX/11 and WCBS/2 — Mary Murphy retired in 2024.

Retired? Well, not quite.

Murphy, 67, is not exactly the retiring type. Since then, she has launched a production company, Trinity, with Erin Mulvey, a former special agent with the New York office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Their first film, which just wrapped, is is the documentary "Saint of the City" about NYPD Det. Steven McDonald, who became paralyzed after he was shot three times by a teenager in Central Park in 1986. Later forgiving the teen, McDonald became world-famous for speaking out about compassion and clemency. The Malverne native died in 2017. The film has yet to get a distributor.

Murphy's career spanned four of among the most tumultuous decades in New York history. As a reporter, later anchor/reporter for WPIX, she was at the center of it all. This dervish — who still seems to remember every single detail about every single one of those stories — was among the most prolific crime reporters, print or TV, over those years in New York, beginning in 1981. She covered pandemics, drug scourges, terrorism, John Gotti and the mob wars, police scandals, Superstorm Sandy, Gilgo Beach and street crime — an inconceivable amount of that.

Murphy, who lives in New York City, spoke to Newsday recently about this remarkable career, and that film. (The following was edited for length and clarity.)

Tell me about your upbringing.

The first six years were spent in Woodside, in the Corpus Christi Church parish. We lived on the top floor of a three-family house — I'm the oldest of four, my father was a bus driver in the Bronx, and my mother stayed home. Both were born in Ireland.

So while at Queens College, you were also an intern at channel 2?

During the weekends, there was only one person at the [news desk] and I was assigned to her. Crime was big [on TV] back then, and she'd have me call up the local police precinct or DCPI [Deputy Commissioner of Public Information]. That was my first exposure to crime reporting. During that time, I was also working at a nursing home, Little Sisters of the Poor, in Queens Village, and quit that job the day I graduated from college, [then] two weeks later got called back to Channel 2.

And not long after that, you go to WPIX for your first stint. What was your first story?

A feature story on Long Island — a man in Port Jefferson who'd built his own schooner, and I went out on it with him. My mother bought me a dress for the shoot that was completely wrong for being out on the Sound. She said I looked like a nun.

Then you go back to channel 2 in 1986?

Channel 2 was looking for a New York-born reporter they could get cheap — city kids — because they were moving away from the old tradition of hiring people with flattened Midwestern accents. I hit the ground running at channel 2 [and] within a couple of weeks, I was covering [the racially motivated riots and death of Michael Griffin in] Howard Beach — found witnesses, people who'd looked out their windows and seen what happened near the Belt Parkway. We had a noon broadcast that the other stations — 4, 5, and 7 — didn't have, so I'd be live on the air at noon.

When did you first realize, "Aha, I want to be a crime reporter?

It was pretty early on because when I started making those phone calls about cases, I felt almost like a detective. I also had a good rapport with police investigators, because I showed up at so many crime scenes. Maybe they respected that, but I developed contacts on the street.

A big break, you've said, was the trial of Joel Steinberg, the New York defense attorney convicted of first-degree manslaughter in 1989 for the severe child abuse and fatal beating of his 6-year-old illegally adopted daughter, Lisa Steinberg. Explain.

Hedda Nussbaum [a book editor, and his live-in partner] made a deal with the persecution to testify against him, and when she took the stand, channel 2 decided they were going to do wall-to-wall coverage of her testimony. Every time there was a sidebar, the [TV] feed would go to color bars, so I was forced to run out into the hallway to talk with the anchors back in the studio while that was going on. During those nine days, the ratings tripled.

You do seem to have a steel-trap memory — all these years later you remember minute details about old tragedies most of us have long forgotten.

It served me well when I had to do so many live shots over the years. I would always have my legal pad on hand, as sort of a security blanket, in case I went blank on live TV, but the challenge was — and I usually rose to the challenge — was I want to be looking at the camera. I didn't want to be looking at my notepad. And before every live shot, I'd bless myself.

Bless yourself?!

Yes [laughs], as a good Catholic girl, I would bless myself — not on the air, but right before I came on. I did that forever. They used to call me Sister Mary when I started in the business. I came off as — I dunno — maybe a little uptight, but that was my nickname. I think it stuck for a while.

Why did you leave channel 2 and go back to channel 11?

I was interested in doing more anchor work, and they would let me do a little [at channel 2] but they didn't want to lose me from the street. I don't blame them, as managers, but I was trying to get the weekend anchor job [and] after six months, I was finally told, 'Oh Mary, you're going to be doing Saturday night.' I just felt that was a long time to lead me on without an answer. [Channel 11] offered more anchoring opportunities, and said I would have a role in selecting my stories.

A big change in your professional life arrived in February of 1993, with the first World Trade Center bombing — which you covered, and which launched years of covering the NYPD's counterterrorism efforts. Then you get back to PIX later that year — and it's crime all over again, with the LIRR massacre. You scored the first interview with [the shooter] Colin Ferguson?

I wrote to him in prison, and he wrote back and, in fact, we beat '60 Minutes' [to the interview]. But I just wanted to know if I could find out what motivated him to do something so atrocious, what made his mind tick. But he was very cagey, and at one point was trying to say he didn't do it. There were some mental health issues going on. It was one of the most bizarre interviews I have ever done [but] no regret doing it.

A lot of crime reporting over the years. Any regrets about that?

My mother asked me at one point, are you ever going to do anything but a murder case every day. But you know, children were getting caught in the crossfire [during the crack epidemic, which peaked in 1990, with a record-high 2,245 murders in New York City]. This was a huge problem for policing in New York in the late ’80s.

Was there a place in your head where you retreated to, in those moments where you were dealing with all this tragedy day after day?

I have a lot of faith and I still found a way to go to Mass every week. And I love movies. Movies were always an escape for me. And later, in my early 40s, I started playing tennis. That became an outlet. But, you know, it did get to be quite a bit to always be out on the street in tough areas that didn't always welcome TV cameras.

What's the word you'd use to describe yourself?

Determined. Jonathan Dienst [WNBC/4's chief investigative reporter] used to joke that, you know, 'Mary Murphy and I would knock on every door on the way up a six-story building looking for witnesses, but then Mary would knock on the same doors on the way down.' But I would usually find a witness.

Not all bad news! You covered Pope John Paul II's visit to New York in 1995.

He'd been sick like six months earlier, and an earlier trip had been canceled, so out on the airport tarmac, there are like two rows of schoolchildren and the reporters right behind them, and I'm leaning over trying to get any sound out of the Pope, who barely speaks. "Holy Father! How are you!!??" and finally he looked at me, and tapped the microphone twice. 'I'm good. How about you?' The cameraman ended up keeping that mic — called it the "Holy Mic."

Your summation of a remarkable 40-year run?

I have met a lot of good people and spoken to a lot of victim's families, and I feel that if it wasn't for the people who trusted me with their stories, I would not have had a career. I'm indebted to them and to all the sources from the law enforcement community who trusted me to do the right thing. And I met a lot of remarkable people — those who some would say had ordinary lives were really the most extraordinary of all.

Speaking of extraordinary people, why have you devoted the last two years of your life to a film on Steven McDonald?

I knew what he represented to the NYPD and the courage he represented to humanity, just by enduring what he endured for 30 and a half years. When they removed him from life support on Jan. 10, 2017, Cardinal [Timothy] Dolan offered St. Patrick's Cathedral for the funeral. His wife, Patti Ann, said she was surprised because he'd been shot 30 years before, but I wasn't, because I knew he'd gone to every single police funeral and spoke to hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren over the years about nonviolence and conflict resolution. ...

That was his way of going forward with life and not letting anger eat him up. He also really leaned into his faith. His faith got him through. I didn't know him very well and our paths would cross at some big moments, but I'd always wondered how he endured with that level of injury for so long, and managed to find joy in his life. As it turns out, I did learn what brought him joy, when his son [Conor] was born. That was a life changer for him.

My co-producer is Erin Mulvey and her husband, Terry [Det. Terence Mulvey, with the NYPD], died of 9/11-related cancer in 2021. Whenever he had his worst moments, he always mentioned Steven's endurance. She wanted to do this film as a tribute to him.