Ivan Murphy was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Lula Denning
According to court documents Ivan Murphy and an accomplice would go to the home of eighty year old Lula Denning. The woman would be fatally beaten
When arrested Ivan Murphy attempted to blame the murder of his accomplice and told police a story that failed to make sense
Ivan Murphy would be convicted and sentenced to death
Ivan Murphy would be executed by lethal injection on December 4 2003
Ivan Murphy Photos
Ivan Murphy FAQ
When Was Ivan Murphy Executed
Ivan Murphy was executed on December 4 2003
Ivan Murphy Case
A former mechanic with an extensive criminal record in Oklahoma was executed Thursday night for fatally beating an 80-year-old woman he’d known since childhood. Ivan Murphy, 38, was the second convicted killer executed in as many nights in Texas and the 24th this year. The total is the highest in the nation.
“This is a celebration of life, not death,” Murphy said in a brief final statement while strapped to the death chamber gurney. “Through Jesus Christ we have victory over death.” He thanked Pope John Paul II and others for prayers, love and support. “I want to thank everybody around the world and Father, let your will be done.” As the drugs began taking effect, he gasped several times. Ten minutes later, at 6:24 p.m., he was pronounced dead.
Murphy was condemned for the 1989 slaying of Lula Mae Denning at her home in Denison, about 70 miles north of Dallas and just south of the Texas-Oklahoma border. “It’s easy to feign religion in the face of death like that, but Christianity is about the Lord’s forgiveness, acknowledgment of one’s sins of the past and there was absolutely none of that. Not wanting to be offensive to anyone, it was just religious babble,” Perry Denning said of Murphy’s final comments after watching his mother’s killer die. “Just howling in the trees, just wind in the trees. Without true remorse, it means nothing.”
Murphy, who smiled and nodded to several friends who witnessed his execution, never acknowledged the presence of relatives of his victim. “‘Sorry’ would have helped a lot,” Richard Denning, another son of the victim, added.
A plastic bowl that contained strawberry ice cream helped convict Murphy . “We dusted the inside of a Cool Whip bowl and found his fingerprint,” said former Grayson County District Attorney Robert Jarvis, recalling evidence in Murphy’s capital murder trial. “He told officers he hadn’t been there in 20 years. He was lying about that.” Besides the fingerprint, jewelry taken from the victim was linked to Murphy and traces of the woman’s blood were found on his clothes. “I wasn’t there,” he insisted in a recent death-row interview. “No way I can be associated with this crime. I know I got framed.”
Murphy had a record for theft in Grayson County and was paroled in 1985 to McAlester, Okla., after serving 6 1/2 months of a three-year prison term. In Oklahoma, he had multiple convictions and prison terms for concealing stolen property, larceny of an automobile and grand larceny. A week after the Denning slaying, he was arrested in Hugo, Okla., on two counts of shooting with intent to kill. Murphy said he was responding to someone who shot at him. “I was wrong for having a gun,” he said. “But that’s what happens when you’re weak. To me, I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a case of bad luck. I know I didn’t kill nobody. I’m not a killer.” A Murphy accomplice, Douglas Stoff, also was convicted in the slaying. He received a life term.
Police were summoned to Denning’s home after she couldn’t be reached by phone. “I remember a little old lady sitting in her chair with her blood splattered all over the wall and the ceiling and dripping down on the newspaper,” Jarvis said. “She died in her own chair in her own living room. It was horrible. “They took either her cane and or a sawed-off shotgun they brought with them and just beat her as she sat in her chair.”
The investigation showed Stoff and Murphy were at Stoff’s house sniffing paint and doing drugs and went to Murphy’s old neighborhood, where he was known as “Pee Wee,” to rob her. According to Murphy’s statement to police, they went to steal her purse and because she knew him, she invited them in and offered him the ice cream. At some point, she was attacked and robbed of jewelry, including a $7,000 wedding ring that another man said he bought the next morning from Murphy. Evidence also showed the attackers may have returned to the woman’s house.
“Police took advantage of me because I was in a drunken stupor,” Murphy said of his comments to officers who questioned him about the slaying. “Why would we pick Ivan Ray Murphy to pin a murder on?” Jarvis asked, dismissing the inmate’s claims. “I feel very confident we have the correct individual that did the crime. I don’t have any problems with this verdict at all.”
