Skip to main content
The largest online newspaper archive

The Santa Fe Reporter from Santa Fe, New Mexico • Page 34

Location:
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Issue Date:
Page:
34
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

STRANGER IN THE HOUSE ONE MOTHER'S STORY BY CARMELLA PADILLA he Monday morning after Thanksgiving weekend 1995 was a hectic one for Myra Murphy. Murphy's housecleaning company was especially busy after the holiday, and an employee had just stopped by Murphy's southside Santa Fe home to pickup some cleaning equipment. While Murphy talked to her employee, the phone rang. "Hello," Murphy said. "Myra?" said the voice at the other end of the line.

"I have some news foryou. Are you sitting down?" "Yeah, sure," Murphy replied, "Why? What's up?" "We've arrested your ex-husband." The words struck Murphy like a bolt of lightning, and in an instant, a rainstorm of tears flowed from her pale green eyes. The woman on the phone was Patty Sousek, an agent with the Child Abduction Unit of the San Diego District Attorney's office. And news of Murphy's ex-husband's arrest surely meant newsaboutherkidnapped daughter, Cozette. "The only problem," Sousek continued, "is that he didn't have your daughter with the little bit of information we have, we thinkyour daughter is somewhere in Mexico." "So what do I do?" Murphy pleaded.

"Just wait to hear from you?" "I'll call you right after the interview in the morning," Sousek said. "Please hang tight." Murphy hung up the phone, and for the umpteenth time in the past four-and-a-half years, she cried like a baby. She cried for her baby. Only this time, her tears were tempered with the hope that her baby might finally be coming home. I took me months to get over the sho ck," Myra Murphy says today, sitting in the same kitchen where she received that important phone call nearly two years ago.

"You can't have this kind of experience without it deeply affecting your whole psyche." Murphy's experience is one that an estimated 368,000 American families share every year: the abduction of a child, not by a stranger, but by a biological parent of that child. In Murphy's case, the abduction of 19-month-old Cozette by Murphy's estranged husband was the final blow in a three-year marriage fraught with violence and deceit. It was the beginningoffour years and 88 days of waiting for news of the whereabouts of the child. And when that news finally came, and Murphy had Cozette back in her arms, it was the start of Murphy's ongoing struggle to try and salvage a new life 'I STARTED SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS BECAUSE I KNEW HE HAD TAKEN HER' MYRA MURPHY for herself and her children. Until then, most of Murphy's old life had been spent in Colorado.

By the time she was 19, she had married and had a son, Jamiel. But Murphy's first marriage was short-lived, and in the summer of 1986, while visiting an aunt in San Diego, she met a stocky, dark-haired Italian named Michael Hansen. Hansen, then 26, was a restaurant chef who had moved to California from his native New Jersey in 1985. After a few dates with Hansen, Murphy returned to Colorado completely smitten. "He had a charm about him," Murphy recalls.

"He was very good at the Italian- lover charm thing." Within months, Hansen's charm hadse- duced Murphy into moving herself and her son to San Diego. The couple continued to date while Murphy began a housecleaning business. Before long, Hansen had begun to assist Murphy with the business and the two began talking about marriage. On Sept. 18,1988, they were married in front of 100 guests on a yacht in San Diego Harbor.

The ceremony was lavish, and though the groom's Italian family was unable to attend, the reception featured expensive Italian catering. The couple honeymooned in Hawaii, then moved into a condominium in nearby Del Mar with Jamiel when they returned. Murphy's previous marriage had been marred by physical abuse, and though Murphy immediately sawthat Hansenhad a temper, she wrote it off because itwasn'tdirect- ed at her. "We'd be driving down the freeway and he'd be screaming at other drivers," says. "I just took it to be that passionate Italian kind of thing." Within six months of marriage, however, Hansen's temper began to erupt with blows to Murphy and her son.

"I didn't want to believe it, so I convinced myself that was just disciplining my child," Murphy says. "In my denial, I didn't want tosee the violence. I had this fantasy that this was going to be the perfect marriage and Michael was going to be the protector. I didn't want to believel had married this kind of man again." But the truth about the kind of man Murphy had married was only beginning to surface. Shortly into their marriage, Hansen told Murphy he had a confession to make.

He told her that he had moved to California from Newjersey.because his father, who was in federal prison for drug trafficking, had suspected that Hansen had turned him in and sent after him. He told her that the hit was called off after his fatherlearned that Hansen's sister had sold drugs to undercover FBI agents. Hansen's mother also had served prison time for drug trafficking, but Continued on Page 16 TOGETHER AGAIN: Myra Murphy and herdaughter, Cozette, 7, share a tender moment in their home here. PHOTO BY GUY AMBROSINO SANTA ri XSPSRTBR May 7-13, 1997 15.

Get access to Newspapers.com

  • The largest online newspaper archive
  • 300+ newspapers from the 1700's - 2000's
  • Millions of additional pages added every month

About The Santa Fe Reporter Archive

Pages Available:
29,018
Years Available:
1986-1998