Cindee Murphy: When the System Fails:Tristan Murphy's Story Changes Florida Law

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast hosted by
Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join
us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will
make you laugh, some will make you cry. Real life
people who will inspire and show that you are not
alone in this world. Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World?
Humanity over Handcuffed the Silent Crisis special event. Joining us
today is Cindy Murphy. She's here to share the story
of her son, Tristan, who battles schizophrenia. Tristan was managing
well on medication for some time, but his condition worsened
following an incident where he took a pickup truck and
crashed it into a pond. He was arrested and sent
to Charlotte County Jail. He was later convicted, transferred to
the Florida Department of Corrections and assigned to work duty. Tragically,
his story ended with the loss of his life while
in jail. This heartbreaking experience has inspired her to advocate
for change. She is now working to support legislation in
Florida to help others. Her story is powerful and we're
grateful to have her here to share it. Thanks for
coming on.
Yeah, you're welcome.
I understand Tristan developed signs of schizophrenia later in life, which,
as we know, is fairly uncommon. Could you provide some
background on how this condition emerged. Were there any early
signs in his younger years and it was how did
it ultimately develop with his life?
Well, you know, Tristan, you know, he's unusual because he
did have schizophrenia, but he didn't develop it at a
young age like most people do. Most people start having
symptoms when they're in their teens or early twenties. Looking
back at the early part of his life, he did
have a learning disability, but it was visual motor integration skills.
He was really really good at school. He was always
a little bit of his own, little quirky personality, I guess,
so as he was growing up, a lot of times
he wondered whether he had Aspergers, because you know, he
just had a lot of those kind of characteristics and stuff.
But otherwise he was just a normal guy and normal
kid until he was in his thirties, probably about thirty
two the first time that we noticed some symptoms, and
it just came out of the blue. He was starting
his own company. I was helping in with that. We were,
you know, applying for business licenses and insurance, and he was,
you know, just under a lot of pressure from everything
that he was going through because he was supporting his
wife and her three children, our three daughters from our
prior marriage, and his two sons, and you know, on
a very limited income and or no one coming off
for a little while there while he was starting his business.
So he was just extremely stressed. And I don't know
if that's what triggered his first psychotic episode or exactly
what it was, but all of a sudden, he started
talking about people were following him, or that somebody put
a tracking device on his truck, that there was somebody
recording things in his attic. You know, it's all related
to his starting his new business. That there were people
after him who were trying to sabotage him and it
wasn't reasonable, and we kept trying to talk to him
about getting help. And you know, at that point time,
we didn't know, we didn't know he had a mental illness.
We thought maybe he had a brain tumor or that
there was something physical going on that was causing his delusions,
and you were just desperately trying to get him to
agree to go with the doctor, but he was so
busy doing everything. And it was just like within probably
two and a half to three months of us first
kind of like saying, well, this isn't right, something's going
on that he got caught up in the criminal justice
system for the first time.
When that happened. Was it something that was minor.
Well, now, he had been acting very strangely and things
had been getting tense at home. Was raising five kids,
you know, ages two to I guess fifteen at that time,
and he just was not acting normally and his fifteen
year old was really alarmed and DCF was notified that
there were things going on in the home that maybe
shouldn't be. There were arguments and just you know, weird
stuff going on. DCF got involved and decided to investigate,
and we're glad that they did. We thought that was
appropriate and we were hoping that we would be able
to get some help from them for him at that time,
so we were kind of like, yeah, let's get these
people involved so they can help us figure this out.
But of course it didn't turn out that way. They
removed the kids from the home while they were investigating
and place them with us, which then tied us up
with all kinds of court hearings.
Now, did you have all five kids?
We had all five. Yes, we took all five women,
and so we had court hearings and all kinds of
stuff that were just kind of overwhelming us at that time,
diverting us so that we really couldn't be as effective
as maybe as we'd hoped to be with in helping him.
So it was just a crazy time. And one of
the things that they ordered was for him not to
come to our house. He or his wife were not
supposed to be here because they were still investigating. And
we were told that he came to our house or
that we needed to tell them to leave. Well, one
night they showed up at our house, and it was
for a good reason. He came to tell me that
he'd gotten a job, and he was so excited about it,
and he walked in the door, and you know, I
could tell he was a little off because he was
like almost manically happy.
You know.
Of course, he met me. You know, it's just as
he was coming to the door and I'm like, no,
you need to leave. You can't be here, because I
was so terrified that DC after if they found out
that he'd been in our house, even for a short time,
that they would take the kids in place and with
in foster care. So I was just going to be
really rigid with their rules and if they said he
wasn't supposed to be here, I was going to adhere
to that. What happened next and then my husband walked
in and he saw me, you know, sort of not
really argue with Tristan, but being real forceful with him,
you know that you've got to leave. And then he
kind of misread the situation, and anyway, things kind of
blew up and it became a problem. Tristan's just kind of,
you know, over everybody was overacting to everything at the moment.
So they did kind of get into it, which was
unusual because they had a good relationship, they were really close,
and you know, I Trisian just was not acting like
he would normally act, and I ended up calling the police.
The police came, and really what we wanted them to
do that night was just tell him to leave. Make
sure that he understood that the DCF rules were just
like a no trespassing order or something. I mean, it
was a rule that he had to follow.
Sure that's understandable. So what happened from there?
Two officers arrived. At first they separated Tristan took him outside.
They were one officer was talking to him. When was
talking to us, everything seemed really calm. The officer in
fact outside popped his head and said, everything's cool, we're
you know, we're just talking out here. Tristan was calm,
and you know, we continued to talk to the officer,
telling him, you know, the things that had been going
on that we'd observed that we thought that there's something
going on in his head. He was deluded, visual he
was paranoid. You know that. We were really trying to
get him some help. But what we need them to
do today is just to tell him to leave. And
then some other patrol cars pulled up and within like
minutes he was on the ground getting taste. And I
didn't see what happened out there. I still don't know
to this day exactly what happened to initiate that, and
the police reports it's mentions that they tripped over some
landscaping and they landed on the ground. And I just
think that Tristan in that moment was his mind not
working right. So it was at the time that he
just fought back, you know. I mean, he was literally
laying on a bed of rocks. Stones in our garden
we had landscaped stones were there getting ground into stones,
with a police officer on his back yelling at him
to give him his hand, and Tristan saying, I'm not
resisting him, not resisting. I did step out at one
point time when they were tasing him repeatedly, and I
stepped out and I said, please stop gazing my son.
And I was told to get back insight, and I
heard the officer yelling at him, you know, giv me
your arm, give me your arm. And I looked at him.
I said, he can't. It's pinned under his body. You're
on top of him. He can't give you his arm.
And I was so upset. I was told by the officer,
you need to go inside or you're going to be
arrested too. I went inside because I didn't really have
a choice. I had five kids that I'm now responsible
for and it was like, oh, it was a horrible situation.
So that was Tristan's first encounter.
So ultimately, did things get worked out?
Oh no, he was Oh no, no, this was just
the start of the crazy journey because he was arrested
that night. He was taken to a hospital on the
way to jail because he had cut and bruises and
was fleeting.
So did anything get better once he was at the hospital.
They took me to the hospital. Apparently at the hospital
he made the statement that he didn't remember what happened
and apologized, but they took him to jail, and yeah,
that started his first journey. He was in jail for
like eight months before they determined that he was incompetent
to stand trial. Wow, it took another several months before
they sent him to Downhair, Florida. They have forensic hospitals
that are solely for the purpose of restoring people's competency.
They sent him there, you know, and then back. You know,
there's more to all that, I guess as far as
what happened there and how he was treated while he
was in jail and stuff. But you know, he ended
up basically coming back on medication, which was good. That
really helped him because on the medication he was fine
after that, But when he came back, he was desperate
to get out of jail. He was not going to
plead no contests because he was told by his defense
attorney that if he did, he'd have to day in
jail for as long as they wanted to keep him.
It wouldn't be up to him, and they could rest
him any time they wanted to for the rest of
his life, anytime he started acting, you know, weird, and
he was desperate to get out of jail because he
was losing his children. He hadn't done the things that
the Department Children and Family Services required him to do
while he was in jail as far as taking parenting
classes and stuff like that, because he wasn'tcompetent, he was
not mentally well and didn't have access. He was during
that time kept in an isolation cell on the medical
unit of the jail, so he didn't have a tablet,
He didn't have communications with DCF or his attorney, you know,
just nothing was effectively done to help him keep custody
of his kids, and he knew he was about to
lose and they were about to take them away from
him and remove his parental rights, and his house was
going into foreclosure. I mean, when something happens like this
and somebody you're removed from the community, I mean, their
whole life blows up.
Yeah, that's unfortunate.
Then he just felt desperate to get out, so he
ended up pleading no contest to five selling charges.
Wow, for resisting.
Arrest for a five minute period of time.
Yeah, that's unbelievable.
You know, if it's a nuts it's insane.
Yes, it certainly sounds it. So how is your health
doing along, of course with your husband.
Well, you know, we were just desperate at that time.
I mean the most frustrating part was not knowing what
was going on and not having access to him. We
did try to communicate with him when he was in
jail initially, you know, doing video chats that's allowed at
our county jail, and we tried to set those up
and we couldn't communicate with them. The last time I
communicated with him, prior to him being held for months
and sent away for restoration and all that stuff, he
was pacing in front of me in the video screen
and would not sit down. I could only see him.
You know, from the chest down, and he was agitated,
and he told me and that had to have emergency
surgery because he had to take out his gullbladder. And
I mean just told me this like really fanciful tale,
not fanciful in a good way, but this really awful
tale about what was going on with him. And of
course none of it was real. That was just all
part of his psychosis. So we couldn't effectively communicate with him.
And he did not get good representation at the time. Never,
never through the whole legal processes that he went through,
never did he get adequate legal representation. Everybody just kept
kind of love through this this sudden.
So between the time that he was arrested went to
jail because he was in front of your house. From
that point, did he ever get out and did things
get kind of back to well, I'm not going to
say normal, because it never does get normal, But did
he ever get back to a better place?
Yes, he did when he was released after pleading no contests. Well,
what they sensed him that day is just credit for
time served and put him on probation for I think
four years, just told him good luck, stay on your medication,
sent him on his way to his credit. He really
wanted to stay on his medication. When I picked him
up from the jaw, the first thing he wanted to
do was go get a three day prescription that they
had gave him for his medication to get that filled.
So I took him to the local pharmacy and you know,
he gave him a prescription for three days worth of
pills and it was going to be over three hundred dollars.
And fortunately the pharmacist said, hey, do you have good
RX or whatever, and she helped us line to pharmacy
where we could get it at cheaper. And then Monday
rolled around, and you know, the first place he went
was to the local behavioral health center to get an
appointment so that he could get a regular prescription. And
you know, he did really good when he first got out.
Within a few days, he got a job, and he
managed to get his mortgage paid up, and you know
it was really working through, you know, getting things caught
up when you've been gone for you know, almost a
year of your life.
Wow, he was gone for almost a year.
Yeah, Yeah, it took about a year because it took
so many months. It was like eight months before they
even decided he had a problem and it was incompetent
to stand trial. And then of course there was the
several months of the restoration facility and being brought back
before the court. I don't remember
exactly how long it was, but it was a long time.
So when he got out the first time, got back
to a better place, how was his family? Was it
still intact? What happened on his personal life there?
Oh? Well, by then the process had gone on so
long through DCF, and DCF here in Florida really tries
to resolve their cases within a year. Okay, so they
were pushing for resolution and they ended up taking away
his wife's rights. But prior to that, Tristan talked to
them and while terrily relinquished his rights with the understanding
that they would allow us to adopt his sons because
he wanted to make sure, no matter what, that they
were placed with foster care, that they could live, they
could be placed with us, and he knew that he
would be able to have contact with him because we
told him as long as you're standing your medication and
you're stable and you're not acting goofy, you know, we
want you to be part of their life. We want
you to be their dad. We're still their grandparents. We
want to be their grandparents, but legally will be the
ones with custody. And you know, we all felt like
that was the best solution for getting the Department Children's
Family Services out of our lives and keeping the kids
in a stable situation. So that summer though, when he
got out, he was doing really good. He came to
all of Cody's baseball games. They were in frequent communication
with each other. You know, we'd go over and spend
time at his house, especially with Colton, the younger one. Yeah,
I mean he was getting to be dad, and he
was a good dad for most of that time. And
then I don't know, I don't know. I mean it's
I guess pretty typical for people to stop taking them
their medication, and I think that's what happened with him,
because it was about October. He got out in like
in March and was flying through the whole summer, and
then in March we kind of started seeing the same
symptoms again. It was like, yeah, there's that thing in
my attic. I need to go take out of my
attic because they're recording me, and it was like, no, no,
here we go again. And you know, people who have schizophrenia,
they tend to not acknowledge that they have mental illness.
There's yeah, there's a word for that. I'm not for
announce it right.
Yes, I believe you're talking about anisignolsia.
Yes, it's hard to pronounce, it's hard to remember. But
it's very typical, very very common with people with schizophrenia
to feel like convince themselves that they're not ill.
What was going through your mind at the time. You
saw what was going on at first, and things were
getting better. Now you're seeing a relapse. So how did
you handle that?
Well, we were trying to get help again, you know.
Of course I had not stopped getting trying to get
help or trying to educate myself. You know. As soon
as we had that diagnosis that he had schizophrenia, of
course I started going online and trying to learn everything
that I could about the illness and how to help them,
and how to talk to him and all that kind
of stuff. I even went to the behavioral center and
we only have really one here in town. It's the
one that had given him his medication, just to see
if my husband and I could meet with somebody there
who could explain to us, you know, how we could
help him, what we could do to keep him on medication.
And they just wouldn't talk to us, you know, the
hip or rules or they just it was a big wall.
I mean, they just would not talk to us because
he was their patient and he would have to be
the one who came in. And of course he was
working and he just didn't think that he had an
illness by that point, and we were all blowing everything
out of proportion.
Then meanwhile, do you still have the five children?
Well we did at that time. Yes, Well one of
them had gone to live with another family, a family friend,
but we had the younger four. Yeah, and we ended
up raising his two step daughters, and we still have
two of them. And once we were able to, we
adopted Cody and Colton, so they've been ours. I'm a
grand mom.
Now what are their ages?
Oh, I'm Cody seventeen, he's a junior, and Colt in
his nine.
And how are they doing?
They're doing. They're doing good, they really are. Cody's fully
aware of what happened to his dad. He knows how
his life ended and all the details, and in fact,
he you know, will talk about this. I'm sure that
you know, he's went to Tallahassee with me to lobby
for changes in the mental health and criminal justice rules.
So he's like, you know, he has a pretty good
handle on He seems to be okay. I think that
there's sort of a lot under the surface that's you know,
that he still has to deal with a lot of
thoughts and that Colton's the one, Uh, he's doing great.
Colton was only two when this started, and so he
doesn't really have a lot of memories with his dad.
He loved his dad, but he doesn't have a lot
of memories. So we've been his mom, you know, and dad,
and we are in his mind. But the hard part
with him is that he does not know yet. He
knows his dad died, but he only knows that he
died because he was mentally ill, that he had a
sickness in his head. He doesn't know how he how
he died. And I'm going to have to tell him
that his dad died because he committed suicide with the chainsaw.
Yeah, that's going to be tough.
And how do you tell that.
I really don't know but it's sure is going to
be tough.
So, yeah, I'm not looking forward to having that conversation
with Colt. And I decided I've thought about it so
many times that I don't know how I'll even find
the words.
Yeah, I can understand that, but I do know that
somehow you'll find a way he'll present itself. And of
course the older he becomes not going to be easier,
but easier to understand for him. Right, it's a tough
situation and a very tough subject to cover. Right when
all this started happening again, what was the next step?
He was having these delusions again, So how did you
go about trying to handle this delicate situation?
Well, he was We were trying again to convince him
to get help again, and he was like, in denial,
I don't have a mental illness. You guys are just
blowing things out of proportion that I'm fine. You know,
we just couldn't get his cooperation. He was like by
December then, I guess we were still really concerned, trying
to stick close to him and be nosy and you know,
kind of keep a handle on it. I guess, just
to see if he'd work it out. I mean people
sometimes have psychotic episodes and then they come through it, right,
you know. I went got his medication myself from the
pharmacy and said here, you know, and he's like, I've
already got it. I didn't need that.
You know.
It's like, yeah, I think you do. We have those
kind of discussions with him and then and we saw
him just a couple of weeks before this the last episode,
because he'd come to one of Cody's basketball games and
he seemed pretty okay that day. And it was like
a week and a half or two weeks later when
we got the phone call that he had driven his
truck into the pond at the Charlotte County Jail they
have a big pond out front, and been arrested for littering.
Yeah, that's what I heard. It was like a class
three felony for littering.
Yeah, because the truck weighed over five hundred pounds, right.
You know that's usually people that go up, you know,
dump loads of trash, construction debris in the woods or whatever.
But now they decided to charge him, and you know,
they knew, they knew that he had a mental illness.
They knew, you know, he'd been there, they knew that
he was mentally ill. I immediately wrote letters to the judge.
I wrote a letter to the District Attorney's office, like
within three days, they had communication on their desks for
me stating and pleading for this to be treated as
a mental illness not as a criminal matter. And I
just didn't get anywhere with that.
So what was their thinking or did you ever find
out why would they pursue this as a criminal act
rather than just a reach out for help.
Well, interestingly, two days ago, finally talked to the head
prosecutor at the District Attorney's office who I directed the
letter to, and she said she never saw the letter,
but she never got it. I don't know if it
was one of those situations where I wrote to her
and of course you know she's got other people who
scanner mail or whatever and handed off to different people
in the I don't know what happened to the letter,
but she said that she didn't get it.
Okay, Just so that we can clarify this for everyone,
how long did this take? What was the time frame
from when this all started before you actually saw the
DA to find out?
Oh this, well, four years ago Okay, I haven't confronted
her until now. I met her in Tallahassee because I
was up there for a hearing and met her for
the first time. Did not expect to meet her that day.
I frankly, when she walked up to me and introduced
herself with another person. There was another person who introduced
himself and said, oh, and by the way, this is
her name. And I just it stunned me because I
didn't know what she looked like. I'd never seen her before,
and I just looked at her and I said, I
have been so mad at you for so long, which
I think just really caught her off guard. And so
then we had a long discussion. She's somebody that I've
been wanting to talk to because I have been angry.
The word that I had gotten back at that time
was the defense attorney had talked to the DA's office
and that they were going to go for the full
three years and they didn't want to discuss his mental
health issues and they were going for the max. Wow,
that's the word I got. And she, you know, I
was telling her this the other day. She's like shaking
her head, and she said, I would have talked to you,
I would have, you know, if i'd known. So, you know,
I really thought at the time, and that's why I've
been angry with her for so long, right right, because
I just I thought that they were just cold hearted.
I guess my question is was she believable? Did you
believe what she said?
But you know, I tend to give people the benefit
of the doubt. That's sort of my personality. Yeah, me too,
So I tend to believe her when she says that.
I'm hoping that that's true. I'm choosing to. I guess
I don't have to forgive her because there was nothing
to forgive, but I have chosen.
To let go of that sure.
And you know, by the end of our conversation, it
was like, well, how can we work on this legislation together?
What can we do now to make sure this doesn't
happen to anybody else? And I expected in the coming
months I will be working with her.
Well that's a good thing. As we know, this was
a very bad situation and it turned out unfortunately horribly.
But if some good can come out of this, the
shining light that you're putting forward is that you're changing
legislation that will help others in the future.
Right, well, you know the rest of Tristan's story there.
I don't want to skip over that. But he went
through the whole process again like he had the first time,
being determined that he was incompetent to stand trial. This
time he was literally in solitary though they don't like
for me to call it solitary confinement, but he was
in rural what did they call it. He was in
the infirmary, locked in a cell for his protection and
everybody's protection because of his mental health issues, without a tablet,
without a phone, without newspapers or TV or anything but
the voices in his head for hundreds of days right
before they determined that he was again incompetent to stand
trial and sent to the forensic facility. After he was
adjudicated and competent to stand trial, it took another one
hundred and seventeen days before they sent him for restoration,
and which is just crazy because in florida's supposed to
happen within three days. But anyway, he at the end
of that us he came back and pled no contests
and was sensed to three years in prison and he
was transferred from the catty jail to a prison here
in Florida, and he lived only sixty three days. The
sixty third day, he was sent out on a work
detail and handed a chainsaw and used the chainsaw to
take his own life.
Okay, I guess the big question, at least the one
that resonates with me, is why would they give someone
a chainsaw.
That's the question that everybody asks. You know, it didn't
make sense to me. You know, we know some of
the details. I can't really talk about some parts of
this because we did end up suing the Department of
Corrections here in Florida and settled the case. But you know,
I think it came down in part to miscommunication within
the facility because the person who handed in the chainsaw
I didn't know that he was mentally ill. He had
just met Tristan, and Tristan had been put on the
work detail that day. He was put enough to facility
where it's like the end of your sentence, like we're
going to now make sure you've got some skills to
go out in the community and work when you get home.
This is like the winding down part of it. Because
they only had fifteen months left to serve at that time,
and so you know, they have those inmates do things like,
you know, do a landscaping detail so they can learn
some skills. So that day the guard asked for volunteers.
They use all kinds of power tools, you know, lots
of dangerous tools, but by that time they're supposed to
be okay to handle it. So the guard asked he
needed to volunteer to handle the chainsaw that day. Tristan
and another guy you know, said yeah, we have experience.
Tristan was the first one that you know, he had
a chain saw and said, can you start this? And
yeah he did. He knew how to use a chainsaw.
So yeah. So that's one of the problems being dealt
with this litigation is that there's more communication so that
it has to be documented if somebody has a mental
illness and they're classified as being mentally ill, that their
work assignments have to be taped, get into consideration and
documented if there's any restrictions or whatever.
So when this all happened, reactions are going to be
horrible and it's going to be hard to understand. How
did the prison handle this, what was their tone, their
attitude and it how did it all come across when
you found out.
Well, we got a phone call. I was sitting at
my desk working that morning and I saw Miami flash
up on my phone and it didn't even occur to me.
I just didn't even think that about Tristan. I thought
it was another business call. When I answered the phone,
it was the chaplain and we had about a three
minute phone call with him. He just called to tell
me that Tristan had been found dead that morning, and
he couldn't tell me any of the details. Gave me
a phone number so that I could call back to
get more details, and you know, referred as to the
more that I could contact them as well. You know,
I really didn't talk to them very long. Once he
told me that Tristan had been found dead, I was
like I hit the ground on I just was like devastated.
I handed the phone to my husband, so he handled
that part of the conversation. But it was so short,
so perfunctory, and you know, we did as soon as
we got off the phone, we started calling back. You know,
what happened. We wanted to know, We wanted to know details.
We wanted to know did he dive, natural causes, had
he been beaten up, had he been murdered. You know,
we just didn't have any answers at that point in time,
and honest to God, we could not get ahold of
a single person at the jail. You know, our phone
calls kept going to those robocalls, dial pushed one for whatever,
for for whatever. We tried every single button we could push.
We even called the push the button for the laundry
to try to get a message through. You know, I did, actually,
I think, get a hold of a live person there
and said, you know, my son was found dead there today. Nobody,
I can't reach anybody. Please get a message to somebody
and have somebody call me back. Well, we never heard.
I never to this day have talked to anybody in
the Department of Corrections except for the records department when
we finally started trying to get RECs and like my
husband said, they just circled their wagons.
Really well did you get anything from them? Eventually?
I mean it took like over a year for me
to get his records release. We did get a hold
of the Mark and found out that he had committed
suicide with the chainsaw that day, and we learned that
from them fighting for records after that with the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement that were investigating. Yet they were
the other agency brought in to investigate it. You know,
we just couldn't get any answers. It was still under investigation.
We can't talk to you about this. It was just insane.
So did you ever get any calls from them that
gave you any comfort or did they ever show any
kind of empathy at all?
No, not, any type of empathy, definitely not. We finally
found out that they had ruled that there was no wrongdo,
no legal wrongdoing. You know, nobody had harmed him, nobody
had participated in it, nobody had committed a prime per se.
So but that wasn't didn't answer questions. No, so we
you know, we brought a lawsuit. I finally was fortunate.
I had contacted lots of different attorneys who just weren't
interested in the handling the case because I didn't have
answers for him. I couldn't give them details. So nobody
wanted to take the case. They were like, you get
the details first, and we'll look over the records and
we'll determine if there's a case. So we couldn't get
anywhere but the Florida Justice Institute. It's a law firm
in Miami, a nonprofit law firm that really advocates for
cural justice issues. I've written a letter on their website
or a request on their website. They get hundreds of
them every month for representation and telling Tristan's story and
about It was about three months after I did that
that I got a phone call saying, Hey, we read
what you wrote about your son. We'd like to come
over and talk to you about it and see if
there's a cause of action there that we can help
you with.
So what happened moving forward from that?
So we did end up suing and you know, going
through that whole legal process that you go through with
a runful death, and you know, through the discovery, there
were lots of things that we learned. I can't talk
about now, but we did get some answers.
Did you find any trying to find the right word,
comfort isn't it, but did you find any case, you know,
anything where you could take and effort was all said
and done. You heard all the testimony, You've heard everything
where you could take a deep breath and at least
move forward in a better way.
Well, you know, it helps to at least understand what happened.
Sure that helped us make some sense of it because
it was senseless, right, but we it didn't start to
make sense to understanding, you know that exactly what happened
during that time period. There's so many answers will never
have though. I mean, we don't know what was on
Tristan's mind, and that's probably one of the most heartbreaking things.
I've said this many times. If he had been a
college student off to college who committed suicide, I would
have wanted to talk to his roommates and his professors
and try to figure out what his mental state was
and what was on his mind. That when you're dealing
with somebody who was locked away at prison, he can't
talk to anybody. Nobody will talk to me from the
Department of Corrections about what happened because of liability and
being concerned that they're going to get in trouble if
they do. And I can't talk to his roommates because
their inmates. They're locked up. I mean, I would love,
I think I would love. I don't know. I have
mixed feelings about this because at first I felt like
I really wanted to talk to somebody who was with
him there that day, who had observed him, who knew
what he was like that morning or the days before
that happened. And now I'm not so sure. I'm not
so sure. I want to know. You know, It's just
like it could be. It could make it easier, it
could make it harder.
Yeah, I don't know.
So that it is frustrating.
So now you're doing a lot of adflicacy work. Is
that correct?
I am. There was a one of the things that
happened shortly after Tristan died, and we got that phone call,
like within three or four days of that, I got
a phone call from a journalist from CBS Miami. His
name's Jim Deffidi, and someone had contacted him from the
prisons that hey, this is not getting any coverage, this
is not getting any attention. It's not been reported on.
This is a big deal and you need to know
about it. And he's an investigative journalist that does like
really long pieces and stuff. Yeah, to contact me, and
he said, you know, I hate to be this way.
He said that this story is going to be told
whether you participated or not, because I'm gonna dig, I'm
gonna find the details, and I'm gonna have I want
to report. I want people to know what happened to
your son, but it might be better for you to
help me with this so that we can tell Tristan's
story in a compassionate way. And you know, I mean
that just took my breathway. I just at that point,
I was feeling shell shocked because I just found out
that he died, and I was like, well, do I
want this to do I want other people to know
about this? Do I how do I handle this with
his sons? How do I protect them? Because at that
point in time, we didn't know, we didn't know all
the details. So that was a tough decision, but I
did decide. I mean, we talked about it and we decided, yeah,
we'll start talking to him and we'll see where it goes.
And right away Jim decided, this is not just a
little story. This is not and this doesn't need to
be addressed by a five minute blurb on you know,
Monday night TV. This is something that has to be investigated.
How did it go moving forward with that?
With his help and you know, between the two of us,
we were able to really dig for records and get
access to things that you know, most journalists don't get
access to. We gave him full access to all the
records that we got and he ended up developing a
whole documentary titled The Warehouse, The Life and Death of
Tristan Murphy. You can find it on YouTube. He's done
a lot of follow up interviews, like he interviewed the
judge who had sentenced Tristan and you know, other people
who were involved in the criminal justice system. And out
of that grew with an invitation last year to speak
at a hearing in Tallahassee before the Criminal Justice Committee
where they brought in the Department Children, Family Services and
the doc and I got to speak at that hearing
explaining what happened to Tristan and Senator Bradley was the
head of the Criminal Justice Committee, and she really slunk
her teeth into the issue. I also had the opportunity
to meet with Senator Albritton, who is the current and
was at that time the incoming President of the Senate,
and one on one with him, and you know, he
just took the reins with this. He's like, this needs
to be a major part of my platform. You know,
when somebody comes into office like that and it's their
two year term to be Senate President, they kind of
get to pick some objectives, some reforms that they want
to make a priority, and this is one that he
chose to do that with. So right now, yes, through
the legislature, we have the Tristan Murphy Act passing through
legislature right now. I was just there for a hearing
on Wednesday before the Criminal Justice Committee of the House
of Representatives. It's already passed the Criminal Justice Committee and
the Senate. Several more committees to go before it lands
on the House floor and the Senate floor for full
votes find of votes. But it's been well received. And
what this legislation does is it really focuses on the
front end of someone's involvement with a criminal justice system,
with there being an effort to really identify right from
the get go, like within the first twenty four hours,
whether the individual has mental health issues, whether the actions
that they had been arrested for could be related to
their mental health, and to have them evaluated on an
emergency basis, and if there's some funding and some model
programs for how that might be structured in the county jail,
with the hope that throughout all of Florida counties will
start developing these programs so that people can get diverted
right out right at the beginning, get the mental health
that they need, get the services they need, and become
a productive member of the community rather than rotting in jail.
Yeah, anything that can be diverted helps a lot.
Because once you get in the criminal justice system, and
that was our experience with Tristan, we just we had
to wait, We had to wait for their processes, We
had to wait for them to determine who's incompetent to
stand trial, and meanwhile, during that time, he became more
and more mentally ill. So we're hoping that this passes.
There's several other things in the legislation that you know,
would have helped in Tristan's case. Everybody now involved in
looking back on it, you know, hindsights, you know whatever. Yeah,
twenty twenty, Yeah, that everybody understands and realizes this should
have really been handled so differently, and he'd still be
with us if it had, if some of the legislation
were in place.
At least if something good comes out of something bad, right,
at least a step in the right direction of where
it needs to go.
Oh. Absolutely, I mean I don't want this to happen
to anybody. And that's what I've been fighting for, you know,
the whole this whole time is this has got to change.
This is it's so broken. Yeah, floor is maybe no
different than in the other state, but here in Florida,
you know, we have the highest number of people in
need of mental health services or number one in need,
and we're forty nights in provision of services and thirty
percent or so of people in our prisons have mental
health issues.
Unfortunately, what you said is very prevalent all across this country.
I know it is.
Yeah, talk with so many people across this country. I
just spoke with a judge of Nevada. We had a
very similar discussion in the fact that the problems all
across this country. We need to focus on legislation that
can be national rather than just county by county. But
until we get that, we have to do exactly what
you're doing in that fight on a local level. By
doing that, hopefully we can get enough people together and
we can change it on a national level.
Right. Well, I feel like this is a real shift
for Florida. And I'm really happy about that because Florida
has been the really part on crime state. And I
mean our system here, our prisons are failing, and they're
not working financially, they're not working, there's no rehabilitation. I
mean that everybody's really starting to realize this isn't a
can that they can keep kicking down the road, and
they need to address it. And I think this is
a great first step to really think about those who
are especially vulnerable and try to shift them towards treatment
instead of handcuffs. Yeah.
Yeah, Now, is there anything that I haven't touched upon
that you think is important for people to hear? You know?
Well, I will say that there's one part of this
legislation that doesn't deal with one of the problems. And
I think that that is, you know, it's difficult to
treat somebody with a mental illness, particularly a mental illness
like schizophrenia. But I think that sometimes there's not an understanding.
I mean, I understand that because we didn't even understand
how to deal with this. But you know, there's medications
and there's treatments, and there's new treatments. That can be
really effective in treating schizophrenia. In particular, there's now injectables
that can last a long time thirty days or two
months or whatever that helps people with schizophrenia and not
fall off the medicine wagon. You know, there needs to
be funding on the national level there. I have real
concerns I guess about Medicaid and try not to get
political here, but you know, all the talk in Washington
about cutting the Medicaid program, people don't understand that most
of these people with mental illnesses are a lot of
them who are needed these services. I mean, they get
it from Medicaid, and we cut Medicaid. I mean, there's
just going to be a tsunami of people flooding into
the criminal justice system if Medicaid funding is cut, and
there just needs to be really an emphasis on the
mental health provisions, the provisions of mental health care.
Yeah. Absolutely, Well, I appreciate you taking the time to
come on my show.
You're welcome, happy to be part of it.
Yeah, it was a pleasure to have you. Thanks again,
thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule
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