1 year ago
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by Jeremy Kohler, ProPublica, and Ryan Krull, Riverfront Times
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
The voicemail left on St. Louis police detective Roger Murphey’s cellphone carried a clear sense of urgency.
A prosecutor in the St. Louis circuit attorney’s office was pleading with Murphey to testify in a murder trial, the sort of thing the lead detective on a case would routinely do to see an arrest through to conviction. The prosecutor told Murphey that, without his testimony, the suspect could walk free.
“I wanted to reach out to you one more time,” Assistant Circuit Attorney Srikant Chigurupati said in a message one afternoon in June 2021. “I do think we need you on this case.”
Murphey didn’t respond.
