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

• Tony Mantor

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Cindy Murphy shares the heartbreaking story of her son Tristan, who struggled with schizophrenia and died by suicide while incarcerated after being handed a chainsaw during a prison work detail. 

Through her grief, Cindy has become a powerful advocate for mental health reform in the criminal justice system, working to pass the Tristan Murphy Act in Florida.

• Tristan developed schizophrenia in his 30s, unusually late compared to typical onset in teens or early 20s
• After his first psychotic episode, Tristan spent 8 months in jail before being declared incompetent to stand trial
• When properly medicated, Tristan functioned well and maintained a relationship with his children
• Florida ranks #1 in mental health needs but #49 in providing mental health services
• The Tristan Murphy Act aims to identify mental health issues within 24 hours of arrest and divert people to treatment
• Approximately 30% of prison inmates have mental health issues
• New treatments like long-acting injectable medications can help people with schizophrenia maintain stability
• The documentary "The Warehouse: The Life and Death of Tristan Murphy" is available on YouTube

If you know anyone that would like to tell their story, send them to tonymantor.com/contact with their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. Please tell everyone everywhere about Why Not Me ? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide 

The World, the conversations we're having, and the inspiration our guests give to everyone that you are not alone in this world.


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intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild
Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)

Speaker 1:

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. 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.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to why Not Me? The World Humanity Over Handcuffs 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 a 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.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're welcome.

Speaker 1:

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 if there was, how did it ultimately develop with his life?

Speaker 2:

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 20s. 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 we wondered whether he had Asperger's because you know, he just had a lot of those kind of characteristics and stuff. But otherwise he was just a normal guy, a normal kid, until he was in his 30s probably about 32, 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 him with that.

Speaker 2:

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 a prior marriage and his two sons and, you know, on a very limited income and no income at all for a little while there, while he was starting his business.

Speaker 2:

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 in 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 we were just desperately trying to get him to agree to go to 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.

Speaker 1:

When that happened, was it something that was minor.

Speaker 2:

Well, no, he had been acting very strangely and things had been getting tense at home. He was raising five kids, you know, ages two to, I guess, 15 at that time, and he just was not acting normally. And his 15-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 placed them with us, which then tied us up with all kinds of court hearings.

Speaker 1:

Now did you have all five kids.

Speaker 2:

We had all five. Yes, we took all five of them and so we had court hearings and all kinds of stuff that were just kind of overwhelming us at that time and 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, if he came to our house, that we needed to tell them to leave.

Speaker 2:

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 I could tell he was a little off because he was like almost manically happy. Of course he met me, it's just 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 DCF, if they found out that he'd been in our house, even for a short time, that they would take the kids and place them 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 there, I was going to adhere to that.

Speaker 1:

What happened next?

Speaker 2:

And then my husband walked in and he saw me, you know, sort of not really arguing 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, everybody was overreacting 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, tristan 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.

Speaker 1:

Sure, that's understandable. So what happened from there?

Speaker 2:

Two officers arrived at first. They separated Tristan, took him outside One officer was talking to him, one was talking to us took him outside. One officer was talking to him, one was talking to us. Everything seemed really calm. The officer in fact outside popped his head in and said everything's cool, we're you know, we're just talking out here.

Speaker 2:

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 had observed that we thought that there's something going on in his head. He was delusional, 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 tased 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 mentions that they tripped over some landscaping and they landed on the ground and I just think that Tristan in that moment, with his mind not working right the way 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 landscapes 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, I'm not resisting.

Speaker 2:

I did step out at one point in time when they were tasing him repeatedly, and I stepped out and I said please stop tasing my son. And I was told to get back inside and I heard the officer yelling at him you know, give me your arm, give me your arm. And I looked at him and 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 it was a horrible situation. So that was Tristan's first encounter.

Speaker 1:

So ultimately did things get worked out.

Speaker 2:

Oh no, he was 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 cuts and bruises and was bleeding.

Speaker 1:

So did anything get better once he was at the hospital.

Speaker 2:

They took him 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.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

It took another several months before they sent him to down here in Florida. They have forensic hospitals that are solely for the purposes 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.

Speaker 2:

But when he came back he was desperate to get out of jail.

Speaker 2:

He was not going to plead no contest because he was told by his defense attorney that if he did, he'd have to stay in jail for as long as they wanted to keep him.

Speaker 2:

It wouldn't be up to him and that it could rest on 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 of 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 was incompetent, 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 is removed from the community, I mean their whole life blows up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's unfortunate.

Speaker 2:

And he just felt desperate to get out. So he ended up pleading no contest to five felony charges. Wow For resisting arrest for a five minute period of time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's unbelievable.

Speaker 2:

You know it was nuts. It was insane.

Speaker 1:

Yes, it certainly sounds it. So how is your health doing along, of course, with your husband?

Speaker 2:

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 him. 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 on 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 gallbladder.

Speaker 2:

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. 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 swaddling through the system.

Speaker 1:

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?

Speaker 2:

Yes he did. When he was released after pleading no contest, well, what they sentenced him that day is just credit for time served and put him on probation for, I think, four years. He had just told him good luck, stay on your medication. Send him on his way. To his credit, he really wanted to stay on his medication.

Speaker 2:

When I picked him up from the jail, 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 a prescription for three days worth of pills and it was going to be over $300. And fortunately the pharmacist said hey, do you have GoodRx or whatever? And she helped us find a 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, was really working through. You know getting things caught up when you've been gone for, you know, almost a year of your life.

Speaker 1:

Wow, he was gone for almost a year.

Speaker 2:

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 was incompetent to stand trial. And then, of course, there was the several months of the restoration facility and being brought back and being brought back before the court. I don't remember exactly how long it was, but it was a long time.

Speaker 1:

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?

Speaker 2:

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.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

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 voluntarily 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 them, because we told him you know, as long as you stand your medication and you're stable and you're not acting goofy, you know we want you to be part of their lives. We want you to be part of their lives. We want you to be their dad. We're still their grandparents. We want to be their grandparents, but legally we'll be the ones with custody, and you know we all felt like that was the best solution for getting the Department of Children's Family Services out of our lives and keeping the kids in a stable situation.

Speaker 2:

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 their medication and I think that's what happened with him, because it was about October. He got out and like in March and was fine 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 people who have schizophrenia they tend to not acknowledge that they have mental illness.

Speaker 1:

There's yeah, there's a word for that. I'm not sure if I pronounced it right.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I believe you're talking about anosognosia. 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 they're not ill.

Speaker 1:

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?

Speaker 2:

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 him and how to talk to him and all that kind of stuff. I even went to the behavioral center we only have really one here in town, someone 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 get keep him on medication, and they just wouldn't talk to us. The HIPAA rules, 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.

Speaker 1:

Meanwhile, do you still have the five children?

Speaker 2:

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, we ended up raising his two stepdaughters and we still have two at home. Once we were able to, we adopted Cody and Colton, so they've been ours. I'm a grand mom now.

Speaker 1:

What are their ages?

Speaker 2:

Oh, Cody's 17. He's a junior and Colton is nine.

Speaker 1:

And how are they doing?

Speaker 2:

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 we'll talk about this, I'm sure but 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 it and 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 but Colton's the one he's doing great.

Speaker 2:

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 died and I'm going to have to tell him that his dad died because he committed suicide with a chainsaw.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's going to be tough.

Speaker 2:

And how do you tell that?

Speaker 1:

I really don't know, but it sure is going to be tough.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, I'm not looking forward to having that conversation with Colton. I've thought about it so many times that I don't know how I'll even find the words.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I can understand that, but I do know that somehow you'll find a way. It'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. 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?

Speaker 2:

Well he was. We were trying again to convince him to get help again and he was like in denial. I'm not, I don't have a mental illness. You guys are just blowing things out of proportion. I'm fine, you know.

Speaker 2:

We just couldn't get his cooperation. It was like by December then, I guess, where 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 and got his medication myself from the pharmacy and said here, you know, and he was like I've already got it, I didn't need that, you know. It's like, yeah, I think you do, we're having those kinds of discussions with him. And then, and we saw him just a couple of weeks before the last episode because he'd come to one of Cody's basketball games and he 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.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's what I heard. It was like a class three felony for littering.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because the truck weighed over 500 pounds. Right, you know that's usually people that go out, you know dump loads of trash, construction debris in the woods or whatever. But no, 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.

Speaker 2:

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 from 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? 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, that 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 scan her mail or whatever and hand it off to different people. I don't know what happened to the letter, but she said that she didn't get it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, Just so that we can clarify this for everyone how long did this take? What was the timeframe from when this all started before you actually saw the DA to find out?

Speaker 2:

Oh, this started well four years ago.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

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, 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 isn't 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.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

That's the word I got and she, as 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 I you know. I really thought at the time and that's why I've been angry with her for so long.

Speaker 1:

Right right.

Speaker 2:

Because I just I thought that they were just cold hearted.

Speaker 1:

I guess my question is was she believable? Did you believe what she said?

Speaker 2:

You know I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. That's sort of my personality, yeah me too.

Speaker 2:

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 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 expect that in the coming months I will be working with her.

Speaker 1:

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.

Speaker 2:

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 although 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.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Before they determined that he was again incompetent to stand trial and sent to the forensic facility. After he was adjudicated incompetent to stand trial, it took another 117 days before they sent him for restoration, and which is just crazy because in Florida it's supposed to happen within three days. But anyway, at the end of that whole process he came back and pled no contest and was sentenced to three years in prison and he was transferred from the county jail to a prison here in Florida and he lived only 63 days. The 63rd day he was sent out on a work detail and handed a chainsaw and used the chainsaw to take his own life.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I guess the big question, at least the one that resonates with me, is why would they give someone a chainsaw?

Speaker 2:

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 him the chainsaw didn't know that he was mentally ill. He had just met Tristan and Tristan had been put on the work detail.

Speaker 2:

Um, that day he was put in a facility where it's like the end of your sentence, like we're gonna 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 15 months left to serve at that time and so you 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.

Speaker 2:

That day Tristan another guy you know said yeah, we have experience. Tristan was the first one that you know. He had a chainsaw 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 taken into consideration and documented if there's any restrictions or whatever.

Speaker 1:

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 in it? How did it all come across when you found out?

Speaker 2:

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 about Tristan. I thought it was another business call.

Speaker 2:

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, refer us to the morgue. Then 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.

Speaker 2:

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 die of 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 honestly, god, we could not get ahold of a single person at the jail.

Speaker 2:

You know our phone calls kept going to those robocalls dial push one for whatever, four for whatever. We tried every single button we could push. We even called the, pushed 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 records and, like my husband said, they just circled their wagons.

Speaker 1:

Really well, Did you get anything from them eventually?

Speaker 2:

I mean it took like over a year for me to get his records released. We did get a hold of the morgue and found out that he had committed suicide with a 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.

Speaker 1:

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?

Speaker 2:

no, not any kind 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 crime per se. So but that wasn't. It didn't answer questions. No, so we, you know, we, we brought a lawsuit.

Speaker 2:

I finally was fortunate. I had contacted lots of different attorneys who just weren't interested in handling the case because I didn't have answers for them. I couldn't give them details. 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 criminal justice issues 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 you know cause of action there that we can help you with. So what?

Speaker 1:

happened, moving forward from that.

Speaker 2:

So we did end up suing and you know, going through that whole legal process that you go through with a wrongful death and through the discovery. There were lots of things that we learned that I can't talk about now, but we did get some answers.

Speaker 1:

Did you find any? I'm trying to find the right word comfort, isn't it? But did you find, any case, anything where you could take? And, after it 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.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, it helps to at least understand what happened. Sure, that helped us make some sense of it, because it was senseless.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

But it didn't start to make sense to understanding. You know that. Exactly what happened during that time period? There's so many answers we'll 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 you know.

Speaker 2:

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. But when you're dealing with somebody who was locked away at prison, you 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 they're inmates. They're locked up and 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.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I don't know so, but it is frustrating.

Speaker 1:

So now you're doing a lot of advocacy work, is that correct?

Speaker 2:

I am. There was 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 DeFede, and someone had contacted him from the prison and said, 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. So he contacted 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 in it or not, because I'm going to dig, I'm going to find the details and I'm going to have, I want to report, I want people to know what happened to your son, but it might be better for you to. You know, help me with this so that we can tell Tristan's story.

Speaker 2:

Way, and you know I mean that just took my breath away. 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? 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 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 going to need, 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.

Speaker 1:

How did it go moving forward with that?

Speaker 2:

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 an invitation last year to speak at a hearing in Tallahassee before the criminal justice committee where they brought in the department of children and family services and the DOC. And I got to speak at that hearing explaining what happened to Tristan and and Senator Bradley was the head of the Criminal Justice Committee and she really sunk her teeth into this 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 a 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.

Speaker 2:

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 in the Senate, several more committees to go before it lands on the House floor and the Senate floor for full votes, final votes.

Speaker 2:

But it's been well received and what this legislation does is it really focuses on the front end of someone's involvement with the criminal justice system, with there being an effort to really identify right from the get-go, like within the first 24 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.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, anything that can be diverted helps a lot.

Speaker 2:

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 hindsight's- you know, whatever, yeah 2020.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but 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.

Speaker 1:

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.

Speaker 2:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I don't want this to happen to anybody, and that's what I've been fighting for, you know, this whole time is. This has got to change. This is, it's so broken.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Florida's maybe no different than any other state, but here in Florida, you know, we have the highest number of people in need of mental health services. We're number one in need and we're 49th in provision of services, and 30% or so of people in our prisons have mental health issues.

Speaker 1:

Unfortunately, what you said is very prevalent all across this country.

Speaker 2:

I know it is.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I talked with so many people across this country. I just spoke with a judge in Nevada. We had a very similar discussion in the fact that there's 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, and that's fight on a local level. By doing that, hopefully, we can get enough people together and we can change it on a national level.

Speaker 2:

Right. Well, I feel like this is a real shift for Florida and I'm really happy about that, because Florida's been a really hard-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, 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.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Now, is there anything that I haven't touched upon that you think is important for people to hear?

Speaker 2:

You know I will say that there's one part of this legislation that doesn't deal with one of the problems, 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 30 days or two months or whatever. That helps people with schizophrenia not fall off the medicine wagon.

Speaker 2:

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, or a lot of them, who are in need of these services, I mean they get it from Medicaid and when 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.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to come on my show.

Speaker 2:

You're welcome. Happy to be part of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was a pleasure to have you. Thanks again, again Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to tonymantorcom Contact then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask tell everyone everywhere about why Not Me, the World, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world.