From theMemphis Commercial Appeal:
January 10, 2003
NEWARK, N.J. - A go-go dancer who was supposed to be taking care of three young brothers found dead or starving in a locked basement was captured after a four-day manhunt Thursday when a stranger turned her in.
Authorities had been looking as far as North Carolina for Sherry Murphy since Saturday, when two of the brothers were found emaciated and starving in her home. The next day, authorities discovered the body of the third brother stuffed into a purple plastic storage bin.
The case has touched off a furor over New Jersey's child welfare system, which had investigated complaints about the family but closed the case last year. "This is the most horrible story I have ever heard," Mayor Sharpe James said. "There's enough blame here to go around for a lot of people."
The case is just the latest around the country to highlight the difficulties caseworkers have in protecting some of the nation's most vulnerable children from abuse or death.
In Florida, the state's child-welfare agency went through a shake-up last year after caseworkers lost track of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson for 15 months before realizing she was missing. In Missouri, a caseworker resigned last week after a 2-year-old boy who had been sent back to a foster home was shaken to death.
In New Jersey, Gov. James McGreevey ordered an investigation of the child-welfare agency and new procedures for investigating abuse allegations. The caseworker was suspended Thursday, a day after the supervisor in charge of the case also was ordered to take a paid leave.
Murphy, 41, was arrested Thursday on child-endangerment charges.
The man who turned her in had seen her crying at a phone booth near a go-go bar and offered her a place to stay after she told him she had just arrived from the South with nowhere to go, James said. Jean Claude Dessources later recognized Murphy from news reports. On Wednesday, he sent her to his cousin's apartment next door and called police, James said.
Officials had offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to her arrest, but had not decided Thursday whether Dessources would get the money.
Raheem Williams, 7, and Tyrone Hill, 4, remained hospitalized Thursday in fair condition. When the two surviving children were found Saturday, they were cowering under a bed soaked with urine, feces and vomit in the basement of a Newark rowhouse. They were using a jar for a toilet and their hair was infested with lice. They had not eaten in days.
Investigators said the two boys had been beaten, burned with cigarettes and subjected to other abuse.
Authorities did not know Faheem Williams existed until Raheem said at the hospital that he hadn't seen his twin for a long time. They went back the next day and discovered Faheem's mummified remains in the purple storage box. An autopsy determined that he had died more than a month ago of starvation and blunt force to the stomach.
No one has been charged in the death, but police said more charges are being drawn up against Murphy.
Murphy had been taking care of the boys since their mother, Melinda Williams, Murphy's cousin, was jailed on assault charges in March.
Williams, 31, told authorities she could not find Murphy or the children after she got out of jail last year. She was hit by a car Saturday while rushing to see the children and was hospitalized in critical condition.
The state welfare agency had received 10 complaints about the family over the past 10 years, including one in October 2001 that Williams was beating and burning her children.
Three complaints were substantiated: Williams left the children alone in 1996 and 1999, and she failed to get medical attention for another child, 7-year-old Fuquan, after he cut his hand in 1998. The boy, now 11, is in a treatment center in New York.
Authorities say at least one of the boys also was molested. A friend of Williams was arrested Wednesday and charged with sexual abuse.
Yet the state agency closed the case in February 2002, saying it could not find the boys. That same month, Williams was jailed for child endangerment stemming from a 1996 incident and she entrusted the boys to Murphy, who was dancing in bars under the stage name "Ebony."
Police said Murphy has a crack habit, but no criminal record.
New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services has 1,400 people to supervise some 47,000 children; the average caseload is 35. National advocates recommend that a caseworker handle no more than 25.
The surviving brothers are clinging to each other more than ever, said the mayor, who has visited them several times in the hospital.
"They tried to place them in separate rooms in the hospital, and every time they did, Tyrone would start to cry," James said. "So they brought an extra bed into Tyrone's room and let them stay together. Through all of this terrible tragedy, they learned to trust just one person in the whole world: each other."



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As for the so called mother...nothing.

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