Female robber arrested after 33 years on the run
Mom nabbed for Gwinnett robbery after 33 years
By SAEED AHMED
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/09/07
On the run for 33 years, Deborah Gavin knew the day would come when the long arm of the law would catch up to her.
She just didn't expect that day to be Wednesday.
Deborah Gavin's booking mug taken on Wednesday, after her capture in Frankston, Texas, after 33 years on the run.
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The 53-year-old Gavin, who escaped from a Georgia prison while serving time for armed robbery in Gwinnett County in the early 1970s, said as much to U.S. Marshals as they cuffed her outside her home in Frankston, Texas.
In the intervening years, Gavin moved from state to state, living in Tennessee, Florida and Texas. She met and married Richard Murphey, changed her last name and bore two children, authorities said.
She earned a nurse's license and worked at a nearby hospital. When her back and heart conditions worsened and she was too weak for the rigors of a medical ward, Gavin started a quilting business from inside her two-story home.
And through it all, Gavin kept clean.
"As far as we know, she's been completely clear," said Ricky Myrick, chief investigator with the Georgia Department of Corrections. "There were no hits on fingerprints. We've never been notified by any agency that her prints matched those of someone they arrested."
For her husband, her past was a mystery.
"Things in her past, she'd get upset if I brought them up," said Richard Murphey, 63. "I didn't push her."
Deborah Gavin, aka Debra Ann Gavin or Debbie Gavin, was convicted of armed robbery in Gwinnett County on Feb. 11, 1972, and sentenced to serve seven years at the Georgia Women's Correctional Institution at Hardwick in Baldwin County.
Corrections officials could not immediately provide details on the robberies. Their computerized records don't go that far back, they said.
Jason Watson, a corrections employee assigned to the U.S. Marshal Service's Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force who traveled to Texas to arrest Gavin, also was at a loss about the details.
"That was before I was born," Watson said sheepishly. "Trying to [efficiently] get paperwork from that time is like trying to find [Jimmy] Hoffa's body."
Records show Gavin escaped from the facility five times, once fleeing as far away as Louisiana. Each time she was recaptured and reincarcerated.
On July 23, 1974 - a month after her last recapture - Gavin once again broke loose. This time, she disappeared.
A new life
A year after her escape, Gavin met her husband, Richard Murphey, while she worked as an assistant in his construction business in Plano, Texas. They moved to Frankston sometime in the 1980s, and soon after, Gavin became a registered nurse.
She worked for about a decade at East Texas Medical Center, about 24 miles from Frankston. There, said her husband, doctors nicknamed her "Gestapo."
"If a patient was hurting, she was good at going after the doctors. She just kept at them [to come check on the patients]," Murphey said.
At home after work, Gavin loved to quilt. So much so that when the problems in her lower back worsened - she suffered from Paget's disease, a bone disorder - and when she could not longer work because of heart problems, she decided to parlay her hobby into a job.
But the business never quite took off, Murphey said. "She couldn't bend over the sewing machine."
Over the years, Gavin disclosed bits and pieces of her past to her husband, but painted her role in the robbery as that of an unwitting accomplice.
The way Gavin told it to her husband, she was passed out in the back seat of a car while riding around with two friends. She awoke to find cops surrounding the car, and learned that the driver had robbed a store while she was knocked out.
"She said the prosecutor told her he didn't care if she didn't take part," Murphey recounted. "He was going to make an example out of her."
Gavin told her husband she simply walked out of the correctional institute after her conviction. Security was lax, and the 20-year-old had her whole life ahead of her.
"She said, 'Why am I in here when I didn't do nothing?' So she decided to go," Murphey said.
"I believed her."
The hunt is on
Enter the U.S. Marshal Service's Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force. The force, with officers from more than two dozen agencies, works full-time nabbing fugitives. Since its inception in 2003, the task force has picked up people in more than 11,000 felony investigations - an average of seven each day.
"If the case comes to the Marshal Service, it never goes away," said Supervisory Inspector James Ergas. "Someone is always on the case."
The hunt for Gavin wound through much of the Southeast until investigators determined she could be found in Frankston living under the name Deborah Murphey.
Since Monday morning, marshals watched the house on North Elm Street to make sure Deborah Murphey was indeed Gavin. To talk to her and verify her identity, they posed as city municipal employees and told her they were checking on a work order at the house.
"Thirty-three years is a long time," Ergas said. "They didn't want to jump a 53-year-old woman and drive her to the ground if it was the wrong person."
At 2 p.m. Wednesday, the marshals surrounded her house and knocked.
Gavin came to the door with a shotgun, heard them out and surrendered peacefully.
"We expected her to say, 'That's not me, that's not me," Watson, the corrections employee, said. "She just said she knew this day was going to come. But she hadn't prepared for it yet."
Before being escorted away, Gavin placed a phone call to her husband, who was at work at a construction site.
"All she said was when I got home, she wasn't going to be there," Murphey said.
The future
The next step in bringing Gavin to justice is to extradite her back to Georgia, but she has indicated she will fight it, authorities said.
What ultimately happens to her is up to the parole board, said Myrick, the corrections official.
The board will take into consideration several factors in determining whether she will serve out the six years remaining in her sentence. Among them, her age, her health and how she's conducted herself over the years.
Murphey remains hopeful.
"She's not the same person she was. She's changed," he said. "They can see that, can't they?"
By SAEED AHMED
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/09/07
On the run for 33 years, Deborah Gavin knew the day would come when the long arm of the law would catch up to her.
She just didn't expect that day to be Wednesday.
Deborah Gavin's booking mug taken on Wednesday, after her capture in Frankston, Texas, after 33 years on the run.
RELATED LINK:
More Gwinnett news
The 53-year-old Gavin, who escaped from a Georgia prison while serving time for armed robbery in Gwinnett County in the early 1970s, said as much to U.S. Marshals as they cuffed her outside her home in Frankston, Texas.
In the intervening years, Gavin moved from state to state, living in Tennessee, Florida and Texas. She met and married Richard Murphey, changed her last name and bore two children, authorities said.
She earned a nurse's license and worked at a nearby hospital. When her back and heart conditions worsened and she was too weak for the rigors of a medical ward, Gavin started a quilting business from inside her two-story home.
And through it all, Gavin kept clean.
"As far as we know, she's been completely clear," said Ricky Myrick, chief investigator with the Georgia Department of Corrections. "There were no hits on fingerprints. We've never been notified by any agency that her prints matched those of someone they arrested."
For her husband, her past was a mystery.
"Things in her past, she'd get upset if I brought them up," said Richard Murphey, 63. "I didn't push her."
Deborah Gavin, aka Debra Ann Gavin or Debbie Gavin, was convicted of armed robbery in Gwinnett County on Feb. 11, 1972, and sentenced to serve seven years at the Georgia Women's Correctional Institution at Hardwick in Baldwin County.
Corrections officials could not immediately provide details on the robberies. Their computerized records don't go that far back, they said.
Jason Watson, a corrections employee assigned to the U.S. Marshal Service's Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force who traveled to Texas to arrest Gavin, also was at a loss about the details.
"That was before I was born," Watson said sheepishly. "Trying to [efficiently] get paperwork from that time is like trying to find [Jimmy] Hoffa's body."
Records show Gavin escaped from the facility five times, once fleeing as far away as Louisiana. Each time she was recaptured and reincarcerated.
On July 23, 1974 - a month after her last recapture - Gavin once again broke loose. This time, she disappeared.
A new life
A year after her escape, Gavin met her husband, Richard Murphey, while she worked as an assistant in his construction business in Plano, Texas. They moved to Frankston sometime in the 1980s, and soon after, Gavin became a registered nurse.
She worked for about a decade at East Texas Medical Center, about 24 miles from Frankston. There, said her husband, doctors nicknamed her "Gestapo."
"If a patient was hurting, she was good at going after the doctors. She just kept at them [to come check on the patients]," Murphey said.
At home after work, Gavin loved to quilt. So much so that when the problems in her lower back worsened - she suffered from Paget's disease, a bone disorder - and when she could not longer work because of heart problems, she decided to parlay her hobby into a job.
But the business never quite took off, Murphey said. "She couldn't bend over the sewing machine."
Over the years, Gavin disclosed bits and pieces of her past to her husband, but painted her role in the robbery as that of an unwitting accomplice.
The way Gavin told it to her husband, she was passed out in the back seat of a car while riding around with two friends. She awoke to find cops surrounding the car, and learned that the driver had robbed a store while she was knocked out.
"She said the prosecutor told her he didn't care if she didn't take part," Murphey recounted. "He was going to make an example out of her."
Gavin told her husband she simply walked out of the correctional institute after her conviction. Security was lax, and the 20-year-old had her whole life ahead of her.
"She said, 'Why am I in here when I didn't do nothing?' So she decided to go," Murphey said.
"I believed her."
The hunt is on
Enter the U.S. Marshal Service's Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force. The force, with officers from more than two dozen agencies, works full-time nabbing fugitives. Since its inception in 2003, the task force has picked up people in more than 11,000 felony investigations - an average of seven each day.
"If the case comes to the Marshal Service, it never goes away," said Supervisory Inspector James Ergas. "Someone is always on the case."
The hunt for Gavin wound through much of the Southeast until investigators determined she could be found in Frankston living under the name Deborah Murphey.
Since Monday morning, marshals watched the house on North Elm Street to make sure Deborah Murphey was indeed Gavin. To talk to her and verify her identity, they posed as city municipal employees and told her they were checking on a work order at the house.
"Thirty-three years is a long time," Ergas said. "They didn't want to jump a 53-year-old woman and drive her to the ground if it was the wrong person."
At 2 p.m. Wednesday, the marshals surrounded her house and knocked.
Gavin came to the door with a shotgun, heard them out and surrendered peacefully.
"We expected her to say, 'That's not me, that's not me," Watson, the corrections employee, said. "She just said she knew this day was going to come. But she hadn't prepared for it yet."
Before being escorted away, Gavin placed a phone call to her husband, who was at work at a construction site.
"All she said was when I got home, she wasn't going to be there," Murphey said.
The future
The next step in bringing Gavin to justice is to extradite her back to Georgia, but she has indicated she will fight it, authorities said.
What ultimately happens to her is up to the parole board, said Myrick, the corrections official.
The board will take into consideration several factors in determining whether she will serve out the six years remaining in her sentence. Among them, her age, her health and how she's conducted herself over the years.
Murphey remains hopeful.
"She's not the same person she was. She's changed," he said. "They can see that, can't they?"
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I used to live 4 miles from the Women's Prison in Hardwick, Georgia, from where Gavin escaped.
The femmes used to escape from there fairly often.
One day, my girlfriend drove into town. She stopped along the highway to pick some wild flowers.
In a minute, the SWAT team had her at gunpoint.
There had been an escape an hour earlier and she fit the description.
They would not let her go even when she showed id. She had them call me, and I had to drive down there to get her released.
Of course, I knew all the cops.0 -
Good story!! 0
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