Testimony in Phila. kidnap, murder trial continues

The mother and sister of the woman kidnapped with Shamari Taylor took the witness stand in Philadelphia today to corroborate Caren Murphy's story of the kidnapping and apparent murder of a son of State Rep. John Myers.

Tanya Murphy, the mother, and Nicole Murphy, Caren's older sister, both supported Caren Murphy's version of the events of Aug. 26 and 27, 2006.

Their testimony was especially important because it supported Caren Murphy's new testimony yesterday about the threats and a mysterious stranger named "Blue."

The new information and her version of the kidnapping were challenged strongly yesterday in the Common Pleas courtroom by defense attorney Gary Silver, who argued that her story and identification of Kenneth Tuck was part of a pattern of lies.

"I was afraid," Caren Murphy told a Common Pleas Court jury in her second day on the witness stand. "They knew who I was and where I lived and they had threatened to kill me."

The kidnapping of Murphy and Taylor late on the night of Aug. 26, 2006, has resulted in the arrest of just one of the half-dozen armed men who Murphy said surrounded her car in Strawberry Mansion.

Murphy testified Wednesday about how their abductors handcuffed them, wrapped duct tape over their eyes and took them to what she believed was a warehouse or garage.

There, she said, she was held for four hours, listening to Taylor, 26, being tortured and begging for his life in what investigators believe was a drug deal gone awry. His body has not been found.

Murphy was dropped off near dawn on Aug. 27, 2006, at an alley near 31st and Diamond Streets. She identified Tuck, 36, as a kidnapper because she said they had a three-month sexual relationship six years earlier when she was 15 and he 28.