Xtreme Vogue London Desk: Sarah Marshal
Jack Roland Murphy just about had it all: Kennedy-esque good looks, charm to burn, athletic talent and even a musical gift. Still, he wanted more.
The man who became a legendary jewel thief – he bagged the priceless Star of India from a New York museum – before graduating to murder is the focus of the documentary series Murf the Surf: Jewels, Jesus and Mayhem in the USA, which premieres on MGM+ on Sunday. Renowned filmmaker R.J. Cutler directed and executive produced the four-part series.
“Murf the Surf tells the story of one of the most complicated and notorious American crime figures ever, Jack Roland Murphy,” Cutler has explained in a director’s statement, “who became America’s very first true crime television superstar in 1964, a mere few months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.”
In episode 1 of the series, Murf describes his upbringing as “storybook.” It was hardly that, unless the book in question is Grimm’s Fairytales. When Jack was six, his hardscrabble pop plunked him on the back of a steed in the rugged California Badlands, slapped the horse’s rear and exhorted his son, as the mount trotted away, to find his way back home.
“We do root a lot of it [his psychological profile] — as we find is often the case — in his upbringing, in his relationship with his father, in a certain cruelty that was at the core of his childhood,” Cutler tells Media. “It is a wild combination of great charisma, an endless appetite for outside adulation, a hole in the heart that seems never to be filled, and a certain sociopathy that defines him.”
In high school Murphy moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where, according to him, he played violin for the Pittsburgh Symphony. He then won a tennis scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh, but later quit school, decamped to Florida and became a surfing champion (hence the nickname Murf the Surf). For a time, he built surfboards in Cocoa Beach, but eventually he torched the business – an initial flare up of a criminal predilection.
