General
Reg Murphy, Newspaper Editor Whose Kidnapping Riveted the U.S., Dies at 90
He made his mark on newspapers in Atlanta, San Francisco and Baltimore, but may be best known for having been abducted in Atlanta in 1974.
Reg Murphy, who was so well regarded as an editor and publisher of newspapers in Atlanta, San Francisco and Baltimore that one boss promptly paid the $700,000 ransom when he was abducted by a right-wing terrorist and another handed him the keys to a Porsche in appreciation of his coverage of thebank robbery trial of a kidnapped Patty Hearst, the boss’s daughter, died on Nov. 9 at his home in St. Simons Island, Ga. He was 90.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Diana Murphy.
Mr. Murphy was the editorial page editor of The Atlanta Constitution on Feb. 19, 1974, when a man later identified as William A.H. Williams, a drywall subcontractor, called Mr. Murphy’s office to ask his advice about how best to donate 300,000 gallons of heating oil to a worthy cause.
He called again the next day at dusk and arranged to meet Mr. Murphy at his home and for the two of them drive to Mr. Williams’s lawyer’s office to sign some papers.
“I really had no choice but to go with him,” Mr. Murphy wrote in The New York Times shortly after the incident, “for newspapermen have to lead open lives and be available to anonymous or strange people.”
So strange was Mr. Williams that he immediately displayed a .38-caliber gun in his left hand and announced, “Mr. Murphy, you’ve been kidnapped.” He identified himself as a colonel in the American Revolutionary Army and ranted against the “lying, leftist, liberal news media” and “Jews in the government.”
“He was a bigot and disagreed vehemently with the anti-Vietnam stance of our ‘damn liberal’ newspaper and all it had done to promote the civil rights movement,” Mr. Murphy, who in fact was generally regarded as a political moderate, wrote in 2011.
