Parents of son who allegedly murdered 2 younger siblings speak out

(KKTV)
Published: Nov. 30, 2017 at 10:30 PM MST
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You can feel Melissa Murphy's pain as she talks about her children that were taken far too soon.

It's been nearly two months since Malik Murphy, 20, was arrested for a gruesome attack against his 5-year-old sister Sophia and 7-year-old brother Noah. The siblings were stabbed to death in their sleep in a Colorado Springs home back in October.

"They were so easy to love and they were so full of joy and laughter," Melissa said, reminiscing over the children she lost.

Her family destroyed in a matter of minutes.

"It's just more than I can bear. This is more than we can bear as a family," Melissa said, holding back tears

The nightmare started out as a normal day. Melissa says the family was outside together in the front yard, playing football. Malik was playing too, laughing.

A few hours after bedtime, Sophia came to her parents' room for her normal midnight bathroom run with Malik by her side, also pretty typical according to the family. But Melissa says something was off.

"I remember feeling that irritability from him," she recalled. "You know when you look back and you think and you replay -- because that's all we do -- I remember him being real annoyed, just feeling that off of him."

Minutes later, Melissa was tucking Sophia back in.

"So I say the same things that I always say, 'Be a good girl and go night night, Mommy loves you, see you in the morning.'"

The last words Melissa ever spoke to her daughter.

Forty minutes later, Melissa said she heard "awful, awful" sounds. She said it sounded like men fighting, grown men screaming.

Melissa's husband Vinnie Murphy was woken up first.

"Malik met me at the top of the stairs as I was going to turn the corner to go down the stairs," recalled Vinnie. "I was face to face with him for a split second, then I see the knife raised and come down into my neck."

At this point, no one knew that Malik had already attacked his little brother and sister. Melissa woke up to find her husband and son fighting in the garage. With a knife sticking out of his neck, Vinnie was punching Malik and holding him down.

"It was such confusion. It's 1 a.m. and Vinnie's still yelling, 'He stabbed me!' And Vinnie is reaching around me and he is still punching Malik," Melissa remembered.

It's a full house. Five kids, two parents and their grandmother. One of their other sons, 14-year-old Elijah, called 911. In such a state of shock, Sophia's grandma didn't even realize at first what happened to the kids. And then it became all too clear.

"I heard her [the grandma] yell, 'Sohpia's been stabbed!' So I run and I don't know Sophia's upstairs, I don't know she's up there, so I go running upstairs to the room and I find my Noah and he's at the bottom," Melissa wept as she replayed that night out loud. "He was out of bed, he was on the floor, like he was almost to the stairs, and there was so much blood. I knew he was gone. So I left him. I hated leaving him but I had to find Sophia. So I ran up the stairs and found her outside my door."

Sophia, Noah and Malik all lived downstairs on the same floor. Elijah and Hannah were in bedrooms in the back. Melissa says she's still amazed by Sophia's strength that night.

"Sophia had made it up those flight of stairs through the kitchen to my bedroom door, and all she wanted was me," Melissa said.

A moment no parent should experience.

"Her eyes were closing, she was half gone. I could feel her half gone, and I squeezed her neck and she made this noise and went 'ahh' and looked at me, opened her eyes. She knew I was there and she was just looking at me ... she had no fear and she had no tears, she was not scared. And I just asked her to hold onto me. Oh my gosh, and it felt like forever. I swear it felt forever before help came," Melissa said.

While Hannah somehow slept through the chaos, Elijah stayed with his little brother Noah.

"Elijah describes how 911 made him look for heartbeats and pulses and he couldn't find any. He's only 14 years old," Melissa cried.

But how did they get here? The parents pinpoint a specific day at school when Malik was 16. Melissa says he found a cell phone and instead of returning it to the lost and found, he destroyed it. School authorities eventually caught wind.

Melissa and Vinnie say when school officials searched his backpack they found a kitchen steak knife, a little bit of marijuana, and a Bic writing pen he had taken to use to smoke the marijuana out of it.

That's when years of intensive therapy, mental hospital visits and a trial of medications started. The parents say he admitted that he had killed animals and that he had thoughts of killing his family. Malik even went as far as calling police on himself last summer.

His parents say Malik wanted to kill all of them and he said he had tried to come upstairs to do it. But even with the struggles, these parents never thought their son could go through with any of those threats. They described the entire situation as "confusing."

"The stuff that came out of Malik's mouth totally contradicted who he was, completely," Melissa said.

Now the family is still grasping for answers. 11 News reporter Kyla Galer asked if they could ever forgive their son.

"Right now, that's a very hard thing to see," Vinnie replied.

"I've got so much anger and hate for my own son that I loved with every fiber in my being, so I don't know. I don't care," responded Melissa.

But both parents agree that because of their strong faith, anything is possible. They say they are taking it one day at a time with the help of their church and most importantly keeping Sophia and Noah alive in their prayers.

Melissa tells 11 News she buried three children that day. They haven't talked to Malik since, but they might try to see him in jail next week.

She says once she gains the strength she wants to use this tragic experience to fight for better mental health counseling.