Desperate Measures: Lost Boy

Desperate Measures

STORIES BY LOU KILZER

Lost Boy
Painful journey through childhood ends with tragedy in Texas

EL PASO, Tex. — It was nothing new for Corey Murphy and his mother Laura to argue. And it was nothing new for Laura to gain the upper hand.

But this time, the quiet 17-year-old boy was about to end the arguing forever.

Early in the afternoon of March 21, he strode into the family kitchen, grabbed a black .38-caliber handgun from the top of the refrigerator and bolted for his room.

A shot rang out.

At 1:01 p.m., El Paso fire department pumper 22 and paramedic van 11A got the call: "Suicide in progress."

Laura Murphy burst into her son's room.

He had fired a bullet into the wall. Now, he stood by a love seat in the back of his room, gun in hand.

Laura, 50, a former Army nurse, told Corey to put it down.

DESPERATE MEASURES

The Series
Epilogue:
Lost Boy
From Sterling to Samoa
A mother's concern
An international network
The state intervenes
An Internet support group
Stuck in Samoa
On to Montana
The 'exit plan'
Over the edge
Epilogue
Share your thoughts

Instead he put the barrel of the gun to his temple. When she pleaded again, he put it to his other temple.

Then, without saying a word, Corey pressed the the barrel to his forehead, between his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

Corey had come home to El Paso a few months earlier after a long stint in the care of Teen Help, one of America's toughest tough-love programs for defiant teens. His mother had sent him to Teen Help while he was attending middle school in the small Colorado town of Sterling, where the family was living.

He had been confined for 32 months in Teen Help's behavior modification compounds in Montana and the Pacific nation of Western Samoa. Corey made great progress after a rough start, graduating at the highest level.

Now, he was dead.

Corey had snapped as he and Laura discussed implementing one of Teen Help's latest practices — removing kids from their homes if they didn't follow a strict behavior contract.

Despite the tragic outcome, Laura says that Teen Help was a godsend. Without it, she says, Corey might have died years earlier.

Teen Help official Ken Kay says that only two or three kids in the program have committed suicide, while hundreds have benefited.

But several top-flight mental health professionals say that the program's intense behavior control techniques could produce "psychological casualties."

Was Corey a beneficiary of Teen Help? A casualty? Or simply a teen-ager ground up by the raw emotions of adolescence?

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