A Belmont man accused of killing his mother in March was once again denied bail and will remain incarcerated pending trial.
Belknap County Superior Court Judge James D. O’Neill III ruled that the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office had shown by “clear and convincing evidence” at a hearing last week that the murder charges pending against Nicholas Murphy are punishable by up to life imprisonment and that the proof against Murphy “is evident.”
Murphy, 31, has been jailed since his arrest April 16 on alternative counts of second-degree murder, which allege that he either knowingly or recklessly caused the death of his mother, 62-year-old Pamela Murphy.
New Hampshire State Police Sgt. Matthew Amatucci testified during a virtual hearing last week that an autopsy revealed Pamela had suffered sharp and blunt force trauma to the head and neck in a homicide. He said a hatchet recovered by police in a wooded area near her home had traces of blood and tested positive for her DNA.
Pamela’s husband, Richard Murphy, came upon her lifeless body in the living room of their mobile home at 31 Tee Dee Drive on the afternoon of March 16, according to prosecutors. A state medical examiner said she died sometime between 8:20 a.m. and 12:20 p.m. that day.
Less than a month before her murder, Pamela tried to obtain guardianship over her son and tried to get him civilly committed to the state’s psychiatric hospital, Amatucci said. He described the relationship between mother and son as “very strange.”
“Nicholas would refer to his mother as the devil,” Amatucci testified, adding that Nicholas routinely spoke about hearing his mother’s voice in his head. “When he would go inside the residence, he would wear headphones in an attempt to block out the voices.”
Nicholas resided in a shed on his parents’ property, but it was a living arrangement that his mother hoped would be short term.
Defense attorneys argued during last week’s hearing that Nicholas’s alibi of remaining in the shed on the morning of the murder could not be proven because there were no witnesses.
But a photograph taken by investigators of the shed’s interior shows a cigarette rolling machine that Nicholas’s father told police he had used in the kitchen of the mobile home that morning and found missing upon his return from work that afternoon. Amatucci said Nicholas also shared in a phone call with his sister that he may have entered the mobile home at some point to get food.