Reg Murphy, a widely admired editor and publisher of newspapers in Atlanta777sm, San Francisco and Baltimore whose kidnapping by a lone right-wing gunman in 1974 riveted the nation, 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; the two of them would then 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 a lengthy account 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.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.777sm