​Mary Murphy, a veteran TV and digital news journalist, is co-founder of Trinity Films NYC, along with Erin Mulvey. Their first project is the feature documentary "Saint of the City," which chronicles the life of the late NYPD Detective Steven McDonald.  The officer spent 30 1/2 years in a wheelchair as a quadriplegic, after a teenager's bullet shattered his spine during a shooting in Central Park in July 1986.  He famously forgave the troubled teen who altered his life forever.

 

Mary made the transition to documentary filmmaking after a forty-year career on the air in her native New York City, working for PIX11 News and CBS2.  She earned 33 Emmy awards for her journalism, reporting in-depth on organized crime, terrorism, cold cases, the heroin/fentanyl crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. She was also "live" in Vatican City for the 2013 election of Pope Francis, the first pontiff from the Americas.

 

Starting in the mid-1980's, Mary covered the rise and fall of dapper don John Gotti, after he ascended to the top of the Gambino crime family.  This followed the rubout of Gambino boss Paul Castellano, who was shot outside Sparks Steakhouse during Christmas shopping season in December 1985.  Mary was one of the first reporters on the scene. In 2023, Mary appeared in all three episodes of the Netflix docuseries "Get Gotti."

 

Mary covered both terror attacks on the World Trade Center, beginning with the 1993 truck bombing in the parking garage of Tower One that created a crater six stories high. It left six people dead, along with an unborn baby.  Mary later spent a year reporting on the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 plane attacks that knocked the towers down and killed nearly three thousand people.  

 

Mary served fourteen years as the weekend anchor at PIX11, before transitioning to investigative reporting. She created her popular Mary Murphy Mystery segments in 2013 and received special recognition with a 2014 Journalistic Enterprise Emmy for a composite of her work.

 

On January 6, 2017, Mary received a tip that quadriplegic NYPD Detective Steven McDonald had been rushed to the hospital and was not expected to live.  Mary immediately wrote a web article explaining the significance of the officer's life, staying with the story through Detective McDonald's funeral the following Friday.  

 

In 2018, Mary was asked to host a Facebook Live show for PIX11, which did in-depth reporting on the Lesandro "Junior" Guzman-Feliz murder case in the Bronx.  Mary also did extensive reporting on the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, creating features on the "Faces of the Pandemic" throughout the first year of the global emergency.  

 

In 2021, Mary launched another segment that resonated with viewers, "The Missing."  She focused on communities of color that had received scant attention in the past when their loved ones went missing. She reported on teen runaways that were often lured from home by sex traffickers.  Numerous reports helped locate vulnerable young people.

 

During the last fifteen years of Mary's television news career, she was committed to reporting on the painkiller/heroin/fentanyl crisis that was driving fatal overdose rates past 100,000 a year. She produced five, Emmy-winning specials on these topics, most recently "Tranq: The Zombie Effect" in 2023.

 

Mary spent more than a dozen years reporting on the elusive Gilgo Beach serial killer (also called the Long Island Serial Killer) and covered the arrest of suspect Rex Heuermann in July 2023. She appeared in all episodes of the Peacock docuseries "House of Secrets: Gilgo Beach Killer," which was released in 2025.  

 

Mary was eager to work on documentary projects, so she left local TV in early 2024.  A chance encounter with the widow of Detective McDonald led to the development of "Saint of the City," which has been two years in the making.

 

Mary knew Erin Mulvey from Erin's time serving as Special Agent and chief spokesperson for the Drug Enforcement Administration in New York.  Mary asked Erin to join her on the "Saint of the City" project.  Together, Mary and Erin created Trinity Films NYC.  The name was a nod to Detective McDonald's favorite book, "Trinity," which was written by Leon Uris.  

 

Both Mary and Erin took on the challenge of doing fundraising for an independent film, wearing many hats to handle research, the search for archives, and licensing.  They plan to continue creating compelling content on multiple platforms.