By John Annese
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — An anime-loving Rikers Island correction officer testified Thursday that he smuggled drug-soaked issues of the hyper-popular manga “Demon Slayer” into the jail at the behest of a Brooklyn gang leader.
Darius Murphy told a jury in Brooklyn Federal Court how he got the comics from one of accused Bully Gang leader Moeleek Harrell’s accomplices, then slipped one issue into a janitor’s closet so Harrell could retrieve it in May 2020.
Murphy, 27, who’s a fan of the anime TV show based on the comic book, held on to the second issue so he could read it, and when he tried to bring it into the jail two weeks later, investigators intercepted him.
Murphy testified at the trial of Harrell and three co-defendants, Derrick Ayers, Franklin Gillespie and Anthony Kennedy, who are accused of racketeering, murder and running two drug trafficking operations.
Prosecutors allege the gang ran one of those drug operations on Rikers Island with the help of Murphy and fellow Correction Department Officer Johnny Chiles, who faces a separate trial at a later date.
A search of Harrell’s Rikers cell on May 29, 2020 — the day Murphy was stopped by investigators — turned up 19 pages of comic books coated in an oily film that tested positive for K2 and fentanyl or heroin, according to the feds.
Murphy said he started working at Rikers in 2018, and he first encountered Harrell in March 2020, in a housing unit at the jail complex’s Otis Bantum Correctional Center. They talked about basketball and rap music, and Harrell started asking for favors — first cigarettes, then to bring him a comic book.
“I initially said no,” he said, but he soon agreed. “I believe it was drug-related. He was known in the housing unit for having drugs.”
Murphy said he regularly saw inmates using drugs on Rikers. “Very often. Like every other day.”
He only reported it sporadically, he said, “Because it was known that they were using drugs. … They would smoke. … They would use Bible paper, tea bags.”
Murphy said Harrell handed him a note, with a phone number for a man called “Biggie,” that said, “Tell Bald head I need him to put a 100 pages together for me & Imma have my man pick it up this week. I need the (sauce) to be on the Chinese comics books so my man don’t have no problems bringing it in. When my man come pick up the books give him 10 bands.”
Ten bands is slang for $10,000, Murphy testified.
Murphy texted Harrell’s accomplice and arranged a meeting in May 2020 in Brooklyn, he said. He picked up the books plus his payment — which he spent on clothes, he said.
Murphy said he slipped one comic into his book bag and walked through jail security, and kept the other to read later. He headed to a second floor janitor closet and hid the comic there. He testified that he let Harrell know the comic was stashed in the closet.
He said he brought the second comic in days later after he finished reading it, but was pulled out of roll call before he could deliver it. At first, he lied about where he got the book, but caved and told the truth after an hourlong interview with Department of Investigation officials, he said.
He was suspended and fired a month later, then criminally charged in February 2021. Murphy said he’s cooperating with the government in the hopes of getting a reduced sentence.
Murphy’s testimony comes more than a year after another crooked guard, Patrick Legerme, gave a blow-by-blow account in a 2022 trial of how he brought marijuana into the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers for a $1,500 bribe.
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