Once a pioneer of video game technology, man convicted in horrific Florida case involving teenage sex victim

A renowned software engineer who developed revolutionary video game technology that has been widely used since the mid-2000s will spend the rest of his life in federal prison following a horrific case that left a 16-year-old runaway girl a sex slave in Florida for more than six weeks.

United States District Judge Allen Winsor sentenced Timothy Frederick Murphy-Johnson40, of Gainesville, was sentenced to life in prison and 90 years in prison in the case. He pleaded guilty to enticing a teenage girl from Corpus Christi, Texas, to flee her family last summer and join him in Florida, where he told her they would build a new life together. They first met through Discord, an online chat service.

Instead, the girl lived a nightmare in the trailer, at the end of a dirt road in the wooded countryside where Murphy-Johnson lived, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) northeast of the University of Florida campus in the college town. The trailer had a fence that blocked her view of the road and surveillance cameras mounted in the trees, authorities said.

Sheriff’s investigators and Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents said the teen was stripped naked, tied to a bed for days, cut with a knife and sexually assaulted by Murphy-Johnson and his then-girlfriend, Oliva Ashford Henn21, from Orlando. Inside the trailer, they found sex toys, handcuffs, condoms and Plan B pills.

Investigators found Snapchat messages on Murphy-Johnson’s cellphone about the teen and his plans to “break her and make her a slave whose sole purpose is to please me,” according to court documents. Another message described plans to chain the girl in a soundproof room.

In videos submitted as evidence by authorities, the teen was covered in bruises and cuts, crying and moaning on camera during an assault on a bathroom floor, according to court documents. On two occasions, authorities said the couple gave her so many narcotics that she overdosed and had to be resuscitated.

The American prosecutor, Jason Coodycalled the crimes “unspeakable and nothing short of horrific.” He added that the rescued teenager had been returned to her family in Texas.

Murphy-Johnson is the founder of Artificial Studios and the developer of the pioneering Reality Engine software in the mid-2000s, which coordinated how players’ inputs affected the fast-moving scenes they saw on screen. The technology revolutionized parts of the industry, including popularizing the genre of shooters seen from the player’s perspective.

Authorities rescued the girl in July 2023 after her family in Texas reported her missing and found her cellphone, which she had left behind. She was last seen outside a Wendy’s restaurant in that city. Murphy-Johnson had found a driver on Craigslist willing to transport her from Texas for $480, according to court documents.

By the time authorities began searching for her, she had been missing for more than a month. Investigators traced her social media activity back to Murphy-Johnson’s Florida home and noticed that Murphy-Johnson was one of her Instagram followers.

After a judge approved a search warrant, they found Murphy-Johnson and the teen inside the trailer with ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, wearing only an oversized T-shirt and underwear. She was malnourished and suffering from lack of sleep, authorities said.

When questioned by authorities that day, Murphy-Johnson said: “I’m not going to answer.”

Authorities said Murphy-Johnson and Henn expected them to go to jail. Henn once texted her, “This is terrible. We’re going to jail,” and added, “She’s going to throw me under a bus right now.”

Murphy-Johnson responded, “No, man. We’ll both go, I’ll take the worst,” according to court documents.

On Tuesday, Winsor sentenced Murphy-Johnson to life in prison plus 90 years in prison on federal charges of coercion of a minor, sale or purchase of a child and sexual exploitation of a child. The judge also ordered him to pay the teenager $56,000.

The judge sentenced Henn this week to 23 years in federal prison and life on supervised release after her sentence is served. She was also ordered to pay $56,000 to the victim.

“These sentences reflect the heinous acts of depravity committed by the defendants and send a strong message that those who exploit children will be brought to justice,” Coody, the lead federal prosecutor, said in a statement Wednesday.

Henn suffered from mental health issues and a history of sexual violence, according to statements from friends and relatives in court documents. Around 5 a.m. in late June 2023, neighbors reported hearing screams coming from the area of ​​the trailer. Sheriff’s deputies who responded said Murphy-Johnson wouldn’t come out and would only speak to them through an open window. They described him as paranoid and shaking.

Murphy-Johnson told police that Henn had suffered a psychiatric episode and left in an Uber. Police said he called her — after warning her not to say anything incriminating — and she lied to them over the phone, saying she had forgotten to take her medication and was going home, authorities said. She met Murphy-Johnson on the dating service Whisper, she said.

Unbeknownst to deputies at the time, the fleeing teen was hiding inside the trailer, out of their sight.

There were hints that something much darker was going on that morning: In messages between Murphy-Johnson and Henn, she indicated that the teenager had briefly but unsuccessfully escaped her tormentor. “You need to stop letting her out, haha,” Henn texted her later.

Henn left the trailer and the teenage victim for good in early July, a few weeks before officers came to rescue the girl. She said she didn’t want to talk to him anymore, then blocked him and drove back to Central Florida, according to court documents. She was arrested in Orlando in August 2023 and brought back to Gainesville.

In letters to the judge, Henn’s friends and family described him as manipulated and victimized.

“Olivia needs intensive psychiatric care to recover from years of abuse and assault,” he wrote. Carolyn Tringali of Melville, New York, a family friend. She described Henn as “trusting and gullible, unable to judge the motives of others.”

Ann Marie PowersAnother family friend wrote: “She had an endearing naivety, but these traits betrayed her in her youth. She learned a hard lesson, but perhaps she had to learn it the hard way.”

On Wednesday, Powers said she was too upset to answer further questions about Henn. “I am disappointed that the courts did not understand how much of a victim she was,” she wrote in an email.

Murphy-Johnson’s former father-in-law, Bob Gelman of Sunnyvale, California, accused Murphy-Johnson of her daughter’s death, Molly. She died at age 28 in December 2017, from an overdose of Benadryl and traces of fentanyl, according to the coroner, after a violent but brief marriage to Murphy-Johnson on the West Coast. There was no foul play, the coroner concluded.

“He said he gave her some Benadryl,” Gelman said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “I think he got her, either through drugs or some other means, and the more she was asleep, the more Benadryl he probably kept pumping her into.”

Gelman, a retired aerospace engineer, said his daughter told him that Murphy-Johnson regularly assaulted her and forced her into prostitution to pay the couple’s bills after they married.

Molly Murphy wrote in documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in July 2016 that Murphy-Johnson threatened to kill her and make it look like suicide. She said he used his technological prowess to hack into her social media, email, banking, phone and online accounts and blocked her.

During the argument, he called her a “bitch” and an idiot, according to court documents. She accused him of kicking her in the stomach, punching her in the head and stealing her purse, money and phone to prevent her from fleeing and calling police.

Eleven days later, without explanation, Molly Murphy told a judge she wanted to revoke the protective order.

It fit the pattern of her returning to her abuser, her father said. “He was very manipulative,” Gelman said.

When Gelman learned this week that Murphy-Johnson had been sentenced to life in prison in a separate case, he said: “It couldn’t have happened to a more evil person. He was not a good guy.”

He confirmed that Murphy-Johnson had worked as a software engineer on video game technology in California before moving to Florida after Molly’s death. Molly was his third wife, Gelman said.

Asked if he had a message for the man he blamed for his daughter’s death, Gelman choked up and could barely speak. “I don’t know, I love him so much,” he said. “I miss my daughter, and he’s never getting out of prison.”

Gelman regained his composure and said he hoped other victims of domestic violence could escape their situation before it was too late.

The revolutionary technology designed by Murphy-Johnson has been licensed by Epic Games, a nationally recognized video game company popular for titles such as Fortnite, Gears of War, Infinity Blade and Unreal.

Epic Games developed its Unreal Engine and briefly hired Murphy-Johnson. He was fired following a dispute over his employment and promised stock options that escalated in a North Carolina civil court in 2014.

Despite developing the video game software responsible for millions of dollars in revenue, Murphy-Johnson wasn’t exactly wealthy. In his financial disclosure for a public defender last year, he told a judge that he earned $57,200 a year, had $400 in his bank account and owed at least $10,000 to creditors. In August 2022, he paid $80,000 for the single-family trailer on five acres that became the crime scene. The Justice Department is in the process of seizing the property and selling it.

___

This article was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be contacted at: (protected email). You can donate to support our students here.

Number of views of the publication: 0