BY DARRELL HALEN

Ryan Murphy has no recollection of what happened during 24 hours of his life. Only witness accounts, a coroner’s report, crash-scene photos and a police investigation provide some of the missing pieces.

But what happened during that time had deadly consequences, changing his life, and the lives of others, forever.

Murphy was drunk and behind the wheel of his SUV when he caused a 2001 crash that killed a man and injured another.

“Imagine 24 hours of your life gone,” Murphy told about 700 Pelham High School students and faculty as they listened in the school’s gymnasium. “When you get woken up, you’re told you killed a man. How can that be?”   

Murphy, an inmate at the state prison in Concord, came to the school on Friday, Feb. 16, not to lecture the students, but to tell them about the choices he had made and their impact on others.

Murphy, who walked into the gymnasium wearing handcuffs and a green prison uniform, described what he was like in high school: a teenager with an invincibility complex, thinking he had all the answers, wanting to be treated as a young adult, not a kid.

He lasted only a year and a half in college. He partied and struggled academically, having not developed good study habits in high school.

Murphy bounced from job to job. He worked for a landscaping company but eventually found no room for advancement.

He went to work in sales, where his career took off when he stopped drinking. But life on the road was lonely and boring and he started to frequent bars. Drinking was an almost daily routine.    Invited up to Lake Winnipesaukee by a customer, he partied for a solid day and a half. Murphy doesn’t completely know what happened when he left a campsite in his SUV.

He remembers waking up with an aching body and a pounding head. A state trooper, standing over him, told him he had killed a man. He later learned another man was injured.

Murphy, whose blood alcohol level was .19  – nearly three times the legal limit – was sentenced to seven-and-a-half to 15 years in prison for negligent homicide and assault.

For the sentencing hearing, the young daughter of the man Murphy killed had drawn a picture of a happy time she had shared with her father: riding on the back of his motorcycle  – the same bike he was on when he was killed.

Murphy had spent hours writing his own statement to the court, to no avail.

“Between sobs and tears, all I could get out was ‘I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry,’” he recalled.

In prison, Murphy was thrust into a world of anger, hatred and violence. He was assigned a number, 32615, and now belonged to the state.

“This was clearly not the identity I was seeking all these years,” said Murphy, who is now 33 and has served five years of his sentence to date.

Murphy used a metaphor of throwing a rock into a pond. At the center was the crash and each ripple represented the people who had been affected by what he had done.

“Imagine all these people affected by one seemingly simple choice to drive drunk,” Murphy said. “But now the tough question: How do all these people heal from this?”

Murphy has given more than 35 talks, appearing before 7,000 students. By sharing his story, he said, he hoped to add one last ripple, a positive one, by educating others.

“I come here today to share my experience with you in an effort to show you that some choices just aren’t worth making for yourselves,” he said, later adding: “Hopefully, I’m making a difference in people’s lives, helping someone.”

In prison, Murphy has received alcohol treatment and is continuing his college education. He will continue speaking to students after his sentence is completed.

One student asked Murphy if he thinks he’ll drink again after he’s released.

“I have no intention of drinking. But I can also stand here and tell you I’m an alcoholic,” he said. “For me to say I won’t drink again – I can’t tell you that because I know my disease.”

John Costa, a math and driver’s education teacher at the school, arranged for Murphy’s visit. Murphy’s talk will be broadcast on the local cable access channel.

“It’s not just the teens we want to get the message out to,” Costa said before Murphy arrived. “There’s other people in the community who can benefit from this.”

Murphy’s talk apparently had an effect on the students. Normally students are talkative during assemblies, said sophomore Ethan Neskey.

“But everybody was quiet,” he said. “You could tell everyone was into it.”

“It’s an important message  –  don’t drink and drive,” said senior Billy DeBenedetto.

It’s a message that hopefully all the students took seriously, he said.