But in recent weeks, as the scandal of Peter's parentage has become public knowledge, a good many people have seemed to care quite a bit. At the Murphys' home, where Annie, 44, lives with Peter and Pennell, 67, a carpenter, the phone rings day and night as reporters call in from all over the world. And no wonder. Not only had Casey, 65, a champion of the poor and one of his country's most powerful and admired Catholic leaders, been exposed as Peter's father, but for years he had taken virtually no responsibility for the child. In the face of the disclosures, Bishop Casey earlier this month tendered his resignation from his diocese to the Vatican for "personal" reasons and announced that he would become a missionary. Only last week did he publicly acknowledge being Peter's father and voice remorse for having "grievously wronged" the boy and his mother.
Murphy first met Casey when she was a 7-year-old living in Redding, Conn., and he was a 28-year-old visiting priest. Even then, says Murphy, she was drawn to him. "That face stuck with me," she says. "It was either jovial or had that sadness. I never forgot it." The two did not meet again until April 1973, when she was 24, a lapsed Catholic and recovering from a failed marriage of 2½ years. Her father, who had remained in contact with Casey over the years, set up a visit to Ireland to help get her mind off die divorce. As Murphy recalls it, Casey, who was then serving as the Bishop of Kerry, told her father, "If Ireland has nothing else, it has serenity, so send Annie to me. I'm sure she'll find something special."
That she did. From the moment that Casey, then 45, picked her up at Shannon International Airport, there was a romantic charge between them. "I felt it immediately," she says. "I can't describe it. I was bewitched, I was bewildered." Casey began flirting from the start, she says. During a walk on the first day, he took her hand and utterly charmed her. "He is not a handsome man, but he has these dancing eyes," she says. Within three weeks they were "intimate," usually visiting each other in their respective bedrooms at his official residence. The couple made some effort to be discreet, but not always. One time, during a car ride back from Dublin with two other priests sitting in the front seat, they snuggled and nuzzled in the back. "Eamonn loves to live on the edge," says Murphy. "That was part of the fun."
But that attitude also got them in trouble when Murphy, who used no birth control, became pregnant around November. When she told Casey, he was aghast. Ultimately his more reasoned response was to implore her to have the child and put it up for adoption as a way to "cleanse" herself. She refused, and their relationship became so strained that Murphy moved from Casey's residence to a private home outside Dublin that helped unmarried mothers. After Peter was born, Casey made frequent, tense visits to the hospital, often with adoption papers in hand, in an effort to get Murphy to change her mind.
Returning to the U.S. with her infant son in 1974, Murphy took a job as a telephone operator at Greenwich Hospital. Though her parents had known nothing about the pregnancy until she got off the plane and presented them with their grandson, they were distraught but supportive. Casey, however, was not. Despite her pleas for generous child support, he offered only $100 a month. "One hundred dollars a month," she now says incredulously, "when he drives a Mercedes, has a home and money to boot." When Murphy threatened to make the child a ward of the church, which might have exposed Casey as the father, she says he upped the ante to $175. In 1978, after he was appointed Bishop of Galway, Casey started kicking in $285.
Still, he had little communication with Annie, who now works two jobs as a secretary, and none at all with Peter until 1990, when she threatened a suit seeking "compensation." Casey immediately flew over from Ireland and agreed to pay an out-of-court settlement of $125,000. (Last week Casey admitted that almost all that money had initially come from church funds but that several donors had since helped him pay it back with interest.) Casey also agreed to see Peter for the first time since just after his birth, though it was hardly a rewarding encounter. "He was kind of cold and distant," says Peter, an easygoing teen who works at a local grocery store and likes the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and the New York Yankees. "He just asked how I was doing, where I would like to go [to college]. It was something you would talk to your guidance counselor about, but even a guidance counselor would have a more personal conversation."
Earlier this year, Casey's continuing refusal to deal with his son directly motivated the Murphys to contact a reporter for the Irish Times and tell their story. When Casey got wind that the press was investigating the allegations, he offered Annie and Peter $150,000 in hush money, she says, which they refused. For them, ultimately, the real issue is some measure of acceptance, which Casey's statement last week helped provide. "If he is sincere, he will reach out to Peter," she says. "He could be like a friend."
BILL HEWITT
BRYAN ALEXANDER in Ridgefield
- Contributors:
- Bryan Alexander.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
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