Once a pioneer in video game technology, man sentenced in horrific Florida case involving teen sex victim

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A renowned software engineer who built groundbreaking video game technology widely used since the mid-2000s will spend his life in federal prison over a horrific case that victimized a 16-year-old runaway girl as a sex slave in Florida for over six weeks.

U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor sentenced Timothy Frederick Murphy-Johnson, 40, of Gainesville to life in prison plus 90 years in the case. He pleaded guilty to enticing a teen in Corpus Christi, Texas, to run away from her family last Summer and join him in Florida where he told her they would build a new life together. They first connected over Discord, an online chat service.

Instead, the girl landed in a nightmare inside the trailer home — down a dirt road in the rural wooded countryside — where Murphy-Johnson was living about 10 miles northeast of the University of Florida campus in this college town. The trailer featured a fence that blocked its view from the road and surveillance cameras mounted in trees, authorities said.

Sheriff’s investigators and agents with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said the teen had been stripped, tied to a bed for days at a time, cut with a knife and sexually assaulted by Murphy-Johnson and his then-girlfriend, Oliva Ashford Henn, 21, of Orlando. Inside the trailer, they found sex toys, handcuffs, condoms and Plan B pills.

Investigators recovered Snapchat messages from Murphy-Johnson’s cell phone about the teen and his plans to “break her and make her into a slave whose only goal is to please me,” according to court records. Another message described plans to chain the girl in a soundproof room.

In videos authorities introduced as evidence in the case, the teen was covered in bruises and cuts, weeping and whimpering toward the camera during one assault on a bathroom floor, court records said. Twice, authorities said, the pair gave her so many narcotics that she overdosed and had to be resuscitated.

The U.S. Attorney, Jason Coody, called the crimes “indescribable, and nothing short of horrific.” He said the rescued teen was returned to her family in Texas.

Murphy-Johnson was the founder of Artificial Studios and developer of the pioneering software Reality Engine in the mid-2000s, which coordinated how commands from video game players affected the fast-paced scenes they saw on screens. The technology revolutionized parts of the industry and especially popularized the genre of shooting games viewed from the player’s own perspective.

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

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

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 a lack of sleep, authorities said.

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

Authorities said Murphy-Johnson and Henn had anticipated they would go to prison. Henn once texted him, “This is bad. We’re gonna go to jail,” and added, “She’s going to throw me immediately under the bus.”

Murphy-Johnson answered, “No, dude. We will both go, I’ll go worst,” according to court records.

Winsor sentenced Murphy-Johnson on Tuesday to life plus 90 years on federal charges of coercion for a minor, selling or buying a child and sexually exploiting a child. The Judge also ordered him to pay $56,000 to the teen.

The Judge sentenced Henn this week to 23 years in federal prison and a lifetime of supervised release once she completes her time behind bars. She also was ordered to pay the victim $56,000.

“These sentences account for the defendants’ vile acts of depravity and send a strong message that those who exploit children will face justice,” Coody, the top 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 filings. In late June 2023, about 5 a.m., neighbors reported hearing screams from the area of the trailer. Sheriff’s deputies who responded said Murphy-Johnson wouldn’t come outside and spoke to them only through an open window. They described him as paranoid and shaking.

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

Unknown to the deputies at that moment, the runaway teen was hidden inside the trailer, outside their view.

There were hints that a far darker story had unfolded that morning: In messages between Murphy-Johnson and Henn, she indicated the teen had briefly but unsuccessfully escaped her tormentor. “You need to stop letting her go outside ever, haha,” Henn texted him later.

Henn fled the trailer and the victimized teen for good in early July, weeks before agents rescued the girl. She said she didn’t want to talk to him again then blocked him and returned to central Florida, court records said. She was arrested in Orlando in August 2023 and brought back to Gainesville.

Friends and relatives described Henn in letters to the Judge as manipulated and victimized.

“Olivia needs extensive psychiatric care to unwind the years of abuse and assault,” wrote Carolyn Tringali of Melville, New York, a family friend. She called Henn “trusting and gullible, unable to judge other people’s motives.”

Ann Marie Powers, another family friend, wrote, “She had a naivete that was endearing; but these character traits have betrayed her in her youthfulness. She has learned a hard lesson, but perhaps she had to learn the hard way.”

Powers said Wednesday she was too upset to answer further questions about Henn. “I am disappointed the courts did not realize how she has been victimized,” she wrote in an email.

Murphy-Johnson’s former father-in-law, Bob Gelman of Sunnyvale, California, blamed Murphy-Johnson for the death of his daughter, Molly. She died at 28 in December 2017 from what the coroner said was an overdose of Benadryl and trace amounts of fentanyl after a violent but brief marriage with Murphy-Johnson on the West Coast. There was no foul play, the coroner ruled.

“He said he gave her a little (Benadryl),” Gelman said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I think he got her, either high or whatever, and the sleepier she was, he probably kept force-feeding her handfuls of Benadryl to take.”

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

Molly Murphy wrote in court papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in July 2016 that Murphy-Johnson had threatened to kill her and make it look like a suicide. She said he had used his technology prowess to hack into her social media, email, bank, phone and online accounts and locked her out of those accounts.

In arguments, he called her a “slut” and stupid, the court records said. 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 the police.

Eleven days later, without explanation, Molly Murphy told a judge she wanted to revoke the restraining 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 federal prison in the unrelated case, he said, “Couldn’t happen to a nastier 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 he moved to Florida after Molly’s death. Molly was his third wife, Gelman said.

When asked whether 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 her so much,” he said. “I miss my daughter, and, well, he’s never getting out of prison.”

Gelman regained his composure and said he hoped other victims of domestic violence can escape their situations before it’s too late.

The groundbreaking technology that Murphy-Johnson designed was licensed by Epic Games, a nationally recognized video game company popular for titles that include Fortnite, Gears of War, Infinity Blade and Unreal.

Epic Games developed its Unreal Engine and briefly hired Murphy-Johnson. He was fired in a contentious dispute over his employment and stock options he said he had been promised that boiled over in civil court in North Carolina in 2014.

Despite developing the video game software responsible for millions of dollars in revenues, Murphy-Johnson was hardly wealthy. In his financial affidavit for a public defender last year, he told a Judge 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-wide trailer on five acres that became the scene of the crime. The Justice Department is in the process of seizing the property and selling it.

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This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at [email protected]. You can donate to support our students here.