Video surveillance released Thursday revealed the identity of the man who dropped off $10,000 in cash to cover the unauthorized charges on a dead Coppell mayor's city credit card.
David Murph, the husband of the editor of a local newspaper, was the once-anonymous man who dropped off an envelope containing the money at City Hall on Wednesday. A note accompanied the cash, directing that it "reimburse the city for any and all credit card charges of Jayne Peters, with any remainder to go to the city."
Murphy's wife, Jean Murph, the editor of a Coppell newspaper that publishes weekly, said in an e-mail that her husband delivered the donation for her.
"The reason the donation was anonymous was for it to be representative of the many people in Coppell who cared about Jayne Peters and her family," the e-mail said.
Neither Jean nor David Murph could be reached for additional comment.
The security video released by the city showed Murph walking into the main entrance of Coppell's city hall with an envelope that he quickly handed off to the front desk.
City spokeswoman Sharon Logan said Coppell officials didn't know who made the donation until an information technology employee who had been going through the footage alerted them that the act was caught on tape. Logan said the city contacted David Murph to let him know it would release the video.
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"At least we know who to thank," Logan said.
Peters and her 19-year-old daughter were found dead in their home earlier this month. Investigators believe Peters shot her daughter before killing herself.
City officials have said they had been questioning the mayor about her use of the city credit card in the months before her death. A city investigation showed the mayor charged more than $6,300 in personal and unexplained expenses on the card.
The city's investigation found that only $1,348 items charged on her card were legitimate. Nearly $2,000 of the questioned charges were made two weeks before Peters apparently shot herself and her daughter in their home. They included payments for rental cars, gas, restaurants, clothes and groceries.
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