Tucson's Lupita Murillo kicks off her heels after 50 years of news scoops

She interviewed world leaders and convicted murderers.

She covered prison riots in Mexico and reported live from inside a cross-border drug tunnel.

Once, she even caught a Hollywood legend with his fly down.

Now Lupita Murillo is hanging up her notebook and her trademark high-heeled shoes after a half century in broadcast journalism, nearly all of it with KVOA-TV Channel 4 in Tucson.

“Every big crime story that has come out of Southern Arizona, Lupita had a hand in covering it,” said Cathie Batbie, KVOA’s senior director of content and creative services, who has worked alongside Murillo for the past 25 years. “And man did that girl have sources. She always seemed to be able to confirm stories before anyone else could.”

The station sent her off into retirement on Friday with a special on-air tribute that was broadcast live in front of a studio audience of about 25 of Murillo’s closest friends and family members.

The award-winning reporter’s last official day on the job is Sunday, 46 years to the day she started at KVOA on June 30, 1978.

“I’ve been in the business 50 years, and I’m only 37,” Murillo said with a laugh.

Actually, if you must know, she was born in 1953, the same year that Channel 4 went on the air in Tucson, which makes both her and the station 70. “But don’t put that down,” she said.

“Some really, really good people have come out of Channel 4, and I’ve enjoyed working with every one of them,” Murillo said. “I’ve learned from so many people from the beginning up until now. I just think it’s just the people that have kept me here.”

Batbie doesn’t know what KVOA will look like without its veteran reporter.

“You can’t replace her. She’s one of a kind,” she said. “There will never be another Lupita Murillo.”

Texas transplant

Tucson is actually the farthest north that Murillo has ever lived. She was born and raised in Pharr, Texas, a small city in the Rio Grande Valley about 10 miles from Mexico.

She caught the reporting bug at an early age. She worked for the school newspaper both in junior high and high school.

“I was always fascinated with journalism. I wanted to know why and I wanted to know how things happened,” she said. “But when I was growing up, of course, there weren’t any female journalists, there weren’t any women of color on TV. I could never see myself on TV, because I just never saw anyone that looked like me.”

Her thinking changed when she began studying communications at Pan American University (now known as the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley) and took a tour of the local TV station, KRGV Channel 5. “I said, ‘This is what I want to do,’ so I did,” she said.

Murillo pestered the news director for an internship, then worked her way into a full-time reporting position.

Four years later, curious to see what life was like outside of Texas, she left KRGV for an opening at the NBC affiliate in Tucson.

Murillo said her first story for KVOA was about gerrymandering in South Tucson. “I didn’t even know what the word was, but I learned,” she said.

Back then, she thought she’d spend a couple of years in Arizona and then return to the Lone Star State for her dream job on the TV news in either Houston or San Antonio.

Somewhere along the line, though, she stopped dreaming about Texas.

“Tucson has been very good to me. I just decided to stay, and I’ve not regretted it at all,” she said. “This is what I tell all the young reporters: Don’t look at it as a stepping stone. This is your home; make it your home. Be a part of this community, because what affects your neighbor affects you.”

Crime scenes

Murillo is probably best known for her investigative stories and her crime coverage, the sort of work that requires a level of fearlessness she never seemed to lack. As Batbie put it: “You can hear those heels coming.”

By Murillo’s own count, she has witnessed seven executions and covered six others at the state prison in Florence. “I think I probably hold the record,” she said.

In 2022, she watched as Frank Atwood was put to death for the 1984 abduction and murder of 8-year-old Tucson girl Vicki Lynne Hoskinson. It was one of several death row cases Murillo covered across decades, from the initial crime to the final sentence.

“She started it with us, and she finished it with us,” said Hoskinson’s mother, Debbie Carlson, who now considers the reporter a friend. “She always stood by us.”

She is thrilled to see Murillo wrap up her distinguished career on her own terms. “She was a true crime fighter to say the least. She deserves this retirement,” Carlson said.

Rick Kastigar first met Murillo about 45 years ago, when he was working as a public information officer for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. He’s lost count of how many times she has stuck a microphone in his face since then.

“I’m 6-6, she’s 5-foot-nothing. She would bring a step stool to interview me,” said Kastigar, who retired last year as the department’s chief deputy and second in command.

He called Murillo one of the most dogged and trustworthy journalists he has ever known, with so many sources in the local law enforcement community that no agency could ever plug all the leaks.

“Lupita would scoop everyone in this valley time and time again, and we were just scratching our heads. ‘Where did she get that?’” Kastigar said.

Once at the staging area for a fatal airplane accident on the east side, Murillo asked the sheriff’s department to give her a ride to the remote crash site. She was told there wasn’t room for her in the cab of the 4-by-4 pickup truck, but she hopped in anyway and rode to the scene on Kastigar’s lap.

“She wouldn’t be denied,” he said.

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Another time, Kastigar recalled his phone ringing at 4 a.m., just a few hours after he got home from a long night at a crime scene.

“Hi, honey, it’s Lupita,” Murillo said on the other end of the line.

An hour and a half later, he found himself standing on his own front lawn, freshly showered and shaved for the live shot she had convinced him to do.

“Sometimes she was a pain in the ass,” Kastigar said with a laugh, “and you can quote me.”

On assignment

Murillo’s career wasn’t all murder and mayhem.

In 2000, she was dispatched to Mexico with one day’s notice, after Vincente Fox became the first opposition party candidate to win that country’s presidency in almost 90 years.

Murillo said she and her team arrived in the capital with no clear idea of where to go or what to do. Within 24 hours, they had secured all the necessary media credentials, scored a one-on-one interview with the new president and landed a rare invitation to Los Pinos, then Mexico’s version of the White House.

Another memorable assignment sent her to San Diego, where she got to go onboard the USS Tucson, a nuclear-powered, fast-attack submarine.

She was there to report on the ship’s galley being named “El Charro Down Under” in honor of the historic local restaurant. Cooks from the Tucson even spent time in El Charro’s kitchen learning how to make proper Mexican dishes while out at sea.

“That was a fun story,” she said. “My last line was something like, ‘They wanted everything to be authentic, but where are they going to hang the dried beef on a submarine?’”

Then there was the time Robert Redford was in Tucson for a speaking engagement, and Murillo was supposed to do a live interview with him. The Oscar-winner was running late, so she went into the men’s room to hurry him out. And that’s how Redford ended up giving a speech to a room full of people with his zipper down.

Murillo said she bumped into him about a decade later in the executive terminal at the Tucson airport. She handed him her card, apologized for the whole bathroom incident and offered to buy him a beer next time he came to town. “I said, ‘Don’t forget me,’ and he said, ‘Oh, I’ve never forgotten you.’”

Heels and cake

Murillo’s reporting chops were on full display during KVOA’s morning news meeting on June 19.

As the small team of reporters and producers gathered in a conference room to run down the list of stories for the day, she tapped away on two different phones, collecting updates, new details and other newsworthy tips to fill out the coverage.

Then one of her coworkers complimented her on her shoes, so she flung her leg up onto the conference table to give everyone a closer look.

“I just like high heels,” she said.

Murillo is also known around town for the rum cakes she has baked for years to spoil her friends and sweeten her sources.

She has been known to hand out 30 or more of the decadent, boozy desserts at Christmastime or bake one up special to thank someone for a juicy tip or exclusive interview.

The only thing Murillo would say about the recipe is that it includes one full cup of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum. She still can’t eat her own cakes to this day, she confessed, because of a bad experience in college with an unknown number of Rum and Cokes.

“It’s an honor and a privilege to receive one of Lupita’s rum cakes,” said Debbie Carlson, who had one personally delivered to her house by Murillo the week before the Atwood execution. “You cannot deny that rum cake. You will not forget that rum cake.”

Murillo’s longevity at KVOA is even more remarkable when you consider the amount of turmoil in the local news business in recent decades. Waves of layoffs, including one at Channel 4 earlier this year, have hollowed out newsrooms nationwide and forced those who are left to master new skills and take on more responsibilities.

Batbie said Lupita rolled with the changes because she loved being a reporter and didn’t want to quit.

She described her close friend and long-time coworker as “old school,” right down to her disaster area of a desk. Batbie said she was forever pestering Lupita to clean it up, especially when network executives or other VIPs were scheduled to visit the station.

During one such nagging session, Murillo insisted that everything piled around her was critical to doing her job, so Batbie plucked a Polaroid from amid the clutter and held it out to her.

“This is a picture of a chicken,” Batbie told her.

But Murillo didn’t blink. “That chicken’s name is Lupita,” she explained. “One of my viewers named their chicken after me.”

Into the sunset

Lupita Murillo is leaving journalism with a lot to be grateful for and a lot to be proud of.

She said she hopes people will remember her as someone worth trusting — a reporter who always protected her sources and strived to uncover the truth.

So if you ever told Murillo something off the record or slipped her a sensitive internal document that led to a bombshell report, no need to worry. She insists her secrets and her sources are retiring with her. No one at KVOA or anywhere else stands to inherit her little black book.

“All I ever wanted to do in my career was be fair. You may not have liked what I had to say, but I just wanted to be fair to both sides,” she said. “That’s what I want to be known for.”

As for her retirement plans, Murillo said she intends to travel and enjoy life with her husband of 29 years, Don Gutzler, who just retired himself after a career as a tax accountant. (His last day was April 15, naturally.)

She will also have more time to spend with her parents, who relocated to the Old Pueblo more than 30 years ago, once it became clear that their only child wouldn’t be moving back to South Texas anytime soon.