Docuseries Murf the Surf: Jewels, Jesus, and Mayhem in the USA will premiere on February 5th, 2023. A new true-crime four-part docuseries from Imagine Documentaries and R.J. Cutler’s This Machine (a part of Sony Pictures Television), the series pulls back the curtain on America’s most infamous jewel thief, Jack Roland Murphy.

The docuseries is directed by Emmy winner R.J. Cutler and executive produced by Cutler and his long time producing partner Trevor Smith (Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, BELUSHI) along with Brian Grazer (A Beautiful Mind, American Gangster), Ron Howard (Thirteen Lives, Apollo 13), Justin Wilkes (Louis Armstrong’s Black and Blues, Light & Magic, MARS), and Sara Bernstein (We Feed People, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel) for Imagine and Elise Pearlstein (American Factory, Food, Inc.) for This Machine.

In October 2019, the New York Times published an article celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Museum of Natural History. One of the most momentous events to take place on site was an epic jewel heist, the biggest in American history, mastered by a band of suave “surfer dudes” from Miami in 1964. The key to the operation was Jack Roland Murphy, otherwise known as Murf the Surf, whose name was propelled into pop culture after the heist—creating a notoriety that would stretch far beyond the caper. What followed Murf’s meteoric rise is a spiraling tale of unspeakable crime, murder, deception, and mayhem which, to this day, remains shrouded in mystery.

This four-part documentary series will explore the tumultuous life of the man behind the legendary nickname. Featuring exclusive access to Jack Roland Murphy himself prior to his death in 2020, the series will address the blurred line between fact and fiction, faith and delusion, sanity and madness—raising the timely question of who and how we believe. Murf the Surf will be internationally distributed by MGM.

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