Mr Murray finished up with police on Friday to take up a new role as regulatory and compliance manager at the Waimate District Council.
He said the time was right to go and do something different.
Timaru born and bred, Mr Murray attended Timaru West School and Waimataitai School — where he was named dux — and then Timaru Boys’ High School.
He gained a bachelor’s degree of commerce at the University of Otago, but with jobs hard to come by, the need for a regular pay cheque made him decide to join the police.
The first posting for the fresh-faced, naive and shy child from Timaru was to Wellington Central.
"Wellington was where I grew up. I got chucked out of Wellington Central police station on night shift by myself, so I had to grow up pretty quick.
"Looking back, I think Wellington was an incredibly exciting place to start. It was busy, it was fun, risky, dangerous occasionally.
"I look back on those days fondly. I walked the beat a lot, I knew every nook and cranny, alleyway, every shadow. It was just a great place to learn."
Mr Murray spent five or six years in Wellington before moving to Porirua and then, having started a family, he and his wife moved back to his home town in 1999.
The difference was marked.
"The community expects more of you. When I got down here, Sergeant Linn Koevoet made me investigate someone who had put detergent in the piazza fountain. We wouldn’t have done anything like that in Wellington.
"In the bigger city, we didn’t really delve into too much stuff too deeply, because it was just too busy. It’s truer community policing here, and the Timaru community has received very good service from police over the years. Having worked elsewhere, I know that to be true."
Arriving in Timaru as a constable, Mr Murray worked his way up, and had two stints with the CIB, following in the footsteps of his first sergeant and mentor Andrea Jopling.
"She was quite an inspiration and my career has followed the same kind of trajectory, I guess."
He rated his Timaru CIB boss Marion Neill similarly highly, describing her as a good boss who knows her stuff.
He said the CIB years were pretty special, dealing both with local cases and investigations elsewhere; the 2002 Baby Kahu kidnapping case, the murder of Lower Hutt woman Kate Alkema, and Operation Reef, the 2003 investigation into the murder of Coral Burrows in Featherston.
Locally, a few come to mind; James McNee being prosecuted under the Food Act for selling One4b, Howard Jamieson’s faking of a plane crash off the South Canterbury coast, only to be found out when a shipping container holding his intact plane was burgled, and the 2004 murder of Donald Linwood at a dinner party in Methven.
In 2009, he and brother Tristan were both promoted to sergeant on the same day, and worked in Timaru together for some time.
His CV also includes a six-month policing stint in the Solomon Islands in 2005 as part of a contingent deployed there, and about five years in charge of the police negotiating team.
Police work often involves dealing with trauma, and while that has not changed, how police deal with it has.
"It’s more acceptable to ask for help now. We probably used to get that help from a beer bottle, but the culture has definitely changed for the better.
"You become pretty resilient. You are exposed to a lot of challenging things, and you carry on with that weight, particularly the deaths of people, or abuse of children.
"You carry that weight, but you can’t let it weigh you down."
He rated his time with the CIB as the best career-wise, but has enjoyed the challenges of his more recent roles.
He said he had been lucky to work with great people and see their careers develop, especially since being promoted to senior sergeant in 2015, and looking after the frontline, supporting everyone in uniform.
"It’s very satisfying seeing people flourish and grow in the job. It’s about their successes, not mine, now."
Living in Waimate, the new job means an end to the daily commute to Timaru, and will enable him to fully immerse himself in the community in and outside of work.
"There’s so much for me to learn, and that’s one of the attractions, to start fresh with great people down there.
"A lot of them I know, but there is a lot to learn."
As to what he will miss the most?
"Just the people I work with. They are such good people, they work so hard, there is a lot of pressure on them, but they are just exceptional human beings."
