Pete's place: in Duplin County, Wendell Murphy's brother builds a high-end development that's no place like home.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.
• Position: Feature

It's lunchtime, and Pete Murphy is hungry. He fasted this morning, expecting to take a stress test--a follow-up to his heart attack two years ago--but the cardiologist canceled it. Now he sits away from the crowd in a corner booth at the Mad Boar and considers his order. "Two steaks," he tells the waiter, "and a glass of sweet tea." No vegetables, no bread. Just meat. He gets it his way. It's his restaurant.

A stocky man in jeans and T-shirt with jet-black longish hair and a Vandyke, he resembles Waylon Jennings, the late country-outlaw singer. Murphy, who recently returned from six weeks of motorcycling through Europe, seems out of place among the button-down crowd eating there. Then again, the restaurant itself seems out of place. It's just off Interstate 40 between Wallace and Willard in the wilds of rural Duplin County.

The Mad Boar shares a 28,000-square-foot brick building with River Dancer, an upscale eatery with a 4,000-bottle wine cellar and its own Irish pub, and the Celtic Court banquet hall. Across the parking lot is a real-estate office. Behind it is a Holiday Inn Express, and there's a "village mart" across the road. All were developed and are run by two companies owned by Murphy, 58, his brother, sister and their children. Pete is the president. But why would he want to build a commercial complex here?

About a quarter-mile down N.C. 41 lies the answer. All that's visible from the road is the entrance to River Landing, a 1,500-acre residential development. Behind 7-foot-high brick walls, tree-lined streets wind through two golf courses and a subdivision bordered by the Northeast Cape Fear River. Only about 300 people live here now, but Murphy and General Manager Kevin Hine say houses will be built, someday, on all 1,100 lots. About half have been sold. Total investment so far, here and back at the interstate: $35 million.

The reason all this is in Duplin County is simple: This is Pete Murphy's home, his family's home, and he wouldn't have it anywhere else. But the people buying property--about 80%, Hine says, are from outside the state--do it for reasons that would puzzle those who consider this the middle of nowhere: location, location and location.

To many Tar Heels, the name Murphy and Duplin County mean one thing: hog farms. Pete's big brother, Wendell, is credited with revolutionizing pork production in Eastern North Carolina - and blamed for the environmental problems the industry has caused. He parlayed $3,000 in savings and a $10,000 bank loan into a fortune Forbes magazine estimated at $850 million in 1998. The...