October 6, 2025 • 56 mins
When Maggie and Paul Murdaugh are killed on their family’s estate in 2021, the investigation unravels a history of privilege, corruption, and suspicious deaths tied to one of South Carolina’s most influential families. But beneath the headlines and courtroom drama are stories of people who never got justice, mysteries still unsolved, and a justice system that let one family operate above the law for nearly a century. As appeals move forward and the possibility of a new trial looms, one question remains – why would a man who had everything risk it all by brutally murdering his own family? Additional info
Crime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat.
Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
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- Stephen Smith
- In 2023, South Carolina law enforcement officially declared Stephen Smith’s death a homicide, rather than a traffic accident, but still, it’s never been fully explained and no one has ever been arrested in connection with it. If you know anything about his roadside death in July of 2015, please reach out to South Carolina Law Enforcement.
- Mallory Beach
- Mallory’s family was eventually able to settle a lawsuit with one of the places that served Paul that night, with Maggie’s estate and with Buster. No one has ever been put behind bars.
- Gloria Satterfield
- Gloria's body has purportedly yet to be exhumed. The criminal investigation into her death is ongoing.
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Crime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat.
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Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
High crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
And I'm brit Guys.
Speaker 3 (00:04):
The story I have for you today is the one
that you've probably heard something about. A powerful Low Country dynasty,
a double murder, a trial that gripped the country. We're
covering it not just because of the killer's shocking fall
from grace or the trail of death's corruption and cover.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Ups that seem to follow him wherever.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
He goes, but because buried beneath the courtroom drama are
stories of people who never got justice, mysteries still unsolved,
and a system that let one family operate above the
law for nearly a century. And the fallout isn't over.
As of this recording, appeals are moving forward, the South
Carolina Supreme Court is getting involved, and with the possibility
(00:46):
of a new trial on the horizon, one question is
more important now than ever. Why Why would a man
who seemed to have everything choose to destroy it all
by murdering his own wife and son. This is the
story of the Murdoch family.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
And now, at your emergency, Keli forty one forty moselle mos,
I need to collect as my wife and stop. Okay,
you said forty one forty seven Roan, Sir, you said,
(01:55):
forty one forty seven Mozell Rhodogan, Yes, sir, forty one
forty Yeah, Thursday on the line with me. Okay, I'll
get up through it.
Speaker 5 (02:06):
Now.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
It's bad, Okay. How do they shoot that? They shoot theirselves? Oh? No,
hell no, okay?
Speaker 6 (02:18):
And are they breathing?
Speaker 4 (02:20):
No, ma'am, I can tell. I can tell shot in
the head, and so I'm really bad. Okay. Where where
he shot at, ma'am? I don't know, but you're just
flood everywhere, brains brain. But now that's got just down
(02:44):
her a little bit. It's just got a whole head sweepers.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Those are just excerpts from the nearly ten minute call
Alec Murdoch made to nine one one on June seven,
twenty twenty one, at ten oh seven pm. Between sobs,
he dispatch that he had just discovered the bodies of
his wife and son near some dog kennels on his
estate in rural call Iton County, South Carolina. And rule
(03:10):
is for real because even speeding with lights and sirens on,
it takes South Carolina law enforcement about twenty minutes to
get out to Mozelle Road. Now, when they finally turn
up the long driveway to get to the dog kennels,
the first thing they see is Alec standing by his
truck with his hazard lights flashing, and leaning against his
(03:31):
truck is his twelve gage shotgun, which Alex says that
he got from his house in case whoever hurt his
wife and son decided to come back. Now. Officers immediately
take the gun. They secure it in their patrol car
and make their way to the kennels to see for
themselves what Alec described on the phone. His twenty two
year old son, Paul, is lying face down in the
(03:51):
open doorway to a feed room that's at the end
of this row of dog kennels. He has traumatic chest
and head wounds, and police as Alec told the dispatcher
that the majority of Paul's brain is actually lying next
to him on the ground. Everything they're seeing is consistent
with a gunshot wound. Now, first responders also find Paul's
(04:12):
iPhone laying on top of his body, like just resting
on top of his shorts, kind of like it was
placed there and there's no blood on it or anything.
But Alec did tell the nine to one one dispatcher
that he had touched both of the bodies to try
and see if they were breathing, So the positions that
they're found in might not have been the positions that
the killer left them or that they naturally like fell in.
I mean, Alec actually said to the operator that he
(04:34):
tried to turn his fifty two year old wife, Margaret,
who goes by Maggie. He tried to turn her over
a little bit too, but she had a hole in
her head. And first responders see what looks like five
gunshot wounds to her back, her chest, wrist, and leg.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And is Maggie right there next to Paul.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
No, she's actually about thirty feet away, like across this
gravel driveway, but there is this like clear line of
sight between the two victims. There are also twelve gage
shell casings and three hundred blackout casings next to the
bodies and like strewn along the gravel driveway between them.
So it's definitely looking like both victims were shot. But
(05:10):
what's weird is that it seems like those two casings
would have been fired from two different guns, a shotgun
and a semi automatic rifle, and neither of those weapons
were left behind.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
And what about the gun that Aleck had with him
when they'd showed up, Like that was a shotgun.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
And it was a twelve gage shotgun too, but it
actually wasn't the one used to kill Maggie or Paul.
Investigators eventually are going to take it into evidence, but
right now they're more focused on hearing from Alec. Their
first interview with him actually happens in one of the
officer's cars, and again, between like sobs and dry heaving,
Alec walks them through the events of that night. And
(05:47):
here is some of that thirty four minute interview, So.
Speaker 7 (05:55):
Just start the top. Take your time.
Speaker 6 (05:58):
Like when I came back here, I mean I pulled
up and I could see him, and you know, I
knew something was bad. I ran out. I knew it
was really bad.
Speaker 8 (06:09):
My boy over there, I could see it was, and
I ran over to Maggie. Actually, I think I tried
to turn Paul over first, you know, I tried to
turn him over, and I don't know I figured it out.
Speaker 6 (06:32):
His cell phone popped out of his pocket. I started
to try to do something with it, thinking maybe, but
then I put it back down really quickly. Then I
went to my wife, and I mean I could see.
Speaker 7 (06:49):
Did you touch Maggie at all?
Speaker 8 (06:50):
I did.
Speaker 6 (06:51):
I touched him both. I tried to take I mean,
I tried to do it as limited as possible, but
I tried to take their poults.
Speaker 8 (07:00):
On both of them.
Speaker 6 (07:04):
And you know, I called nine one one pretty much
right away, and she was very good.
Speaker 7 (07:15):
So I know you said the phone and fell out
the pocket. But did you see anything else that didn't
belong or shouldn't belong or that wasn't part of Paul?
Speaker 6 (07:27):
No, sir, not no, not.
Speaker 8 (07:32):
No, sir.
Speaker 7 (07:33):
How about Maggie? No, sir, you didn't see anything around them?
What made you come out here tonight?
Speaker 6 (07:43):
I went to my mom's the late stage Alzheimer station.
My dad's in the hospital. My mom gets anxious when
she does. I went to check on them and Maggie.
Maggie's a dog lover and she fools with the dogs,
and I knew she'd gone to the kennel. I was
at the house. I left the house and went to
(08:06):
my mom's really just a little while. Tried to call
her when I left, texted her no response. When I
got back to the house, the house was obviously nobody
(08:27):
was in there. Some figured they're still up here fooling around.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
Paul was.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
Gonna be getting set up to plant or some flower
seeds got sprayed and died, and he was refiguring to
do to plant to some flower seeds. So I came
back up here, and I drove up and saw and called.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
The window of time from when Alec left to see
his mom to when he came back is small, nine
pm to ten pm ish. The window for when Maggie
and Paul were murdered is even smaller. The coroner estimates
that that was between nine and nine thirty, but Alex says.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That he didn't hear or see anything.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Odd when he got home and back to He says
he only went to the dog kennels because he was
looking for Maggie, like he couldn't find her inside.
Speaker 7 (09:18):
Had Maggie and Paul been arguing over anything?
Speaker 8 (09:20):
No?
Speaker 7 (09:22):
What was their relationship like wonderful, wonderful? How about yours
and Maggie's wonderful?
Speaker 6 (09:28):
I mean, I'm sure we had little things here and there,
but we had a wonderful marriage, wonderful relationship.
Speaker 7 (09:35):
In yours and Paul's relationship as good as it could be.
Have y'all been having any problems out here, trespassers.
Speaker 6 (09:45):
None of breaking in none that I know of. The
only thing that what comes to my mind is my
son Paul, was in a boat wreck a couple of
years ago, and there's been a you know, he was
charged with being arrested for being a driver. There's been
a lot of negative publicity about that, and there's been
(10:07):
a lot of people online just really vile stuff. But
when Paul's out and about, I mean people routinely, I
don't think I know the full story, so I don't
think they give it to me. But I mean he's
been punched and hit and just attacked a lot, so,
(10:29):
you know, but I mean, nothing like this.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Well, Alec is downplaying the situation here. The boat wreck
he's talking about happened in twenty nineteen and resulted in
the death of a nineteen year old girl named Mallory Beach,
and a couple months afterwards, Paul was charged with three
felony counts of boating under the influence, which included causing
Mallory's death and seriously injuring two other passengers.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
But the boat crash is just like the tip.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Of the iceberg when it comes to the Murdoch family,
Mallory's death, Paul and Maggie's deaths, they're not the only
suspicious deaths that Alec and his family have been tangled
up in.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
Yeah, I remember when all of this was like dominating
the news. The Murdoc name was just being brought up
with like one tragedy after another after another.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
It seemed like right.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
And it's because like the Murdocks, they're not just like
any old southern family. They were a huge name in
South Carolina. I mean, for over a century, the Murdoch
name was basically synonymous with power and money. Three generations
of Murdoch men served as the region's top prosecutors, overseeing
every criminal case across five counties. According to an article
(11:36):
published in the state, they sent thousands of people to
prison and more than a dozen to death row. People
seem to believe that they are untouchable, but beneath that
polished surface there are cracks, like big cracks, and with
the deaths of Paul and Maggie, for the first time
in nearly a century, they are about to split wide open.
(12:00):
The media latches on to Paul and Maggie's deaths immediately,
and the rumors and speculation are rampant in the month
that follows the incident. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division
doesn't name any suspects or people of interest, but they
also don't publicly clear anyone, and given the Murdoch family history,
people are quick to jump to their own conclusions. I mean,
(12:22):
the first incident that starts getting a lot of airtime
is that boat crash, the death of Mallory Beach on
February twenty third, twenty nineteen. She was ejected from Alec
Murdoch's boat after it crashed into a bridge at two
twenty one in the morning. Now, there weren't any adults
on the boat, it was just a group of teenagers
with Alec's son Paul allegedly at the wheel. And while
(12:42):
all the other kids made it back to shore after
the crash, Mallory didn't. Her body was found eight days
later in a marsh about five miles away from where
the crash originally happened. Now, according to the coroner, Mallory
drowned after suffering a blow to the head from impact.
When officers got to the scene that night and started
talking to all of the kids, it was clear that
(13:03):
they had been drinking a police report describes them as
grossly intoxicated, and there was a cooler full of beers
and pelters on the boat and a bunch of empty cans.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
But no one was breathalyzed at the.
Speaker 5 (13:15):
Scene, which I always get hung up on that part,
like why not at least breathalyize Paul, like he was
the one driving.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
At least on paper, officers couldn't confirm who was driving,
even though the passengers on the boat were all pointing
fingers at Paul. And according to one of the passengers
that night, while everyone was focused on Mallory, Paul's main
concern seemed to be getting in touch with his grandfather,
Randolph Murdoch, who was the former South Carolina Circuit Solicitor.
(13:43):
In an audio recording taken that night by first responders,
you can hear one of the kids, Mallory's boyfriend in particular,
shouting at Paul during his conversation with an.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Officer, well you're just smiling.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Like Later in that same conversation, Mallory's boyfriend is heard
warning the police.
Speaker 6 (14:09):
You all know Elec Murdoch, that's his son. Good look.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I feel like there's so much behind that good luck.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Yeah, so Mandy Matney the investigative journalists who covered this
boat crash and went on to deep dive into the
Murdoch family and break a lot of the news surrounding
Maggie and Paul's death. She told our reporters that immediately
following the crash, she started getting tips from people saying
that there was going to be a cover up. She
kept hearing that the alleged boat driver belonged to a
(14:44):
powerful family of lawyers that quote got away with everything
and did not believe that anybody could touch them.
Speaker 5 (14:51):
Which seems like it was the case if all the
kids from the crash were telling the officers that Paul
was driving the boat, and the officers were, like you
said on paper, that no one really knew who was driving.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
The boat, right, And like, I get it to some extent,
this was a chaotic scene. The kids aren't necessarily of
sound mind, but it is hard to shake the idea
that maybe Paul might have been getting some favorable treatment
because of his last name. I mean, Mandy actually said
that when she began reporting on this boat crash story,
people were scared to talk to her or even say
the name Murdoch out of fear of the family's power,
(15:25):
and the family's power was in full force that night
when the kids were taken to the hospital, Paul's dad
and grandfather were there waiting. They were like walking through
the er trying to talk to all of the kids
while they were talking with officers, trying to like prevent
them from taking those sobriety tests and eventually stopping all
police interviews.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Is that even allowed?
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Well, I mean, like they're all lawyers, so if they
were their lawyers. But according to AP News, one nurse
did actually tell Alec Murdoch to stay in Paul's room
or like leave the hospital, and she asked security to
keep an eye on him. Now.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Eventually, over an.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Hour after the crash, Paul's blood was taken at the hospital,
and even then his BAC was more than three times
the legal limit, but at least at that time, no
charges were filed. Over the next month, authorities continued their
investigation into Mallory's death. Her mom filed a civil lawsuit
(16:23):
over it, accusing three Murdoch men of wrongdoing, and ultimately
the county Sheriff's office ended up recusing itself from the
investigation due to their quote long standing relationship with Randolph Murdoch.
So that's when the case got handed over to the
Department of Natural Resources, and within a matter of weeks
of them having it, they end up charging Paul with
(16:44):
voting under the influence, resulting in Mallory's death. Paul pleaded
not guilty at his arraignment, which two judges recused.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Themselves from, by the way, because of the Murdoch family.
But here's the thing.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
He is murdered before the trial can take place, and
two months after his murder, all charges get dismissed in
what officials describe as a formality.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
So all of that is a pretty far cry from
how Alec was talking about this incident to the cops
the night of Paul's murder.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Why and because Alec isn't just some guy talking to
police like he is used to dealing with law enforcement,
used to dealing with.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Judges, the whole system.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
He knows the right things to say, he knows the
right way to position himself to make sure things get
handled quietly. And the boat crash wasn't even the first
time the Murdochs had inserted themselves legally into the case
of a dead teenager in the area. I'm gonna take
one more detour to give everyone like background before we
come back to Maggie and Paul, because like this is
(17:45):
important to know. So, six years before the murders of
Maggie and Paul, a nineteen year old named Stephen Smith
was killed and from the jump his death was suspicious
as hell.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, full disclosure. This is the case that I have
the most questions about.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
I think it's the one that, like most people have
the most questions about because none of the facts seem
to be matter of fact. On July eighth, twenty fifteen,
around four o'clock in the morning, Stephen's body is found
in the middle of a road like ten to fifteen
miles away from the Murdock home. Now, originally investigators thought
(18:23):
that he had been shot. I mean, like I've seen
some of the photos from the road that day and
it is like gruesome. But at autopsy, it was determined
that he died from blunt force's trauma to the head
resulting from a possible hit and run. I mean, his
shoulder had been dislocated. But the thing to me that
doesn't line up with a car crash is he had
apparent defensive wounds on his hand.
Speaker 5 (18:43):
Right, and like, you aren't fighting a car. How do
you get a defensive wound from a hit and run?
Speaker 1 (18:48):
You don't.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
And that's one of the reasons that the coroner and
the pathologists and the detectives and Stephen's family all seemed
to have different ideas about how Stephen actually died. Sled
South Jerelia Law Enforcement Division. They believe that Stephen was
on his way home when he likely ran out of
gas on the highway and decided to like walk the
rest of the way, like his car is found with
(19:11):
the gas cap unscrewed, about two to three miles away
from where he would have been killed. And to explain
the severity of Steven's head injury, The pathologists who performed
the autopsy suggested Stephen had been hit by like the
mirror of a passing truck, but an investigator from Highway
Patrol wrote in reports that there was no evidence of
Stephen being struck by a vehicle like things you would
(19:33):
expect to see, right, like no glass, no debris from
a car found anywhere on the road or on Stephen's body.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
So the investigator.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Asked the pathologist if it was possible that could Steven
have actually.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Been struck with a baseball bat?
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Now? She said no, But then he asked, okay, well,
what if someone was like driving by and swung the
bat from a moving car, Because I think she's saying, like,
just a hit from a baseball bat wouldn't be this severe, right,
But what if the have the bat and it's like
in a moving car. And the pathologist said, well, I
guess that's possible.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Now.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
The County Corner didn't buy the hit and run theory either.
His theory was that Stephen was actually shot like they
initially thought the first time, and Stephen's mom, Sandy, was
adamant that her son's life did not end from a
vehicle collision. Sandy has said that her son was skittish,
like he would not have been walking in the middle
(20:27):
of the road, and even if for some reason he was,
he would have gotten off the road once he saw
the headlights coming. And she doesn't think he ran out
of gas either. She thinks it was a setup and
that he was beaten to death, I mean so severely
by the way that part of Stephen's face had to
be rebuilt with putty for his funeral.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
So why does she think it was premeditated?
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Well, Sandy tells Sled that Stephen was acting strange in
the weeks leading up to his death. He was being
more secretive, not studying as much, and playing hooky from school.
So her theory is that his classmates, who were coming
home from a baseball game that night, were responsible.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Hence the baseball bat theory right.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
And in a letter Sandy wrote to the FBI, she
mentions Alec Murdoch's sons specifically, now Alex's oldest son, Buster
went to high school with Steven. Buster has actually mentioned
a couple of times throughout the highway patrol report, along
with others that police were looking into. And I mean,
we're talking about a small town in South Carolina that
is far from the only connection between the Smiths and
(21:33):
the Murdochs. Alec Murdock coached the boys little league baseball team,
and his brother Randy reportedly repped Stephen's dad in a
worker's comp claim.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
And wasn't there a rumor that Stephen and Buster were
possibly in a relationship at some point? Like?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Is that that just internet knowing?
Speaker 1 (21:50):
No, that rumor is actually in the police report.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
It is not verified or anything, just an early rumor
that investigators were tipped off to Stephen was out as
gay and was in a relationship when he died. But
people online have brought up the Stephen Buster secret romance
theory to suggest that silencing Stephen might have been a motive,
and Buster has never even explicitly acknowledged the rumor. He
(22:14):
said in a statement that he was not involved in
Stephen's death and that all of the vicious rumors swirling
about him were false.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
But what makes me like double take is that a
sexual assault.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Kit was ordered in Steven's death by a corner without
consulting investigators, Which.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Is that normal for a supposed to a hit and
run that you're investigating as a hit and run.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
One of the highway patrol officers who responded the night
said that he had never seen anything like that done
before in any traffic accidents. But like he was aware
of and like the autopsy, didn't know anything abnormal that
would like prompt a sexual assault kit. And what's so
interesting is like the coroner who performed it is no
longer in office, and because the records have been sealed,
(22:58):
I don't know the results of the kit. If there
were any. I mean, it's not even clear they collected
a kit. Was the kit actually tested Now, Because everyone
seems to disagree on what really caused Stephen's death, we
reached out to an Ohio based forensic pathologist, doctor Kent Harshburger,
to get our own professional opinion bull clarity. Like he
did not work Stephen's case, but he agreed to like
(23:18):
look at the autopsy photos and tell us his thoughts.
And according to doctor Harshburger, the injuries don't look like
a typical hit and run. The head trauma is forceful
enough that Stephen had to have been struck by either
a moving vehicle or something in motion, but not in
a way that matched the usual patterns, Like it seems
(23:38):
too much to just be a beating, and a bat
likely would have left a different he said, narrow were wound.
What stood out most to him though, was the blood
all poling in one area, like no sign of a
second impact, which you would normally expect in a hit
and run when the body like hits the ground, there's.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Two impacts, the hit and then the ground the ground.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Doctor Harsberger said that he would have ruled it blunt
force's trauma to the head and left the manner undetermined,
not ruled it in accident with the car.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
But rulings aside.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
What really gives me pause is that Sandy claims that
the day of her son's death, the first call she
received was from authorities notifying her. Do you want to
guess who The.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Second call is from Alec Murdoch.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Not Alec, but his brother, solicitor Randy Murdoch. Sandy says
that he told her he was interested in working pro
bono as a liaison between her family and the authorities.
Stephen's dad accepted, though neither he nor Sandy had any
idea how Randy found out about the incident so quickly,
or why he would have been interested in it specifically.
(24:45):
And shortly thereafter, Randy just stopped returning their calls. So
by June seventh, twenty twenty one, when Alec is sitting
in the patrol car talking to officers, he's telling them
about the Mallory.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Beach in Sia. It's kind of way underplayed, but.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
There is all this stuff just like bubbling under the surface.
So once Maggie and Paul are killed, every suspicion anyone's
ever had any rumor that they've heard about this family.
They're all getting spoken about louder and more often than
ever before. I mean, this is all anyone is talking
(25:24):
about in this area at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Now.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
I don't know what police think of alex story early on,
but they don't arrest him that night. Per some redacted
police reports I have, it doesn't even seem like he's
even the first suspect. A kid named Rogan Gibson is,
and Rogan is like a third son to the Murdochs,
And the night of the murders, Paul had actually been
dogs sitting for him. That was likely why he was
(25:49):
out in the kennels that night to begin with. And
they know that Rogan was the last person Paul talked to,
but when they interview him the next day, they end
up quickly ruling him out. Turns out Paul had called
Rogan at eight forty PM to tell him that something
was wrong with his dog's tail. The pair like tried
to FaceTime, but Paul had a bad connection. They end
up disconnecting, and that after that, Rogan tried texting and
(26:12):
calling Paul, tried texting Maggie to get Paul to call
him back, even tried buster but no one was answering.
So this FaceTime call and the logs proved that Rogan
was telling the truth, but all the stuff they get
from the phone also proved that someone else was lying Alec.
There is a fifty second cell phone video that Paul
(26:34):
took via Snapchat at eight forty four PM on the
night of his murder, and the video taken at the
dog kennel's shows Paul like petting Rogan's dog. But it
isn't the visuals that investigators are interested in. It's the
audio because in the background you can hear Paul's voice
talking to Rogan's dog. You hear Maggie's voice shouting that
an off camera dog named Bubba has a bird in
(26:56):
his mouth. But then there's a third voice Ali you
can hear him trying to get Bubba's attention to drop
the bird.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
So this video basically says that Aleck was at the
crime scene right before the.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Murderers, and he lied to police about it.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Originally, he said that the last time he spoke to
Maggie was around like eight or eight thirty PM that night,
after which he laid down for a quick nap. Then
just after nine o'clock he woke up left to go
visit his mom, so in his version of events, he
never stopped by the dog kennels that night, or saw
Maggie or saw Paul before leaving him. Leaving just after
nine though, which was always his story, doesn't seem to
(27:36):
be a lie. The telemetry data from his car shows
that he left the Mozelle property at nine oh seven PM.
Speaker 5 (27:43):
So he would have been there during the nine to
nine thirty window that Maggie and Paul were presumably murdered
by at least a small portion of him.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah, and there's the fact that Alec practically raced to
his mom's house that night, driving faster than he had
on any other trip that day, and that his car
idled for a period of time halfway up the driveway
at his mom's house. Perhaps they suspect when he was
trying to conceal or stash the murder.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Weapon, So he did go to his mom's that night, then.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Yeah, they think he went to establish an alibi, but
he for sure went, and that is proven by his
car's GPS data, which makes the evidence that they end
up finding in his mother's house all the more suspicious
because there is this blue rain jacket in a closet
of hers, and when tested, this jacket is found to
have a large amount of gunshot residue on the inside
(28:37):
of it. Now, it's probably sounding like all of this
is happening fast, but keep in mind the murdoch of
it all.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I feel like hoops.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Had to be jumped through because this search of mom's house,
which seems like something you would search early on knowing
that's exactly where he went at the time of the murder.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, that's his supposed alibi.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
That doesn't happen until four months after the murders, and
I think it was only pro did by information from
the woman who took care.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Of Alex's mom's house.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
She said that she saw Alec carrying what looked like
some sort of blue tarp under his arm to go
into the house, and given the placement of the gunshot residue,
SLED agents put forward that aside from shooting a gun
while wearing the jacket inside out, the residue could have
gotten there if the jacket was like wrapped around the
weapon that had recently been fired.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Now, I thought that they never found the murder weapon, though.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
They didn't, so I mean this is just circumstantial evidence,
but it definitely doesn't do Alec any favors. And by
month four when they're finding this, there is already so
much more that they've learned to make Alec look suspicious.
I mean, for starters, everyone by now is talking about
(29:49):
Mallory's case and Steven's case, and Stevens had so much
that was like glaringly suspicious around it that it actually
got reopened, not officially tied the Murdochs though, just reopened.
But another case undeniably is being connected to the Murdos.
(30:09):
It's the case of Gloria Sadderfield. Her death and specifically
the aftermath of it starts to raise a lot of eyebrows.
Gloria had worked as a nanny and a housekeeper for
the Murdox for over twenty years. She helped raise their kids,
practically spent more time with them than her own family.
(30:31):
I mean, Gloria's sister said in an interview with People
magazine that she would have given Alec anything she had.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
So.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Gloria was fifty seven years old when she allegedly suffered
a trip and fall accident at the Murdoch home. According
to the family, she tripped over their dogs and fell
down the front steps of their house. Gloria got admitted
to the hospital with severe head trauma, and just over
three weeks later she died from the injury. What's weird, though,
(30:59):
is that the corner was notified about Gloria's death, nor
was an autopsy performed, and on Gloria's death certificate, her
manner of death is listed as natural, which is obviously
not consistent even with a trip and fall accident.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
Right Like, Gloria didn't just happen to die of natural
causes at the exact moment she tripped down the Murdock residence.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Exactly, But with no autopsy or police involvement, there is
just no way to know what happened or was anything
about her death intentional. I mean, I can't find anything
that might have motivated them to want her dead. But
the weirdness doesn't even like stop there. At Gloria's funeral,
Alec apparently approached her sons and told them that they
(31:40):
should file a wrongful death suit against him, or technically
claim it against his home's insurance policy, which would be
able to pay them compensation. And so her sons do,
but they like never hear anything the whole thing just
sort of like fizzles away, which is like catching a
theme here. Yeah, so by fall sled seems to be
(32:03):
focusing specifically on Alec, and they expand their investigation into
his finances, which uncovers some irregularities. It comes out that
the very day that Paul and Maggie were shot to death,
June seventh, the CFO of Alex's law firm confronted Alec
about funds that seemed to be missing from the firm's settlements. Now,
(32:25):
Alex tried to talk his way out of it, and
then of course everyone became distracted by the slaying of
his wife and son, but not forever. On September three,
the firm confronts Alec again after another employee discovers that
instead of making sure settlement money went to the firm's clients,
Alec was actually redirecting it into a personal account or
(32:45):
accounts that he had set up to look like they
belonged to the law firm and.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Using the money himself.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
And he had been doing this for years, by the way,
And this is where Gloria Saderfield comes back in. So
remember he liked tell the Suns you should file a
claim against my insurance. They're like, okay, we're gonna do it.
They did it, never see a dime. While it turns
out his home insurance did pay out four point three
million dollars, but the Sadderfields never received a dime. Aleck
(33:16):
was the one who pocketed all of it. He and
some associates diverted the money and Gloria's kids were completely
in the dark. And so now, after learning about the payout,
they file a lawsuit against Alec and his associates and
also Sled decides to open a criminal investigation into Gloria's death.
(33:37):
They even get permission from her family to exume her
body so they can finally do an autosy. So, I mean,
the information is just avalanching at this point, but before
anyone can dive fully into this twisted string or like web,
or whatever you want to call it of deaths and
fraud and forgery, on September fourth, nine one one gets
(33:58):
a call that turns every thing on his head.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Hampton carrying Now one oney, I stopped.
Speaker 6 (34:05):
I got a flat tire, and I stopped, and somebody
stopped to help me.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
And when I turned my back, they tried to shoot me.
They actually shoot you.
Speaker 6 (34:16):
They tried to shoot you.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
They shot me.
Speaker 6 (34:18):
But okay, wait you need ms uh.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
Huh, well, I mean yes, I can't drive, okay, and
then I'm bleeding a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
We're part of your body.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
Uh, I'm not serious, somewhere on my head.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
And what's your name?
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I'm still here, I'm still on the line with you.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
What's your name?
Speaker 4 (34:41):
Alex Murdoch, Alex Murdoc, Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Shortly after that call, Alec is airlifted to a hospital
in Savannah, Georgia for treatment.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Airlifted.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
He's on a totally fight on the phone for someone
who's just been shot in the head.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
So authority say Murdock had h superficial head wound, though
his attorney will later call it significant head trauma. I mean,
there definitely was a lot of blood on him coming
from his head, enough to have spilled into his car
when he went to get his phone to call nine
to one one, and enough for somebody driving by to
feel like they needed to pick him up from the
side of the road and bring him to a nearby ambulance. So,
(35:20):
in my mind, like it might be a protocol thing,
like when you're dealing with a head injury like this, because,
like I mean, it turns out he did have a
bullet wound to the back of his head and he
suffered a skull fracture and a brain bleed. He was
hospitalized for two to three days, in which time he
tells SLED agents that the man who pulled over to
help him with like a flat tire he had, he's
(35:41):
the one that did this, and he was driving a
blue pickup truck. And he tries to give details to
a sketch artist, but SLED never releases any images because
they are apparently not satisfied with them. Like they say,
at first, Alec didn't have enough information about the driver's features.
Speaker 5 (35:57):
And the rest of us online just didn't buy the
story from the job. I mean, it seems like this
guy's mo is when he gets backed into a corner, Oh,
a gun goes off.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
It definitely felt fishy to me at the time. Now
after this.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Like within a couple of days, Alec releases a statement
announcing his resignation from the law firm and that he'll
be entering rehab for a twenty year opioid addiction, which
has only gotten worse since the deaths of his wife
and son, and he essentially uses the addiction to explain
his financial misconduct, and his lawyer says that it was
(36:32):
an enormously expensive habit and that he stole the money
to fund that habit. So two days after that statement,
Alex's law license is suspended indefinitely.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
And not even a week.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
After that, some new details come out in this roadside shooting.
Basically Aleck admits to police that this was staged. He
said it was a staged suicide attempt and he had
asked a man named Curtis Smith to shoot him during
a fake car breakdown in order to make his death
(37:05):
look like murder because he believed it would help his
surviving Sonbuster collect his ten million dollar life insurance payout.
And for what it's worth, Mandy Mattney believes that the
insurance settlement thing is actually made up to.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Did he really mean to die? Though?
Speaker 3 (37:22):
So Curtis who doesn't go by Curtis, he goes by Eddie. Okay,
he's this sixty one year old former client for like
a workers comp case and like also apparently like a
distant cousin of Alex, so they fined him on September fourteenth.
He's arrested on charges of assisted suicide and assault and
conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, among others. But Eddie's version
(37:45):
of things doesn't quite line up with what they heard
from Alec. Eddie actually goes on the Today Show and
says that he was not a willing accomplice in the
whole scheme. He says, quote, I didn't shoot him. If
I had shot him, he'd be.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Dead fair enough.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
He claims that he had a close relationship with Alec,
but said that he was he thinks he was basically
set up. He said he had no clue about the
stage suicide plot, and in his telling, he didn't know
why Aleck asked him to even meet him on this
like remote road in Hampton County, but he went anyways,
and then he says Alex showed up with a gun
asked Eddie to shoot him. When Alec made a sudden movement,
(38:21):
Eddie intervened. The gun went off, but Eddie says that
when it went off, that bullet didn't hit Alec, and
once he realized Alec was okay, he took the gun,
drove off and disposed of it.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
So how does Alec end up with the bullet to
the head if Eddie drove away with the gun.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Honestly, nothing about this incident adds up. It's Alex's word
against Eddie's word. Alex's attorney says Eddie was basically Alex's
primary drug dealer.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Eddie's attorney says that's not true.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Of course, Eddie said he just did like odd jobs
for Alec and that they stayed friends after Alec represented him.
I mean, it's reported some places that Alec hired Eddie
to kill him. Other places say that Eddie shot Alec
willingly without pay. I mean, there is so much conflicting
information out there, it is almost impossible to pin down
what exactly happened on the side of that county road.
(39:14):
But one thing is clear. Alec has been committing financial
crimes for years, and finally authorities are charging.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Him for them and they are not holding back.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
But that's just for the financial crimes, right like, not for.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Murder that eventually comes to So, according to NBC News,
Alec first faces eighty four criminal charges and eleven lawsuits
by July twenty twenty two. We're talking fraud, money laundering,
computer crimes, forgery, criminal conspiracy, narcotics, offensive conspiracy, to purchase
and distribute oxy codone, and honestly, like none of these
(39:49):
charges seem to be very shocking, and Alec will end
up leading guilty to a number of them eventually. Then
that same month, Alec is finally indicted by a grand
jury for the double murder of his wife and son,
Maggie and Paul Murdoch, and he does not go down
without a fight. Alec pleads not guilty to the murder
(40:13):
charges and a trial date is set for January twenty
twenty three. Now that trial has been covered extensively. It
was one of the longest in South Carolina history, and
according to Alex's lawyer, Dick Harpoulian, who we spoke to
for this episode, people came from across the country to spectate,
So I'm only gonna walk everyone.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Through like the highlights.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
The prosecution puts forward that Alec killed Maggie and Paul
on the night of June seventh, and then left to
alibi himself at his mom's house. Their theory is that
leading up to the murders, Alec feared that his financial
crimes were on the verge of being exposed, basically, and
that he saw no way out, so he draws up
this scheme to protect himself by becoming the victim, like
(40:56):
they think, in his mind, if he could be seen
in the eyes of the public as a grieving husse
and a grieving father, maybe all that sympathy would drown
out the growing suspicions about his.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Fraud and his theft. Plus he wouldn't get.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Caught because the murders could be attributed to the threats
that Paul had been getting at the time since Mallory
Beach's boat crash in twenty nineteen, because that was he
was getting a lot, you.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
Know, with all the financial stuff in the mix. It
really strikes me as kind of classic family annihilator situation, right,
Like Alec reached a point of desperation, saw no way
out and made like this incredibly violent decision in a
distressed state.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
And so many times with the family annihilator stuff I
see over and over, what it comes down to is
not even so much like trying to not get caught
for financial crimes.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
It's like this image of themselves they don't want.
Speaker 5 (41:44):
Right yeah, And like like you just said, like the
image not just the whole family legacy, not just the
image of himself, but like painting himself as sympathetic yeah,
and versus like distracting from a poor image.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
And family annihilator like. That is a phrase that the
prosecution throws out repeatedly, But the defense counters that the
case against Alec is entirely based on circumstantial evidence. They
know his car left Mozelle at nine oh seven, but
it's impossible to say whether Maggie and Paul were alive
were dead at nine oh seven. They also claim that
(42:16):
law enforcement was biased against Alec from the beginning, deciding
that he was guilty. And then they say fabricating evidence.
They say someone else committed the murders, if not multiple someones,
and they point to some data from Alec and Maggie's
phone suggesting that a person other than Alec was in
possession of Maggie's phone after the murder.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Wait did they find her phone?
Speaker 1 (42:38):
They did so.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Remember Paul's was like on top of him. Hers wasn't
anywhere near her body. They actually had to track it
down using the Find my iPhone feature on Buster's phone.
So her phone is found on Mozelle Road, just beyond
the Murdoch property. Like on the ground, it sounds like
it was tossed in the woods. The defense uses the
(43:01):
data from Alex's phone to argue that it couldn't have
been him who tossed Maggie's phone.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Like you have to remember, just because someone's phone.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Is somewhere, it doesn't mean they're with the phone, right,
And there are some wild theories out there about why
Alec might have even tossed Maggie's phone that honestly, like,
I don't I say they're wild, but like some of
them kind of makes sense. Like one theory is that
basically Alec, Maggie, and Paul all rode down to the
kennels together in one of the family's golf carts, which
(43:32):
wouldn't have recorded the trip. Right once they got there,
Alex killed Paul and Maggie and then quickly jumped back
in the golf cart to go back to the house.
But here's the problem. Maggie had left her phone in
the golf cart, so when Alex drove away he has
it with him. He actually took it with him, right.
Investigators say that the phone data backs this up, like
no steps are logged on Maggie's phone while she's at
(43:54):
the kennel's and then it suddenly unlocks and changes orientation,
just as Alec or someone would have been handling it.
And you know, the theory goes like, once Alec realized
that he had Maggie's phone, he like panicked. He didn't
have time to go back to the kennels because he
needed to rush to his mom's house for an alibi.
But he definitely couldn't go there with Maggie's phone still
(44:14):
in his possession, so he just like tossed it into
the woods.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
And does anybody ever explore the possibility that Alec may
have had an accomplice.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
I mean, with regard to his financial crimes, definitely right
with the double murder, it seems like Slid really.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Just hones in on him.
Speaker 6 (44:29):
Now.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
The defense, they present a two shooter theory based mainly
on the fact that there were two different guns that
were used, but they obviously assert that neither of those
two shooters was Aleck.
Speaker 5 (44:41):
Honestly, we're so deep into the story, I kind of
forgot that there were two different guns that were used.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
I know, and like it's such an oddity in this case,
and like when you talk about the guns, like the
other weird thing that I don't think I touched on
is they did a bunch of crime scene analysis and
the angle of the shots fire also were weird to me,
Like they point to an assailant that was shorter than Alec.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Alec is like six three sixty four.
Speaker 5 (45:04):
And is that like the analysis of all the shots
or just one or just like some of them.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
So the what they think is, I think they believe
that Paul was shot first. The initial shot to Paul's
shoulder seemed more straight on. All of the others were
like angled up.
Speaker 5 (45:20):
I'm also just thinking, like Alec was a trial lawyer,
like and we already know about one incident that he
staged involving a guy, and like he would have known
that using two weapons would complicate a case against him
in a court room, Like two guns makes per sense
with two people. He's only one person.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah, and list making muddy Yeah, and muddies usually like
for a defense.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Good at trial. Yeah, Listen.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
There are so many theories out there about exactly how
these shootings might have gone down. I mean there's literally
even videos of people online who have like literally rebuilt
the dog kennels and acted out the shooting with dummies
and like basically one of the other theories that they
like play out explains the low angle shots by suggesting
that Alec may have like fallen down from the recoil
(46:07):
or like tripped after shooting once up Paul on the shoulder,
which then would have even forced him to like take
a second shot from the ground, So like, did he
do it intentionally?
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Did he fall? Did he is there some other excuse?
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Basically he's like when he's like on the ground, that's
when he like fires at Maggie. That's they say, there's
a theory, that's why the angle doesn't make sense.
Speaker 5 (46:24):
Okay, So if it's not Alec, then who right, Like
who does the defense put forward? If I'm a juror
I'm supposed to believe Alec didn't do this, I kind
of want to see an alternate theory, like someone else
that we aren't looking at.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
So Dick Carpoolian, his lawyer, suggested in our interview with
him that he suspects Eddie, that guy that was tangled
up in Alex's like roadside shooting thing. But even though
he said that to us, like Eddie was never put
on the stand or called as a witness at this trial.
Because again, like you don't have to say I know
the jury wants it. You don't have to say who.
You just have to provide reasonable doubt. And to provide
(47:02):
that reasonable doubt, I mean, the defense points out that
there was unknown DNA found under Maggie's fingernail and a
brown hair in her hand that ostensibly had not been
tested or explained. I mean, Alec had red hair, And
these are two details that the Internet has really run with.
Some people say that the hair in Maggie's hand was
her own, like maybe it got there when she was
(47:24):
shot in the head. She was dirty blonde, so I
don't know, I haven't seen it myself, or they say
like was it from one of the dogs? I again
haven't seen it. How long was it? And then there's
all these Reddit threads that pour over the DNA under
her fingernails, like some attribute it to the fact. They
say Maggie went to the nail salon earlier that day,
where other people would have obviously been like touching her hands.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
She also went to the doctor's office.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
I don't know, And honestly, the defense doesn't spend nearly
as much time on either of those pieces of evidence
as like I would have expected.
Speaker 5 (47:57):
And yeah, I've this trial is just like such not
even a mess, just confusing.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
What about the car data and the blue.
Speaker 5 (48:06):
Jacket and stuff like, how does the defense explain those things?
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Not even the defense. Alec actually ended up taking the
stand in his own defense to explain it. Oh how
could you? So In his testimony, he says he's clear.
He says, I didn't kill my wife, I didn't kill
my son. He like breaks down multiple times in describing
how he allegedly found them that night.
Speaker 4 (48:30):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
He admits that he lied to law enforcement in early interviews,
but claims that it was because he was on a
massive amount of oxy cotton, which made him paranoid and
distrustful of law enforcement. And he said that he was
basically afraid that if he told investigators he was at
the kennel's that night, like the video at eight forty
four they have of his voice, he thought that they
would immediately.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Set their sights on him.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
And he's like, if they were looking at me as
the suspect, that's going to distract them from finding like
the real killer. Now, he explains that stopping in the
way of his mom's house was because he was trying
to grab.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
His phone, which had like fallen in a crack between.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
Like the seat and the console. He says he doesn't
remember bringing a blue anything. There knows nothing about the
rain jacket, so he doesn't really explain it.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
He's just like non factor.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
But in the end, like it's not enough to convince
a jury. Even Alex's lawyer, Dick told us that while
he believes Alex's story is credible in the context of
a man that is quote lied and cheated and stolen
millions and millions of dollars, absolutely not end quote, it
takes the jury less than three hours to return a
(49:36):
guilty verdict. On March second, twenty twenty three, Alex was
found responsible for the murders of Maggie and paul In
later sentenced to the maximum, which is two consecutive life sentences.
Speaker 5 (49:47):
I think the one thing I'm still struggling with in
this case is just the why. Like to be clear,
I feel really really certain of Alex's guilt, but like, why.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Would he go so far as to kill his.
Speaker 5 (50:02):
Wife and son just to essentially distract people from his
financial crimes? Like, is that really the only explanation we
get out of this?
Speaker 3 (50:12):
I know it, Like it, which, like every family and
Eilattery case, I feel like this is where we end up.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
We're like, really, this is why.
Speaker 5 (50:19):
There are like a million other options that don't include
killing your own family.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
When we spoke to Mandy Mattney, who in my mind,
she's like one of arguably like the deepest in the
trenches of this case, She's like in the same boat.
She says that the motive in this case is one
of the most misunderstood parts of the story. She told
our reporters that she believes Alec was in this sort
of like downward spiral before he killed Maggie and Paul,
(50:44):
and that we have to remember that he grew up
with this belief that because of his last name, he
could just get away with anything. Now, I didn't mention
this before because I didn't want to distract from the
other cases I told you about. But just three days
after Maggie and Paul were murdered, alex father, Randolph Murdoch,
died in his home. And I don't bring this up
(51:05):
to suggest in any way that like Alec was involved
in his father's death, like Randolph died after about it
with cancer. But what Mandy suggested is that Alec was
used to relying on his father to get him out
of messes that he made. She said that Randolph was
really the one who had the pull at police stations
and with solicitors and judges. So maybe Alec believed that
(51:26):
this mess was just another thing that he could get
away with, and he had no way of knowing that
his father wouldn't be around to help him anymore.
Speaker 5 (51:34):
Safety net disappeared after he took these drastic actions.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Yeah, and maybe that that's why, like things continued to escalate,
or we saw him like scrambling scrambling making those like
drastic moves. Now, did Alec really believe that he could
get away with double murder? I don't know, But I
also don't really have a better theory to give you,
like no one does.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
So can I ask, like what happened to Buster?
Speaker 1 (51:59):
He don't really hear about him.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
Yeah, Yeah, he's tried pretty hard to keep just a
low profile. Like from what I can tell, he seems
to still be living in South Carolina. I know he
was enrolled in law school at the University of South Carolina,
but by twenty twenty one he'd actually been asked not
to return. According to court record, citing plagiarism and low grades.
Recorded phone calls that Alec made in prison to him
(52:24):
show that he was like trying to pull any strings
he could to get Buster back in. But in twenty
twenty two, Buster's attorney stated that Buster had quote put
his desire to go to law school.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
On hold for now.
Speaker 6 (52:35):
Now.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
I know, our reporter tried every number we could find
online to contact him, and we even emailed his long
term girlfriend turned wife as of earlier this year for
any kind of comment, but we never heard back. And
all I know is that Buster maintains that his dad
is innocent, and Alec also continues to maintain his innocence
from protective custody at a maximum security prison in South Carolina.
(52:57):
We sent him a letter and asked Dick to make
sure that he got it, but we never heard anything back.
And all the while, Alex lawyers are still fighting to
appeal his conviction. I mean, they are also pushing for
a new trial alleging jury tampering. Now, a judge denied
that motion back in January of twenty twenty four after
an evidentiary hearing, but Alex teen didn't stop there. In
(53:20):
August of twenty twenty four, they elevated the issue to
the South Carolina Supreme Court. Oral arguments are pending, and
until then, Alec will remain in his eight y ten
single cell unit. According to Dick, he's now sober, busy
with prison jobs, and of course still pouring over his
own defense, still strategizing, still looking for a way out now.
(53:46):
Mandy Mattey ended up writing a book on this case
called Blood on Their Hands, Murder, Corruption and the Fall
of the Murdoch Dynasty, and her work has been optioned
into a dramatized limited series that's about to come out.
So I don't think that this is the last we'll
be hearing about the Murdocks. In twenty twenty three, South
Carolina law enforcement officially declared Stephen Smith's death a homicide
(54:10):
rather than a traffic accident. But still it's never been
fully explained and no one has ever been arrested in
connection with it. We reached out to SLED for more
information about Stephen's case, but they declined a comment, saying
that it's an ongoing investigation. So if you out there,
if you know anything about his roadside death in July
of twenty fifteen, please come forward.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Now.
Speaker 3 (54:32):
Mallory's family was eventually able to settle a lawsuit with
one of the places that served Paul that night, and
with Maggie's estate and Buster, whose idep Paul used to
buy the alcohol. But no one has ever been put
behind bars. As far as I can tell. Lauria's body
was never actually exhumed. The criminal investigation into her death
is ongoing.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
You can find all the.
Speaker 3 (55:06):
Source material for this episode on our website, crime junkie
dot com, and if you want to listen to more
episodes like this one and all of our episodes completely
add free, be sure to join our fan club. You'll
also get early access to new episodes every.
Speaker 5 (55:21):
Week, and you can follow us on Instagram at Crime
Junkie Podcast.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. I think Chuck
would approve
Speaker 8 (56:00):
One
High crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
And I'm brit Guys.
Speaker 3 (00:04):
The story I have for you today is the one
that you've probably heard something about. A powerful Low Country dynasty,
a double murder, a trial that gripped the country. We're
covering it not just because of the killer's shocking fall
from grace or the trail of death's corruption and cover.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Ups that seem to follow him wherever.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
He goes, but because buried beneath the courtroom drama are
stories of people who never got justice, mysteries still unsolved,
and a system that let one family operate above the
law for nearly a century. And the fallout isn't over.
As of this recording, appeals are moving forward, the South
Carolina Supreme Court is getting involved, and with the possibility
(00:46):
of a new trial on the horizon, one question is
more important now than ever. Why Why would a man
who seemed to have everything choose to destroy it all
by murdering his own wife and son. This is the
story of the Murdoch family.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
And now, at your emergency, Keli forty one forty moselle mos,
I need to collect as my wife and stop. Okay,
you said forty one forty seven Roan, Sir, you said,
(01:55):
forty one forty seven Mozell Rhodogan, Yes, sir, forty one
forty Yeah, Thursday on the line with me. Okay, I'll
get up through it.
Speaker 5 (02:06):
Now.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
It's bad, Okay. How do they shoot that? They shoot theirselves? Oh? No,
hell no, okay?
Speaker 6 (02:18):
And are they breathing?
Speaker 4 (02:20):
No, ma'am, I can tell. I can tell shot in
the head, and so I'm really bad. Okay. Where where
he shot at, ma'am? I don't know, but you're just
flood everywhere, brains brain. But now that's got just down
(02:44):
her a little bit. It's just got a whole head sweepers.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Those are just excerpts from the nearly ten minute call
Alec Murdoch made to nine one one on June seven,
twenty twenty one, at ten oh seven pm. Between sobs,
he dispatch that he had just discovered the bodies of
his wife and son near some dog kennels on his
estate in rural call Iton County, South Carolina. And rule
(03:10):
is for real because even speeding with lights and sirens on,
it takes South Carolina law enforcement about twenty minutes to
get out to Mozelle Road. Now, when they finally turn
up the long driveway to get to the dog kennels,
the first thing they see is Alec standing by his
truck with his hazard lights flashing, and leaning against his
(03:31):
truck is his twelve gage shotgun, which Alex says that
he got from his house in case whoever hurt his
wife and son decided to come back. Now. Officers immediately
take the gun. They secure it in their patrol car
and make their way to the kennels to see for
themselves what Alec described on the phone. His twenty two
year old son, Paul, is lying face down in the
(03:51):
open doorway to a feed room that's at the end
of this row of dog kennels. He has traumatic chest
and head wounds, and police as Alec told the dispatcher
that the majority of Paul's brain is actually lying next
to him on the ground. Everything they're seeing is consistent
with a gunshot wound. Now, first responders also find Paul's
(04:12):
iPhone laying on top of his body, like just resting
on top of his shorts, kind of like it was
placed there and there's no blood on it or anything.
But Alec did tell the nine to one one dispatcher
that he had touched both of the bodies to try
and see if they were breathing, So the positions that
they're found in might not have been the positions that
the killer left them or that they naturally like fell in.
I mean, Alec actually said to the operator that he
(04:34):
tried to turn his fifty two year old wife, Margaret,
who goes by Maggie. He tried to turn her over
a little bit too, but she had a hole in
her head. And first responders see what looks like five
gunshot wounds to her back, her chest, wrist, and leg.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And is Maggie right there next to Paul.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
No, she's actually about thirty feet away, like across this
gravel driveway, but there is this like clear line of
sight between the two victims. There are also twelve gage
shell casings and three hundred blackout casings next to the
bodies and like strewn along the gravel driveway between them.
So it's definitely looking like both victims were shot. But
(05:10):
what's weird is that it seems like those two casings
would have been fired from two different guns, a shotgun
and a semi automatic rifle, and neither of those weapons
were left behind.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
And what about the gun that Aleck had with him
when they'd showed up, Like that was a shotgun.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
And it was a twelve gage shotgun too, but it
actually wasn't the one used to kill Maggie or Paul.
Investigators eventually are going to take it into evidence, but
right now they're more focused on hearing from Alec. Their
first interview with him actually happens in one of the
officer's cars, and again, between like sobs and dry heaving,
Alec walks them through the events of that night. And
(05:47):
here is some of that thirty four minute interview, So.
Speaker 7 (05:55):
Just start the top. Take your time.
Speaker 6 (05:58):
Like when I came back here, I mean I pulled
up and I could see him, and you know, I
knew something was bad. I ran out. I knew it
was really bad.
Speaker 8 (06:09):
My boy over there, I could see it was, and
I ran over to Maggie. Actually, I think I tried
to turn Paul over first, you know, I tried to
turn him over, and I don't know I figured it out.
Speaker 6 (06:32):
His cell phone popped out of his pocket. I started
to try to do something with it, thinking maybe, but
then I put it back down really quickly. Then I
went to my wife, and I mean I could see.
Speaker 7 (06:49):
Did you touch Maggie at all?
Speaker 8 (06:50):
I did.
Speaker 6 (06:51):
I touched him both. I tried to take I mean,
I tried to do it as limited as possible, but
I tried to take their poults.
Speaker 8 (07:00):
On both of them.
Speaker 6 (07:04):
And you know, I called nine one one pretty much
right away, and she was very good.
Speaker 7 (07:15):
So I know you said the phone and fell out
the pocket. But did you see anything else that didn't
belong or shouldn't belong or that wasn't part of Paul?
Speaker 6 (07:27):
No, sir, not no, not.
Speaker 8 (07:32):
No, sir.
Speaker 7 (07:33):
How about Maggie? No, sir, you didn't see anything around them?
What made you come out here tonight?
Speaker 6 (07:43):
I went to my mom's the late stage Alzheimer station.
My dad's in the hospital. My mom gets anxious when
she does. I went to check on them and Maggie.
Maggie's a dog lover and she fools with the dogs,
and I knew she'd gone to the kennel. I was
at the house. I left the house and went to
(08:06):
my mom's really just a little while. Tried to call
her when I left, texted her no response. When I
got back to the house, the house was obviously nobody
(08:27):
was in there. Some figured they're still up here fooling around.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
Paul was.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
Gonna be getting set up to plant or some flower
seeds got sprayed and died, and he was refiguring to
do to plant to some flower seeds. So I came
back up here, and I drove up and saw and called.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
The window of time from when Alec left to see
his mom to when he came back is small, nine
pm to ten pm ish. The window for when Maggie
and Paul were murdered is even smaller. The coroner estimates
that that was between nine and nine thirty, but Alex says.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That he didn't hear or see anything.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Odd when he got home and back to He says
he only went to the dog kennels because he was
looking for Maggie, like he couldn't find her inside.
Speaker 7 (09:18):
Had Maggie and Paul been arguing over anything?
Speaker 8 (09:20):
No?
Speaker 7 (09:22):
What was their relationship like wonderful, wonderful? How about yours
and Maggie's wonderful?
Speaker 6 (09:28):
I mean, I'm sure we had little things here and there,
but we had a wonderful marriage, wonderful relationship.
Speaker 7 (09:35):
In yours and Paul's relationship as good as it could be.
Have y'all been having any problems out here, trespassers.
Speaker 6 (09:45):
None of breaking in none that I know of. The
only thing that what comes to my mind is my
son Paul, was in a boat wreck a couple of
years ago, and there's been a you know, he was
charged with being arrested for being a driver. There's been
a lot of negative publicity about that, and there's been
(10:07):
a lot of people online just really vile stuff. But
when Paul's out and about, I mean people routinely, I
don't think I know the full story, so I don't
think they give it to me. But I mean he's
been punched and hit and just attacked a lot, so,
(10:29):
you know, but I mean, nothing like this.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Well, Alec is downplaying the situation here. The boat wreck
he's talking about happened in twenty nineteen and resulted in
the death of a nineteen year old girl named Mallory Beach,
and a couple months afterwards, Paul was charged with three
felony counts of boating under the influence, which included causing
Mallory's death and seriously injuring two other passengers.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
But the boat crash is just like the tip.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Of the iceberg when it comes to the Murdoch family,
Mallory's death, Paul and Maggie's deaths, they're not the only
suspicious deaths that Alec and his family have been tangled
up in.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
Yeah, I remember when all of this was like dominating
the news. The Murdoc name was just being brought up
with like one tragedy after another after another.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
It seemed like right.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
And it's because like the Murdocks, they're not just like
any old southern family. They were a huge name in
South Carolina. I mean, for over a century, the Murdoch
name was basically synonymous with power and money. Three generations
of Murdoch men served as the region's top prosecutors, overseeing
every criminal case across five counties. According to an article
(11:36):
published in the state, they sent thousands of people to
prison and more than a dozen to death row. People
seem to believe that they are untouchable, but beneath that
polished surface there are cracks, like big cracks, and with
the deaths of Paul and Maggie, for the first time
in nearly a century, they are about to split wide open.
(12:00):
The media latches on to Paul and Maggie's deaths immediately,
and the rumors and speculation are rampant in the month
that follows the incident. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division
doesn't name any suspects or people of interest, but they
also don't publicly clear anyone, and given the Murdoch family history,
people are quick to jump to their own conclusions. I mean,
(12:22):
the first incident that starts getting a lot of airtime
is that boat crash, the death of Mallory Beach on
February twenty third, twenty nineteen. She was ejected from Alec
Murdoch's boat after it crashed into a bridge at two
twenty one in the morning. Now, there weren't any adults
on the boat, it was just a group of teenagers
with Alec's son Paul allegedly at the wheel. And while
(12:42):
all the other kids made it back to shore after
the crash, Mallory didn't. Her body was found eight days
later in a marsh about five miles away from where
the crash originally happened. Now, according to the coroner, Mallory
drowned after suffering a blow to the head from impact.
When officers got to the scene that night and started
talking to all of the kids, it was clear that
(13:03):
they had been drinking a police report describes them as
grossly intoxicated, and there was a cooler full of beers
and pelters on the boat and a bunch of empty cans.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
But no one was breathalyzed at the.
Speaker 5 (13:15):
Scene, which I always get hung up on that part,
like why not at least breathalyize Paul, like he was
the one driving.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
At least on paper, officers couldn't confirm who was driving,
even though the passengers on the boat were all pointing
fingers at Paul. And according to one of the passengers
that night, while everyone was focused on Mallory, Paul's main
concern seemed to be getting in touch with his grandfather,
Randolph Murdoch, who was the former South Carolina Circuit Solicitor.
(13:43):
In an audio recording taken that night by first responders,
you can hear one of the kids, Mallory's boyfriend in particular,
shouting at Paul during his conversation with an.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Officer, well you're just smiling.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Like Later in that same conversation, Mallory's boyfriend is heard
warning the police.
Speaker 6 (14:09):
You all know Elec Murdoch, that's his son. Good look.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I feel like there's so much behind that good luck.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Yeah, so Mandy Matney the investigative journalists who covered this
boat crash and went on to deep dive into the
Murdoch family and break a lot of the news surrounding
Maggie and Paul's death. She told our reporters that immediately
following the crash, she started getting tips from people saying
that there was going to be a cover up. She
kept hearing that the alleged boat driver belonged to a
(14:44):
powerful family of lawyers that quote got away with everything
and did not believe that anybody could touch them.
Speaker 5 (14:51):
Which seems like it was the case if all the
kids from the crash were telling the officers that Paul
was driving the boat, and the officers were, like you
said on paper, that no one really knew who was driving.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
The boat, right, And like, I get it to some extent,
this was a chaotic scene. The kids aren't necessarily of
sound mind, but it is hard to shake the idea
that maybe Paul might have been getting some favorable treatment
because of his last name. I mean, Mandy actually said
that when she began reporting on this boat crash story,
people were scared to talk to her or even say
the name Murdoch out of fear of the family's power,
(15:25):
and the family's power was in full force that night
when the kids were taken to the hospital, Paul's dad
and grandfather were there waiting. They were like walking through
the er trying to talk to all of the kids
while they were talking with officers, trying to like prevent
them from taking those sobriety tests and eventually stopping all
police interviews.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Is that even allowed?
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Well, I mean, like they're all lawyers, so if they
were their lawyers. But according to AP News, one nurse
did actually tell Alec Murdoch to stay in Paul's room
or like leave the hospital, and she asked security to
keep an eye on him. Now.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Eventually, over an.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Hour after the crash, Paul's blood was taken at the hospital,
and even then his BAC was more than three times
the legal limit, but at least at that time, no
charges were filed. Over the next month, authorities continued their
investigation into Mallory's death. Her mom filed a civil lawsuit
(16:23):
over it, accusing three Murdoch men of wrongdoing, and ultimately
the county Sheriff's office ended up recusing itself from the
investigation due to their quote long standing relationship with Randolph Murdoch.
So that's when the case got handed over to the
Department of Natural Resources, and within a matter of weeks
of them having it, they end up charging Paul with
(16:44):
voting under the influence, resulting in Mallory's death. Paul pleaded
not guilty at his arraignment, which two judges recused.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Themselves from, by the way, because of the Murdoch family.
But here's the thing.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
He is murdered before the trial can take place, and
two months after his murder, all charges get dismissed in
what officials describe as a formality.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
So all of that is a pretty far cry from
how Alec was talking about this incident to the cops
the night of Paul's murder.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Why and because Alec isn't just some guy talking to
police like he is used to dealing with law enforcement,
used to dealing with.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Judges, the whole system.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
He knows the right things to say, he knows the
right way to position himself to make sure things get
handled quietly. And the boat crash wasn't even the first
time the Murdochs had inserted themselves legally into the case
of a dead teenager in the area. I'm gonna take
one more detour to give everyone like background before we
come back to Maggie and Paul, because like this is
(17:45):
important to know. So, six years before the murders of
Maggie and Paul, a nineteen year old named Stephen Smith
was killed and from the jump his death was suspicious
as hell.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, full disclosure. This is the case that I have
the most questions about.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
I think it's the one that, like most people have
the most questions about because none of the facts seem
to be matter of fact. On July eighth, twenty fifteen,
around four o'clock in the morning, Stephen's body is found
in the middle of a road like ten to fifteen
miles away from the Murdock home. Now, originally investigators thought
(18:23):
that he had been shot. I mean, like I've seen
some of the photos from the road that day and
it is like gruesome. But at autopsy, it was determined
that he died from blunt force's trauma to the head
resulting from a possible hit and run. I mean, his
shoulder had been dislocated. But the thing to me that
doesn't line up with a car crash is he had
apparent defensive wounds on his hand.
Speaker 5 (18:43):
Right, and like, you aren't fighting a car. How do
you get a defensive wound from a hit and run?
Speaker 1 (18:48):
You don't.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
And that's one of the reasons that the coroner and
the pathologists and the detectives and Stephen's family all seemed
to have different ideas about how Stephen actually died. Sled
South Jerelia Law Enforcement Division. They believe that Stephen was
on his way home when he likely ran out of
gas on the highway and decided to like walk the
rest of the way, like his car is found with
(19:11):
the gas cap unscrewed, about two to three miles away
from where he would have been killed. And to explain
the severity of Steven's head injury, The pathologists who performed
the autopsy suggested Stephen had been hit by like the
mirror of a passing truck, but an investigator from Highway
Patrol wrote in reports that there was no evidence of
Stephen being struck by a vehicle like things you would
(19:33):
expect to see, right, like no glass, no debris from
a car found anywhere on the road or on Stephen's body.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
So the investigator.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Asked the pathologist if it was possible that could Steven
have actually.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Been struck with a baseball bat?
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Now? She said no, But then he asked, okay, well,
what if someone was like driving by and swung the
bat from a moving car, Because I think she's saying, like,
just a hit from a baseball bat wouldn't be this severe, right,
But what if the have the bat and it's like
in a moving car. And the pathologist said, well, I
guess that's possible.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Now.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
The County Corner didn't buy the hit and run theory either.
His theory was that Stephen was actually shot like they
initially thought the first time, and Stephen's mom, Sandy, was
adamant that her son's life did not end from a
vehicle collision. Sandy has said that her son was skittish,
like he would not have been walking in the middle
(20:27):
of the road, and even if for some reason he was,
he would have gotten off the road once he saw
the headlights coming. And she doesn't think he ran out
of gas either. She thinks it was a setup and
that he was beaten to death, I mean so severely
by the way that part of Stephen's face had to
be rebuilt with putty for his funeral.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
So why does she think it was premeditated?
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Well, Sandy tells Sled that Stephen was acting strange in
the weeks leading up to his death. He was being
more secretive, not studying as much, and playing hooky from school.
So her theory is that his classmates, who were coming
home from a baseball game that night, were responsible.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Hence the baseball bat theory right.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
And in a letter Sandy wrote to the FBI, she
mentions Alec Murdoch's sons specifically, now Alex's oldest son, Buster
went to high school with Steven. Buster has actually mentioned
a couple of times throughout the highway patrol report, along
with others that police were looking into. And I mean,
we're talking about a small town in South Carolina that
is far from the only connection between the Smiths and
(21:33):
the Murdochs. Alec Murdock coached the boys little league baseball team,
and his brother Randy reportedly repped Stephen's dad in a
worker's comp claim.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
And wasn't there a rumor that Stephen and Buster were
possibly in a relationship at some point? Like?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Is that that just internet knowing?
Speaker 1 (21:50):
No, that rumor is actually in the police report.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
It is not verified or anything, just an early rumor
that investigators were tipped off to Stephen was out as
gay and was in a relationship when he died. But
people online have brought up the Stephen Buster secret romance
theory to suggest that silencing Stephen might have been a motive,
and Buster has never even explicitly acknowledged the rumor. He
(22:14):
said in a statement that he was not involved in
Stephen's death and that all of the vicious rumors swirling
about him were false.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
But what makes me like double take is that a
sexual assault.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Kit was ordered in Steven's death by a corner without
consulting investigators, Which.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Is that normal for a supposed to a hit and
run that you're investigating as a hit and run.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
One of the highway patrol officers who responded the night
said that he had never seen anything like that done
before in any traffic accidents. But like he was aware
of and like the autopsy, didn't know anything abnormal that
would like prompt a sexual assault kit. And what's so
interesting is like the coroner who performed it is no
longer in office, and because the records have been sealed,
(22:58):
I don't know the results of the kit. If there
were any. I mean, it's not even clear they collected
a kit. Was the kit actually tested Now, Because everyone
seems to disagree on what really caused Stephen's death, we
reached out to an Ohio based forensic pathologist, doctor Kent Harshburger,
to get our own professional opinion bull clarity. Like he
did not work Stephen's case, but he agreed to like
(23:18):
look at the autopsy photos and tell us his thoughts.
And according to doctor Harshburger, the injuries don't look like
a typical hit and run. The head trauma is forceful
enough that Stephen had to have been struck by either
a moving vehicle or something in motion, but not in
a way that matched the usual patterns, Like it seems
(23:38):
too much to just be a beating, and a bat
likely would have left a different he said, narrow were wound.
What stood out most to him though, was the blood
all poling in one area, like no sign of a
second impact, which you would normally expect in a hit
and run when the body like hits the ground, there's.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Two impacts, the hit and then the ground the ground.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Doctor Harsberger said that he would have ruled it blunt
force's trauma to the head and left the manner undetermined,
not ruled it in accident with the car.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
But rulings aside.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
What really gives me pause is that Sandy claims that
the day of her son's death, the first call she
received was from authorities notifying her. Do you want to
guess who The.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Second call is from Alec Murdoch.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Not Alec, but his brother, solicitor Randy Murdoch. Sandy says
that he told her he was interested in working pro
bono as a liaison between her family and the authorities.
Stephen's dad accepted, though neither he nor Sandy had any
idea how Randy found out about the incident so quickly,
or why he would have been interested in it specifically.
(24:45):
And shortly thereafter, Randy just stopped returning their calls. So
by June seventh, twenty twenty one, when Alec is sitting
in the patrol car talking to officers, he's telling them
about the Mallory.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Beach in Sia. It's kind of way underplayed, but.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
There is all this stuff just like bubbling under the surface.
So once Maggie and Paul are killed, every suspicion anyone's
ever had any rumor that they've heard about this family.
They're all getting spoken about louder and more often than
ever before. I mean, this is all anyone is talking
(25:24):
about in this area at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Now.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
I don't know what police think of alex story early on,
but they don't arrest him that night. Per some redacted
police reports I have, it doesn't even seem like he's
even the first suspect. A kid named Rogan Gibson is,
and Rogan is like a third son to the Murdochs,
And the night of the murders, Paul had actually been
dogs sitting for him. That was likely why he was
(25:49):
out in the kennels that night to begin with. And
they know that Rogan was the last person Paul talked to,
but when they interview him the next day, they end
up quickly ruling him out. Turns out Paul had called
Rogan at eight forty PM to tell him that something
was wrong with his dog's tail. The pair like tried
to FaceTime, but Paul had a bad connection. They end
up disconnecting, and that after that, Rogan tried texting and
(26:12):
calling Paul, tried texting Maggie to get Paul to call
him back, even tried buster but no one was answering.
So this FaceTime call and the logs proved that Rogan
was telling the truth, but all the stuff they get
from the phone also proved that someone else was lying Alec.
There is a fifty second cell phone video that Paul
(26:34):
took via Snapchat at eight forty four PM on the
night of his murder, and the video taken at the
dog kennel's shows Paul like petting Rogan's dog. But it
isn't the visuals that investigators are interested in. It's the
audio because in the background you can hear Paul's voice
talking to Rogan's dog. You hear Maggie's voice shouting that
an off camera dog named Bubba has a bird in
(26:56):
his mouth. But then there's a third voice Ali you
can hear him trying to get Bubba's attention to drop
the bird.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
So this video basically says that Aleck was at the
crime scene right before the.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Murderers, and he lied to police about it.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Originally, he said that the last time he spoke to
Maggie was around like eight or eight thirty PM that night,
after which he laid down for a quick nap. Then
just after nine o'clock he woke up left to go
visit his mom, so in his version of events, he
never stopped by the dog kennels that night, or saw
Maggie or saw Paul before leaving him. Leaving just after
nine though, which was always his story, doesn't seem to
(27:36):
be a lie. The telemetry data from his car shows
that he left the Mozelle property at nine oh seven PM.
Speaker 5 (27:43):
So he would have been there during the nine to
nine thirty window that Maggie and Paul were presumably murdered
by at least a small portion of him.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah, and there's the fact that Alec practically raced to
his mom's house that night, driving faster than he had
on any other trip that day, and that his car
idled for a period of time halfway up the driveway
at his mom's house. Perhaps they suspect when he was
trying to conceal or stash the murder.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Weapon, So he did go to his mom's that night, then.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Yeah, they think he went to establish an alibi, but
he for sure went, and that is proven by his
car's GPS data, which makes the evidence that they end
up finding in his mother's house all the more suspicious
because there is this blue rain jacket in a closet
of hers, and when tested, this jacket is found to
have a large amount of gunshot residue on the inside
(28:37):
of it. Now, it's probably sounding like all of this
is happening fast, but keep in mind the murdoch of
it all.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I feel like hoops.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Had to be jumped through because this search of mom's house,
which seems like something you would search early on knowing
that's exactly where he went at the time of the murder.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, that's his supposed alibi.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
That doesn't happen until four months after the murders, and
I think it was only pro did by information from
the woman who took care.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Of Alex's mom's house.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
She said that she saw Alec carrying what looked like
some sort of blue tarp under his arm to go
into the house, and given the placement of the gunshot residue,
SLED agents put forward that aside from shooting a gun
while wearing the jacket inside out, the residue could have
gotten there if the jacket was like wrapped around the
weapon that had recently been fired.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Now, I thought that they never found the murder weapon, though.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
They didn't, so I mean this is just circumstantial evidence,
but it definitely doesn't do Alec any favors. And by
month four when they're finding this, there is already so
much more that they've learned to make Alec look suspicious.
I mean, for starters, everyone by now is talking about
(29:49):
Mallory's case and Steven's case, and Stevens had so much
that was like glaringly suspicious around it that it actually
got reopened, not officially tied the Murdochs though, just reopened.
But another case undeniably is being connected to the Murdos.
(30:09):
It's the case of Gloria Sadderfield. Her death and specifically
the aftermath of it starts to raise a lot of eyebrows.
Gloria had worked as a nanny and a housekeeper for
the Murdox for over twenty years. She helped raise their kids,
practically spent more time with them than her own family.
(30:31):
I mean, Gloria's sister said in an interview with People
magazine that she would have given Alec anything she had.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
So.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Gloria was fifty seven years old when she allegedly suffered
a trip and fall accident at the Murdoch home. According
to the family, she tripped over their dogs and fell
down the front steps of their house. Gloria got admitted
to the hospital with severe head trauma, and just over
three weeks later she died from the injury. What's weird, though,
(30:59):
is that the corner was notified about Gloria's death, nor
was an autopsy performed, and on Gloria's death certificate, her
manner of death is listed as natural, which is obviously
not consistent even with a trip and fall accident.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
Right Like, Gloria didn't just happen to die of natural
causes at the exact moment she tripped down the Murdock residence.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Exactly, But with no autopsy or police involvement, there is
just no way to know what happened or was anything
about her death intentional. I mean, I can't find anything
that might have motivated them to want her dead. But
the weirdness doesn't even like stop there. At Gloria's funeral,
Alec apparently approached her sons and told them that they
(31:40):
should file a wrongful death suit against him, or technically
claim it against his home's insurance policy, which would be
able to pay them compensation. And so her sons do,
but they like never hear anything the whole thing just
sort of like fizzles away, which is like catching a
theme here. Yeah, so by fall sled seems to be
(32:03):
focusing specifically on Alec, and they expand their investigation into
his finances, which uncovers some irregularities. It comes out that
the very day that Paul and Maggie were shot to death,
June seventh, the CFO of Alex's law firm confronted Alec
about funds that seemed to be missing from the firm's settlements. Now,
(32:25):
Alex tried to talk his way out of it, and
then of course everyone became distracted by the slaying of
his wife and son, but not forever. On September three,
the firm confronts Alec again after another employee discovers that
instead of making sure settlement money went to the firm's clients,
Alec was actually redirecting it into a personal account or
(32:45):
accounts that he had set up to look like they
belonged to the law firm and.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Using the money himself.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
And he had been doing this for years, by the way,
And this is where Gloria Saderfield comes back in. So
remember he liked tell the Suns you should file a
claim against my insurance. They're like, okay, we're gonna do it.
They did it, never see a dime. While it turns
out his home insurance did pay out four point three
million dollars, but the Sadderfields never received a dime. Aleck
(33:16):
was the one who pocketed all of it. He and
some associates diverted the money and Gloria's kids were completely
in the dark. And so now, after learning about the payout,
they file a lawsuit against Alec and his associates and
also Sled decides to open a criminal investigation into Gloria's death.
(33:37):
They even get permission from her family to exume her
body so they can finally do an autosy. So, I mean,
the information is just avalanching at this point, but before
anyone can dive fully into this twisted string or like web,
or whatever you want to call it of deaths and
fraud and forgery, on September fourth, nine one one gets
(33:58):
a call that turns every thing on his head.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Hampton carrying Now one oney, I stopped.
Speaker 6 (34:05):
I got a flat tire, and I stopped, and somebody
stopped to help me.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
And when I turned my back, they tried to shoot me.
They actually shoot you.
Speaker 6 (34:16):
They tried to shoot you.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
They shot me.
Speaker 6 (34:18):
But okay, wait you need ms uh.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
Huh, well, I mean yes, I can't drive, okay, and
then I'm bleeding a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
We're part of your body.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
Uh, I'm not serious, somewhere on my head.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
And what's your name?
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I'm still here, I'm still on the line with you.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
What's your name?
Speaker 4 (34:41):
Alex Murdoch, Alex Murdoc, Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Shortly after that call, Alec is airlifted to a hospital
in Savannah, Georgia for treatment.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Airlifted.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
He's on a totally fight on the phone for someone
who's just been shot in the head.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
So authority say Murdock had h superficial head wound, though
his attorney will later call it significant head trauma. I mean,
there definitely was a lot of blood on him coming
from his head, enough to have spilled into his car
when he went to get his phone to call nine
to one one, and enough for somebody driving by to
feel like they needed to pick him up from the
side of the road and bring him to a nearby ambulance. So,
(35:20):
in my mind, like it might be a protocol thing,
like when you're dealing with a head injury like this, because,
like I mean, it turns out he did have a
bullet wound to the back of his head and he
suffered a skull fracture and a brain bleed. He was
hospitalized for two to three days, in which time he
tells SLED agents that the man who pulled over to
help him with like a flat tire he had, he's
(35:41):
the one that did this, and he was driving a
blue pickup truck. And he tries to give details to
a sketch artist, but SLED never releases any images because
they are apparently not satisfied with them. Like they say,
at first, Alec didn't have enough information about the driver's features.
Speaker 5 (35:57):
And the rest of us online just didn't buy the
story from the job. I mean, it seems like this
guy's mo is when he gets backed into a corner, Oh,
a gun goes off.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
It definitely felt fishy to me at the time. Now
after this.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Like within a couple of days, Alec releases a statement
announcing his resignation from the law firm and that he'll
be entering rehab for a twenty year opioid addiction, which
has only gotten worse since the deaths of his wife
and son, and he essentially uses the addiction to explain
his financial misconduct, and his lawyer says that it was
(36:32):
an enormously expensive habit and that he stole the money
to fund that habit. So two days after that statement,
Alex's law license is suspended indefinitely.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
And not even a week.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
After that, some new details come out in this roadside shooting.
Basically Aleck admits to police that this was staged. He
said it was a staged suicide attempt and he had
asked a man named Curtis Smith to shoot him during
a fake car breakdown in order to make his death
(37:05):
look like murder because he believed it would help his
surviving Sonbuster collect his ten million dollar life insurance payout.
And for what it's worth, Mandy Mattney believes that the
insurance settlement thing is actually made up to.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Did he really mean to die? Though?
Speaker 3 (37:22):
So Curtis who doesn't go by Curtis, he goes by Eddie. Okay,
he's this sixty one year old former client for like
a workers comp case and like also apparently like a
distant cousin of Alex, so they fined him on September fourteenth.
He's arrested on charges of assisted suicide and assault and
conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, among others. But Eddie's version
(37:45):
of things doesn't quite line up with what they heard
from Alec. Eddie actually goes on the Today Show and
says that he was not a willing accomplice in the
whole scheme. He says, quote, I didn't shoot him. If
I had shot him, he'd be.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Dead fair enough.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
He claims that he had a close relationship with Alec,
but said that he was he thinks he was basically
set up. He said he had no clue about the
stage suicide plot, and in his telling, he didn't know
why Aleck asked him to even meet him on this
like remote road in Hampton County, but he went anyways,
and then he says Alex showed up with a gun
asked Eddie to shoot him. When Alec made a sudden movement,
(38:21):
Eddie intervened. The gun went off, but Eddie says that
when it went off, that bullet didn't hit Alec, and
once he realized Alec was okay, he took the gun,
drove off and disposed of it.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
So how does Alec end up with the bullet to
the head if Eddie drove away with the gun.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Honestly, nothing about this incident adds up. It's Alex's word
against Eddie's word. Alex's attorney says Eddie was basically Alex's
primary drug dealer.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Eddie's attorney says that's not true.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Of course, Eddie said he just did like odd jobs
for Alec and that they stayed friends after Alec represented him.
I mean, it's reported some places that Alec hired Eddie
to kill him. Other places say that Eddie shot Alec
willingly without pay. I mean, there is so much conflicting
information out there, it is almost impossible to pin down
what exactly happened on the side of that county road.
(39:14):
But one thing is clear. Alec has been committing financial
crimes for years, and finally authorities are charging.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Him for them and they are not holding back.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
But that's just for the financial crimes, right like, not for.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Murder that eventually comes to So, according to NBC News,
Alec first faces eighty four criminal charges and eleven lawsuits
by July twenty twenty two. We're talking fraud, money laundering,
computer crimes, forgery, criminal conspiracy, narcotics, offensive conspiracy, to purchase
and distribute oxy codone, and honestly, like none of these
(39:49):
charges seem to be very shocking, and Alec will end
up leading guilty to a number of them eventually. Then
that same month, Alec is finally indicted by a grand
jury for the double murder of his wife and son,
Maggie and Paul Murdoch, and he does not go down
without a fight. Alec pleads not guilty to the murder
(40:13):
charges and a trial date is set for January twenty
twenty three. Now that trial has been covered extensively. It
was one of the longest in South Carolina history, and
according to Alex's lawyer, Dick Harpoulian, who we spoke to
for this episode, people came from across the country to spectate,
So I'm only gonna walk everyone.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Through like the highlights.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
The prosecution puts forward that Alec killed Maggie and Paul
on the night of June seventh, and then left to
alibi himself at his mom's house. Their theory is that
leading up to the murders, Alec feared that his financial
crimes were on the verge of being exposed, basically, and
that he saw no way out, so he draws up
this scheme to protect himself by becoming the victim, like
(40:56):
they think, in his mind, if he could be seen
in the eyes of the public as a grieving husse
and a grieving father, maybe all that sympathy would drown
out the growing suspicions about his.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Fraud and his theft. Plus he wouldn't get.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Caught because the murders could be attributed to the threats
that Paul had been getting at the time since Mallory
Beach's boat crash in twenty nineteen, because that was he
was getting a lot, you.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
Know, with all the financial stuff in the mix. It
really strikes me as kind of classic family annihilator situation, right,
Like Alec reached a point of desperation, saw no way
out and made like this incredibly violent decision in a
distressed state.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
And so many times with the family annihilator stuff I
see over and over, what it comes down to is
not even so much like trying to not get caught
for financial crimes.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
It's like this image of themselves they don't want.
Speaker 5 (41:44):
Right yeah, And like like you just said, like the
image not just the whole family legacy, not just the
image of himself, but like painting himself as sympathetic yeah,
and versus like distracting from a poor image.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
And family annihilator like. That is a phrase that the
prosecution throws out repeatedly, But the defense counters that the
case against Alec is entirely based on circumstantial evidence. They
know his car left Mozelle at nine oh seven, but
it's impossible to say whether Maggie and Paul were alive
were dead at nine oh seven. They also claim that
(42:16):
law enforcement was biased against Alec from the beginning, deciding
that he was guilty. And then they say fabricating evidence.
They say someone else committed the murders, if not multiple someones,
and they point to some data from Alec and Maggie's
phone suggesting that a person other than Alec was in
possession of Maggie's phone after the murder.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Wait did they find her phone?
Speaker 1 (42:38):
They did so.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Remember Paul's was like on top of him. Hers wasn't
anywhere near her body. They actually had to track it
down using the Find my iPhone feature on Buster's phone.
So her phone is found on Mozelle Road, just beyond
the Murdoch property. Like on the ground, it sounds like
it was tossed in the woods. The defense uses the
(43:01):
data from Alex's phone to argue that it couldn't have
been him who tossed Maggie's phone.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Like you have to remember, just because someone's phone.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Is somewhere, it doesn't mean they're with the phone, right,
And there are some wild theories out there about why
Alec might have even tossed Maggie's phone that honestly, like,
I don't I say they're wild, but like some of
them kind of makes sense. Like one theory is that
basically Alec, Maggie, and Paul all rode down to the
kennels together in one of the family's golf carts, which
(43:32):
wouldn't have recorded the trip. Right once they got there,
Alex killed Paul and Maggie and then quickly jumped back
in the golf cart to go back to the house.
But here's the problem. Maggie had left her phone in
the golf cart, so when Alex drove away he has
it with him. He actually took it with him, right.
Investigators say that the phone data backs this up, like
no steps are logged on Maggie's phone while she's at
(43:54):
the kennel's and then it suddenly unlocks and changes orientation,
just as Alec or someone would have been handling it.
And you know, the theory goes like, once Alec realized
that he had Maggie's phone, he like panicked. He didn't
have time to go back to the kennels because he
needed to rush to his mom's house for an alibi.
But he definitely couldn't go there with Maggie's phone still
(44:14):
in his possession, so he just like tossed it into
the woods.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
And does anybody ever explore the possibility that Alec may
have had an accomplice.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
I mean, with regard to his financial crimes, definitely right
with the double murder, it seems like Slid really.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Just hones in on him.
Speaker 6 (44:29):
Now.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
The defense, they present a two shooter theory based mainly
on the fact that there were two different guns that
were used, but they obviously assert that neither of those
two shooters was Aleck.
Speaker 5 (44:41):
Honestly, we're so deep into the story, I kind of
forgot that there were two different guns that were used.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
I know, and like it's such an oddity in this case,
and like when you talk about the guns, like the
other weird thing that I don't think I touched on
is they did a bunch of crime scene analysis and
the angle of the shots fire also were weird to me,
Like they point to an assailant that was shorter than Alec.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Alec is like six three sixty four.
Speaker 5 (45:04):
And is that like the analysis of all the shots
or just one or just like some of them.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
So the what they think is, I think they believe
that Paul was shot first. The initial shot to Paul's
shoulder seemed more straight on. All of the others were
like angled up.
Speaker 5 (45:20):
I'm also just thinking, like Alec was a trial lawyer,
like and we already know about one incident that he
staged involving a guy, and like he would have known
that using two weapons would complicate a case against him
in a court room, Like two guns makes per sense
with two people. He's only one person.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah, and list making muddy Yeah, and muddies usually like
for a defense.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Good at trial. Yeah, Listen.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
There are so many theories out there about exactly how
these shootings might have gone down. I mean there's literally
even videos of people online who have like literally rebuilt
the dog kennels and acted out the shooting with dummies
and like basically one of the other theories that they
like play out explains the low angle shots by suggesting
that Alec may have like fallen down from the recoil
(46:07):
or like tripped after shooting once up Paul on the shoulder,
which then would have even forced him to like take
a second shot from the ground, So like, did he
do it intentionally?
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Did he fall? Did he is there some other excuse?
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Basically he's like when he's like on the ground, that's
when he like fires at Maggie. That's they say, there's
a theory, that's why the angle doesn't make sense.
Speaker 5 (46:24):
Okay, So if it's not Alec, then who right, Like
who does the defense put forward? If I'm a juror
I'm supposed to believe Alec didn't do this, I kind
of want to see an alternate theory, like someone else
that we aren't looking at.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
So Dick Carpoolian, his lawyer, suggested in our interview with
him that he suspects Eddie, that guy that was tangled
up in Alex's like roadside shooting thing. But even though
he said that to us, like Eddie was never put
on the stand or called as a witness at this trial.
Because again, like you don't have to say I know
the jury wants it. You don't have to say who.
You just have to provide reasonable doubt. And to provide
(47:02):
that reasonable doubt, I mean, the defense points out that
there was unknown DNA found under Maggie's fingernail and a
brown hair in her hand that ostensibly had not been
tested or explained. I mean, Alec had red hair, And
these are two details that the Internet has really run with.
Some people say that the hair in Maggie's hand was
her own, like maybe it got there when she was
(47:24):
shot in the head. She was dirty blonde, so I
don't know, I haven't seen it myself, or they say
like was it from one of the dogs? I again
haven't seen it. How long was it? And then there's
all these Reddit threads that pour over the DNA under
her fingernails, like some attribute it to the fact. They
say Maggie went to the nail salon earlier that day,
where other people would have obviously been like touching her hands.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
She also went to the doctor's office.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
I don't know, And honestly, the defense doesn't spend nearly
as much time on either of those pieces of evidence
as like I would have expected.
Speaker 5 (47:57):
And yeah, I've this trial is just like such not
even a mess, just confusing.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
What about the car data and the blue.
Speaker 5 (48:06):
Jacket and stuff like, how does the defense explain those things?
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Not even the defense. Alec actually ended up taking the
stand in his own defense to explain it. Oh how
could you? So In his testimony, he says he's clear.
He says, I didn't kill my wife, I didn't kill
my son. He like breaks down multiple times in describing
how he allegedly found them that night.
Speaker 4 (48:30):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
He admits that he lied to law enforcement in early interviews,
but claims that it was because he was on a
massive amount of oxy cotton, which made him paranoid and
distrustful of law enforcement. And he said that he was
basically afraid that if he told investigators he was at
the kennel's that night, like the video at eight forty
four they have of his voice, he thought that they
would immediately.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Set their sights on him.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
And he's like, if they were looking at me as
the suspect, that's going to distract them from finding like
the real killer. Now, he explains that stopping in the
way of his mom's house was because he was trying
to grab.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
His phone, which had like fallen in a crack between.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
Like the seat and the console. He says he doesn't
remember bringing a blue anything. There knows nothing about the
rain jacket, so he doesn't really explain it.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
He's just like non factor.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
But in the end, like it's not enough to convince
a jury. Even Alex's lawyer, Dick told us that while
he believes Alex's story is credible in the context of
a man that is quote lied and cheated and stolen
millions and millions of dollars, absolutely not end quote, it
takes the jury less than three hours to return a
(49:36):
guilty verdict. On March second, twenty twenty three, Alex was
found responsible for the murders of Maggie and paul In
later sentenced to the maximum, which is two consecutive life sentences.
Speaker 5 (49:47):
I think the one thing I'm still struggling with in
this case is just the why. Like to be clear,
I feel really really certain of Alex's guilt, but like, why.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Would he go so far as to kill his.
Speaker 5 (50:02):
Wife and son just to essentially distract people from his
financial crimes? Like, is that really the only explanation we
get out of this?
Speaker 3 (50:12):
I know it, Like it, which, like every family and
Eilattery case, I feel like this is where we end up.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
We're like, really, this is why.
Speaker 5 (50:19):
There are like a million other options that don't include
killing your own family.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
When we spoke to Mandy Mattney, who in my mind,
she's like one of arguably like the deepest in the
trenches of this case, She's like in the same boat.
She says that the motive in this case is one
of the most misunderstood parts of the story. She told
our reporters that she believes Alec was in this sort
of like downward spiral before he killed Maggie and Paul,
(50:44):
and that we have to remember that he grew up
with this belief that because of his last name, he
could just get away with anything. Now, I didn't mention
this before because I didn't want to distract from the
other cases I told you about. But just three days
after Maggie and Paul were murdered, alex father, Randolph Murdoch,
died in his home. And I don't bring this up
(51:05):
to suggest in any way that like Alec was involved
in his father's death, like Randolph died after about it
with cancer. But what Mandy suggested is that Alec was
used to relying on his father to get him out
of messes that he made. She said that Randolph was
really the one who had the pull at police stations
and with solicitors and judges. So maybe Alec believed that
(51:26):
this mess was just another thing that he could get
away with, and he had no way of knowing that
his father wouldn't be around to help him anymore.
Speaker 5 (51:34):
Safety net disappeared after he took these drastic actions.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Yeah, and maybe that that's why, like things continued to escalate,
or we saw him like scrambling scrambling making those like
drastic moves. Now, did Alec really believe that he could
get away with double murder? I don't know, But I
also don't really have a better theory to give you,
like no one does.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
So can I ask, like what happened to Buster?
Speaker 1 (51:59):
He don't really hear about him.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
Yeah, Yeah, he's tried pretty hard to keep just a
low profile. Like from what I can tell, he seems
to still be living in South Carolina. I know he
was enrolled in law school at the University of South Carolina,
but by twenty twenty one he'd actually been asked not
to return. According to court record, citing plagiarism and low grades.
Recorded phone calls that Alec made in prison to him
(52:24):
show that he was like trying to pull any strings
he could to get Buster back in. But in twenty
twenty two, Buster's attorney stated that Buster had quote put
his desire to go to law school.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
On hold for now.
Speaker 6 (52:35):
Now.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
I know, our reporter tried every number we could find
online to contact him, and we even emailed his long
term girlfriend turned wife as of earlier this year for
any kind of comment, but we never heard back. And
all I know is that Buster maintains that his dad
is innocent, and Alec also continues to maintain his innocence
from protective custody at a maximum security prison in South Carolina.
(52:57):
We sent him a letter and asked Dick to make
sure that he got it, but we never heard anything back.
And all the while, Alex lawyers are still fighting to
appeal his conviction. I mean, they are also pushing for
a new trial alleging jury tampering. Now, a judge denied
that motion back in January of twenty twenty four after
an evidentiary hearing, but Alex teen didn't stop there. In
(53:20):
August of twenty twenty four, they elevated the issue to
the South Carolina Supreme Court. Oral arguments are pending, and
until then, Alec will remain in his eight y ten
single cell unit. According to Dick, he's now sober, busy
with prison jobs, and of course still pouring over his
own defense, still strategizing, still looking for a way out now.
(53:46):
Mandy Mattey ended up writing a book on this case
called Blood on Their Hands, Murder, Corruption and the Fall
of the Murdoch Dynasty, and her work has been optioned
into a dramatized limited series that's about to come out.
So I don't think that this is the last we'll
be hearing about the Murdocks. In twenty twenty three, South
Carolina law enforcement officially declared Stephen Smith's death a homicide
(54:10):
rather than a traffic accident. But still it's never been
fully explained and no one has ever been arrested in
connection with it. We reached out to SLED for more
information about Stephen's case, but they declined a comment, saying
that it's an ongoing investigation. So if you out there,
if you know anything about his roadside death in July
of twenty fifteen, please come forward.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Now.
Speaker 3 (54:32):
Mallory's family was eventually able to settle a lawsuit with
one of the places that served Paul that night, and
with Maggie's estate and Buster, whose idep Paul used to
buy the alcohol. But no one has ever been put
behind bars. As far as I can tell. Lauria's body
was never actually exhumed. The criminal investigation into her death
is ongoing.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
You can find all the.
Speaker 3 (55:06):
Source material for this episode on our website, crime junkie
dot com, and if you want to listen to more
episodes like this one and all of our episodes completely
add free, be sure to join our fan club. You'll
also get early access to new episodes every.
Speaker 5 (55:21):
Week, and you can follow us on Instagram at Crime
Junkie Podcast.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. I think Chuck
would approve
Speaker 8 (56:00):
One
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