266: High Profile: The Murdaugh Family, Part 2

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
Hey everyone, it's Jen and this is Lindsay and welcome
back to Corpus Delicti the podcast. We have finished up
with the back history of Alec Murda and we are
getting down deep even further. There's more questionable debts in
this family history that could or could not be tied
to the family, so we're just going to jump in.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
So last episode, again we talked about the boating accident,
we talked about Steven Smith who was found in the
middle of the road, and all of this was kind
of building up to the deaths of Maggie and Paul,
which is Alex's wife and son. But there's still one more,
like Jen said, one more questionable situation that we have

(01:07):
to talk about, and that is the death of Gloria Sadderfield.
Gloria Saderfield worked for the Murdau family for over twenty years.
She was the housekeeper, she helped care for the kids.
She did a lot for this family, and that's a
long time to work for one family. Needless to say,

(01:27):
over twenty years, they knew her very well and in
some of the documentaries and articles, people recall that Gloria
was almost like a mother figure to these boys. Because
she filled in a lot when Alec and Maggie were
out or just whatever, and they were very, very close.
So it was very shocking when in February of twenty eighteen,

(01:50):
Gloria was found at the bottom of the steps leading
into the Murdaw home. And this was the home at Mozelle.
Now remember we've talked about a few different properties with
this family. She was found by Maggie. She was still
alive but unconscious, and she was brought to the hospital
and she died several days later, on February twenty six

(02:15):
after succumbing to a stroke that was caused by this fall.
So when Maggie called nine one one, she said, and
this is a quote, my housekeeper has fallen and her
head is bleeding. I cannot get her up. This was
on February second, And she goes on to say during
that call, which was six minutes long, that Gloria Sadderfield

(02:36):
fell up eight brickstairs at the Moselle home and was
bleeding from the head. She says that basically, she she's
going up the stairs, the dogs kind of jump in
front of her, she trips over the dogs and she
falls up the stairs. Of note though which you don't

(02:57):
hear in the background of this call for what a
it's worth or any dogs barking. There's no background noise. Now,
did the dogs run off? Where the dogs put away
before they called nine one one so they didn't mess
anything up? Don't know, but no dogs. Then Paul hops
on the phone and says she is not unconscious, she's
just mumbling.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
So we don't know when the fall actually happened or
who was there when it happened, but we do know
that Maggie and Paul were there to discover her. Now,
of course Rumorbil being the Rumor Bill, it was said
that Gloria had found Paul's drugs and she was pushed
down the stairs. Gloria had been concerned about Paul for

(03:41):
a long time. He is still a kid at this point,
and she had told her sister that Paul would kill
animals for no reason. So we're already seeing some tendencies here.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
That's not to say that Paul Murdle is a serial
killer or would have a serial killer, but it's just
to say that it was a concerning behavior, and I
have seen it presented as it was Paul's drugs that
were found and I've also seen it presented as it
was alex drugs that were found and Maggie was trying

(04:18):
to protect that. So I've seen it both ways, so
not really sure which it was. But she did have
a lot of concerns about Paul.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
And Alex is known to stash his drugs everywhere and
hiding them like under the bed, in the drawers, behind
the drawers, under the drawers, so it could have been
originally Alex and then Paul found him that was taking him.
Now the coroner takes over and he looks at it
and he says, this is a natural cause of death
because of the trip and fault which led to the stroke,

(04:50):
and that's what he put on the death certificate and
no autopsies performed.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
But isn't it weird that they specified on the call
that she fell up the stairs. But and again in
the documentary they showed some of this in you know,
more detail, where she was. She was laying back at
the bottom of the stat the bottom of the stairs.

(05:18):
I that's not falling up the stairs. She's on her
back with a head wound.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
And to the back of the head, to the back
of the head, there's a head wound yeah, so it.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Just it's it seems a little weird, which of course
causes people to be suspicious and people are like, what
the heck that doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
After Gloria has to wait, Alec persuaded Gloria's sons to
hire an attorney, Corey Fleming, to represent them to bring
a wrongful death claim against Alec so they could collect
from his homeowner's insurance policies. Again, you have a lawyer
saying I need you to assume me, but you can
only sue me if you use this lawyer. The sons

(06:05):
are young, they don't come from a lot of money
like Alec and his family. These are very much hard working,
working class family. And the son was like, I don't
know what else to do. This sounds good. I can
get the money, you know, we need some income comeing
in and they agree.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Not to mention she worked for them for twenty years.
They trusted this family, They trusted them. They had a
very long relationship. The Myrdals watched these her kids grow up,
so yeah, they had a whole reason to doubt it.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
But he did this at her funeral, where emotions are high.
They're not thinking. All they're thinking is I'm here to
bury my mom because it's some horrible accident, and he
comes to them at the funeral, I need you to
sue me, and I need you to use this lawyer.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
So, as it turns out, Alec and Corey were in
this together and they're running a personal insurance claims scam.
So the insurance company ends up settling the estate's claim
for more than four point three million dollars. So there's
two payments, one of five hundred and five thousand and
one of three point eight million. So Alec and Corey

(07:20):
file this money comes in to them through Corey, right,
because Corey's the official, he's the official attorney. Corey and
Alec split the settlement because Alec Murdaal's insurance paid it,
not Alec himself. It's going through the insurance and it
sounds all well and good, but none of it went

(07:44):
to Gloria's sons. In fact, they did not even know
about it until the boat accident happened. When an article
came out with the settlement total and they're like, wait, settlement,
what are you talking about. We've been told continuously that
we're still working on it. We're still working on it.
The case is still in process. Meanwhile, Alec and his

(08:06):
old buddy over here are rolling in the dough and
just telling them, oh, it's still in process. We don't
know anything yet. All these articles are coming out, and
when Alec ends up getting arrested in September, glorious case
does end up getting reopened. So investigators said at the time,

(08:27):
and this is what last year, year and a half ago,
they said that they plan to exume her body with
questions mounting around the nature of her death. While Alec
is a waiting trial on fraud charges. So there's murder
charges and there's fraud charges, and again we're gonna get
to the murder charges. Just bear with us. So while

(08:49):
he's a waiting trial, Alex starts to say, well, I
actually lied about her death originally, and he says that
he invented the story that she fell over the dog
in order to ensure the life insurance company paid up.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
So he remember, Alec was never there.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
It was Paul exactly, Maggie or was he because we
don't know who was there because there's no dogs in
the background, we don't know how much time lapsed. And
he is saying that he invented the story. So if
he invented the story, here's my question, what did Maggie

(09:34):
and Paul know about that? Because Maggie made the nine
one one call. But if Alec invented the story, what
did he say to her? Did he find the housekeeper
at the bottom of the stairs and told Maggie like, well,
how did that play out? Do you see what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
I think my personal theory is that he said, you
know what, I'll just take care of this. We don't
have to worry about it.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, she was in the.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Dark, and then the boating accident happens, and she starts
to see these articles. And remember there is rumors that
she went to a divorce lawyer and a forensic accountant.
So this may be all kind of bubbling up for her, right.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Which is why I wonder how that happened. You know,
what prompted her to make the nine one one call?
Did she genuinely just walk up on it or what
did he just say, Hey, look tell him this. I
came home and found her this way. So here's what
you need to tell them, you.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Know, because the dogs are always in the kennels.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Only two, which we will find out.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, there's only two that they let kind of roam around.
There are more pets than they were hunting kennel dogs,
but most of the time most of the dogs always
stayed in the kennels. Yeah, all right, so let's finally
get to the meat of the subject. Let's talk about
Maggie and Paul and their murders. It's Memorial Day weekend.

(11:00):
Paul gets in trouble again. Remember, he can't seem to
keep out of trouble. The DNR, which is the Department
of Natural Resources, stops him from getting on his family
boat with a cooler full of alcohol and a group
of friends.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Thank god. Keep in mind, he's about to go on
trial for killing someone doing this exact same thing.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, Mallory Beach. This happens while he is waiting for
the hearing for Mallory's wrongful death suit. So it's a
long weekend. He gets in trouble. They stop him and
Paul causes. Dad says, hey about this, can you fix it?
Because Dad's fixed it before. Dad has a history of

(11:49):
fixing things. Now just two years before he crashed the boat.
So I mean he's about to get into the hearings
and about to get into the trials because every possible
term they've been delaying, in delaying and delaying. It's a
normal tactic. So July seventh, sometime between six thirty and
seven thirty in the morning, Maggie wakes up at Mozille

(12:12):
and she calls the new housekeeper that morning and throughout
the day, so she just back and forth. They're talking,
they're chatting, they're texting. Her and Maggie were close. They
hit it off pretty well. They were described as good friends.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Maggie texted Blanca on the way to work and asked
if she could pick up Capri Sons on her way
to the house. Now. While on the phone, Blanca hears
Alec in the background. And when Blanca gets to the house,
Maggie had left for a doctor's appointment just before she arrived.
So Alec comes out to greet her about an hour

(12:49):
after she gets there. He is wearing a blue blazer
khaki pants, and she said that he appeared really anxious
and not his normal self. That day at work, Alec
is working on the boat case and it's the civil suit.
He had to present his family's finances, and so he
leaves the house at twelve oh six PM headed to

(13:11):
the law firm in Hampton and he gets to work
at twelve twenty four. So we just mentioned that he
had to present the family's finances, right, so let's pause
for just a second and talk about that. So at
his law firm, Jeane Seconder, who is the CFO and COO,
She basically knows every penny that goes in and out

(13:35):
of the law firm, right, that's her job, And she
made an interesting discovery that Alec was stealing from the company,
and she was going to confront him that day.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
She's having a crap week, you know, it's all.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
It's all bubbling up really quick. So she is trying
to find seven hundred and ninety two thousand dollars that
is unaccounted for. Can't find I did. And he had
also been trying to secretly transfer assets to Maggie's name
to hide it from the lawsuit, which this CFO COO

(14:12):
discovers as well. So basically, the Murdaals are about to
be sued. They have to present their finances and the
Beach family is obviously going to try to get what
they can from the Murdaals, right because they their negligence
resulted in their daughter's death. So Alec is essentially saying, Okay,
this account is in Maggie's name, not mine, not Paul's.

(14:34):
I own the boat, I'm at stake here, not Paul's name.
This is justin Maggie's name, so that the money is
safe and they can't take it. That's what he is
doing when she discovers this. So Cowager goes, or really
one of the bosses basically goes to him, and in
the middle of the confrontation she is saying, I know

(14:56):
you're stealing money. The hospital calls Alec and says he hey,
your father is dying, and Alex's like, I gotta go.
So Alec leaves and he goes to the hospital. Now,
Maggie texts the housekeeper. She says, I'm waiting at the doctor.
Alec wants me to come home. I have to leave

(15:16):
the door open at a disto. His dad is back
in the hospital. No cancer, it's pneumonia. So she's communicating
saying Alec wants me home, his dad's not doing well. Now.
Alec never went to the hospital that day. Instead, he
calls back to the office. He calls Jean later that
day asking about his balances in his four to oh

(15:39):
one k because it's connected to the boat case.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Maggie is wanting to stay in Adesta. It's another property
they owned, remember the beach house that night. In the
following days, trying to get ready for an upcoming Fourth
of July party. They always celebrate a big Fourth July
party at this beach house. She wanted to go, get
it ready, get it cleaned up, and she wanted to

(16:03):
stay there that weekend. However, Maggie text the housekeeper and
asked her to cook dinner for the family. Hey, I'm
not gonna be there at the time, and this is
not uncommon for the housekeeper to cook when things are
hectic and their lifestyle is fast paced. Three twenty eight,
the housekeeper finishes cooking dinner for Alex, Maggie, and Paul
at Mozelle. She texts Maggie, who is in Charleston area

(16:28):
because of the doctor's appointments and getting the house ready, says,
dinner's on the stove, just left. Maggie texts Paul about
meeting her for dinner at Mozelle. So right now, with
a lot of coordination, Alec wants her home. She's trying
to get Paul back to the house so they can
all eat together. Aleck tries to FaceTime Maggie and she

(16:49):
doesn't pick up. It's at three forty one PM. Alec
would manually delete this call from his phone's history. He
deletes this. We don't know if he deletes it right
then and there or if it was deleted later, but
it does show in the phone records when they subpoenaed
the phone records that it was manually deleted.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
So also going back to Maggie wanting to stay at
the Edisto property, keep in mind that there are rumors
going on that she might be trying to get out
of the marriage, so she's also wanting to stay there
to stay away potentially as well. So just throwing that
out there too. So that call is deleted at three

(17:30):
forty one or the FaceTime rather so right before four
o'clock that afternoon, Roger Dale Davis comes by the property.
He's feeding the dogs, he's feeding the chickens, which he does.
That's normal, and he tells police later no one's at
the property, it was just me. He leaves at four thirty.
Job is done, but before he leaves, he takes the

(17:52):
water hose. He waters off the inside of the kennels.
They've got all the hunting dogs out there, and it's
the house and then you know, not too too terribly
far away, but still kind of far away, there's the kennels.
They're outdoor, they're covered, but it's it's where the dogs
are kept. Now. He is meticulous about hanging up this hose,

(18:12):
leaving the kennels in perfect condition. He's you know, any
dog crap, dog pee whatever. He's hosing it down and
he hangs up the hose before he leaves. So Alec
tries to FaceTime Maggie again at four thirty five, and
again this call is manually deleted from the phone. At

(18:35):
six oh six, Paul calls and talks to Alec again.
This is manually deleted from the phone. After Paul talks
to Alec, he texts his mom saying what did Blanca
cook for dinner. Alec leaves the law office at six
point twenty four and heads back to the property at

(18:56):
Moselle Mozelle's. The property with the dog kennels Edisto is
the one where Maggie is trying to get ready for
the party.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
Paul calls his dad at six forty and they talked
for about two and a half minutes. Alex then calls
Maggie right after, which last for about a minute a half,
So you're probably thinking, Hey, on my way meet you there. Hey,
just letting you know where I'm at, and you guessed it.
These calls were also manually deleted from Alex's phone history.

(19:25):
Paul pulls up to Mozilla at seven o four. He
had just gotten off the phone with his uncle John
Marvin murdaal Alex claims that he and Paul were riding
around the property to plant some flowers, looking for hogs,
and target practicing with some of their guns. This was
before or after dinner, since Maggie was getting back from

(19:45):
a doctor's appointment and a pedicure. So you hear a
lot of conflicting stories that they did this before. You
hear a lot of things that it was after. But
there is video footage of them riding around and playing
with a very skinny tree that's kind of limped over

(20:07):
and looking at where they're going to plant the sunflowers.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
So seven fourteen to eight fifteen at night, Alec and
Paul's phone records have some interesting things going on. It
shows each of them taking steps. You know, it can
track where you're going, how many steps you have for
the day. And there is a Snapchat video that Paul

(20:33):
has of Paul playing with a tree on the property
and it was taken with Paul's phones on the property,
going around looking at things where we're going to plant
the sunflowers, the hogs, all that. Paul takes a video
at that time it's on Snapchat. So after dinner, Paul
and Maggie go down to the kennels where the dogs are,

(20:55):
while Alec is at the house. He's watching TV and
Alec falls asleep on the cat. His phone does not
record any steps from eight oh nine to nine oh
two pm. So he texts Maggie at nine oh six
and says, Hey, I'm gonna go drive out to see mom.
His mom lives by herself. Remember, his dad's in the hospital,

(21:15):
so he's gonna go check on mom. So from eight nineteen,
so going back a little bit, because that was at
nine oh six, So from eight nineteen to eight forty four,
Paul's phone has him texting and snapchatting friends pretty consistently,
and at eight forty four he takes another video for
someone named Gibson at the kennels showing cash, which is

(21:38):
Gibson's dog. Gibson's dog is on the property in the kennels.
The dog had heard its tale, and Paul was videoing
him to show his friend, like, hey, look here's how
he's doing. We're gonna get to that later, so put
a pin in that. But at eight forty nine, so
that video is at eight forty four. At eight forty
nine PM, Paul's phone for the last time.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
Now he claims this is Alec claims that he was
at his mom's for about an hour and he talked
to Shelley. When Shelley is the caregiver for his mom.
His mom has got Alzheimer's. Shelley claims that when Alec arrived,
his mom was already asleep, and he stayed and talked
just a bit and left. So Alex saying I'm there

(22:26):
for over an hour, Shelley's going No, he just stopped by,
said hi, said mom's asleep, and he went on his way.
So two very conflicting stories there. On the right home.
Aleck calls his brother John and Buster. On his way home.
He texts Maggie and she does not answer. He goes
to the house and goes in. Maggie and Paul are

(22:47):
not there. This is his side of the story. And
so he went down to the kennels and that's when
he sees Maggie and Paul brutally murdered. So all of
this was his story. So on June seventh, to twenty
twenty one, at ten oh six, Hampton County nine to
one one dispatch gets the nine to one one call

(23:08):
from Alec. He tells the dispatcher his name, the address
to the Mozelle property, telling him that his wife and
son have been shot badly. This is a cold blooded murder.
Those are his words, and then disconnects the line. So
the police come to the crime scene at ten twenty five,
and the first thing, the very first thing that Alex

(23:31):
gets out of his mouth as soon as he sees
the cop, you can see it on the body cam video,
is saying everything he can about Paul's boting accident and
how Paul had received death threats. All right, guess when
we come back, we're gonna get into a lot of details.
So we're going to take a really quick break and

(23:54):
we'll see in just a few minutes, all.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Right, welcome back. So when we left off, police had arrived.
Alex starts saying Paul has been receiving death threats. There
was the boat case. Kind of seems like to me
at least, that he is setting the stage for what
may have happened. So you know, they've got body cams
on and in the documentaries you can see it. And

(24:21):
in the police footage, Alec is wearing a white shirt,
perfectly clean green cargo khaki shorts, also clean and bright,
clean tennis shoes. He does appear distraught, he's babbling. But
what is also captured on this footage is the water
hose on the ground and water pulled around the feed

(24:44):
room where they keep all the food for the chickens
in the docks. So to better understand this, let's talk
about the property for a minute. We've talked about it
a little bit. But the house itself, it's it's gorgeous.
It's two stories, it's white, It's got about seven steps
leading up to the front door. The house also has
a barn and kennels. All of this is on a

(25:06):
twenty one acre property, so it's very very spread out.
The house was a short drive away from the barn,
and the kennels are not viewable from the home, so
they're on their property. They're within a twenty one acre radius,
but they're not right up against the house. So the
kennels are this straight line of cages with a tin

(25:29):
roof like I said earlier, and they hold the hunting dogs.
And at the end of the row of kennels there's
this small room with a door that holds all the supplies.
It's like a you know, like a pantry or a
storage room. And in the trial they end up calling
it the feeding room. So the barn is close by
here and it's a one room storage area that holds

(25:50):
a tractor storage for items. That's where you're gonna have
all of your farm tools. So the police called in SLED,
which which is the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. They
called them in to help with everything that is going on,
and they arrive on the scene at eleven forty seven pm.

(26:13):
The SLED Detective Special Agent David Owens brings Alec to
his police car. He says, come sit in here and
let's talk. I'm going to interview you. From the police car.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Alex claims that he had just arrived home from visiting
with his mom, and he saw Maggie and Paul on
the ground. He also said that he tried to turn
Paul over since he was faced down, and Paul's cell
phone fell out of his pocket. When he realized he
was unable to do anything do CPR or to help Paul.

(26:45):
When he knew Paul was not coming back, he put
the cell phone back on Paul, he says. Then he
goes over to Maggie and sees that she is dead
as well. Now, he claims he had visited his mom
earlier since she's in late stages of Alzheimer's and his
dad's in the hospital. He brings up the son's boat
wreck case, stating that Paul had been kind of verbally

(27:10):
attacked over the situation. He's talking about how he was
getting death threats, you know, messages, the community was turning
on him. So he's definitely setting the scene here now.
June eighth, the next day, Slud is at the property
assessing the scene and gathering evidence. Paul was shot by

(27:30):
a shotgun and Maggie was killed by an automatic rifle,
so we have two separate weapons. Kind of makes you
think that there's two killers here, right, two different weapons
carried by different people. Well hold your horses, because this
family kept a lot of guns. In fact, they had

(27:52):
a gun room twenty six hunting guns, which includes shotguns, rifles,
a three hundred blackout rifle. There was two of them originally,
but one they sit with stolen. There's a lot of
ammunition in the documentaries, in the photos that you find
on Google and what have you, there's ammunition and guns everywhere.

(28:18):
They lined the walls, the ammunition lines to shelves on
the ground. They did uncover two types of spent bullet casings,
which indicated that those are the two types that were used.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
So Alec calls Blanca around six point thirty that next
morning because remember they're doing the investigation the next day
in the daylight, and he tells her that Maggie and
Paul had been murdered, and he says, can you come
by the house and help me clean up since quote,
a lot of people will be there. Okay, this is
a crime scene.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
And that's the first thing that you're thinking of, right right,
come clean.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
Yeah. So, now he did tell her not to go
to the house by the road leading to the kennels
because Sled was there. So he's like, come on the
other side. So she goes by another road and goes
into the house.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
I'm just wondering, don't go in front of the place
to let them know you're here?

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah? Absolutely? Or is it at the house or is it?

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Don't go that way because all the police are blocking.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
He's he's trying to play it off as they're blocking,
but really it's I don't want them to know that
my housekeeper's coming in to clean up a crime scene.
So when the housekeeper gets there, so first she noticed
that the pots that she had left on the stove
the night before, remember she cooked dinner for the family.
They were in the fridge with the lids on, which
is very out of the norm for Maggie because you're

(29:45):
gonna put it in some sort of container or whatever.
But the pots are just in the fridge with the
lids on. Didn't look like anybody had really eaten much anyway.
She noticed that Maggie's pajamas were laid out neatly on
the floor leading into the bathroom. Keep in mind, it's
the next morning now, and there's pajamas on the floor.

(30:06):
So John Marvin Murdall, which is Alex's brother, we've talked
about him very briefly. Was also at the house that morning,
and he was there when police came and asked to
search the house. John was even able to walk to
the kennels and look around, and he decided that the
right thing to do in this case was to start

(30:28):
cleaning up. He's out at the kennels and he's like,
this needs to be cleaned right now, in the middle
of an investigation. We don't do that while the housekeeper's
cleaning the house. That sucks.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, she cleaned the house before the police searched.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
Wait, So I mean the sled team or the local
cops should have locked down the house. They should have
locked down the barn, They should have locked down the kennels.
They shouldn't have left, or they shouldn't have let this
big group of people because the family showed up in force.
The brother's there. I mean, you could see all of
them sitting around the gun room. That room should have

(31:08):
been quarantined, marked out, marked off nobody. It just feels
a lot like John Benet when they were letting people
just come in and out. There's no telling what could
have been found.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
So then Alec rides over to his mom's house and
he's talking to Shelley again. Shelley's the caregiver, and he
tells Shelley, quote, if someone asks you that I was there,
meaning at the house visiting his mom, just say I
was here for thirty to forty minutes. Now she's confused
because she's like, well, you were only here for like

(31:43):
twenty minutes, so why are you telling me to tell
people you were here longer. So she talks to her brother,
who is a police officer, and her brother encourages her
to just tell the court the truth and say he
was only there for twenty minutes. So she's insistent he
was not here as long as he says he is.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
This poor woman when she gets to try, you can
tell she adores his mom. She loves him, and she
has this huge heart, and she is struggling with this.
She loves that family very very much. But she will
go on to say, you know, he asks me to
go against my faith, and my faith says do not lie.

(32:23):
My brother backed me on this, and you could tell
it really hurt her not to lie for the Murdos.
But I mean, well, good for her, I mean, you
got your props.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yeah, absolutely, So three days after the death of Maggie
and Paul, Alex's father dies due to complications from pneumonia.
He was in the hospital. All of that really did
happen the way he said it did. And after Maggie
and Paul's funeral, Alex calls Blanka, the housekeeper and asked
her and her husband to come live at Mozelle. So well. Meanwhile,

(33:01):
Buster and Alex spent the rest of that summer together
going to boat shows and living at a disto, so
not at the property where all of this happened.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
So two months after the deaths of Maggi and Paul,
Alex is brought in for questioning. Since the timeline it's
just not adding up for June seventh. You know, you
have Shelley who is saying no, twenty minutes. Then you
have the cell phone evidence. They bring up that there
was a video of Alex taken by Paul messing around

(33:34):
with a small tree leaning over. We kind of alluded
to this earlier and Alex was wearing a light blue
dress shirt and tan khaki pants. Now remember when the
police said he was wearing a white T shirt the
green cargo shorts, and they seemed very clean and pristine. Well,
since the video didn't have a timestamp on it, it

(33:54):
did look like the sun was setting, so they're all
trying to get this timeline nailed down. So it could
have been about seven thirty or eight, because they looked
at when the sun set during that day. And he
said as soon as he got home from driving around
with Paul, he changed clothes, So that's his reason why

(34:15):
he was out in a different clothes. September third, twenty
twenty one, Randy, which is another brother of Alex and
the other partner of the law firm, confronts him about
the embezzlement because remember that all was happening the day
that Maggie and Paul die. They're not going to give

(34:35):
up on this. They know he has been embezzling a
lot of money, they know how, they've traced it all back,
they know the large sum, and they're not going to
let these desks get in the way of saying, hey,
you need to step down from the law firm. So
he was forced to quietly resign from the lawm his

(35:00):
grandfather had founded and his dad had worked at. So
it's all coming a park for him right now.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
So let's go to September fourth of twenty twenty one.
This is about three months after Maggie and Paul were murdered.
A nine one one call comes in and a lady
is driving down the road and she saw a man
who is waving his hands for her to stop, and
the man is bloody, he's bleeding. So she calls nine
one one because she thought it looked like a setup

(35:32):
and she didn't stop, so some sort of radar was
going off in her mind, but she did call police.
So nine one one dispatches police who go to the
scene and they see Alec Murda who has been shot
in the head on the side of the road. He
was airlifted to a local hospital. He makes a full recovery.

(35:53):
And let's talk about cousin Eddie.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Cousin Eddie is the black sheep on the other side
of the Murdoff family. He's loosely connected. Alex and Eddie
met when Eddie worked for Alex's dad, doing minor work
and running errands for the family. The work could range
from fixing up the landscape or being a handyman, you
know that kind of work, A lot of hands on,

(36:20):
intensive physical labor type of work. Well around ten or
ten thirty. The morning is September fourth, twenty twenty one.
Alex called and asked cousin Eddie to meet him at
a funeral home in Varnville. When Alex arrives, Eddie said
that he pulled the sudden visor of his vehicle around
and open the window just a little bit so you

(36:42):
could only see like just a little part of his face.
So he's sitting in his car. He turned to roll
down the window. He put the visor down, so he's
like being all incognito, shady type. If someone's driving by,
they wouldn't be able to see that. It was Alex straight,
all right. So when cousin Eddie asked, what in the

(37:03):
world are you doing, because this is kind of weird,
Alex said, I don't need to be seen in town.
I'm being watched. He would tell cousin Eddie that sled
was watching him. You know what you're You're probably right,
I mean, it's probably a good thing to be a
little bit paranoid on that. And Alex says, do you
love me? Cousin Eddie replied yeah, like a brother, and

(37:26):
then Alex said, I need you to shoot and kill
me so that buster gets all the life insurance and
make it look like an accident. Okay, Eddie claims, I
refuse to do this, and Alex just takes off and
drives away. Now cousin Eddie is worried. He says he
jumps in his car and follows just to make sure.

(37:47):
Alec didn't want to hurt himself, so that's why he
chased him down. Alex walks up to cousins Eddie car.
Alec had a gun. Eddie takes the gun and he
said he fires it in the air like it was
a struggle. He was trying to get the gun away
from Alec and unfortunately it goes off and Alec gets

(38:09):
hit in the head with a bullet and he drops
to the pavement. Well, during all this, cousin Eddie's asking Alec, man,
why do you want me to shoot you? This just
doesn't feel right, And Alec tells Eddie that Sled was
going to be able to prove that Aleck killed his family,

(38:30):
but he wanted Buster to get the money, so he
stages this whole thing because Eddie claims that he went home,
he didn't shoot him on purpose, or that the gun
actually went off, So there's a lot of tell your
own adventure type of stories. Here there's one that says,
I did shoot the gun, but it was a body accident,

(38:52):
or I was struggling with the gun and it went off,
or I didn't shoot him at all. So he's those
are his three varying events.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
But Alex's story to the police was first that he
was going down the road in Maggie's car, his late
wife's car. He gets a low pressure alert on his dashboard.
He's like, oh, no, I have a flat tire. He
pulls over and a car or truck drives by, turns
around and pulls over and shoots him in the head,

(39:23):
and he tells slid a few weeks later that cousin
Eddie shot him, which contradicts what he told police. Now again,
cousin Eddie, he's all over the place. He claims he
never shot Aleck, but they were able to tie him
to drug deals and check fraud with Alec. Now, Alec,
we've talked about this a little bit, but at this

(39:43):
time he's addicted to drugs, mostly oxy and cousin Eddie
was allegedly his dealer. Eddie does admit that he delivered
pills to someone at a law office and took two
hundred dollars for it that day. So September sixth, two
days after the shooting, Alec checks himself into a rehab

(40:07):
facility in Orlando to help him with this drug addiction. Now,
keep in mind he is being looked at for murder.
He just basically tried to fake his death. So what
is he trying to prove here? Now? Is this even
does he say I have a problem and I need help,

(40:29):
which has you know led to all this? Is? He
is at smoking mirrors? What's going on? To me?

Speaker 1 (40:34):
It's like, Okay, his law office caught him and they
confronted him, Hey, you're in busling money. We need to
talk about this. His wife and son die, he is
going to be put on trial. All of a sudden
he gets shot in the head. It is like he's

(40:56):
trying to use diversions in the worst possible way, the
worst kind of diversions. Just say, hey, don't look at me,
look over here, look over here. I'm the victim. So
maybe hoping praying that these charges get dropped, which they're not.
I mean, you can't just drop these charges. And then

(41:16):
it just it just feels very.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Manipulative, absolutely yeah, I totally agree. So eight days later,
on September fourteenth of twenty one, SLED makes a public
statement saying that they had proof that cousin Eddie was
indeed Alex drug dealer. He is arrested for having conspired
with Alex to commit this whole fake death thing or

(41:43):
intended to be real death, and again for the purposes
of Buster receiving a ten million dollar insurance payout. So
cousin Eddie ends up getting charged with assisted suicide, aggravated
assault and battery, and insurance fraud. So cousin Eddi did
take checks that Ali gave him and he deposited them

(42:05):
at the bank, and then he also withdrew other large amounts.
So in total, the money laundering scheme that he was
running with drug money and money that Alec gave him
total two point four million dollars. So September sixteenth, twenty
twenty one, remember Alec is trying to do the right

(42:26):
thing and puts himself in rehab. Well, the state pulls
him out and they drove him straight from rehab to
his bond hearing related to the faked suicide, fake death,
and people in the courtroom were like, where's the bullet
wound you got shot.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Because his hair is so short at this time, you
can't see it.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
They're like, there's no visible wound, there's no scab, there's
no dressing over it, there's nothing. What the heck happened?
So he was driven right back to rehab in Florida
after this to continue his treatment. Now the state charges
him with Gloria's settlement fraud. At this point, he gets

(43:11):
picked up at the front door of the rehab facility
by the police and driven back to jail for another
bond hearing. So at this point there's so many things
in play. There's Paul's boat accident in play. There is
you know, the death, the murder of his wife and son,
there's this whole cousin Eddie fake death. There's Gloria. I mean,
he's just everything is flying at him right now.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
So during the hearing, the judge asks the SLED agent
to come forward and talk more about the allegations that
they're investigating, to include Stephen's death. Remember Steven we talked
about him in the first episode. Add to that additional
fraud cases, and the judge has taking a look at
you know, murder, murder, attempted assisted suicide or death by suicide,

(44:00):
and Eddie then all these money allegations, and the judge
was like, you know what, we're not giving you bond.
I'm sorry. We can't let you out that you could
die by your own hand at this point, So we're
gonna keep you. We're going to keep you safe because
you need to make it to court. Not to mention
another incident that alleges that Alex and cousin Eddie used

(44:23):
hundreds of illegal transactions to quote to facilitate the acquisition
and distribution of illegally obtained narcotics in several counties, not
just one, not just two, but there's several of them
throughout South Carolina for eight years going back to twenty thirteen.
They're running their deal drug cartel.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, basically they're Yeah, it just is.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Not looking good.

Speaker 3 (44:48):
But I mean it's like you're literally being charged for
everything right now and bezzling money, laundering, running a drug cartel, murder,
your death.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
I mean, you've got it all, my dude.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
This doesn't. So here's the real here's the full list.
Stealing money from.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
The firm not good.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Stealing money from Gloria's family again not good. Paul's boat
civil suit still going on. They didn't drop it. They
still want their money because Alec owned the boat and
he let a minor get heavily intoxicated. Then we have

(45:31):
a reopen investigation in Steven's murder case, murder charges for
Maggie and Paul. Nineteen total lawsuits against Alec over one
hundred charges just in financial crimes. So of course you
know what comes next. Woman problems and it doesn't get better,

(45:52):
but we're gonna cover that in the next episode. See
gotta come back. Don't worry, it's worth it. It's worth coming
back to all right.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
So that wraps up episode two, but we do want
to take a quick minute and shout out our two
new Patreon members, Chelsea and Carrie. Welcome to the team.
You guys will have early access to these Also, since
I just figured out how to record on on Skype
and not Zoom, we might be posting this one in

(46:26):
video form un edited God bless it, so that might
be there as well. Depending on when this comes out,
This will probably come out this weekend, which means you
might catch the Patreon Live which is going to be
on Tuesday, October first. It is the September Patreon, even
though it falls on October first, just because of the

(46:47):
way the monstylin went not so the month went by
really fast. Yeah. So Tuesday night, seven pm join us
for our live episode. Speaking of Patreon Live, we have
something new we're trying for October, November, and December, and
it relates to something we talked about in at the

(47:09):
end of the last episode. So we are going to
do Patreon Live book club style for October, November, and December.
Jen and I have been reading the Fourth Monkey books.
We've been talking about it relentlessly, especially in the Discord server,
and we love them. The people who are reading them
with us seem to like it, so we wanted to

(47:30):
do it book club style and talk about these So
if you're hearing this, if you're on Patreon and you're
going to join us in October, start with The Fourth
Monkey if that's book one in the series, and be
ready for it towards the end of October.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
I promise you, once you pick it up, you don't
put it down. It's not on Libby. So if you're
like an Audible member or you're like me, you have
to have the physical trophy. I think on Amazon's like
twelve or thirteen dollars. It is so worth it.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
But it's been a long time since I have read
a series this solid. In my mind, this is a
really solid to me. The third one is like action
on every page. I'm just I'm a big fan. If
you like the whole serial killer, who'd done it? Detective,
But it's just it's so well executed, it grips you

(48:27):
from the beginning. So anyway, we'll do that win in October,
the second one in November, and the third one in December.
So it's the fourth Monkey, the fifth to Die, and
the sixth Wicked Child. But it's all part of the
Fourth Monkey series. So new thing.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
And if you haven't read the book and you don't
mind a few spoilers, yeah, doing us anyways, it's probably
going to get very passionate knowing us.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
And we'll still hang out and chat like we always
do too, so there will be that aspect too where
we just kind of hang out with everyone. So also
an update for something else to be said in the
last episode, which is so infuriating. We literally just said
that the state had the nitrogen hypoxia executions on hold

(49:11):
because the company who supplied the gas refused to supply it.
I don't know what the hell happened. I don't know,
But now we have scheduled the second one, and there
are people out there that are saying, why are you
already doing this? They're saying it's perfectly humane, even though
it took the dude twenty two minutes to die and
he was like seizing and convulsing. The gas chamber has

(49:32):
been deemed unconstitutional. That's essentially what this is, because it's
a mask that's placed over them and it replaces their
oxygen to where they suffocate. So I don't know how
this is any different. And it's nerve wracking. It's nerve
wracking because they are trying to push these through and
again that is Rocky's chosen method. So I don't even

(49:56):
know what else to say about it. And now it's
the time to start getting those letters in. Noww's the
time to start writing those letters. We still accept them.
We're handing it over to Rocky's lawyers. We gave her
like the biggest stack during our last live event, so
hopefully we can get some more to hand over to
or so Rocky, we're still thinking about you, and we
still love you absolutely, and on this note, and this

(50:20):
will be the last thing before we go. Rocky's case
has been the only one up until this point where
we've really like had people involved in it to talk
to people handing us documents, a case with a call
to action that we feel really involved in. That's not
normally how we operate, but it seems like it could

(50:42):
potentially be happening again. We won't say what it is
yet because we still have some work to do. We're
doing some things behind the scenes, but.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
A lot of work.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
Yeah, we've been handed another case, another local case that
I remember it very clearly. It was a big case
around here. It did, it did kind of go nationwide
for a time, and it's wild. It's infuriating, and it
sounds like we will have access to a lot of

(51:11):
things that could hopefully maybe potentially help if we can
get some people to look at it and maybe reopen it.
So with that said, we said that we were going
to do the whole high profile cases move into the
next series. That's still the plan for now, but that
could technically change depending on what happens with this, and

(51:32):
we'll just kind of leave it at that. I think
it depends on how much comes from it. There's the
potential for a lot depending on who all is willing
to talk, So.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
You know, that's a huge care guys. We may even
talk more about it on Patreon, so you got to
tune in, yep, But until then, you know what they
said to Felicia by

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}266: High Profile: The Murdaugh Family, Part 2