I say, because if I do die, I'm an extra lawyer. Let me hunt you." We so often hear about those that don't make it out of danger alive. But what about those that do? "My body got warm and it just said, 'Get up. You're not done, get up.'" I'm Caitlin Van Maal, back with a brand new season of I Survived. "The more I begged him, the happier and the more excited he got." Join me for new episodes of I Survived every Monday, and subscribe now, wherever you listen to podcasts. [Music] I'm Brett. "And I'm Alice." And we are The Prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors, the murders of two prominent South Carolina citizens were shocking enough, but that was only the beginning of the murderous saga. [Music] Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett, and I'm joined as always by my confused co-host, Alice. "Fret I am loving that you are now weaving in these puns from the episode into the introduction, because seriously, how do you say, "Ellik Murdoch's name?" Look, this case is a case that has fascinated many people, and it is a great mystery, and there are so many mysteries wrapped up into this case, but there is no mystery greater than what this man's name is. And I don't want to hear you. I don't want to have any emails from people telling us for a mispronouncement, because I have heard "Alex, Alex, Elik, Murdoch, Murdoch, Murdoch, Murdoch." "Murdoch." "So like. " I watched the HBO documentary, which is only three episodes, and it's riveting, right? And then this person's dead, and this person's dead, and this person's dead, and there's so much money missing. And then all I could think about was like, "What is his name?" [Laughter] "I know, I couldn't get past it, and I couldn't get past it." "I couldn't get past it." And if you've watched the trial, by the time you hear this, the trial may or may not be over. If you've watched the trial, and I realize we're just diving right into this, but I think you guys know what we're talking about. It's just, it's crazy, because every single person pronounces it a different way. Including his own attorney. That's the funny part. "I know, that's the crazy part." When he stood up, when he stood up, I thought to myself, "Findly, I'm gonna know how to pronounce this man's name, and I kid you not." Harput Leon, Poodie Poodie, he introduces himself, and he says, "I represent Mr. Murdoch." Mr. Murdoch, however you pronounce it. And I'm like, "What?" I mean, maybe he was trying to humanize himself, but like, what the heck? That is like the worst thing to say about your client, when you don't know how to say his name. I don't know that Eric Murdoch knows how to pronounce his name. So, so we're gonna do our best. We're gonna be all over the place. I mean, as someone from Alabama, it's a little hypocritical from me to criticize anybody for the way they pronounce things. As long time listeners of this show know. The good thing about this is we can't get it wrong. Nobody can email us and be like, "That's true." You know what I'm saying, Ro. That is true. Murdoch. Not Murdoch. So, sometimes it'll be Murdoch sometime. I like Murdoch personally. Murdoch. Well, I like Murdoch. I mean, a lot of people have texted me this throughout the trial. It's just too good that his name sounds like Murdoch. You know, so Murdoch kind of sounds like Murdoch. Murdoch. Murdoch. Yeah, there you go. And this has just been a wild ride. I mean, it was a wild ride, as it was unraveling in the news. And now that it's in trial every day is a, quote, unquote, bombshell moment. We're going to try to unravel some of that for you. But this is stranger than fiction. It was literally made for TV or made for a movie screen. Everything that is happening. And we are just seeing the unraveling of one of the legal/prominent family dynasties in South Carolina. And this is like basically as reality TV as you get. And it's quickly become one of my favorite cases. And don't email us complaining about how excited we were talking about this case. I get it. It's tragic. There's a lot of tragedy in this case. But it is also just from a perspective of the law and true crime and mystery and trials. This is an amazing case. It's one of the most amazing cases to come around in a while. And there are so many different angles to it. We're going to spend a few weeks doing this. People have been asking us to cover this for forever. And what I always told them was, let's let the trial get going. I mean, I know there's a lot of interest. And I'm sure we do a lot of downloads. But let's let the trial get going so we can sort of do it with the trial. At the time of recording this, I think we're in the third week. So we let it go a little bit. Because hopefully by the time you start hearing these episodes, the trial will either be over or close to over. So as you're learning the ultimate verdict, you're also have a better understanding of how we got there. And we will continue to cover this case through the end of the trial. And as I said, by the time we reach the final episode in our coverage, I would be very surprised if the trial is not over. At least this trial, you never know. Could be a hung jury. Maybe we get to do this again. But there are so many interesting things to talk about. Only off chance that you know, you are one of the, you're one of our fans in Romania, which we have some. We love you. When it comes to you. And you have no idea what we're talking about. We will give you the backstory on this fascinating case. And I think you will agree with us that this is, this is truly will be forever. One of the great cases in true crime. As Alice said, this takes place in South Carolina. And not just any part of South Carolina, the low country, which is the southern part of South Carolina along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and along the border with the Georgia. It's a place good food and long history. But it's also the kind of place that some people who've been around for forever, have ran the place for forever. There's a lot of poverty there. And so if you're one of the people who is either lucky enough or talented enough or corrupt enough to amass wealth, you will also be incredibly powerful. I have a lot of thoughts on this. By the way, a lot of thoughts on sort of the power dynamics in small southern counties, primarily because I came from one, but I promise you, I'm going to save those till the end. We'll cover the case first and then you can listen to me pontificate if you want to. Well, the Murdoz Murdox were we promise to do that every time. This podcast is this series is going to take forever. Yes, just guess what we have to say the names multiple times. So those people whose last name starts with it, you know, they were the kind of people that control a small town. They had dominated Hampton County, both politically and monetarily for a century, at least. They had a successful law firm with millions of dollars in recoveries and their family roots ran deep in the community. For a hundred years, they ran this place. They were solicitors or prosecutors for four generations. At the same time, they were doing that work. They also had a civil practice. This is something that's going to be unusual to some of you who come from bigger places, where there's a sharp distinction between prosecutors and private attorneys, but in a lot of places, maybe not a lot of places, but in some places like this, small towns, where the prosecutors don't make a whole lot of money, you'll have this arrangement. We have someone who sort of volunteers to be the prosecutor at the same time. They have a civil practice. The idea is it's not as if you're the prosecutor and defending people. You're the prosecutor in criminal side and then you do civil work as well. The civil work is really where your money comes from and that allows you to have really good lawyers and that sort of prosecution role and that's what they had and that allowed them to not only amass money from the law firm, but also have a lot of power. The position of prosecutor is an incredibly powerful position. You hold life and death in your hands for a lot of people. The decision whether to charge or not to charge can have a huge impact on that person's life and the life of the community not to mention the lives of victims. And so these people became the main family in this community and they were pillars of the community. You've heard a lot of bad things about them probably, but they did a lot of good as well. They were the people who led civic organizations in town. They were the people who did a lot of charity, gave a lot of donations. And in a place like Hampton, which as I said is a poor part of the country. It's a place with a lot of lower income individuals. That money went a long way and in certain ways it could do a lot of good. And that was the image they wanted to present this upstanding ideal leaders of this area. But there was wrought behind that shine even here as there too often is. And when it started to fall apart, it did so in spectacular fashion. Late at night on June 7th, 2021, a frantic 911 call came into the local police. It was Alec Murdoch and both his wife and his son had been quote shot badly. He was distraught, shattered only a few months later. Alec himself would be shot. The victim of a roadside
assassin, or at least that was the story told by Alec. Soon the roadside shooting would be revealed as an elaborate fraud, and Alec Murdoch would be on trial not only for the murder of his family, but for a massive financial fraud with wide reaching implications. Ordinarily we would start with the timeline as you guys know those of you who have listened to a lot of our episodes, but maybe given that we have a trial, it's better to start with the opening statements of the parties, and see how the timelines and evidence either support or contradict those statements. Many of you have probably watched this trial, it's been streaming on multiple platforms, a lot of articles have come out day after day. We're gonna try to strip away some of the you know hair on fire, clickbait sort of articles, and try to show you what the prosecution's case is and what is being presented at trial, and what it tells us about Alec and about the Murdoch's. And I want all y'all to know is recording this, Alice is going on like two hours of sleep, she had a, she had an all-nighter last night in her new fancy law job, so just so you know. I mean I think I'm also losing it in general, like I think age is just getting to me. So yeah I'm definitely running on two hours of sleep, so there's that, and this case is just so wild, you know it feels like here a little bit just you know on the substances when you watch this trial. Oh well in that the truth, in that the truth, and sometimes you wish you were on substances because the trial is so slow, which we're gonna talk about as well. It's so slow. So opening statements, it's really interesting, every lawyer wants to give the closing, but the closing is the sexy part. It's where you bring it all together, it's where you explain to the jury how all the evidence you presented should now convince them to decide one way or the other about guilt or innocence, but the reality is a lot of jurors make up their minds a lot earlier than the closing, and there are some lawyers who think that the opening statement is actually the most important part, and that the story you tell it opening, if it's good enough, can lay such a firm foundation for either your position as a prosecutor, your client, as a defense attorney, that it really can tell the tale of how things are going to go. And the opening statements in this case, I think, demonstrate a lot of that. And I think that's right. I actually personally love giving opening statements because it is storytelling at its best. That's the first time you get to kind of turn and face the jury. They've heard a lot from you. They've been talked at a lot. They're not allowed to say anything, but kind of for the first time, everyone seated in all eyes are on you and you get to hold the floor. I mean, it's a really powerful moment when you get to give opening statements because, of course, the jury is not blank slate per say, but they don't know much about the case other than what happened in questioning, and they're usually tired. They've been there all day. They've gone through a wild deer. Most of them were hoping they wouldn't get picked, so everyone's kind of restless and just want to get home. And this is your time to shine and grab their attention and show them why this cares and why, you know, Uncle Sam has called them to sit in those chairs for the good of America. And the murder case is a little unusual in that even the jurors, I'm sure, have heard of this case. You know, when they did a vordier in this case, I'm sure most the jurors had heard of the case. This is not a case where you're going to have jurors who've not heard anything. They would have been aware of the case before and they would know what it's about. But in a lot of cases, most cases, the vast majority of cases, the jurors who walk into that courtroom have no idea what you're going to present to them. They get some very vague idea when you're questioning them and when you're picking the jury. But they really don't know the details at all. They might know the charge. They might know some of the players involved because you have to make sure, you know, nobody's close personal friends with the defendant or anything like that. They don't really know the charge. And so this is a really important point because you have to lay it out for them in the story. They will know. It's kind of like when you're talking about true crime cases. There are a lot of cases where we know that most of the people listening to the episode know that case. And you talk about more Murray. Most people know that case. But the way we always approach it is you don't know. We always approach it as if we're talking to someone who really doesn't know the story. And we go through the story and lay it out for them in the way that we're going to do in this case. And I think that's what you have to remember with the jury. And sometimes it can be hard. If you steeped yourself in a case for months and months and months and you know every detail, it can be kind of hard to put yourself in that position where I need to tell a story that's detailed enough that everyone will understand without being so detailed that they're completely confused and they have no idea what's going on. And I think honestly in this case, both sides did a pretty good job with opening. Let's start with the prosecutions opening. So the prosecution starts exactly where we did on June 7th, 2021. And they start with Paul Murdoch who is the youngest son of Alec and Maggie. And he is standing in a feed room in some kennels on the Murdoch's property in Collatin County. It's a thing called the Mozel property. It's called that often. It's kind of a farm. It's occasionally called a hunting camp, but it's the kind of hunting camp where if any of us lived in it, we would think we were living in a mansion. It's a huge house. It's a very nice property. Many, many, many acres, huge property. And he's in these kennels. Those of you who are really into hunting, and I've never been so into hunting that I would know what this is like. People who are really into hunting have kennels with hunting dogs. And they keep the dogs in the kennels and they bring them out to hunt. And they're not the kind of dogs that stay in your house and sleep in your bed. They are working dogs. And this is where they live. And these people were rich enough that they had these kennels where they had these these dogs. And Paul is down there. He's working with the dog. We're going to talk about that some later. It's about a third of mile away from the house. That's how big this place is. The kennels are a third of a mile away from the main home. And Paul is down there in Sois' mother, Maggie. And according to the prosecution, so was Alec Murdoch. And in the story that they tell, Alec Murdoch shot his own son with a shotgun in the chest. Maybe he could have survived that though it would have been a very brutal wound and a difficult one to overcome. But Alec or whoever fired the shot didn't take that chance. He then shot him again in the head. And it was a close range shot and a close range shot with a shotgun is about as devastating as anything can be. And as the prosecution described it, it actually blew his brain out through the back of his head. If that wasn't enough, he then picked up an AR-15 rifle called a blackout. We'll talk more about what that means later. And shot his wife who was also there in the leg and the abdomen. And then in the chest, which knocked her to the ground. At that point, he shot her two more times in the head execution style killing her. Neither Paul nor Maggie had defensive wins, indicating they didn't see this threat coming from their attacker, even though the shots came in close range. They thought they were with someone they could trust. Now Alec Murdoch for his part said it couldn't have been him. He was never at the kennels. But the facts that we're going to see say differently, including Paul's own cell phone. And it shows that Alec wasn't only there at the kennels, but he was there mere minutes before Paul's cell phone and Maggie's cell phones went silent forever. This, the prosecution said, was murder with malice of forethought. It was evil intent with premeditation. It was just what it takes to have first degree murder. Now the Murdoch's own a lot of guns. The trial is going to show that. And if you watch the trial, you saw a lot of guns, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of guns. And this included several custom built AR 15 blackout rifles. And that included one that Paul was known to fire in the backyard. We've talked about this before. This is shocking to some of you that people just shoot off their guns in the backyard. But once again, when you own a property that's so large that your dog kennels are a third of the mile away from the house, you got plenty of room to shoot. And that was something they did there. They would shoot their, their guns into the back, reared. They would do target practice. They would do some hunting on this property. Paul would often shoot this AR 15 in the backyard. And when the police went to the property, they not only looked for the casings at the scene of the murder. They looked for casings that had been ejected from firearms weeks prior to the murder. And they found some. They found some for AR 15 blackout rifles. And when they took those cases, and they matched them to the casings found at the crime scene, wouldn't you know they came from the same firearm. And that led the prosecution to say, this wasn't a weapon that someone brought under the property. And then used it to kill these people to assassinate this family. This was a family weapon. A weapon that the family knew was the weapon that had killed Maggie. Originally, there had been three AR 15 blackout rifles at the home. But wouldn't you know it? All it could only account for one. In addition, as the prosecution laid out in the opening, the same ammunition used to kill Maggie. There were empty boxes of that ammunition found at the home. Same brand, Caliber found throughout the property. This blackout.
ammo, which is not the typical kind of ammo you see used with AR-15s. It's a little bit more rare, it's a little bit different. There was also lots of federal shotgun ammunition found on the property. This was the ammunition used to kill Paul. Now I'll call some you, prosecution doesn't say this. Federal ammunition, federal shotgun ammunition about as common as you can get. I have a case of it downstairs. So the blackout rounds, pretty interesting. The federal shotgun rounds, maybe not as convincing. But nevertheless, about a week after the murders, Alex shows up in his parents' home, which is not something he typically does. And he has something in what a witness will describe as possibly a blue tarp. Law enforcement, they don't find a blue tarp, but they find a blue-watted-up raincoat, a big raincoat. One that maybe someone would mistake for a tarp. And what do they find inside of it? They find gunshot residue. And not just a little bit, but a ton of it. Coating the inside of this raincoat, suggesting maybe this is the kind of thing that you would use to wrap firearms in. The kind of firearms used to kill someone, the kind of firearms that were missing from the property. And it wasn't just the raincoat. There was also gunshot residue on Alec at the scene. And on the car, he was driving that night. So that's the prosecution story. You can see how the story lays out what's coming in the evidence. And we've talked about opening statements before, so we won't dive into it. I'll just note, there's more. You have some of the prosecution story too. There's more to the prosecution story, but and we won't dive into what the prosecution is able to say in the opening statement, but know how powerful this story is already. Remember Brett was telling you how it's going to be really sexy when they bring it all together in the closing. This is what I mean when I say it's really fun to do the opening. You're laying out a story and you're doing it in a way where you're saying like, I'm not advocating. I'm just telling you what the evidence is there. This is so clearly what happened. And so we're beginning to see the evidence that the prosecution will bring through out trial. Now cell phone evidence will also play a large role in the trial as you already heard Brett say. See on June 7th Maggie had not been on the Mozel property. She'd actually been another one of their houses at the beach. She got to Mozel around 815 PM and Paul was already there. The three of them eight dinner together at about 830. Paul's phone starts moving towards the canals. Now note that that's a relatively quick dinner. Alex said he was taking a nap after dinner when Paul and Maggie went out. At 844 and 55 seconds Paul recorded a video of one of the dogs to send to a friend. On that video you can hear Paul's voice, Maggie's voice and also Alex's voice. This video is kind of run of the mill. You don't see anyone. You just hear voices and it's focused on like the tail of the dog. Paul is clearly talking to his friend about something that's wrong with the dog's tail. It's seen pretty mundane. They're trying to troubleshoot what's wrong with the dog at 849 and one second. Paul's phone locks and he never uses it again. 35 seconds later he gets a text from the same friend that he had sent that video to but he never reads it. He never answers it. At 849 and 39 seconds Maggie's phone locks. So in under a second from when Paul's phone locks her phone also locks and she never uses her phone again either. Alex phone had no activity from 809 to 902 pm. He did not have his phone with him at the kennels. At 904 pm, Alex calls Maggie's phone. She doesn't answer. He then calls his father Randolph and then he immediately dials Maggie again at 906. Again Maggie doesn't answer the phone because we know that her phone locks and is never used again after 849. At 906 pm, Alex turns on his car and he texts his wife that he's going to check on his mom who has some dementia. He drives Almita where his mom has Alzheimer's and he arrives there at about 921 pm. He sits on the bed with his mom while she watches a game show. She's not well enough mentally to be able to interact or talk about whether Alec was there but he says that she's just watching TV and he's there with her and while he's there, he calls several people and he's only there about 20 minutes and by 944, Alex heading home. On his way home, he calls some people and at 1001, he gets back to the MoZell property. That's when he discovers the bodies and he calls 911 at 1006 pm. When the police arrive, Alex tells the police he believes this is all about the quote "boat case." A case where Paul had been implicated in the death of a friend who was riding in a boat with him. Alex suggests that Paul was getting threats but here the prosecutor talks about a gathering storm that came together that day for Alec. Although the prosecution did not mention a motive in its opening and an earlier filing the prosecution speculated that the murder is "served as Murdoz means to shift the focus away from himself and buy himself some additional time to try and prevent his financial crimes from being uncovered." Which if revealed would result in personal, legal and financial ruin for the Murdoz? There's a couple things to be interesting about this. One thing I always find interesting about openings is how to get little details wrong. So if you listen to us describe what happened, that's what the prosecution says. They get little details wrong which are kind of revealed throughout trial. Which I don't know. I think that's interesting. You may not think that's interesting. But I'm sure there are some of you who are listening as describe the times and exactly what you did and you thought that's not what happened. They said it happened at 1059 and 59 seconds, not 1006 or whatever. Well there's some stuff like that. Whereas the trial progresses, little things shift a little bit. Like for instance, his mom wasn't watching game shows. The woman who was the caretaker, she was watching game shows. His mom was actually asleep when he arrived. Little things like that. And it's always interesting to me. And you see that every case when you look at an opening statement and then you read the transcript, we do the Ralph Stokes case. If you read the opening statement, the opening statement does not describe things as the evidence does. And you know, the opening statement is not evidence. It's just the statement of a prosecutor and he can hurt you. Obviously, if you say things that you never prove, but it's a little bit of wiggle room there. So that's the first thing it's interesting. The second thing that's interesting is when I always just mentioned prosecution doesn't mention a motive. But we know what their motive is going to be because in this earlier filing, they talked about it. So why don't they mention a motive in the opening statement? As those of you who watched know, there was a pending motion from the prosecution to introduce 404B evidence. If you listen to legal briefs, you know, we did a whole episode of 404B evidence in the Murdoch case. Go back and listen to it for sort of a detailed description. I'm sure we'll talk about it in our coverage here as well. But essentially, they had asked the court allow us to present this financial information to show the motive. And the court had said, let me see how the evidence comes in and then I'll give you a ruling. Well, the problem with that for the prosecution, from their point of view, they cannot then mention it. They can't mention it in the opening. If they mention it in the opening, the judge decides not to let it in. I mean, that's like mistrial material right there. So they have to leave it out. So that is a whole in their opening statement, but it's one they can't help. Until the judge says, yes, financial motive can come in, they can't talk about it. So if you're watching the opening and you're like, why didn't they mention the motive? That's the reason they are hamstrung to a certain extent by the judge's rulings. The prosecutors is brought to buy progressive insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yeah, while you're listening to us, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you can be doing right now. 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And native deodorant checks a lot of boxes. 72 hour odor protection naturally derived ingredients in a smooth residue free application. Native also offers a variety of sense with new and limited edition sense being released all the time. And recently I just got their gummy bear scent and it smells delicious. And I love it in addition to it being a healthy, clean deodorant analysis. Probably no surprise to anybody. I also went with gummy bears because how can you go wrong? And I got to tell you Alice, you know I'm a sensitive soul. That's not just my soul. It's also my skin. And so I really like having a deodorant that is all natural and doesn't have a bunch of chemicals that are going to be harsh on my skin. And that's why I love native and you are going to love it to now is the time to make the switch from an anti-perspirant to native. When you visit their site you can discover all their fresh sense and maybe even try out one of their body washes while you're at it. Right now go to nativedo.com/prosecuters or use promo code prosecutors that check out to get a sweet 20% off your first order. That's native deo.com/prosecuters or use promo code prosecutors that check out for 20% off your first order. Alice, we are so happy to add sock dock to the prosecutor's family and it's something we want you to check out. Thousands of medical professionals are on sock dock there to help you. They listen like a friend and they give you the expert care you need. Zock dock helps you find expert doctors and medical professionals that specialize in the care you need and deliver the type of experience you want. And on sock dock, finding the doctor that's right for you is seamless. The quality care you need is just a few taps away in the sock dock app. On sock dock, you'll find quality doctors who focus on you, listen to you and prioritize your care. Brett, sock dock is the only free app that lets you find and book doctors who are patient reviewed. 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American scandal is a podcast from one tree that takes you deep into the most infamous scandals in American history, bringing to life controversy and events that have shaped who we are as a country and that continue to define the American experience. The newest season of American scandal covers an act of terror unlike the country has ever seen. The Oklahoma City bombing. At first, both the American public and law enforcement believed international terrorists were behind the attack, but the evidence led investigators toward an unexpected and chilling conclusion. The Oklahoma City bombing appeared to be the work of domestic criminals and they plot bound together with political extremism, conspiracy theories and a goal to strike back against the United States government. I remember the Oklahoma City bombing well. It was defining experience in my life and I love listening to this behind the scenes story of this tragic event. So follow American scandal wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or wander app. That's American scandal. The US is a country of the United States. The country is a country of the United States. The United States. The United States. The United States. The United States is a country of the United States. All the discoveries are out there. The defense knows every single thing that's going to come in. They know the entire story of the prosecution is going to tell and they know all the evidence they're going to use to tell it. So when they get up to give their opening statement they often will foreshadow where they are going to be problems in the prosecution's theory and they do that here. There's really two forms of a defense opening statement. The first form is the general I'm totally going to lose because the evidence is all against me. So what I'm going to talk about is how the burden is on the prosecution to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt. And whenever a defense attorney stands up and that's all they talk about is the burden and reasonable doubt and how the prosecution has to prove it and they're not going to be able to do it. Whenever they say that that means they have no real defense and they're just hoping that the jury will hold the prosecution to their burden and be really thorough with them and maybe if they slip up at all they'll acquit their client. That's one version. The second version, the better version if you can do it is to actually tell a story and point out the problems with the prosecution's case. When you watch really sort of high profile trials think back to the staircase trial. And the staircase trial when Michael Peterson's lawyer Eric Rudolph when he gets up and he gives his opening statement he tells a story. He tells his own story about the case and about the evidence and what the evidence is going to show and you see the same thing here. It's Dick Harputlian who is the main, I don't know, he's the face of the defense team. He is not really the main lawyer. If you've been watching
the trial, you know, he has a fairly large team. There is one individual who his name is Kay's pretty right now, but he is, he is the attorney who actually see only HBO documentary. I think he has been a long time associate with the Murdoch's. He represented Paul in the boat case, which we're going to talk about later. He now represents Alec Murdoch as well. He is doing a lot of the cross examination. He's doing a lot of the legal argument. But Harbutlian sort of, he's been doing this forever. He's the old school Southern lawyer. He knows how to talk to these juries. And that's what he does. He gets up to tell his story in the very first thing he does other than not know how to pronounce his client's name. The second thing he does is he has Alec stand up. He has him stand up and he tells the jury, I want you to look at him. Look at this man. He's a loving father of Paul, not only Paul but Buster who's sitting in the in the gallery behind him. And he's a loving husband of Maggie. And he talks about how the evidence is going to show that every single witness who gets up there is going to say that they had a loving marriage that every single witness that's going to get up there is going to say that he loved his son Paul more than anything. This is such an important thing to do because he is humanizing the defendant. He is humanizing Alec Murdo. And there has been a lot of talk about this. And frustration for people who truly believe that Alec Murdo is guilty. Even so, the talking heads on TV watching this and watching the way Alec responded to photographs of his dead family, to video of his dead family, to descriptions of how they died. There were a lot of people watching this who were affected by that. Including as I said, talking heads legal people who said he really seems broken up by this. This is the key to their entire defense. They're going to talk about a lot of things. They're going to contest things. They're going to put on facts. The key to their defense is having the jury or having at least one juror believe I just can't see him killing his family. And you know, that's a really smart theme, right? Because the general father, no matter how deadbeat of a father, it's hard to imagine that they would shoot executions to their own flesh and blood and someone they've been married to and have two children with. So it's something that if you don't know anything about your jurors, it's probably a good bet that that person can never imagine a world in which a loving father who has demonstrated being a loving father throughout their life would do something like this. Shoot their son, point blank with a shotgun so much so that the brains blow out the back of his head and then stand over his wife and shoot her execution style to make sure she's dead. I mean, most of you listening probably can't imagine a world where that could be and we've heard it from you as well. I don't know. The motive seems really weak because you're having you're having me believe something that is almost unbelievable. So, you know, you're trying to reach just one person. And I would say that's not a bad bet. And it's so funny. We get emails from people all the time. We love you guys, but so many of you like to complain. And one of the things people occasionally complain about is they complain about the way we talk about being parents. And they'll say things like, you know, y'all act like only parents love kids and I've got an FU that I really love or I've got, you know, I'm a teacher and I love all my kids and I totally get that. I have an FU that I love more than anything in the world. Great kid. Love him to death. That too, actually. Love him both to death. You're really undercutting yourself here. Well, I mean, I'm just saying I mean, I love him. I mean, they're great. I mean, they're wonderful people. I want the best for them. They were very young. I mean, it was weird. It was kind of like they were more like brothers, like really younger brothers than they were nephews. So, it's always weird to describe them as nephews. But nevertheless, and I understand what people mean when they say that. But I'm sorry. My perspective changed so much once I had a child of my own to the extent it is hard for me to even talk about this stuff. I was talking about this with my wife. We watch for the benefit of you guys. What we do in the evening is we watch this trial. We work all day and then she's stuck watching the trial with me so that we can talk about this with y'all. And I wanted to ask her something along the lines of, can you imagine a situation in which you would shoot, you know, name of child that I'm not going to say here. I couldn't even say it. I couldn't even put that idea into words. Just the notion of doing something like that. I could not get it out of my mouth. Much less, imagine doing it. Much less, ever do it. I just, the ability to conceptualize that is, it's impossible. It is impossible for anyone out there to imagine doing this. You cannot put yourselves in the shoes of a man who would kill his son and his wife. You just can't do it. You cannot do it unless maybe you're somebody who could do that. It's really hard. And, and that is a powerful tool for the defense. Huge, huge tool for the defense. And a massive advantage because everybody on that jury's thinking, man, I just, I don't know. I need, I know it's beyond a reasonable doubt. I need more than that. That's what they're thinking. Even if they don't say it. In the back of their mind, they're thinking, I need a lot for you to convince me that that man took a shotgun and blew his own son's brains out. And the defense basically sets that. I mean, they go into details about how vicious they don't, they don't shy away from this at all. They talk about how vicious this murder was, how terrible it was. You know, at one point, Harput Leon describes Paul's head as being like a watermelon hit by a sledgehammer. I mean, that is a brutal, brutal visual. And that's the defensive turn, describing the victim. Or nearly you would never do that. Because the last thing you want is for the jury to feel sympathy for the victim when your clients on trial for murdering them. But in this case, that's exactly what you want. Because you have to believe that he would do that to his own son. You have to be convinced by this cold evidence, by cell phone tower, pings and gunshot residue and boring days of evidence. That's what you have to be convinced by to get over this visceral thing that he would do something. It's a really, it's a good strategy. It really is. And you see it if you're watching this on Twitter, if you're watching on Facebook, there are people who have said, I just can't imagine this man killing his family over some money. Even though people do that every day, they can't see it. And that's the power of the defense. And all they need is one person in the jury who agrees with those people. And they talk about how, look, you're going to see video, you know, the previewing things. They preview more evidence than the prosecution does. You're going to see video taken that day, an hour before the murders of Alec Murdoch with his son having fun out, you know, being a family driving around the fields, looking at, looking at trees. And you do see that, you will see that in the trial. And their, and their basic point is, is this a look, this is sort of like a man who in an hour is going to kill his son. There they are together. Does he look like somebody who's planning in an hour to shoot that boy in the head? Is that what they, is that what you see? And that's what they want. That's what they want. She believe and they talk about how Maggie was shot. She's running away. We mentioned before shot execution style. And Alec just talked about this. He talked about some of our previous episodes about how just brutal that is to kill someone like that. It's not just fowering at them. It's walking up to them. It's making that decision. It's putting a gun to their head and pulling the trigger. And that's what they say happened here. And Harput Leon basically says, why? Why would you do this? There's no motive. And he can say that because the prosecution didn't present a motive in their opening statement because they couldn't. And he's sort of hedging his bats here a little bit. He's hoping that in the future of the judge is going to keep out all that financial evidence. And that way they really won't be able to present a motive. When problem for him is saying things like this, I actually kind of opens the door even wider for that evidence to come in, which is something we're going to talk about as well. But any event he's seizing on that right now because he knows this is the opening statement. Whatever happens later on, if I can get somebody right now, if I can capture them right now, maybe their mind will never change. You know, they'll have an anchoring bias we talked about. They will have decided and then doesn't matter. So that's what he's going for. He's going all out. He says there's no motive. There's no way you would do this. There's no way you would do this to your family. And the prosecution hasn't presented any good reason why you would do this to your family. And he also says, look, it's not just that. Most of his time is accounted for. And he says, you're going to see things when they walk through the timeline. You're going to see things that don't add up. Things that couldn't have happened if it was Alec Murtaw who did this. And some of that's going to be in the cell phone evidence and some of the things that happened with the cell phone. So he's going to say, look, if it's him, those two things couldn't be happened at the same time. He also points out that this was a pretty brutal crime. There's a lot of blood. There's blood everywhere. There's brain matter everywhere. And yet on Alec Murtaw, there's no blood on his clothing. There's no evidence he was involved in shooting. But how did he get rid of all this blood that should have been on him? He talks about the 911 call. And we talked about the danger of 911 calls all the time. But he talks about that. How you're going to hear it and it's going to be convincing. And you're going to hear a man who sounds like somebody who just found his family murdered. Then he says, you know, after this happened,
after he gets down, he finds his family killed. He actually goes back up to his house and he gets a gun. He gets a firearm, 12 gauge shotgun. And he points out something interesting that he loads some shells into that 12 gauge, but he actually mislodes it. He actually puts 16 gauge shells into the 12 gauge shotgun, which might seem like a small thing to you, but someone like Alec Murdoch who hunts all the time, who's fired more guns than days he's been alive would not make this kind of mistake. Unless he was totally in shock, he was totally panicking by what he had found. So he makes sort of a fundamental mistake that you would never make. And he talks about that gunshot residue that they talked about. Guess what also would have given you that. Picking up a shotgun like he did. And he says the amount of gunshot residue that they find on his hands is more consistent with just picking up a firearm that is shooting a firearm. So these are some pretty good points that he's making. And then he sort of goes into classic defense attorney mode where he says the police immediately decided he did it. They never looked at anybody else. They got tunnel vision. And from that point forward, when they saw evidence that was bad for Murdoch, they went for that. They saw evidence that was good for him, they ignored it. That's what he's gonna say. He's also gonna say the police made fundamental errors that they didn't secure the scene enough. There were too many friends and family members over. There were too many officers walking through the scene, doing things like creating footprints, destroying evidence. And they're gonna say that to the extent you don't see evidence of another person is because the police were sloppy in their work. Another typical defense attorney position that you see in almost every case. They're gonna point out that the next day, the police said, there's no danger in anybody else in the community, which is a strange thing to say when two prominent members of the community have been murdered unless, of course, you've already decided, you know who did it and it was somebody who had a personal reason to do it, say someone like the husband. And they're gonna point out how difficult it would have been for Murdoch to pull this off. And order for him to do this. This is sort of the, you have to believe thing that we do on occasion. You have to believe that he kills them both. He changes clothes, he gets back down to his car and gets out and he does this in less than 10 minutes. He pulls all this off, manages to get rid of the guns, manages to get rid of the clothes, manages to get rid of any blood that's on him, manages to get rid of any evidence whatsoever that he did it. Didn't leave any blood behind in that car. He managed to do all that in a very short period of time. Another thing they point out is something that will jump out to you immediately when you hear the facts of this case. And that's that there were two people killed with two different guns, a shotgun and an AR. And what does two guns ordinarily mean? It means two shooters. And that's going to be the position of the defense. This was someone else who came under that property to kill at least two people and maybe three. Maybe Alec Murdoch was actually one of the people they were trying to kill, one of them had a shotgun and one of them had an AR. And that's a more believable thing. A more sort of Occam's razor explanation than that Alec Murdoch for some reason was carrying two different firearms to kill two different people. And then in his closing part of his opening, he reminds the jurors. He goes right to the natural bias they will have. He doesn't ignore it. He says, I know that you have a natural inclination. We all have a natural inclination to believe if someone is arrested and they're charged with murder, that person is guilty. But he says that is not true. That may be your natural inclination, but it is the wrong inclination. Alec Murdoch is innocent until proven guilty and the prosecution is not going to be able to prove him guilty and he's not guilty. And if the prosecution had ignored witnesses and ignored contradictions in its own evidence, it would have come to the conclusion that Murdoch was in fact not involved in the murder of his wife and child. And that's where the defense wraps up their closing and from that point forward, it's going to be the prosecution putting on their evidence and the defense doing their cross examination until finally the defense has an opportunity to put on its case. So I think you can see why trials are so interesting. I mean, Brett, we got to hear from you essentially play the prosecution and the defense. And each time you were talking like, that's what happened. Yep, that's exactly what happened. And then I hear the other side of me like, that's what happened, that's what happened. And keep all this in mind and a lot of you have kind of thrown up your hands when you email us or text us and say, it's all just theater. Like, I don't know what to believe because I listened to one side and I believe it and then I listened to the other side and I believe it. But that's the whole point of our podcast. Our point is to make you critical thinkers in your own right. These attorneys are supposed to be vigorous advocates for their side. But there is truth and there are shades of the truth and there are pieces of evidence that are true but may not matter, right? And your job is to kind of figure out what matters and what could have happened and to keep in mind what reasonable doubt actually means. And so this is a classic example of why you have vigorous advocates for both sides. There are things to point out and there is no slam dunk case quote unquote. You know, they always say, if you're guilty of sin, you gotta trial. (laughs) And that's because that is your opportunity. You have 12 people who don't get to talk to each other and who don't talk to you and you just have to pick off one if you're the defendant in order not to be convicted. And there's a lot there. Your job as the defense is to give that one person something to hang their hat on. Yeah, I mean, this is all gonna be very interesting as we see the trial unfold. And it's funny, right. As you're, who knows this trial moving slowly, it is my still be ongoing. And let me say about that, about the speed of the trial. This, it is pretty apparent to me that the defense is taking the position of, if you wanna bring something into evidence, you're gonna have to lay the foundation, you're gonna have to bring in the custodian of records, we're not agreeing to anything, which is a one way you can do it if you're the defense. And so for instance, they'll, at one point, they wanna put in a Snapchat video. And they literally have to fly someone in from Snapchat to say this is a video from Snapchat. And then that person gets off the stand and then flies back to San Francisco or whatever. And in a lot of cases, you would make an agreement of this is obviously a Snapchat video. We're gonna stipulate to that fact so that it's admissible, you don't have to bring in the custodian of records. There are a lot of rules that can make trials very long and very boring that you can agree to not enforce. I mean, basically you can wave anything if you're the defendant. And a lot of times you'll do that because while it can be beneficial to various sides, to have a case run long, most, most sort of agree that annoying the jury is not a great thing to do. But you see cases where this happens and the defense's position, I think, is the longer this takes, the more likely the jury will forget key pieces of evidence and the prosecution. So we're gonna make you prove everything to the integrity. And that's one of the reasons it's moving so slow. They are having to introduce all this evidence. They're having to lay foundation for all this evidence. So don't blame the prosecution necessarily that it feels like sometimes we have a whole day of trial and we don't actually learn anything 'cause it's all the guy. Now we wanna know the location evidence from the car. But for some reason we have to listen to an hour of testimony from the guy who went into the car and took out the box that had the location information and put it in this bag and then wrote his initials on the bag and then shipped the bag to this person. And then this person received it and they opened the bag and you're like, I just wanna know what it says. But that's trial. You have to authenticate this evidence. You have to prove it's what you say it is. So that's some of what you're seeing. And you know, that's a great tactic too to make the prosecution have to go through all of the rules to lay foundation properly. That is exactly what the rules require but it's a way to kind of put these boring parts into the trial that you can stop the rolling avalanche of oh my goodness and then what happened next, right? Your whole thing is if the jurors are bored maybe they won't pay as close attention or have you ever had to watch a movie and someone stopped it every five minutes. It's incredibly annoying and you probably don't get the full effect of the storytelling. So you know, there's a tactic in the defense making the prosecution do all this. For the most part, you'll see a lot more stipulations and trials just because no one wants to spend weeks or months of their lives living out of a hotel room and it's incredibly expensive for the client to do as much but in a case like this where we've already said it is just, it's like the trial of the century. You want to build in all of those boring moments as much as possible if you're the defense when you know what the evidence is going to be and you want to slow the prosecution's role. - I'll just say, people talk about the advantage you have if you have money. Obviously one of those advantages is you can hire really expensive lawyers but really expensive lawyers are not necessarily better. But a huge advantage is being what a parent
those lawyers for as long as you need to pay him. Because as Al said, stopping that avalanche of evidence, being willing to pay someone to do that is a huge advantage. We talked about Ralph Stokes and when we talked about his trial, we talked about how it was just like one hit after another from the prosecution. I mean, they're just pounding him. They're putting witness after witness after witness on the stand and they're just killing him. And this is building this massive avalanche of evidence. It's just washing him away. You don't get that in this trial. It seems like every day there's one maybe two important witnesses and those witnesses, because of all the foundation laying even in their testimony, it's only a few things they say that are actually important. So that momentum of the just hit after hit after hit, you don't see that as much in this trial. And it's much more spread out. And I think Alice is 100% right. I think this is a tactic. And I think it's been pretty successful. I think people have criticized the prosecution and it felt like the prosecution is not doing a good job. And some of it is completely beyond the prosecution's control. Like a lot of they are doing the best they can given the strictures that they are under and the tactics that are being used by the defense. That's probably why this trial is taking so long. And eventually they will get through all the foundation and then there will be hit after hit after hit as we get closer to the end of trial. But you're also balanced in just how annoyed the jurors are at that point. Generally, just as a totally general matter, jurors blame the prosecution for the length of the trial. That's just because the case is brought by the prosecution. I don't think it's necessarily, you know, incorrect for them to hold the prosecution to that standard. But that's part of the tactic too is that you know eventually all of these boring witnesses are going to be done and you're going to have the hit after hit after hit. And you're banking on it being month two or three of trial and the jurors are so angry at the prosecution they don't even care that it's an avalanche of evidence. So this is a little bit inside baseball about, you know, who knows what the jurors will say. Maybe some of them will be interviewed and talk about how they think the presentation was. But those of you who are complaining about the boring pace, it's by design the defense. 100%. So we've covered the introduction and we give you some background. Hopefully you know what case we're talking about now. Next week we are going to really dive into this timeline. We're going to go through the timeline of the of the things most connected to the murder itself. There are ancillary issues that are really interesting. We're going to talk about those two by promise. But the timeline is really going to focus on the murders and the event the boat case is described that I think probably had a lot to do with how this all went down. So we're going to go all through that timeline for you. Let you see how these events unfolded. It will really give you a perspective on just how tight this timeline was and does that help the prosecution or doesn't help the defense because both of them are going for that. The prosecution saying, yeah, it was tight. He's the only one who could have done it. The defense is saying, yeah, it was tight. There's no way you could have done it. So we'll look at the timeline and you can decide what that tells you. And then we will go into some of these other sort of ancillary issues surrounding this case. And then once we've covered those, we will dive into all the evidences being presented at the trial. And then we will conclude with our opinion on what happened. And you know, who knows? The jury may have already given its opinion by that time in which case we'll just be able to say whatever they say and we'll automatically be right, which is what we like. But no, of course not. We'll tell you what we think whether the jury gets it right or not. Well, look, there's been so much fascination with this case. You guys are already talking about on the gallery and on Twitter. I'm sure you have many thoughts. We look forward to seeing that conversation. Shoot us emails, prosecutors
[email protected] @proscuterspod for all your social media. Hello to those of you watching on YouTube and to those of you listening early and ad free on Patreon. Thank you so much. We really enjoyed talking about this with you guys live on a legal briefs episode. And we talked about the four four B evidence in this case. And we hope that you're enjoying this in-depth coverage as well. While us, is there anything else you want to add? But what we saw now for tonight and you go to a well deserved restful sleep. I was going to say, I better stop talking because I'm just rolling over my words. But I'm so excited we're doing this. We have been following the trial in real time and getting to talk about it in close to real time with you guys is one of my favorite things to do. So thanks for joining for the ride. And as you guys always do, let us know what you think. Well, that's all we have for tonight. We'll be talking about this case. I have a feeling for several more weeks and we'll be back next week with more on the Murdoch Murdoch Murdoch trial. But until then, I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. And we are The Prosecutors. [Music] You're never in it. Don't you call my friend an idiot? The problem is I'm looking at my word document, not the actual. I should do that. Are you ready? I'm ready. Couldn't be more ready. Could it be more ready? There you go. Okay, here we go. The murders. Oh wait, I forgot the first part. I'm sorry. I almost just laughed out loud at all the pronunciations. Oh no. Oh my god. I also died. [Music] [Music] So, that's the prosecution story. And as we've always said, just because the prosecution will be back. Let's talk there. Sorry, so I'm saying like Alice. I was going to say it's catching or the bourbon is hitting. [Music] All month long, I'm Pluto TV. Stream the biggest Tyler Perry movies free. Watch your favorites like Madilla's Witness Protection and Madilla's Big Happy Family. Join Tyler Perry as he goes on a couple's retreat with Sharon Leal and why did I get married? Or address Elba and Gabrielle Union in the Tyler Perry directed film Daddy's Little Girls. Plus Pluto TV has hundreds of channels with thousands more movies and TV shows, available on live and on demand. Download the free Pluto TV app on all your favorite devices and start streaming now. Pluto TV. Drop in, watch free.
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