177. The Murdaugh Murders Part 2

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That's why Progressive has over 360 heavy truck employees to help truckers stay on time and on track. Quote truck insurance today in as little as eight minutes at ProgressiveCommercial.com. I say, because if I do die, I'm an extra lawyer, let me haunt 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. I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. And we are The Prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors, we continue our look at the Alex Murdoch trial. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett, and I'm joined as always by my Southern Bale co-host, Alice. Brett, am I a Southern Bale really? Can you count someone who's dead? You are absolutely. Who doesn't speak English until the age of seven is Southern Bale. Alice, it's a melting pot down here. We believe in all sorts of people can take part in our wonderful culture. And we're here in the low country, South Carolina. And we're all Southern Bales today, including me. We are all Southern Bales as we dive back into the low country. And you know, I've been thinking a lot about that. You know, there's, I went to like a college seat in Southern culture and it was beautiful. And obviously it was wrought with a lot of angst about what that meant and all these things. And I think the focus on the low country has been really interesting. Because first of all, I just love these like sociology, spotlights into different areas of a country that is just so vast with so many different in-hacket dynamics that I personally don't know. But I feel like I'm diving into a novel. And that's what this trial feels like. Because we're not just learning about the charges against Alok Murdoch. We're really learning about the low country. And kind of the last century of history of how this town ran. And I know that it's obviously coming under a lot of scrutiny, because the allegations are just horrendous. And there's a lot of allegations of corruption and not just corruption by Alok, but maybe more people, maybe like a certain class of people then. And I hope that we also get to zoom out and remember that it's a beautiful community. And it's much more complex than the Murdoch trial, although we are getting a snapshot into this part of the country. What's fascinating about this trial is on the one hand, it seems so unique and so amazing and so different. But I think people really do need to take a step back and realize this kind of stuff happens in a lot of places. There are a lot of places big and small, where a handful of people have managed over the years to accumulate a lot of wealth, accumulate a lot of power. And a lot of times when you put those two things together, you get a lot of corruption. And I think people are seeing that. But honestly, I think the way this community has come together starting a couple years ago, even before the murders, to hold the Murdoch accountable for what happened here, I think is laudable and commendable. And we like to point out that everywhere has its problems. But overall, I think most places are a lot of really good people come together trying to make their lives a better place. So that's what we like to focus on. And this is a case that, as Alice said, stretches back 100 years. And I think we should probably start where we always start, which is with the timeline. And I think that's a great point, Brad, because to really understand what's going on today, we have to understand how this power and how this family has kind of solidified its status in this community. And it stretches back a century. And also to see how we like to say this. Obviously we're coming from the prosecutor's perspective, but that justice is blind. And this trial for me, I think I know how it's going to end. Well, you know, while we're recording, the trial is still very much going on. The prosecution hasn't rested yet. Maybe by the time you guys start hearing this, that the trial will be over and there will be a verdict. But I think I know how it's going to end. And I am given a lot of peace that the justice system is working as it should, even for the most seemingly untouchable in the society. And what that said, let's jump back to 1920. Randolph Murdock's senior is elected to the 14th Circuit solicitor's office and serves in the position until his death in 1940 when he hit by a freight train, tragically. And we've talked about this before, but the solicitor's office is the prosecuting office in that district. So he is the main prosecutor. And unlike maybe prosecutors and other jurisdictions, this is a part-time job. So he's not beholden to just the prosecutors or just the public servant salary. In fact, he is very able to, when he does, have private practice where he can earn a lot of money. So it makes it a pretty attractive position because you have all the power, but you're not kind of relegated to a public servant's salary. I have to say, I hope someone's looking into this whole freight train incident because that seems like something out of a novel. And it's not a good thing. It's not a coincidence. I'm sure it probably is a coincidence in real life, but it certainly struck me when I read that for the first time. Just by the way, trains obviously go pretty quickly. But yeah, that quickly, you know, Rhett and I go see our local baseball team play a lot. And it's like right on the train tracks and our kids love watching the trains. And their cargo trains, you know, that go by pretty frequently. So we watch trains a lot together to two of them. And like, of course, when you're right upon it, the train is going relatively fast. But trains are really loud and they don't move swiftly. Like, they're so stealthy freight train, right? That's why it's called a freight train. You snore like a freight train. There's a reason that that's a saying. So you really know a train's coming for a very long time before it actually gets there. So I kind of agree with you. You see there's a little suspect that you can get hit by a freight train out of nowhere. But, you know, that that's a maybe another crime episode for another day. But what I think is important to note here is that Randolph Murdoch's senior did accumulate a lot of wealth in his private practice. But talk about his law firm. I mean, this is even in play today during this trial. Yeah, it wasn't just that he was a solicitor. At the same time, as Alice was saying, this is sort of a position that you hold. It's a public service while you're also in private practice. And you can understand, especially at this time, when the roles of government private practice weren't as well delineated. This is a small area. You may not have as many lawyers as you would like to have. And so they're sort of wearing both hats. And the idea is you're going to have your private practice. And then you're going to have your public service. And he started a law firm in 1910, a one-man shop that eventually would grow into one of the most powerful and successful plaintiffs firms in that area. And maybe in the country, Peter's Murdoch, Parker, Elz Roth, and Dietrich. And in that role, he was able to not only accumulate great wealth, but also accumulate power. And this is one of those things. We don't really know anything about him. I have a feeling he probably was a pretty upstanding guy who was trying to serve his community at the same time. He's trying to make his way is a lawyer. And he creates this great legacy. A legacy that his Alice is telling us about. We'll continue forward. for 100 years and built this massive law firm. Unfortunately, what you end up having is by the turn of the 21st century, you have a lot of power and a lot of wealth accumulated and in one family. And it's not just that they're powerful because they have money, they're powerful because they control the levers of government. So on one hand, they are in this position of prosecutor, which is incredibly powerful, but there's nothing to check them because they also are the people who have all the money in the town. And so you can really see how, even if originally this started off with the best of intentions. And even if he and his son and his son's son were all in there for the best reasons, it was only matter of time before something was gonna happen, like what we've seen happen. And when it did, it not only sort of brought down this family, but it brought down this firm, the firm is now, there's no longer a Murdoch in the firm. It was started by Murdoch. There's no longer one there and they've changed the name. The name is completely different. So it's, this is a fascinating story in so many ways because you not only have this true crime case, an interesting true crime case own its own, but you have this family dynasty that's falling and you have an entire power structure that is being undermined as you're watching it in real time. - Absolutely. And you can begin to see that power and money in combination take root with Randolph Sr. Remember, the solicitor's office is an elected position but he holds it for 20 years and the only reason he stops holding that position is because of this tragic freight train accident. And unlike, you know, and other, I guess, public offices that were used to, his son actually takes over after he passes away. Randolph, Murdoch, Jr. becomes the solicitor of the 14th Circuit and he serves from 1940 until his retirement in 1886. So even longer than his dad. I mean, for almost half a century, Randolph Jr. holds the position of the solicitor. That's at this point, three quarters of a century of one family holding really one of the most powerful positions in the town. And you can always have the best of intention but especially in public service. There are come to be shortcuts. You tend to know people and shortcuts are never a good thing in public service. This is my view because it's supposed to be for the people by the people and there are checks and balances but not that many, especially if you hold the office for something like 46 years. And so if there wasn't any sort of corruption and it may not have started out as corruption, I can see just being completely content in the position of knowing every single law enforcement officer in the town, probably in the state to some degree because you do cross your stickional investigations at time to probably having more power than anyone should. Little things like, I'm not gonna give you a speeding ticket 'cause we're buddies and it's awkward 'cause we go to Sunday barbecue together or something like that. Kind of like the soft community aspect of it that then becomes something much worse as we're about to see. So in 1987, Randolph Murdoch III takes over the role after his dad, so now it's the third Randolph Murdoch to hold this position and he also serves quite a linking period about a generation. He serves through the end of 2005. At this point, really it's a century of the Murdoch's running the solicitor's office which again holds a lot of power and decides who you charge criminally. That's a big deal in any town and obviously, probably carries a lot of favors from people who wanna make sure they stay on the right side of the prosecutor's office. 2006, Mark Sanford appoints Duffy Stone as a solicitor. Thus finally breaking the Murdoch street of holding the solicitor's office. - But unless you be confused, this doesn't mean that somehow the Murdoch's had fallen from power, Stone was an ally of the family. He was most likely selected at the behest of the Murdoch's and it's one of those things why exactly at this point they decided to go a little bit of a different way is not entirely clear. It may be the case that they were making so much money in the law firm, there was no real reason to continue to do this, but they still had a hand in it. Alec was actually a volunteer solicitor until 2021. So they're maintaining those connections, maintaining those relationships which are so important. And look, the Murdoch's are very important in South Carolina. There has been a lot of conspiracy theories about this. There are podcasts about this family that run into the hundred episodes. And those podcasts will make you think these people are like, you know, the Corleone family or something in the Godfather. But I will tell you from talking to people in South Carolina, one person described the Murdoch's the face of judicial corruption in South Carolina. Whether or not that's true of the entire family, I don't know, Alec certainly seems like somebody who would not have any problem engaging in some judicial corruption. These folks were very involved in the plaintiff's bar in South Carolina and this area where they were is a judicial hellhole, which basically is a ranking that people do of places where if you're a defendant in one of these lawsuits, do you have any chance of getting a fair trial? And when you lose, do you have any chance of getting a fair amount against you, damages against you, or are you going to be hammered? And this is a place where you're going to be hammered. This is a place where plaintiffs attorneys are gonna make a lot of money. To the extent that one person told me there's not even a Walmart in this area because they know if they open up a Walmart and they're gonna get hit with lawsuits all the time and end up paying a lot of money. So that's the kind of practical effect you have of having this sort of thing. Businesses don't even want to move in because it's such a volatile area to be, but these people ruled over this area. And this was a tiny little part of South Carolina. I think Hampton where they're headquartered is like 40 minutes from the nearest interstate. But over their kingdom, they were pretty much all powerful. - That's setting the stage of who this family is and what they mean to the town. And we are now in 2019 February 23rd of 2019. So just about four years ago, three young couples, Anthony Cook and Mallory Beach, Connor Cook and Miley Altman, Morgan Doty and Paul Murdoch. Go out for a boat ride on Alec Murdoch's boat, Folly and Oyster Roast, they set out at night after purchasing a couple cases of beer from a local gas station. They have been lifelong friends, they're young and in love, they are kind of thickest these. They hang out a lot and they're all underage. So this is just a very young group going out for, I mean, at this age, I remember going out on nighttime boat rides. Super fun. And also something that is not uncommon to do in this area. And it's a late night on February 24th, 2019. At midnight, the friends leave the Oyster Roast and they're not ready to end the night though. So at 12.50 a.m., the friends stop at a dock side bar called Luther's and despite it being a late hour and that they had been drinking all night, they go to the bar and they continue to have fun and they order shot after shot of Yeager. - And look, not condoning this, but this is pretty common. If you live on a lake or if you live on a river, you know this stuff happens all the time. When I was in high school, we had a lake pretty close and this is what people did. Doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that Paul's a Myrtle has to do with the fact he's got his brother's ID and he's able to use it. And most people and places like this that only care, they're gonna sell to these kids. And unfortunately, they made some really terrible decisions that are going to result in one of their friends being killed at about 108 AM and all of this is called on camera. By the way, there's some really great documentaries on the Myrtle's, if you don't wanna spend all your time on those podcasts with 100 episodes. So great, I think there's one on Hulu, I think there's one on HBO, Netflix is coming out with one. They got some great video. You can watch this sort of unfold. And because of that, we know the times and pretty much exactly what was going on at all points. And around 108 AM, they leave the bar. Now Paul was very drunk at this point. He'd had a lot of shots, he drank a lot of beer. They get back on the boat and it's cold that night. I mean, this is February. It's gonna be cold. There's a fog developing on the river, which makes it even more dangerous. And of course, it is very dark 'cause it's one o'clock in the morning. Now Paul had a reputation that when he drank too much, he kinda turned into a different person. Most of his friends and the people who knew him describe him as a really sweet kind guy until he started drinking. And when he started drinking, he was a completely different person. They actually had a name for this person, Timmy. They called him Timmy when he got drunk. And Timmy had some sort of tell-tale signs that his hands would kind of spread apart. If you watch these documentaries, they actually show photographs of him when he's drunk and you can see this happening, it's kind of crazy. And it's like he's having some sort of seizure, but really he's just being taken over by the alcohol and you see this happening in these videos. And look, Paul was not a good person this night. He was belligerent and he was angry. There are stories from some of the survivors that he was slapping his girlfriend and spitting in her face 'cause he wanted to keep driving his boat. And everybody else was telling him, "You need to stop. "You need to let somebody else drive. "You are too drunk." At one point, he's driving the boat around in circles. If you watch these videos, you can see this. His one friend, Anthony, actually asked to get off for this. but Paul won't let him. Paul is now completely and utterly out of control and a little after two a some one widely speculated to be Paul and in fact he will be eventually charged for this puts the throttle down all the way on this boat and in one of these videos you can see the boat it's heading down this river towards a bridge and they run smack into a bridge pylon going as fast as they can go when everyone comes to Mallory Beach is missing a couple of the friends are still in the boat they're bleeding everywhere they got broken noses last rated hands a couple people are in the water they're being fished out of the water but Mallory is nowhere to be seen they call 911 at 226 am the police come but they can't find Mallory either and her body would be found in the water seven days later by fishermen she was only 19 years old and I know she's talking about how in my school in high school we had a lake and a river where people would go out and very similar circumstances to this and one of the girls that I went to high school with this is exactly what happened to her her and her friends were in the boat they got very drunk they were going really fast and they ran right into a bridge and when they did she was strong from the boat and she was killed and I don't know what to say about that other than this is the kind of tragedy that happens way too much and it's entirely preventable but in this case Paul is now going to be on the hook for the death of this girl this friend that he's had but he has not changed he is still very drunk and he is still very belligerent to the point that when he is eventually taken to the hospital because he needs to be seen he actually has to be taken in restraints but before that happens Paul calls Randolph Murdoch now this is his grandfather he calls his grandfather not his father because his grandfather is the one who really has all the power and he tells his grandfather that in fact he wasn't driving the boat that in fact it was his friend Connor Cook who was driving the boat and this will become the story from the Murdoch position going forward that in fact it was Connor who was driving the boat a BAC test is eventually done on Paul they're people who complain that it wasn't done at the side of the accident that it wasn't done until he got to the hospital standard procedure they have a lot of people are injured you need to give them to the hospital when people are there's a drunk they're not going to sober up in the 45 minutes it takes you to get them to the hospital and get them stabilized and in fact he does not when the BAC test is done he is at 0.286 which obviously is well over the legal limit to drive a car or a boat and in fact it's even worse for him because he's not an adult so there really is no legal limit and this is setting up to be a really bad situation for Paul and in turn a really bad situation for his family this boat accident in any other situation is just so tragic right these young teenagers on the cusp of the rest of their lives who are friends and having a good time get into a terrible boating accident where one of them dies and honestly if you've seen the video I can't believe more of them didn't die frankly I mean I don't know how you survived something like that the the speed at which they hit the pylon was immense and it's like one of my greatest fears when I boat at night is not being able to see what's coming and I hardly ever go at that speed at night because of the dangers of boating in the dark but what I think is so interesting about this boating accident is yes it's tragic but what it begins to do and if you watch the videos from that night of Paul you get a little glimpse into what power does to a family. Paul is not your average 19 year old he's not your average teenager he's not even your average you know well to do wealthy privileged teenager I mean the way he acts is truly you can tell that his family runs the town that frankly in the way that it's difficult to reason with him and to talk with him and even the fact that he calls his grandfather after such a tragedy you know we've seen people at their worst as prosecutors right we've seen people after terrible situations after shootings after someone they love you know dying being a part of a bombing a car accident what have you and a lot of that kind of tough man exterior falls away when tragedy hits that doesn't really appear to happen here based on the footage on the police cams and also at the hospital after this tragedy they haven't found Mallory at this point which ended up itself is a really bad sign when you can't find someone after an accident like that so it's not confirmed that she's dead but very likely she is dead and at the very least everyone is bleeding everyone is being rushed to the hospital but you don't see that kind of tough exterior fade away it's it's really kind of who he is through and through and he carries himself as if he were someone who has really never been in trouble before and there's a confidence that comes with that a fast forward a couple month April of 2019 the local solicitor who we just talked about duffy stone recuses himself from the boat case and for the reasons conflict of interest reasons that makes sense out Murdoch even though he's not being solicitor he volunteers in that office so duffy stone knows the family well has worked with Paul Murdoch's father and Murdoch's boat is the one at issue in the case so you can see how that could create a at least an appearance of comfort if not an actual conflict of interest so he recuses himself from this bookcase and the state attorney general takes over which is pretty common these local district attorney offices they all kind of ultimately answered to the attorney general so if any of the local jurisdictions have to recuse themselves if another jurisdiction doesn't step in or be appointed to step in usually the state attorney general's office will prosecute the case that happens in almost every state and when the state AG took over they charged Paul with boating under the influence causing great bodily harm and causing death in connection to the crash a very serious charge and as a result of the crash Mallory's parents filed a wrongful death suit against Alec Murdoch the owner of the boat as part of that lawsuit which is a civil lawsuit whereas the lawsuit that Paul is facing is a criminal one in a civil one Mallory's parents saw all of Alec Murdoch's financial records that's pretty typical because what they're looking for in a wrongful death action are damages right in criminal actions you may have your liberties taken away in civil actions the result is usually an injunction or damages and in this case it's damages which means money the financial records are relevant and the prosecution in the murder case the one that we're all watching on TV right now has said that had these requests been granted it would have revealed the full extent of Murdoch's financial problems this is why the boating accident is beginning to shed light on Alec Murdoch's financial situation may 6 2019 Paul pleads not guilty to the charges against him which if you've heard our last past episodes that's pretty common at the beginning of a case your first kind of arrangement you typically plead not guilty even if you're ultimately going to plead guilty to say a plea agreement it because it takes time to work through those deals it's because you want to look at this discovery you want to see what evidence is against you whether you want to go to trial so the fact that he pleads not guilty is that's actually kind of a matter of course he may stick to that but there's nothing out of the ordinary except that he's now been charged criminally and he gets to speak in court and he pleads not guilty Jim Griffin who will later represent Alec represented Paul as his attorney and due to COVID and everything else Paul's next hearing gets pushed to June 10th 2021 which is more than two years later this is typically in the criminal context like undue delay that's like a crazy amount of time except for those of us who practiced during COVID and we all know that a bunch of cases got pushed to maybe more years because everyone kept thinking the pandemic pandemic was going to be over we were going to have an in-person hearing and then boo you know another wave comes through Omicron or Delta or what have you and because this is the criminal context you get to elect to have these you know that there's constitutional rights at issue and so a lot of the judges running these criminal cases were really hesitant to run all of these hearings by Zoom or by video because it was kind of uncharted territory we'd never been in a pandemic situation or a situation where you couldn't meet in person so I say that to say that you know this was just an unprecedented time and we saw delays like this and these are very serious charges and they're hanging over Paul for a couple of years because Paul is looking at 20 years in prison if he's convicted of the charges and this might be one of those things where you hear this and you're thinking to yourself if the murderers are so powerful and if they control all this stuff why did Duffy Stone recuse himself shouldn't he have helped them cover it up wouldn't that be the thing that you'd expect to happen when the super powerful family who nothing bad ever happening. happens to get some trouble like this. There are two things that I will point out here. And both of these are the reasons why the boat crash really was the lighting of a fuse. That eventually was going to explode into this whole case that we've been following. The first thing is, and listen to everything I have to say here before you write the main review. When you are powerful like this, it only matters when you do bad things to people who matter, right? So when you are powerful and you are doing bad things to the poor, or people that people don't care about, or people that people won't notice, or people who don't really know how to work the levers of power, or don't know attorneys, or really have no conception of how the system works, you can get away with a lot. You can get away with a lot. And most people who are helping you get away with things are fine with it because they know those same people are never going to hurt them. But when you become so arrogant as you begin to cause problems for people who are more powerful, that's when you get into trouble. Remember the Salem witch trials. When did the Salem witch trials fall apart? It wasn't when they were accusing beggars and vagabonds and women who didn't go to church. It was when they accused the governor's wife. And when they did that, all of the sudden things got very different. All of a sudden, people who just believed them without question were asking a lot of questions. And all of a sudden, things got shut down. Here, Paul Mallory's family is-- they're not going to just hang back. They're not the kind of people who can be intimidated. They know how this works. They've known the Murdos for forever. And they go out, and they hire themselves, some lawyers who aren't afraid of the Murdos either. And they're willing to go at them. And they're willing to ask the kind of questions that need to be asked. And Duffy Stone-- this is point two. So the first point is, when you mess with the wrong people, you can get in trouble. And the second point is, when you are powerful, you have unlimited allies. But as soon as there is a cheek in your power, the rats will flee the ship like it's sinking underneath them. And Duffy Stone, he might have been a Murdoch ally. And he might have been where he was because of the Murdos. But there was no way he was going to risk himself for those people. Do you really learn how your friends are when all of a sudden you go from having power and you don't have it? Because a lot of those people that you call your friends will abandon you before you know it. That's the thing about having this kind of power. It is incredibly-- it is so fragile and so easily shattered. There is no one who was all powerful because they may believe they are. But all it takes is something like this. And all of a sudden, people start turning on you and they don't have your back. And they are not willing to sacrifice anything for you. And that's what I think happened here. This boat case happens and all of a sudden, Alec Murdoch, who was untouchable, you thought he could do anything and get away with it. All of a sudden, people are starting to poke at him. They're starting to undermine him. They're starting to look deeper. And they're starting to look at things that he never thought they would look at. And that's how all of this starts to unravel. Because suddenly, you know, the AG's office is in here, poking around. And they don't care about some-- you got a few million dollars down in South Carolina. Congratulations. Big whoop, right? They don't care. And the lawyers who are trying to get all their money, they don't care either. And all of a sudden, all of these defenses that the Murdoch had to keep them from getting into trouble, they all start to fall away. The prosecutor's podcast is brought to you by progressive insurance. 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Even when we don't have the Hello Fresh ingredients, we're using the recipes that you get with every order. Hello Fresh's pre-portioned ingredients and easy to follow recipe cards. I mean, you can get a delicious home cook dinner on the table without all the time consuming meal planning or prepping. And you'll only find quality ingredients and Hello Fresh's recipes. In fact, ingredients travel from the farm to your home and listen, seven days so you know their fresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/TP65 and use code TP65 or 65% off plus free shipping. That's HelloFresh.com/TP65 and use code TP65 or 65% off plus free shipping. And find out for yourself. While HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit. And boy does it start to fall away, thinking about it. Like, it's actually like a house of cards, right? Once, like you said, that chink in the middle is there. I mean, the alacrity at which this falls is truly shocking. I mean, we just talked about a century of power for this family that it took to build this up. And we're gonna see within a matter of months, you know, everything just falls to pieces. - And it's amazing how coincidental timing can be the thing that takes out these people. If you think back to Bernie Madoff, people like that, everything's going fine until there's a few coincidences that line up and undermine everything. If, for instance, there had never been a pandemic. If there had never been a pandemic, you could imagine a situation in which Madoff is able to sort of align his finances in a way that prevents any of this from ever happening. Paul goes to trial, it's a quick trial. He gets some plea deal, it's not a big deal. You know, he doesn't go to jail for 20 years. And they're able to cover whatever hit they take from the lawsuit. But I'm going to go out on the limb and say that the Madoffs and the law firm suffered just like all of us did in those years. They didn't have as much business. They didn't have as much money coming in. If you listen to the trial, the way they're pay worked, they made $120,000 a year if you worked at this law firm. You made $120,000. year, which sounds like a lot to everybody out there, certainly should be a lot in a place like Hampton, South Carolina. But when you're living the kind of lifestyle they were living, it wasn't. And all of their money really came from a year in payment that they got that was a certain percentage of all of the payments they had received to the course of the year. And you can bet that 2020, that law firm wasn't taking in much money. And if you didn't have a cushion, if you were spending every dime that came in, you probably all of a sudden were looking at finances that were pretty difficult. If you didn't have a huge wrongful death lawsuit hanging out of your head, maybe that wouldn't be such a big deal. But because they're in that situation, it's another thing, another outside element that might not have been there for all of the other things that happened in the history of the Murdoff family. There might have been other things like this where they were able to cover it up and keep going because you didn't have that one extra element, but here you had it. And it was COVID. And I really think if you really, if you really looked hard at their finances, you would see that. That that was one of the things that led to a situation where all of the sudden, there's not money to move around to cover up problems. That's a great point, Brett, because they are living this fantastic lifestyle. We've seen their properties, the property where these murders take place, for example, is I mean, a hunting lodge that most people would envy, right? Beach houses and and whatnot. But what these extravagant lifestyles mean is also a lot of overhead and a lot of liability. So in hard financial times, when you don't have a lot of liquidity, even if you have a lot of assets, that can be a drain in and of itself. And you can get underwater really, really quickly, which is kind of what we begin to see here. And not to mention the whole keeping up with the Joneses. We see this in like, historical fights for thrones, but part of your power is portraying to the outside how powerful you are and how rich you are so that they never come challenge you. And so there are a lot of cost to keeping up with appearances, which appears to be the case here as well. And let's be clear. People talk about the murder laws that they got more money than God, but you know, the money they had would buy like a nice one bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Yeah, they're well compared to real wealth is not that great. And it's a problem I would love to have. But in some ways, being kind of rich or even definitely rich, but not that rich is kind of a problem because they try and live the lifestyle of the really rich. And when you're doing that, you're getting in debt. And I think that's part of it. We all know that Alex says he has a drug problem and maybe he does. There's no way he spent all the money that came through there on the drugs. They also were living far beyond their means. We've prosecuted so many drug cartels. This is not just drug money. Actually, it's lifestyle money. Right. Exactly. Exactly. It's lifestyle money. But and that money, I mean, you can go fast. And I think you saw that here. And I think, you know, you wonder where did all the money go? That would be another fun thing to do. And if there ever is a financial trial, maybe there will be a financial accountant who will go through this money. And we'll and I'm sure that will be some interesting testimony when you hear all this money. I will say this much and just a lot of people have been like, you know, where's the money? There's no way he was actually not much financial distress because you can't spend that much money that quickly. I will say that Brett and I prosecuted a lot of financial frauds where people steal millions of dollars, either from governmental entities or whatever, all related with COVID. In fact, because COVID, you know, when things were tight, just there was money flying out the door, because everyone was freaking out about businesses closing. And the amount of money that could disappear by the time we prosecuted was shocking. I mean, people could turn around and make millions. And I'm talking millions of dollars disappear within the month. I don't know where it went, but like cars cost a lot of money. And it would just fly out of bank account. I mean, it was like a fool errand to try and round up all this money. And so we saw that repeatedly. That is probably what happened in this case as well. So Alice pointed out today, June 10th, 2021, when we're going to have another hearing in this boat case, we're going to start moving forward in the boat case. Three days before that, June 7th, 2021, Murdoch receives a couple shocks. The first of those is he's confronted by his law firm by the bookkeepers in his law firm about some money that's missing. And it's not just a little bit of money. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, $792,000. And to understand why this is important, this is how law firms work. So if you're in a law firm, the resources of the law firm are going towards generating business. So just because it's your client doesn't mean it's yours alone. And you may get sort of origination bonuses and those kind of things, but most of the money that comes in the client goes into the firm itself. And then at some point at the end of the year in this case, it is divvied out to the partners. And usually there are different ways you can do it. In this firm, the percentage of money that you put in that you brought in was the percentage you got out. So if you brought in 11% of the money and it was $10 million, then you got 1.1 million, right? It would be your bonus at the end of the year. And that's how it worked. But in order for that to happen, the money that was coming to you had to go to the firm, not to the lawyer. And what they had discovered is that Murdoch had been involved in this litigation involving a pretty horrific accident with a large tractor trailer truck. This is the kind of thing that's going to generate a lot of money. And in fact, it had, it had generated a pretty large settlement for the family and fees of $792,000 for the lawyers involved. And it was Murdoch and one of his friends, I believe Chris Wilson is his name, who was another lawyer who had been friends with Murdoch for forever. They'd gone to law school together. They were very tight. They'd litigated this case together and they were going to split these fees. But what the law firm figured out was that money, it should have gone to the firm, it should have gone into their trust account. And the thing about being a lawyer is if you work in private practice and you want to get disbarred, the fastest way to do it is to screw around with your trust account. The money that comes in has to go into that account. Who not doing it? You can't mess with it and it got to get paid out exactly what it's supposed to. You can, I don't want to say you can murder people since this is a case about murder, but you can do a lot of really bad things and keep your law license. But if you mess with your trust account, things are bad. And this law firm is seeing that and so they're very concerned. And they confront him and they say, look, we need to figure this out. We need to figure out why this money went to you and not to the law firm. And Murdoch, he doesn't really have a good explanation for why this happened. It's kind of like, oh, it's just some sort of weird mistake. I'm not sure exactly how that happened. And the law firm's like, okay, well, you know, things happen. You need to come up with this money. You need to come up with a $790,000 and make sure it gets where it needs to be before this becomes a problem. At the same time, this is happening. He gets a phone call. And unfortunately, his father, who, once again, who does Paul call when everything goes wrong, not Alec. He calls this, he calls his grandfather and Alec's father, the one who had been the solicitor for a very long time, who was a very powerful man and also had a lot of money is going into the hospital. He had just gotten out of the hospital and everybody thought he was getting better. But suddenly, he has taken a very bad turn. He's going back into the hospital. And the prognosis is he's going to make it a matter of days. This is terminal. He's not going to make it. This was a big problem for him because his father was making a lot of money himself. And he had loaned a lot of money to Alec. And he was the kind of person who would co-sign on loans for him. And would provide money to cover his shortfalls. So all of the sudden, he's got the firm saying, about 800,000 dollars is missing. You need to find it. And he's got a call that his father is in very poor health and is probably not going to make it. So he's not necessarily going to be able to rely on him for this money. And you might be thinking to yourself, well, but if his father does, maybe he'll get an inheritance. Well, his mother was still alive, number one. And number two, as everyone who's ever dealt with inheritances involving a lot of money, which I haven't. I say that like I have, but I haven't, but it takes a long time. As we go through probate, has to be figured out. There's a lot of creditors that have to be paid. A lot of different things go into the estate. I mean, I was just talking to our friend yesterday, things, you know, mother had passed away two years ago. She was so frustrated with the probate system because it wasn't finalized. And it was not contested. You know, it was, there was a well. No siblings are fighting for anything, but it's two years later because COVID that none of the inheritances have been distributed, which was causing my friend a lot of just turmoil because she wanted this to all be done. So that's actually pretty typical for this to take year. And not to mention, by the way, in his mind, think about what Alec is thinking. You would think that normally if you hear that your father is about to pass away, you know, there's, there's the, I'm about to move my father. I have one father in this life, all these things. But remember, he has $792,000 on his mind. And where he weathered his mother, who was still living, knew about any of this and even had the power to be able to co-sign and lend all this other money to him. That probably takes a long time to explain why you need so much money, something that it seems like his father had kind of been willing to overlook or at least bail him out on multiple occasions previously alone. And his mother, in fact, was suffering from late stage dementia, so she probably wasn't in a position to sign off on any money. So his father dying, this is a really opportunity time for this to happen. Because his father can't give him money. He's not going to get any money for a while. He can't get money from his mom probably without the help of his brother who certainly doesn't know what's going on. So this is a really difficult situation for him where he needs a lot of money and all of a sudden money is not available. And he knows something. Nobody else knows, which is it's not just $792,000. In fact, it's millions of dollars over the course of the last decade that he has stolen from the firm and his clients. And we'll get into that more later. But he knows this is just the tip of the iceberg. And if he can't stop this now, if he can't convince the law firm everything's fine. If they keep looking, if they do a deeper dove, that's going to be a problem. And at the same time, this boat case is going on. And it's not just the criminal case. It's also that civil case and the civil people are wanting to look into his finances as well. So he's really kind of in a pincer right now. And you can only imagine the amount of stress he's under at this time. Well, at around four o'clock, about 355 is a matter of fact. Maggie Murdoch, who is his wife, sends a text message to a friend that says, "Alex wants me to come home. His dad is back in the hospital." She also talks to her sister about this. And Maggie is saying at the beach house. She likes to be at the beach house. There's different people who say different things about why she's at the beach house. The most prosaic answer is that everything had been hunky-dory for the Murdoch's. And they had ran the place until the boat accident. And then his things started to fall apart. The community really turned against them. And Maggie felt like there was an incredible amount of anger at her and the family. And she just didn't want to be around it. So she had gotten away. So she often stayed at the beach house. Now, Alex is telling her, "I want you to come, I want you to come to Mozele," which is what they called their hunting launch. I want you to come here. My dad's. He's back in the hospital. We got a kind of rally together. At the same time, Paul, who's been staying with different friends, he's sort of couch surfing. He's all over the place. His father also calls him and says, "Hey, I need you to come back. We got some problems with the sunflowers." This is a big farm/hunting thing. Most of us can't even imagine this. But basically, they're growing different crops to use and hunting. And their sunflowers have been killed. So he tells him, "I need you to come back and help me with some of the stuff that's going on at the farm." So it's two different reasons to bring Maggie and Paul back to the hunting lodge. At around 815, Maggie arrives at the hunting lodge. Like I said, she'd been at the beach house. Paul and Alex were already there at that point. They have a housekeeper, who we will talk about more later, who has made them dinner. So basically, they show up dinners on the stove and the three of them eat dinner together. At around 830, so after a very quick dinner, Paul's phone starts moving down towards the kennels where they keep the hunting dogs. And if you've seen aerial photos of this really impressive hunting property, when you are of this, I guess, this stature, and you really like to hunt, you have these dogs that are not for indoor pet keeping. They live outdoors. I mean, there's like a big dog house, but they live in kennels outdoors because their job is to go hunting with you to point out, you know, whatever you're hunting, whether it be ducks or whatnot, and they are working dogs. And so because of that, they're not located right next to the house. It's about a little less than a mile from the house, but they tend to be loud. You know, they're wild animals, they bark, and they are usually kept a little bit away from the main living quarters, which is the case here on this property. At 831 p.m., Maggie receives a text from John Marvin Murdoch. She reads it 16 seconds later. By the way, the fact that we can track all of these things on a cell phone should make you all feel very. no, it makes me feel very self-conscious how every moment of my day can be tracked because I'm tied to my phone, but we have found this to be a very helpful way to piece together criminal cases because we do use our phones so much, and we can see metrics such as when something is sent, and when it's opened, and when something is, you know, when your phone is trying to open, those sorts of things, and it all comes into play in this timeline, and it's incredibly important for understanding what happened because three people were there that night, only one is alive, and he is on trial. So, Maggie receives the text. She reads it 16 seconds later, which is pretty typical. Most of us when we hear the ding on our phone, probably looking at pretty scene after, which is what she did. Now, this is a group text about visiting Alex Dad in the hospital, which she knows about because that's one of the reasons she came back to this property. At 8.40, Paul and Rogan Gibson, a friend of Paul's, talk on the phone, and this phone call lasts for four minutes, and it's about a dog as we are going to see in the next call. At 8.44 and 34 seconds, there's an outgoing call from Paul's phone to Rogan Gibson, and it's a FaceTime call, but it lasts just 11 seconds. And the purpose of this call was to show one of the dogs hurt tails. The dog, it's a black lab named Cash, actually belonged to Rogan Gibson, who was staying with his girlfriend in a place that didn't take dogs, but Rogan couldn't see the dog on his FaceTime call, so Paul said that he would record a video and send it kill him to show him what was wrong with his dog's tail. At 8.44 and 49 seconds, to 8.45 and 47 seconds, so about one minute, Paul begins recording a video of one of the dogs, and on that video, you can hear Paul and Maggie's voices clearly, according to the prosecution, so can Alex. This is inconsistent with what Alex told investigators, because he said at this time he was actually taking a nap and not at the kennels with his wife and son. Paul was supposed to send this video of the dog's tail to Rogan, but he never did. Eventually, we'll play this video so you can hear all their voices. If you've been watching the trials, been played multiple times, we've left it about as vague as we can get with prosecution says it's Alex. Everyone has said it's Alex that is testified. And not only if they said it's him, they said they're 100% sure. And that includes Rogan. It includes several of Paul's friends. It includes Maggie's sister. It includes her husband. Everybody says, when they hear this, that it's Alex voice. And you can very clearly hear three voices while he's recording this video. This video is going to become incredibly important because of the timing. So you have this outgoing FaceTime call where basically Paul can't get good service. That's the problem. He's breaking up and so Rogan can't really see it. And the idea is I'll record a video and just send it to you. And that's the video we've been seeing again and again. As Alex said, this video ends at 8.45 and 47 seconds. Three minutes later, at 8.48 and 59 seconds, Paul reads a message from a girl about watching a movie. They were talking about what movie they wanted to watch, whether it should be sad or happy. They wanted to happy maybe because they want to be sad. That's 8.48 and 59 seconds. At 8.49 and one second, Paul's phone locks. He never uses it again. You can imagine how this went. He opens it up. He reads the message. He puts it back in his pocket or he has the button or whatever it locks automatically. He will never unlock it again. At 8.49 and 27 seconds. So 26 seconds later, Maggie's phone unlocks and she reads a group text from John, Marvin Murdoch, another text about the dad and what they're going to do with him. Four seconds after that, Maggie's phone locks and she will never use it again. So that's 8.49 and 31 seconds. Her phone has locked. At 8.49 and 35 seconds. So four seconds after Maggie's phone locks for the last time, Paul gets another text this time from Rogan. This is the person he has been talking back and forth with on the phone. He's been texting back and forth with. He's attempted to send a Snapchat. He has recorded a video for him that he's going to send to him. And this person's just continuing the conversation. So Rogan sends him a text message and says, hey, see if you can get a good picture of it, Marion. That's his girlfriend wants to send it to a girl we know that's a vet telling him to sit and stay and he shouldn't move around too much. Paul never answers this text and in fact, he never reads this text. So this is four seconds after Maggie's phone locks for the last time. You would think that given Paul sort of back and forth with this friend that if he were able, he would have read this text very soon thereafter, but he does not. At 8.54 and 40 seconds, something else happens. Now this is about five minutes after Paul gets this text that he never reads. Maggie's phone changes its orientation to landscape, meaning it was moved. You guys know what this means. You're flipping the phone around. The picture is changing. Four seconds later, it changes to portrait. Ten seconds after that, the camera activates for facial recognition for one second. It is not, however, unlocked, indicating that whoever moved it and whoever looked at it was not Maggie because it did not. unlock. At the same time Maggie's phone registers 59 steps taken. So it seems as though whoever has picked up the phone causing the orientation to change and looked at the phone causing the facial recognition to come on is at the same time walking with the phone. There will be no more steps after this until the phone is found the next day. The phone will lock and portrait orientation at 855 and 52 seconds. By this time you have to assume that the murders have happened and that both Maggie and Paul are dead and in fact have probably been dead for a couple minutes. And that's really powerful because we all can see the activity of the phone. I think that's really a really powerful timeline when you see the constant activity of the phone which is being unlocked by their faces that's how they're reading these text messages and then when all of a sudden the timeline screeches to a halt at the same time says a lot about the timeline of when they were likely murdered. We're gonna touch on one last cell phone activity information to draw parallels to what you've just heard about Saul and Maggie's phones before we leave you guys for the day. Let's talk about Alex phone because from 809 to 902 PM his phone has no activity whatsoever. At 902 Alex turns on his phone and that's the first time in about an hour that there's any activity. At 903 and 44 seconds Alex car door and he has an SUV opens between 902 18 to 906 and 47 seconds. Alex is walking and his phone is recording steps. The phone will not record steps when it's in the car because of the way it's programmed. So he's walking for about four minutes. At 904 in 23 seconds so in the period in which he's walking, Alex calls Maggie but she does not answer as we know she never answers her phone again. Alex then calls his father Randolph who remember that day has suffered a medical emergency and was in the hospital and in fact he would die only a few days later. At 905 so about 30 seconds after Alex calls Maggie that's when Maggie's screen comes on but does not unlock. At 906 and 14 seconds one minute later, Alex calls Maggie again. As we know she doesn't answer. So this is interesting for a few different reasons. All of this is happening before he left. He has not yet left the form. We know that because we know sort of what's going on with his car. We know what's going on with his phone. As we've said by 902 when he turns on his phone, there's a pretty good chance that Maggie and Paul have been dead for at least seven minutes maybe more like 10 minutes when he turns on his phone. He's also you know he's near the SUV. He's opening the door at 903 and 44 seconds but he's not getting in and we know that because he's walking around with his phone. I do this sometimes you open the door to put something in it and you're wandering around getting other stuff. I can totally see this happening not necessarily unusual. At the same time while he's walking around with his phone, he's calling Maggie. She's not answering. Her screen comes on. It's interesting 904 and 23 seconds and let me say this weird thing about this case. We're doing the best we can with these times. Different witnesses are just a little bit off with this which doesn't really make sense to me. I don't understand why some of the witnesses who talk about the phones are like a few seconds one way or the other. I guess nothing's perfect but in any event these are all very close. So if your chart says it happened at 904 and 25 seconds don't know get on to us. This is this is all good enough for government work. He's calling Maggie. Her screen's coming on. You can imagine what's happening there when he calls her when the phone call goes through her screen probably comes on in probably shows that he's calling. No answer. He calls her again. No answer. No one thing he doesn't do is drive down to the kennels which remember Alex says he's asleep on the couch in the house. He's falling asleep after dinner. They're all down with the kennels. He's asleep. We know this is highly questionable given that video but just assume for a second that we're going with what Alex says. The kennels as Alice said they're a little bit away from the house. They're about 0.3 miles away so about a third of a mile away to not that far but far enough that maybe you don't want it to jog down the real fact but you could imagine driving down to sea. Another thing you can imagine is if you're 0.3 miles away is hearing gunshots where that happened but we'll talk about that more later. In any event he's calling her she's not answering. So now go through a few more of these before we sign off. 906 in 20 seconds like I said some testimony says 906 12 so do with that what you will. The orientation of Maggie's phone changes to portrait mode and this indicates that someone has picked it up from wherever it is whether it's laying next to her or whether the person who picked it up earlier and looked at the screen had moved at some of the location they pick it up. This is the last orientation change for the phone but it does not record any steps. So whatever this person is doing when they look at the phone they don't walk with her phone they just look at it. Now at this time we know that Alec is walking around and his phone is recording steps. One thing to note about that though it doesn't mean that every second between 902 18 and 906 47 he's he's walking that's not what it means. He gets off for a few seconds then continue to walk. This is just a period of walking. These phones are amazing they're not perfect especially when it comes to the steps thing. You all know you can manipulate it to make yourself feel better about the steps you've taken and it doesn't mean that he's walking continuously. So the defense kind of makes a big deal about this. Alex walking but her phone isn't how can he be how can he have the phone if his phone is moving and hers isn't doesn't necessarily mean anything. If he did it for instance he could have walked up to where her phone was picked it up put it back down kept walking that accounts for the for what happened. But nevertheless this is a point that the defense has made and in fact they have pointed out as Alex said if you're driving in a car it's not going to measure steps. So in their mind what they think is happening is the murderers have taken Maggie's phone for some reason. They are driving away from the phone they pick up the phone and see that Alec is calling. They kind of freak out they throw it out the window and the phone will actually be found the next day in some brush about a half mile away from the road. It's a curious thing it's not clear why murderers would take Maggie's phone it's not clear why Alec would take her phone. Not sure why that would happen either way. Obviously having her phone own you would be a really bad thing if you were the killer and there's no real reason to take it away from the scene. So little unclear why that happened but it's unclear no matter who did it. So at 906 49 seconds Alec cranks his car in the phone sinks with the car at 906 and 50 seconds he takes the car out of park and 906 and 51 seconds as he's beginning to drive away he calls Maggie again. Once again Maggie's screen turns on it will then go off the phone does not record any orientation changes when all this happens at 908 and 58 seconds Alec texts Maggie that he's going to check on his mom. Obviously Maggie will never read this text and then at 910 PM 929 PM 942 PM 957 PM and 1008 PM Rogan who up until this point has been in constant communication with Paul calls him again and again and again trying to reestablish contact with his friend who suddenly seems to have just disappeared. And that makes a lot of sense right Rogan is worried about his dog and he probably has like a vet you know the friend vet on standby waiting to see what's wrong with it and if it's a big serious maybe an infection he wants to get treatment for the dog right away but what it shows is that that's a lot of calls that's what five missed calls from Rogan but it shows that they were in that close communication which the cell phone records reflect that it was a it was a back and forth and all of a sudden Paul just cold stopped which is completely unexpected. Well that's what we're going to leave you for tonight that sort of gives you the run up of what happened in this case next week we're going to talk more about the alibi of Alec Murdoch. What exactly he says was going on at the time what happened after the murders and what happened when he discovered the bodies and then we will continue to go through the timeline and we will talk more about the initial investigation and then we're going to take a little bit of a sidetrack. We're actually going to talk about some of the things that happened before the murders some of the background of this case that a lot of people have talked about but has only been talked about sort of in whispers in the trial. Little things about it but maybe not as directly as some people would like to see. We're going to talk about those things and then we're really going to dive into the evidence in this case what we think it shows whether or not it is sufficient to convict Alec Murdoch and whether he should be convicted whether he or not he is guilty or innocent. As we record this the trial is ongoing the prosecution is still putting on its case the expectation is the prosecution will rest sometimes seen though they have kept going. There have been people who've said the defense case could last for a couple weeks the defense is indicated they have a lot of different experts they're going to call a lot of times that's actually bluster a lot of times the defense will act as though they're gonna put on this big case and then when the prosecution finishes their case they say oh never mind the prosecution's done such a poor job putting on evidence against my client we're not even gonna put on any witnesses we're going straight to the jury don't think that will happen here and then obviously there's the big question of whether or not Ali Murdoch will testify you know if you're a betting person you should never bet on the defendant testifying but I kind of feel like he may in this case I think there are questions raised by his early statements to the police as we've already talked about and things like that video that only he can answer and I'm not sure if he doesn't come up with a good answer whether or not a jury will acquit him so this may be a case where we see a defendant testify in low-muggeness if that happens that is going to be quite the show this already is quite the show I mean this is look there is a reason this has captivated the news networks and the true crime community and really just society in general I mean you're regularly seeing updates of the Murdoch trial across national media platforms not just true crime you know reddit board and it's because this is the trial of the century it is incredibly interesting and when you have such a highlight on a trial there's going to be criticisms of it there's going to be you know I could have done this better I could have done that better but this is a very just a far-out case so many levels because of the history of this area the history of this family the history of what was going on and also just the absolute tragedy of the potential of a father murdering his own flesh and blood and his wife on their own property when seemingly he's one of the most powerful and you know established people on society has gripped the nation so we're going to try to unpack all of this for you and present it in a way that you guys can make your own decisions and along the way explain some of what's been happening in trial with you guys and if you've been following our other podcast legal briefs we've been doing some kind of more Johnny on the spot analysis of what happening trial so hop on over there for some some of good episodes as well getting into the nitty-gritty of strategy and your favorite 404b and other kind of legal concepts rather than just the story which we're telling about here but thank you guys for coming along for the ride and there's there's a lot's unpack your bread it was a lot to say I think we made some good progress today and we will keep moving through this case I hope you guys will stick with this as we do sure you already have thoughts she just an email prosecutor's pod gmail dot com at prosecutor's pod for all your social media thank you to those of you who are listening early and at free on patreon we've really enjoyed talking about some of these issues live with you guys as we record legal breeze which Alice was talking about but we will be back next week with more on this trial but until then um Brett and our Dallas and we are the prosecutors I'm recording but let me just see what's going on this space remaining 647 hours okay I'm recording again I'm gonna keep an eye on it this time I'm sorry remember how long are you yeah we were I'm really sorry paying it we've been recording for okay well you are on speaker in whenever you're ready okay testing testing testing [Music] usually I keep an eye on it but I just that my volume okay I'm sorry yes so good you know we so good he banter about him it's really okay okay [Music] all month long on Pluto TV streamed 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 couples retreat with Sharon Leal and why did I get married or address Elba and Gabrielle Union and 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 insurance isn't one-size-fits-all that's why customers have enjoyed progressives name your price tool for years now with the name your price tool you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fits your budget so whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family they make it easy to see your options visit progressive dot com find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law