178. The Murdaugh Murders Part 3

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John Tutoro, Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslani, Will Price, and Steve Hashimi Star, in the only living pickpocket in New York. Now playing in New York and Los Angeles, opens nationwide October 30th. 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 Maul, 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 a 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 Murda trial. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett, and I'm joined as always by my luminescent co-host, Elise. Brett, I was already to like respond to the luminescent part. And you had to mispronounce my name because, well, it is a news pronouncing. Is it just an alternative? Exactly. It's just an alternative pronunciation. This trial, this Alec, Alec, Murdoch, Murdoch, Murdoch, trial has made me question pronunciation of everything in the English language. And I love how people are routing emails saying, it was pronounced this way. It's like, okay. There's no way anybody knows how it's pronouncing including the man himself. Yeah, it's great. It's great. But you know, it's been a while since you've caught me totally off guard. Well, there you go. I'm glad I could accomplish that. By the way, that descriptor was provided by Janie, who I guess believes you shine a light on all sorts of dark places. Oh, thank you, Janie. That was a very. I was excited about the descriptor and then you had to go and mispronounce my name. Well, you know, maybe it's just a better pronunciation. Okay. Well, it might be. So let's let's let folks in on this because we have been. I mean, let's be honest, I think if we took our time on this particular case, this could be a Jambane late case. This could be a nine or 10 episode case for sure. But we are racing against the clock because the prosecution rested just yesterday. There's still more of the trial to go while we're recording this. You guys will probably be hearing this afterwards. But we are trying to record this because I am racing against the clock about to have a baby and we really want to finish this case before that happens. I don't know if we're going to do it. I really think we're probably going to have a baby in the middle of this case, but that's okay. It's okay because we're going to get a little bit ahead. It's going to be fine. But look at how good we are. We're recording. So you guys know, we're recording during nap time right now. We're recording after bedtime. We are recording all the time because Brett doesn't give maternity leave. It's true. It's true. It's more like Alice is cracking a whip on me. I was about ready to take a nap myself. And all of a sudden she's like, let's record. Here we are. You know, these babies, they can come at any time. Yeah. For anyone who's been here for the first time, by the time you hear this, there will probably already be a baby here. Yes, there's going to be a new prosecutor will update you when that happens. But in the meantime, we're working hard because what we really care about, I know you guys don't really care about a birthday now. You care about Ellic. Thanks for writing. You do. And as you guys have been listening, no, we're right in the middle of the timeline in this case. And this is truly a case where the timeline may matter more than just about any case you're going to see so much of the prosecution's case has been dependent on the timeline. If you're watching the trial where we are right now as you record this, the prosecution just finished up their presentation. And the very last witness they did was a timeline witness because the timeline really tells a lot of story. And we're in the middle of that. We've been telling you the story is sort of the evidence is laid out. But now we're getting into what happened right around the murders and what Ellic Murdoz alibi is. And interestingly, the defense as part of South Carolina procedural law had to file a filing an alibi filing before the trial even began sort of laid out in a very short, you know, generalized form his description of his, his, what he was doing that day. So we wanted to provide that as well. So you can compare that to the evidence and see sort of how it lines up. And this goes online what we've told you all about trials. There are no surprises allowed at trials. Not just for the prosecution, you know, we've talked about Brady turning over all the evidence, none of these sort of Perry Mason moments because the element of surprise is not supposed to have any role in the courtroom. Of course, the jurors are hearing for the first time, but each side has to know what the other is arguing. And this also applies for the defense. That's why they have to let the prosecution know what they intend to argue as their defense in this, this alibi filing. And just so you know, the whole point of this is we're not trying to go for a TV moment or like an aha movement. That's actually the last thing you want in trial. What you want is for each side to know exactly what the play is going to be for the other side and thoroughly be able to research and cross examine. That's kind of at the heart of the trial system, the cross examination to be able to test the other side's evidence. And so you know, it's almost contrary to this day and age of, you know, the gotcha moment in the TikTok videos that in, you know, whatever, 20 seconds, you're able to just shock the other side. That's not supposed to happen. So this is what the defense put in their alibi filing. So this is Alex defense. He said a few minutes after 9 p.m. Murdoch left to visit his mom in Almeda. And he did so because she's suffering from late stage Alzheimer's. It was a drive of about 20 minutes. And during that drive, Murdoch called his son, Buster, his brother, John, his sister-in-law Liz, Chris Wilson, and CB Row. Keep CB Row in mind, because in particular, he's going to become important later. In other words, on this drive, he's calling a lot of people. But kind of weirdly, I like to read some of these calls from his call record, not all of them, but some of them. And remember what we told you about cell bright and cell phone analysis, 99.9% of what you think is deleted on there can be recovered by forensic analysis. And this was recovered. So the defense is not yet started. It's presentation. Well, they have. They put on a couple of witnesses at the end of the day on Friday that really didn't matter. I mean, they were really just filling some time to like you get to next week when they're really going to start their witnesses. They're going to have some experts. I expect some of those will be cell phone experts. And I think one of the things they're going to attack is this notion that Alec deleted these calls, because they don't actually, it doesn't actually make sense. Like he deletes some of them, I guess might make sense. We'll talk about some of those later. But the more the prosecution talked about the calls that were deleted, the more I began to think, I'm not sure if they were deleted. And the prosecution intimates that they're deleted. The way they presented it is they didn't show up when they downloaded his call log as Alec was saying, which indicates that they're deleted. And that's one of the things I sort of put out there. Why wouldn't they be on there because they were deleted? I really think one of the things the defense is going to do is somehow put on somebody who's going to say, no, actually that's not it. It can happen other ways because I don't know. Some of the calls to his wife we're going to talk about. Maybe you can see by he would delete them, but there were so many that the prosecution walked through and the more phone calls, the prosecution mentioned that weren't on the cell brought analysis, the more I was like, I don't know about this because he was deleting calls that really didn't make any sense for him to delete if he was deleting them. And that's a great point because remember, you want to poke enough holes. So we've been looking at very compelling cell phone evidence that shows that both his wife and his son stopped using their cell phones at a certain time. We saw that, you know, the face recognition came on, didn't unlock the number of steps. I mean, it seems almost just like the most amazing type of evidence to pin down the crime scene. But if the defense can poke holes into the reliability of these sort of cell phone forensic analyses, then you start questioning everything. Did the phone really get picked up? Did it really walk the spending steps? Did it really go, you know, dead at 840 something or did it just not capture the activity? So even though a lot of the forensic evidence probably is solid, you can see why the defense would want to bring up these types of experts. We don't know yet. We'll be hearing this. You'll be hearing this after they've had some witnesses up. But I do think that could be very powerful evidence because so far, the timeline based on the cell phones is pretty bad for Alex. Now, according to the prosecution, Alec is also booking it when he's going to see his mother. His speed to his mom hits 75 miles per hour while his speed back is 80 miles per hour. And the speed limit here is only 55. It's late at night. Remember, it's after 9 p.m. So the road is dark. It's not like a big highway. It's kind of poorly paid with potholes and it's filled with deer because they're kind of in the country. They're in the middle of nowhere. He's out at his hunting lodge. You usually have a hunting lodge where there's not a lot of roads and buildings so that the animal can come out and feel free to come out for you to go hunt them. Now, this was much faster than when he drove home from work that day when he averaged closer to the speed limit. At the same time, he is making all of these calls and texts. Again, this is just looking at black box data, it's just trying to basically establish differences in patterns that could indicate some state of mind, right? Because you see how it would be less powerful if Alec is just a guy who drives 20 to 25 miles above the speed limit on the regular while they're stirring the day at night after he's committed a murder or when he's coming home from work. If he's always a speedster, it doesn't really matter that he's speeding. But what the prosecution is trying to convey here is, no, he drives pretty close to the speed limit, like a normal speed limit regularly. He's speeding right now because he just killed his family and there's a lot of adrenaline going on and he's trying to establish an alibi get to his mom so that he can say he's been there and pretend he's been there longer than he's actually been there. Then speed back and call the police so he can show that he just happened upon them. That sort of thing. Of course, we don't know what actually happened, but that's kind of what they're trying to get out. And the defense guy's a good job at sort of pulling at this. As Al said, the reason this is significant is the comparison to other times. But really the only other time the prosecution compares it to is Alec's trip there that day after work. The defense points out they didn't look at, you know, the last week of data to see how he drives. They didn't look at how he drives at night versus how he drives during the day. It was much more the police said things or the witness said things like I wouldn't even drive this fast with lights and sirens. I wouldn't even drive this fast in an emergency vehicle. And I guess there's two things I'll say about that. Number one, I would remind everyone circumstantial evidence like this, you don't think of it in isolation. In isolation, this may or may not mean anything to you. It may seem completely innocuous to you. It's really only important when you pair it with everything else. When you pair it with all the other evidence showing that Alec might have been involved in this murder, then maybe it becomes a little bit more significant that he's driving so fast. If you look at an isolation, you're probably going to think of it like I do, which is doesn't seem that significant. As someone who lives or has lived in the middle of nowhere in small southern counties with old roads like this with a 55 mile per hour speed limit, they probably should be more like 45. But nevertheless, a road that you drive on at 80 miles per hour is just not weird at all. To me, I don't know. I didn't find this quiet as convincing as maybe the prosecution thought it would be. We have a lot of deer too. Sometimes you're booking it down the road at 80 miles an hour and you see a deer on the side and you're like, "Woo! Glad he stayed over there, so I don't know." I do think, once again, if you just consider this data point with everything else, it's a little bit more convincing, standing along the fact that Alec Murdoch drives really fast at night doesn't really do a lot for me. It is interesting that, and they do this with a few other things to their few other data points that you use to show comparisons between how he was acting before the murders and around the time of the murders versus much earlier or much later. One data point, don't hang your hat on this, but maybe interesting. And just so you know, this is every decision you make within a trial, these minutia things, the prosecution probably thought about for a really long time whether to bring it, whether not to bring it. And it's to try to convey the entire story, but it lets you into kind of the story where it's, who knows, it could be a good call or a bad call to bring this type of, you know, information in, but we're putting that, putting it out there for you. The data will show that he leaves for his mom's house or wishes staying at 907 and 6 seconds. He does not stop at the kennels, despite having attempted to reach Maggie on multiple occasions. The data will also show that around this time, Maggie's phone, the backlight turns off for the last time until much later in the night. So Alex Suburban is passing the spot where Maggie's phone will be found the next day. Testimony indicates that picking the phone up and tossing it into the brush would cause the light to come on. Again, we don't know what really happened, we're trying to show the timing of what's happening here. It's interesting that the defense kind of got whipsawed in this case a little bit. If you followed it, you know that the GM data came in late. They didn't think they had any GM data, and then all of a sudden, halfway through the trial, GM has a bunch of data that's going to allow the prosecution to use this. And the prosecution, as soon as they get it, they give it to the defense. It's not any kind of Brady violation or discovery violation. It's just late, late discovered evidence, and everybody has to deal with it. And the defense had actually, when all they had was the cell phone data, they had said, you may remember, there's that call that Alec makes to Maggie around 906, and the orientation of Maggie's phone changes to portrait mode, which indicates somebody picked it up. And this is the last orientation change on the phone, and the defense actually speculated when they were talking about cell phone data, that what that was was someone driving down the road, picking the phone up, seeing that Alec is calling and kind of freaking out and throwing Maggie's phone out the window, that that's what they were doing at that time. Well, when the prosecution gets the GM data, they're able to show that the person passing that spot where the phone was at the moment that that orientation change comes up is not some unknown person. It's Alec. So if the defense's theory is correct, that that's the moment the phone got thrown out the window, it was Alec throwing it out the window. And that's just unfortunate for the defense that they kind of didn't realize they were walking into that, because they didn't have that evidence. And this goes back to sort of what Alec was saying about the Gacha moments. You don't have them because ordinarily they would have had all that evidence, and they would have known not to say something like that. But because of this sort of late arriving evidence, it ended up being a pretty effective thing for the prosecution. Where the prosecution will be able to really bring that out, enclosing, I don't know. But it certainly was something that I think a lot of people noticed during this last witness. Absolutely. And no, that's not Brady, because it's late discovered evidence. As long as you give over the evidence, as soon as you have it, there's no violation. And the reason it's late, by the way, is you issue these subpoenas in advance of trial and the custodians of these records. They're supposed to respond within a certain amount of time. There's a date on the subpoena, it's usually 30 days or the date of the first day of trial. But people are late all the time. This happens, unfortunately, not infrequently. So just so you know, this is not like some conspiracy that just happens. Now going back to the defense's alibi filing, they say that at 9.20pm, Murdoch arrives and visits with his mom, who because of her Alzheimer's is really not, she's not able to confirm whether he's there or not. She's kind of just there. Now he spends 25 minutes with her while she's watching a show. At 9.24, Alec calls the caretaker for his mom when he arrives at her home. His mom is asleep when he first arrives and he sits on her bed with her. And one thing that I think's interesting is that the alibi filing is always sort of pushing the times a little bit, so the alibi filing has him arriving about five minutes earlier than he actually arrives, which we know from the cell phone and the GM stuff. And as you will see, has him leaving a little bit later than he actually leaves. And I mean, these are all estimates that they're making in the alibi. following, they're obviously not going to be completely accurate. So not saying you should make a big deal out of it, but it is interesting to me that their timeline is a little bit friendlier to murder than the actual timeline, which makes sense. Right? This is your best story of what happened. Now, 934 Rogan Gibbons texts Maggie and says, tell Paul to call me. Of course we know that by that time there's no more action on Maggie's phone and the phone indicates that she never reads that text message. At 942 and 49 seconds, Alex phone connects to his car when he turns his car on and he begins heading back home. And I think what you see here is, I mean, look, it's hard to say what you make about this. Obviously, if you think Murdoz innocent, then you think this is just an innocent visit to see his mom. But there's a couple of things that are pretty striking about this. Number one, it is late. She has late stage all timers. She's already asleep when he gets there. He you know, he's booking it to get there. It takes about 20 minutes to get there. He only stays with her for about 18 minutes. And then he's back in the car heading back home. There's a lot of this that feels like creating an alibi. Maybe it's not, but just the circumstances of him going there. Certainly, it certainly seems like it was a difficult thing, an inconvenient thing for him and a disruptive thing for her for him to even go out there in the first place. But he doesn't. But then when he gets there, he only stays about 15 minutes, a little over 15 minutes. And then he's heading home. You know, it's worth the noting because let's say that it's a situation where he was supposed to make it out there. He fell asleep and it's late and he's like, I got to go see my mom or she'll be upset. She has dementia. She doesn't remember that he's there. So it's really no difference to her whether he is coming that night or the next morning, especially if she's already asleep. So it cuts against, you know, maybe someone who's waiting at the door saying, but my son said he'd come today. None of that has happened here. And the and the person he doesn't go see is his father. His father who you may recall went into the hospital that day. And there's been a lot of discussion between the family about going to seem because his days are numbered. And there's testimony and we'll talk about this as we walk through this that the reason Maggie came back from the beach was because they were going to go see his father. Obviously, they could have intended to do that the next day. But it is just a little strange that Alec picked this time. It is certainly a coincidence. I'll say that. Maybe it's not strange, but it's certainly a coincidence. And you guys know, I don't buy a lot of behavior stuff. I think it's kind of interesting backwards looking. It's kind of like Nostradamus. You know, you can't ever predict anything from Nostradamus. But when people look back, it thinks it happened. They're like, "Ah, he predicted that." It's like, okay, well great. Not very helpful. That's what I feel about behavior a lot of times. It's if he's guilty, then it's helpful. And if he's not, then it doesn't seem like it's that helpful. But one thing that always strikes me in cases like this is alibi creation and how consistent people are and how they create alibis. They go to places where they're going to be seen. They suddenly are a chatty Kathy. In the case of him, he's calling everybody in the world while he's driving. 80 miles an hour down the road, he's sending text messages. You know, he's calling people on the phone. He's going to see his mom. He's seeing the caretaker. I mean, it feels a lot like alibi creation, which obviously if he did it is exactly what it is. And I don't know, you know, like I said, this seems like the kind of thing that it is only helpful. If you have a whole a lot of other evidence to convince you that he did it, this is the kind of thing that helps you be sure in your decision you've already made. And that's an important part of circumstantial evidence. People attack circumstantial evidence. They attack forensic evidence a lot of times. And when they do it, they always attack it as if it's the only evidence. So they'll say things like, "How can you convict somebody on this questionable forensic evidence?" Well, you probably shouldn't, but if you have a whole bunch of other evidence and then you have some like, you know, fibers that happen to match or nearly fiber evidence, not that helpful, but when it's attached to all this other evidence, then it becomes kind of convincing. To me, this is similar. When you have all the other evidence of what Murdoff may have done, this event is something that kind of pushes you to think, "Yeah, your interpretation of that other evidence as indicating he killed somebody is probably correct." So going back to the filing, the alaba filing, they say that he leaves at 9.45, which is consistent with what we said, about them sort of pushing the stuff a little bit. He actually leaves around 9.43, 9.45 is only two minutes later, but you know, when you add two minutes on a back end and you add a few minutes on the front end, all of a sudden you're there and we're like half an hour instead of 18 minutes or however long he was actually there. And any of it, he leaves to return to Moselle and once again, he is firing up the phone lines. He is calling a bunch of people. He speaks again to Chris Wilson, who is a friend of his and a lawyer. As a fact, he is one of Murdoff's best friends. They'd known each other for forever. They had become close in law school and they would often work together and split fees. In fact, it was Chris Wilson that had worked on the trucker case that we talked about last time, the one that resulted in the $792,000 fee payment that should have gone to the law firm, but instead went into Alex pocket the same fee that his law firm had confronted him about on that day and Chris Wilson testifies that fee was not discussed during these conversations. At 9.45 and 32 seconds, Alex calls Maggie. According to the prosecution, this is one of those calls that is not on his call list when they download his phone, indicating to them at least that he will later delete the record of this call. The thing that is strange about this to me and some of the others we're going to talk about, Alex is driving back to the farm. He is creating an alibi. He is trying to present himself as being innocent. Some of the other calls I can see why he would delete them. I don't understand why you would delete this one and I don't understand why he would delete the next one, which was a call to Paul, which also doesn't appear on his call log. Why would you delete those calls when they help to establish that you didn't do it? Yeah, that doesn't make any sense at all. Unless then you start getting down this rabbit hole. A lot of people have given, tried to give him a lot of credit and said that he carried out the perfect crime. First of all, he clearly didn't because he was charged and he's currently in trial for it. So just by the way, he's not like a smart as maybe some people are giving him credit for. But if he is trying to think like chess game and trying to think many steps ahead, you can imagine how if he makes these calls and deletes them, he's thinking later on, why would you delete this? And if they have cell phone records that place me somewhere, I can point to the faultiness of the records. Then we start really getting into rabbit trails. I don't actually think that's what happened, but I'm just pointing out the fact that a lot of people have said that he seems to have carried out the perfect crime. I disagree with that. But if you were to have deleted these records, it may have been like trying to do chess thinking. Well, look, he certainly did things that if he's guilty, we're very helpful for him. He did things like go back to the farm and get a shotgun, which he would have known would put gunshot residue on him. He did things like he did that after going to supposedly check on Maggie and Paul when he found them, which would have put their blood and their DNA on him, which him getting back into his car and driving up to the farmhouse would also put that in the car, which means any sort of forensic evidence you find in the car you find on him is much less valuable. And I do think he probably was thinking about that kind of stuff when he did those things. So does it seem a little crazy that he would think that far ahead? Yes, but he clearly thought about some other stuff. And he wasn't assistant solicitor, he had been around criminal cases. He knew the kind of evidence the police would use. And he would have known that cell phones are always important. So who knows maybe maybe is that smart that he would delete these calls to undermine the rest of the forensic evidence. And I guess we'll just see what the defense does. If they really hit on this, then maybe he did do that. And he told him, well, you know, you should really hit on this because I don't why would I do that? And we'll see what they say about it. It's kind of like they made a big deal. And in fact, one of the defense attorneys, the main defense attorney, not not Putin, but the guy who's really the defense attorney, the one who crosses Hammond's most of the people, the one who appeared in the HBO documentary, his name escapes me right this second. But y'all, if you follow the case, you know what I'm talking about. He actually just published an op-ed in the Washington post. I don't know if he saw this Alice saying that well, it's all about how the police bungled the investigation. And because they didn't maintain the crime scene, the whole case is compromised. So it's like the prosecution concludes their case. And then they publish an op-ed in the Washington post laying out that argument. What's funny about that to me, the argument that the crime scene is compromised and they didn't do a better job searching the house, even if that's true, that only hurts the prosecution. They wouldn't have found evidence in the house of some random killer. They only would have found evidence that Alec Murdoch did it. And so it's funny to me that they're they're using that. Well, they didn't investigate enough to attack him when if they'd investigated more, the only person they would have discovered evidence of would have been Alec. So I don't know, you know, they're they're sort of pulling out the stops. We'll just have to see what they say about these cell phones. So at 947 23, Alec text Maggie, call me babe, which once again is inconsistent with him deleting the phone call he'd made only two minutes before, because that would have been perfectly consistent with him trying to get in touch with her. so I don't know what's going on there. At 952-15, Alec texts Chris Wilson, who he's called a couple times, asking him to call him. He is driving about 80 miles per hour when he sends this text. So not only is he driving really fast on a curvy, bad road with deer jumping over his car every other turn, but he's texting while he's doing it. So whatever. At 956-57 to 10-06-57, Alec registers 231 steps. Obviously not all of these steps are happening at all the times during that period as he is also driving during that period. And we mentioned this when we talked about some of the steps in the last episode and how the defense had tried to make hey out of the fact that Alec was recording steps while the other phone was not. And we had said that as a period where it's recording steps, you're not walking during that entire period. And in fact, there was testimony on Friday to exactly that point that that is just the phone record steps over a period is impossible to say during that period when exactly you were walking when you weren't. So the steps thing is something the prosecution has used is something the defense has tried to turn to its own advantage, but in the end, other than some of the things we're going to talk about later on about the steps, it's probably not as helpful as some people might have thought. Now continuing on the Alibi filing at 10 p.m., the defense says that Murdoch arrives back at Mozel, 10 o'clock and 30 seconds, Murdoch's phone arrives into Mozel and at 10 o'clock and 36 seconds, his car is put into the park position. At 10 o'clock and 17 seconds, his SUV is put out of the park position. At 10 o'clock and 29 seconds, so just a couple seconds later, the SUV is put back in the park. And at 10 o'clock and 30 seconds, so one second later, the car is pulled out of park yet again. At 10 o'clock, 43 seconds, his car is put in park. So in the span of like 30 seconds, 45 seconds, he basically puts his car in park, out of park, in park, out of park and back to park. So he does it like three times and it's a very, very fast succession. - I have no idea what's going on during that time. And I don't know that anybody does, but it's sort of, it's one of the weird things that the data shows it's hard to figure out. - Yeah, I mean, who knows? Maybe, yeah, I have nothing. I have nothing except that it's a lot of car action in the span of like 30 seconds. - And this is all when he's at the main house, by the way. Like he goes to the main house first and all this in and out, in and out stuff is presumably his car sitting in front of the main house. So I guess if he were to testify, which we don't know if he will, maybe he would say, well, I was, you know, the first time, I wouldn't see if they were there and then they weren't there and then I was like, I'll go down to the kennels and then I thought, no, I'm not gonna do that. And then I thought, oh, well, yeah, maybe I should. And then I was like, I know, I'm just gonna sit here. I mean, who knows, but it happens so quickly, right? One of the changes in position happens within one second. I will say, I have been in very frazzled situations before, like a medical emergency and I literally don't know what to do next. And I've been like, get out of the car in the car, in the car, like I've had to take my kidney emergency room before, right? And that was like a very frazzly moment where I'm like, I need to get the diaper back. No, I need to get this. Oh, what would I have to do now? And like, the rush of adrenaline has me do kind of erratic movements. We have no idea what's going on here, but I would describe that chain of events within 30 seconds as kind of erratic. That's not your normal parking behavior. And once again, interesting little thing there that Alice is pointing out because this is purely circumstantial evidence. But if he's in a heightened state at this point, that's evidence that he killed somebody. Because there's no other reason for him to be in a heightened state. He gets back and then family still just down with the dogs. I mean, he could, he could totally just think that. But it seems to show that he is in some sort of erratic state. And it also shows you, and the other thing it shows you is, it seems like he didn't spend a whole lot of time up at the house looking for them in the house because he puts his car in park at 10 and 36 seconds. And then it's out of park in 10, 117. So only another 40 seconds are so later. So if you think he got up there, got out, went into the house, kind of looked for him for a little while. Didn't find anybody and then got back into his car. Well, I don't know if he had enough time to do all that. The prosecutor's podcast is brought to you by progressive insurance. Hey, everyone, whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews, news, or even motivational speakers, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue, right? And guess what? Now you can call the shots on your auto insurance too. Enter the name, your price tool from progressive. The name your price tool puts you in charge of your auto insurance by working just the way it sounds. 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National average 12 month savings of $197 by new customer surveyed who save with progressive between October 2024 and September 2025. Potential savings will vary. - And that's a great point, Brett. Whatever the reasons for the movements are, it seems based on the timeline, very unlikely that he fully got out of the car. The matter of seconds in between doesn't really leave you a lot of time to get out of the car, walk up the steps, by the way that a housekeeper died on. And go into the house, call around for your family members, walk back down the stairs, get into the car, change it out of park. So that's a really good point there. Now 1003 and 58 seconds. There's a miss call from Alec to Maggie, get again. At 1004 and 49 seconds, the SUV is pulled out of park and the car leaves the main house where it's been this whole time. Continuing on their alibi, the defense is at 1005 PM, Murdoch discovers Maggie and Paul's bodies 'cause he leaves the main house, drives down to the kennel, and that's when he discovers their bodies. At 1005 and 57 seconds, his SUV is put in park and that's when it arrives at the kennels and that's where the defense comes up with the 1005 timeline. By the way, when you see the body cams of all these videos, like it is pitch black and you're out in the country and the kennels are in a little bit away from the house and so it's not like it's totally lit up. It's not very easy to see. There are lights in the kennels, but you have to walk kind of a ways to get to the kennels even where you park your car. At 1006 and 14 seconds, Murdoch calls 911. This is about 20 seconds after Alex puts the car in park at the kennels. So the reason I kind of laid out what the kennels look like for you is because if you believe the defense is alibi, in 20 seconds he would have needed to drive up to the kennels, put his car in park, gotten out of the car, find the bodies which are in two different locations, not too far from each other, but they are in different locations and remember what typically happens when you find one dead body. You're probably freaking out about that body rather than looking around. Shock definitely enters at that moment. They are not right next to each other where if you found one body, you'd immediately look over and see that there was another body. You'd have to walk several steps and kind of go under a little ceiling thing where the kennels are to see Paul's body. Do the things that he testified or said that he's done, right? Including picking up Paul's phone, attempting to turn him over and then call 911. Could he have done that in 20 seconds? Possibly, but that's a lot of things that had to happen. Again, he doesn't pull up to the bodies, get out and see two bodies. Pulls up, parks, gets out, walks somehow, stumbles upon, probably Maggie's body first and then look around, see Paul's body, fiddle with his phone, try to see if there are signs of life even though we know that there's brain matter or shout out of his head, so it's very unlikely that he's going to find signs of life then call 911. And we said that this is a time on case in so many ways and this is an important place where that is obvious. In the alibi filing, they say, oh, it's 10.05. That's when he showed up and he actually shows up at 10.05 in 57 seconds. Ordinarily, those 57 seconds wouldn't be that important but here they actually really are for all the reasons that Alex just said. If he actually was there 57 seconds earlier and that gives him a lot more time to do all this, it's a little confusion about the 911 call. It was either at 10.06, 14 or 10.06, 18, so he got a four second difference there, which once again, in the case with this kind of timeline is very important but max, that's 21 seconds between when the SUV is put into park and when he calls 911, this is another one of those, the GM data, really kind of, really kind of did a number on the defense because now we know exactly when he got there, when he got it to the kennels and look, the defense did a couple things on cross to try and mitigate this. Number one, they had the guy set it in alarm for 20 seconds and start the countdown because they knew that 20 seconds where you're standing around doing nothing, it's kind of like watching water boil is always gonna seem longer than 20 seconds in any other facet of your life. So they did that to show just how long 20 seconds is. I thought even when they did that, it didn't seem like that one. It did not seem long at all. (laughing) But they did it. Remember, they also tried to make your hope in for the best, but it's not like everything is always gonna go your way. - They tried to say, well, maybe, you know, the lights would have illuminated one of the bodies from his car and they tried to get the guy to say that and he was like, I don't know, maybe it did, to try and spark some, he was moving around quickly or whatever, but 20 seconds is just not that much time, particularly given that he says he went up to both bodies, he checked for a pulse because he had to say all these things, remember, 'cause he needs to get some DNA and blood may be on him from them. So if there is any, he can, that's the way you can talk about it. The cell phone thing is rough for him because he says that when he tried to turn Paul over, so not only did he check him for a pulse, he tried to turn him over that his cell phone fell out of his pocket. He picked up his cell phone to do something with it, decided better of it and put it back down on Paul, which is also, he probably picked up Paul's cell phone at some point during the murders and needed to explain why his fingerprints would be on it or whatever or why it would be in the weird place it was. In any event, if he did all those things, it's just really hard to imagine he did them in 20 seconds. 20 seconds is not that long, but that is what the timeline tells us had to have happened. He had to have done all that in it most 21 seconds and just look, getting back to your, you're getting your phone out and dialing 911, just doing that, it's gonna take four seconds, five seconds, just to pull up your phone, get to the dialing pad, top in 911 and hit send. It's gonna take a few seconds. So this is rough. As rough as a lot of the timeline has been for him, him managing to do all the things that he himself said he did in 20 seconds is even worse for him. So he's down there for five minutes or so on the phone with 911. At some point, he tells 911, he's going to get himself a shotgun because obviously there's been this horrible murder and he needs protection at 1011 and 54 seconds. His SUV is out of park and leaving the kennels. He gets up to the main house. He goes in and grabs a shotgun. He then gets back into his SUV at 1013 and 54 seconds and is heading back to the kennels. Important point here, and we said a little bit about this before, getting into the SUV and driving back up to the house means because he's interacted with the bodies, he now can explain any physical evidence in his vehicle. It is from when he interacted with the bodies. He goes up, he gets a shotgun. He knows there's gonna be gunshot residue on that shotgun. It's now on him and now it's also going to be on the SUV, which will, that's one of the pieces of evidence the prosecution put in was there's gunshot residue on the steering wheel of the suburban and the defense can very easily say, of course there was because he went and got a shotgun. If he's guilty, these are really smart things he did that would have been, you know, if he hadn't done this, if he got out of the SUV and stood around waiting for the police to show up and the police show up and he never got back in that vehicle and they found Maggie and Paul's blood and gunshot residue in that vehicle, that would have been slam dunk, he's done. But because he did these things, you can't say that those are definitive pieces of evidence, which I think is, well, I mean, Alissa said he's not a master criminal but that was pretty smart and Alissa's theory about him deleting the phone calls after he did that kind of stuff. Maybe that is what he was doing. - There's definitely something going on, right? Like we've said, the state of frenzy is at least in the records, you can sit there and poke at your park and drive buttons on your car and not be frenetic. That's very possible. But even if you planned a murder and you knew it was going to happen, whether it was planned or not, there is a lot of cortisol running through your body. And so even the most calm of criminals are probably going to be in a heightened state. And I say all this because it's probably didn't come out of nowhere if Alec did it. It probably was planned to some degree, some elements of it may have been planned. So I do think he had time, if it were him, to have thought of these cover up moments, even if he himself was in a heightened frenetic state. - So at 1017, the 911 call ends, at some point we're going to play you sort of the relevant part of the 911 call. But he's on the phone with him for a while. You know, he doesn't do the thing where he hangs up after a couple of minutes. He stays on now and one with him for a while. But at that point, the call ends. He's now waiting for the police to get there. At 1018 and 08 seconds, the backlight on Paul's phone comes on. Not entirely sure why that happened. One thing that's interesting about Paul's phone is an hour before this. When he's taking that video of the dog, his phone is at 2% battery. And in some ways, this trial has been an advertisement for Apple battery life because his phone was at 2% battery and doesn't die until much later. Now, one thing that tells you, you wouldn't use his phone much after it was at 2%. The other thing is there was some testimony about because his battery was so low, there's a lot of times when your light will come on. You know, if you get a text, for instance, your screen will light up. But a lot of times when you get below a certain battery level, that stops. And you stop seeing that. And it only comes on when there's actually some sort of physical interaction with the phone. So this is interesting. The backlight, all of a sudden, is coming on at this point. But we don't know exactly why and nothing much happens. But the things we're talking about here actually are important. This is not just whatever. At 101932, Alan calls Randy Murdoch, who is his brother. In 101944, he calls his other brother, John Marvin. This was another thing that was prosecution tried to make some hay of him calling these two people immediately after talking to Alan one. Didn't really impact me much at all. Totally could imagine an innocent Alec Murdoch, the thing he's going to do, maybe even before he calls 911. But certainly after he calls, it's call his brothers. That just didn't surprise me at all. So I didn't really think much of that. But the next part was interesting. So he calls his brothers. They don't answer at 1020 and 8 seconds. Paul's phone display comes on again. But this time, it engages the screen auto-lock. And there was testimony that the reason it would do this is much like when we talked about earlier, that this is sort of a facial recognition thing. It's not seeing Paul's face and so it remains locked. Now, what is interesting about this is even though it's in a locked state, you would see, and I don't have an Apple, so I can't confirm to know this, but you would see the last message on the phone, the sort of indication of a message received. And the last message Paul had received that night was from Rogan Gibson. It was yo, I think. You remember, Rogan Gibson is the guy he was talking to the entire time about the dog, sending videos, trying to do FaceTime, texting back and forth, and then all the sudden it stops. And Rogan, who still wants to know about his dog, is texting about his dog. He's calling him multiple times. He's texting Maggie to try and get her to tell Paul like, "WTF, man, while the sun did you stop talking to me." And he also has texted him yo, once again, trying to reestablish connection with him. Well, that's at 10.20 in eight seconds. Between 10.21 and 10.30, Rogan Gibson has four miss calls from Alec Murdoch. At 10.24, Alec sends a message to him saying, "Call me." At 10.25, Alec sends a FaceTime call to Rogan Gibson. What in the world is going on there? It really makes you wonder what it was that Alec was so concerned about. You could imagine he's just trying to tell one of Paul's best friends about what had happened to him, but he'd also called Randy and John. He only called them once. It wasn't as urgent for him to get in touch with his brothers, apparently, as it was to get in touch with Rogan, and all of this happens after Paul's cell phone comes back on. And after that message would have been visible, but all this stops 10.25 is the last time, or that's the FaceTime call, then you have the first responders arriving at around the exact same time. And you know, Brett, I was breathing because I was like, I hope I never have to be in a situation where I find my family members dead in front of me. But like, I'm not sure I'm calling a kid. Like, I probably don't have my what's about me to do much, but call 911 if that. But like, to call him by FaceTime, right when like why Rogan of all people, right? Rogan is clearly trying to get in contact with Paul, but the number of calls that Alec is giving to his dead son's friend, not his son's girlfriend or fiance or someone that close. I mean, this is just a friend. I couldn't care less about the dog's tail at this time. I just found my family members with their brains blown out. I have other things on my mind. And spends so much of your kind of mental energy in this emotional state on contacting him, it reads strange. We don't know what's in his mind, but it is certainly a strange behavior. And I think one possibility, and really the one that makes the most sense to me, Alec probably doesn't know about the video. He probably doesn't know about the video. The prosecution has sort of handed it. Maybe he was trying to get into Paul's phone to delete the video. Maybe. That's a theory, but I don't think he knew about the video. But I think he did know, or he realized maybe at this point, maybe he had some vague notion of it, but realized at this point that Paul had been on the phone with Rogan down there at the kennels with the dog. And he might have thought to himself when he saw this text, what if Rogan heard me in the background? Because remember, he has to give them a story. And very soon, he's going to have to give a story. It's coming. The moment where he's going to have to tell him exactly what he did that night is coming. The story he wants to tell is I was asleep on the couch. I got up. I couldn't get in touch with him. There's no big deal. I drew that same. My mama came back and massacred her. That's the story he wants to tell. And remember, Brett, what happened after Paul's devastating boat crash where likely one of his friends was dead? They were running around the hospital, not checking on even the state of health for Paul, they were trying to get their alimites drink. I think that's what he's trying to do here. I think he wants to talk to him. Rogan, who's asleep, he's like me. He likes to go to bed around 10. He wants to talk to him and feel him out and figure out what Rogan knows. And if Rogan, if he had talked to Rogan that night and Rogan had said, oh, yeah, y'all were all down at the kennel. I can't believe something like this happened. His story would have been different. He would have been adjusted. I don't know how he would have done it. He would have had to do it on the fly, but he would have adjusted his alibi story to put himself in the kennels, but then leave much earlier than, well, he was as early as he could, right? But he certainly went and told the story about being asleep on the couch. And so that's what I think this is about. I don't think it was he wanted getting the phone to delete the video, because I don't think he knew about the video, but I think he did know that it was possible that Rogan knew he was down at the kennels because Paul had been talking to him at the time. So I think that is what he was trying to do. And you know, he just never could get in touch with Rogan because Rogan was already going to bed. And so he had to stick with his original story just so to hope that it would be fine. And it would have been fine if it weren't for the video, because I don't think Rogan had any idea that he was down there. We're not for the video, but of course, we know the video exists now and we know it's going completely inconsistent with the story. He's going to tell the police first responder show, but 1025 1029 Alex calling Randy again 1030. He calls Rogan Gibson again 1034 Paul's battery finally dies. And then 1035. All it calls his brother John Marvin Murdoch again. And then that's sort of the end of the timeline for that night. At that point, the police have shown up, the investigators have shown up. They are now talking to him. He has time of like communicating with the outside world is over. And at this point, he is going to be interviewed and he's going to have to explain his view of what exactly happened that night. And this is why going back 100 years on this case and also back to the boat case is very enlightening because we have the footage of how the Murdoch are acting at the hospital after a very, very tragic event has happened. And it's currently still unfolding. Like, you know, we kind of got back and forth and joked a little bit about, you know, how smart is he and covering up and how much he's thought about this. Most people are not thinking about alibis right after a tragedy, even those who commit the crime. And clearly, this is a family who's had some experience in having to do some quick cleanup as recently as Paul's boat accident that summer. And now we have kind of this frenzy of activity, but he doesn't have much time. The police arrived. And remember what this is all surrounding. His father, Randolph Murdoch, who has kind of been there for him financially, has bailed him out several times financially, was put in the hospital and was expected to die. And in fact, he did die just a few days later on June 10th. On June 17th, Alex Brothers, John Marvin Murdoch and Randolph Randi Murdoch, the fourth, appear on Good Morning America. They describe Alex as devastated and afraid after these murders. You know, there's this attack on their family. And they're pleading to the public for sympathy for their brother. On June 21st, the South Carolina state law enforcement division or sled release a statement on this case. Now at the time, Solicitor Stone says he's not yet recusing himself because it's not obvious that Alex will be a suspect. And this is really interesting that four days earlier, his brothers are already going on the offensive knowing this does not look good for Alex, right? This is part of the whole Let's do let's make sure everything's covered up everything is clean as much as we can before he is even Pointed at as the suspect. Let's get out there and stir up sympathy for our brother I mean, this is on a national stage This isn't just like down at the corner store in the low country. This is on good morning America These people have access to major channels of communication and You see that their friend mr. Solicitor stone over here is also still playing the game of I don't know if it's really him By the way if you're found with blood on you I mean, it's not visible to the eye, but if you're if you're the one who finds your wife and son murdered that probably is enough to Have some separation from the office that you volunteer in doesn't have to be that you are automatically Assessed back you are already on the list of people to be looked into and who need to be cleared by the solicitor's office As soon as you are the one to have found your family members shot dead. He should have her keys the next day the next day Yeah, I mean, it's a it really is ridiculous on the next day June 22nd slide reopens the investigation They don't say anything about Murdoch, but they reopen the investigation into the death of Stephen Smith Remember Stephen Smith the young man who was found in the middle of the road dead seemingly from a hit and run But questions about whether it was a hit and run and the agency says that the case is being we opened based on information gathered While investigating the deaths of Maggie and Paul Murdoch What like that? Yeah, what and we're gonna talk a lot more about him and and everything that happened with that case But this is weird. This is weird and this this is honestly still a mystery And we're gonna talk about it, but it's still a mystery This may be one of those things that that unravels at some point well after this trial is over Okay, we're moving through the timeline getting through the summer on June 25th Alec announces a $100,000 reward for information on the murder so he's putting up money himself, which is A great move if you're trying to say I'm not the one who murdered them on August 11th due to the developments in this led investigation The local solicitor Duffy stone finally recuses. What is that Brett two more than two months after the murders Which is a very long time and the reason you recuse what right away? Is that you don't want any sort of impartiality to even influence who you think is the suspect And he's clearly on the list of people to be cleared and if you talk to people in South Carolina about this case even non conspiratorial people They will tell you that there are a lot of folks who who think that in that time when stone was still involved That there was evidence that was disposed of that would have been even more damning for a murder Obviously that is probably a conspiracy theory But that's what happens when you should recuse and you don't recuse as people are going to assume that you're sticking around for a reason And as to help your friend We'll never know whether that's true or not But it was number one not a good look for him to do it and this is not a political show We're not gonna get political here But the good people of South Carolina. Hey decide who to allow for their solicitors might consider this when the when the next ballot comes around I'll just say that so that's August 11th September 2nd things go wonky for murder again. You may recall Coincidentally, of course on the day that his wife and son were murdered He had been confronted by his law firm about $799,000 that should have been in the accounts that that weren't obviously once this happens There was a great moment during the trial where the prosecution is talking to one of his paralegals A paralegal who realized this was happening and turned it into the firm even though she was afraid she might get fired for doing it They might just try and cover it up. They didn't do that But that was her concern when she turned it over and the prosecution prosecution asks after you heard About the murders what did you do about the $7992,000 and she said what $7992,000 and her point being it didn't matter at all After that happened we completely stopped thinking about that everybody sort of rallies around Alec and that remains until September 2nd On September 2nd another paralegal actually might have been the same paralegal They're trying to help out Alec He's obviously not coming into the office as much They're trying to deal with some of his files and some of his cases She is going through his desk looking for a file she picks up a file and out slips a check That check turns out to be a canceled check made out to Murdoch personally and said the firm which as we said Big No No that's not what you're supposed to do The firm who had held off looking into Murdoch due to the ongoing murder investigation Now they renew their efforts to figure out what is going on and just how big is this And what they find is they find a bunch of old settlements that Murdoch had been involved in And numerous checks made payable to forge now forge is an entity that they would recognize Because there is an entity called forge consulting llc and forge consulting llc Is an entity that collects big settlements that people have in the kind of cases this law firm deals with And they help structure those settlements for the people who were involved who number one Have probably never had that much money before Don't really know what they're doing with it Are in situations where they need sort of long term financial security And that's what they do they make a lot of money doing it and they're very powerful entity Well Murdoch clever fellow that he is Creates at the Bank of America a forage account not forage consulting llc But forge and it's really Alec Murdoch doing business as forge and the thinking is when people see forge on the check They'll just assume it's going to forge consulting which is normal not to the fake forge Which is actually Alec Murdoch and it doesn't take long for the law firm to figure out what is happening here They figure out that forge consulting doesn't even have a account at Bank of America They figure out that forge is really Alec Murdoch doing business As forge and now they know all of this money millions of dollars at that point They don't know how much but they know it's going to be a lot has been funneled to Alec The first thing they do is they go to his brother who is also a partner at the firm and say look This is what he did which is breaks his brother's heart obviously and they all decide Well, he's number one. He's got to go and we've got a lot of work to do The amount of money that this law firm has ended up having to pay out to people That the partners have had to cough up to make good for all the money that Alec stole It's approaching 10 million maybe more than that amount of money The law firm which as we said before had been Peters Murdoch, Parker, Ellsworth and Dietrich, PMPED They drop Murdoch from the name of the firm. They rename the firm altogether And his brother actually has to leave the firm and form his own litigation groups. So this is like a big deal It's a huge deal and it's exactly what you have to imagine Alec knew would happen On June 7th when that first domino fail he knew If the dominoes keep falling if I don't stop it This is what's going to happen the collapse of everything my families worked on The destruction of not only my name and not only all my money and my legal career and everything else But really the entire legacy of the family and the family name and that's exactly what happened And this is the only choice right this is literally the only choice because As a law firm It's surprising that you can even survive something like your named partner pulling off a fraud like this It's no surprise they had to do this and they should I mean ethically they had to do this But Murdoch like you said knew exactly what was going to happen and this just fell a little bit later I know there's a lot of critique of people who say oh he he just you know It's it's not convincing to say that he murdered his own family just to buy some time I don't necessarily think that's the case This was always going to happen because once the chip started to fall But the house was crumbling around him it was just a matter of time And maybe the murders delayed this a little bit But it was always going to happen and he would have known that nothing would have completely stopped this from happening once They found that one string they kept pulling they would see all of the financial fraud that was happening And that's exactly what happened. So yeah, everything's falling apart for Alec He now quote-unquote resigns from his firm though Well, no, he was fired. This is the day after this check is discovered in September 3rd A month later the law firm will end up suing him Talk about turning the tables and and you can imagine this is a small firm It was a family they described it as a brotherhood this had to be I mean, what do you think of these people? There's no indication that everybody else in the law firm was corrupt or doing anything wrong It's hard to even imagine The shock that must have just Rippled through this group of people because remember when the murders first happened a lot of them were afraid because they didn't know Maybe it was about the boatcase or maybe it was an angry litigant maybe it was somebody they sued maybe it was somebody that was gonna come after them too And now they're starting to see that Alec Murdoch had had really sort of sold a lot of their futures to I mean they are probably will be working for a while to To pay back everything that he stole and say timber 4th. So the next day. So he resigned September 4th That morning Chris Wilson who is one of the people Alec called the night of the murders and Alec meet remember they are best buds best friends An Alec admits that he stole the money from the seven hundred ninety two thousand dollars in fees that were supposed to be split over that trucker lawsuit Wilson is Absolutely furious about this Alec breaks down crying he tells him that he's had an opioid problem for a very long time Tom and he's been spending a lot of money on that and then he has screwed him over and he's screwed a lot of people over. When Wilson leaves, he's not sure how Murdo is going to be able to fix this and really he feels like this is it. You know, his career is over, his life's over, everything is falling apart for him and Chris Wilson is going to have a lot of problems as well because of this because now he's on the hook for a lot of money too. At 130 that day, Alec Murdo is changing a tire on the side of the road when someone passes him, turns around and asks if Alec needs any help. Murdo had one of those fancy cars with the tires that you can drive on forever even if you have a flat. But apparently for some reason he decided he was going to change his tire. He says, "No, I'm good. I don't need any help." At this point, the person who had stopped to help him pulls out a gun and shoots him in the head, Murdo will call 911, he will be airlifted to Savannah. There's what is described as an entry and exit wound on his head though in fact it's more like sort of a trench almost like a valley. It's as if whoever shot him, the bullet just sort of grazed his head. Now it did do sort of enough damage to cause a skull fracture though it seems like the skull fracture is very minor and there's some bleeding on the brain. Our putleyin talks about this all the time as if he was struggling on the verge of death but it seems like this was about as minor a gun shot wound to the head as you could possibly have. You could not be more fortunate if you were shot in the head than Alec Murdoch was assuming that being shot in the head doesn't automatically mean that you're not fortunate but he was. So he's pretty much good, he's fine, he's able to talk to the police and he describes the shooter as a white fella much younger than him with really short hair. Wow, this is just a crazy turn of events, right? The morning that he admits all this is happening, he gets shot, I mean goodness gracious. That's devastating that he shot in the head and just about a week later on September 12th, the police arrest the shooter and he was a white fella but he was not younger than Murdoch. He was not even close, he was clearly rough looking and older than Murdoch and he didn't have short hair and very interestingly he was not a stranger to Murdoch. He was in fact someone who Alec knew quite well, it was Curtis Edward Smith who had done the shooting and he done it at Murdoch's request. Murdoch had represented Smith before and more importantly Smith provided Alec with the oxy cotton he'd become addicted to. Murdoch admitted that he'd asked Smith to shoot him so that he could secure $10 million in insurance money for his son Buster and that's because there's usually a suicide carve out in insurance, like if you kill yourself you usually don't get the insurance payout to prevent a sort of perverse incentive to kill yourself in order to provide for your family. If Smith was supposed to kill Alec, he did a terrible job of it. Murdoch went to a drug rehab soon after this event and then as we know Alec will be arrested on many many many financial charges and also for the murder of his family. That sort of gets us to where we are now with this trial. This insurance thing is kind of interesting, there's two things about it. Number one, as Alec said, ordinarily if you have life insurance, you can't kill yourself and recover it for obvious reasons. But most life insurance policies also have a timing trigger. So basically if you've had it long enough, then they're not going to look into how you died. They'll just pay it and Alec, I guess to his shock, had that. So he actually could have committed suicide and the money would have still been paid out. The other thing, some people have questioned whether this insurance policy even exists or not. It may be it doesn't, though I would think if it did not, that would have come out by now. The reason they do this is because there was a witness, the person who represented the beach family in the boat crash lawsuit, Mark Tinsley, I believe his name. And at some point he says that Alec didn't have life insurance and the point that he's pointing out there is his assets, life insurance was not one of them. There are two different kinds of life insurance. One is an investment and one is literally just insurance on your life. So if you have whole life insurance, little insurance lesson for those of you out there, if you have whole life insurance, that's an investment you're paying into it, you can actually cash it out. And when you cash it out, you'll get money back. It's very expensive. Most people will tell you that it's a terrible investment and there's a lot better things you can do with your money. Instead you should get term life insurance. Term life insurance is not an investment. It lasts for a certain amount of time. You pay your premiums and if you die during that period of time, your family gets money. But it's not an investment. It's not something that if I sue you, it's not an asset that you could use to satisfy that lawsuit in the way that whole life insurance is. So I think when Mark Tinsley says that, that's what he means. He did not have whole life insurance. They would be an asset that he could attack as part of the lawsuit. Well that is the timeline. We'll talk. And we'll be coming back to this timeline a lot because as we said, the timeline is really important. We're going to go back to specific parts of it and really hammer those parts. But for now, that's the end of the timeline. Next week, we're going to sort of back up. We're going to talk about the boat crash and the things that happened around that. We're going to talk about Steven Smith some more in that mystery and everything that was going on there. We're going to talk about Gloria Satterfield, who was the Murdoz housekeeper. We're going to talk about what was going on there. And so with that background as some of the strange things that happened, then we'll move into the trial itself and really start to drill down into the trial what we learned from the trial and whether or not the prosecution has put on enough evidence to convict Alec Murdoz or not. Really going to be interested to see when you guys hear this. Will the defense have finished? Will the jury have returned to verdict? Will we get a verdict? We could always have a hung jury. Do this again. But that's why we're really enjoying doing this case and doing it, sort of, somal casting with the trial. You guys have thoughts. You've been sharing them. We want to hear more of them. If you're not on the gallery, which is our Facebook page, go find it. Check it out. If you need the link, let me know. I'm happy to provide it to you. Lots of great discussion on there. Great people on there. They really dig down into these issues. If you enjoy talking about True Crime is a great place to talk about it. If you're just an email prosecutor's pod at gmo.com at prosecutor's pod for all your social media, hello to those of you on Patreon, getting these episodes early and add free hello to those of you on YouTube, especially those of you who've been doing the lives with us. We have been doing a lot of our legal briefs, which is our other podcast live with our patrons and then putting those live recordings up on YouTube. So I know a lot of y'all been watching those and I hope you've been enjoying them. And thank you to our patrons for joining us on those. It is so interesting to not only discuss the case, but also hear instantaneous feedback and be able to respond to that, really edifying, and I think makes the episodes much better. So thank you guys for all that. Well, Alice, before we sign off, is there anything you want to add? There's, I'm glad we got to the timeline, Brett, because I really want to dive into all these unusual aspects. I know you've probably heard about them in the news, but there this, this story is just truly stranger than fiction and it's all true. So we'll see what there is and please come back and join us for next time and times taking Brett. We better start recording. Oh, no. By the end, who knows? We might have another prosecuting. We'll have to see. But one way or the other, we will see you guys next week, whether it's with a new baby or not. But, yeah, no, that's the thing. Every time when Alice and I sign off on these or when I hang up with them, always stay pregnant, Alice. Just a little bit longer, it's a little bit longer, okay, well, we'll see you guys next week. But until then, I'm Brett and Alice and we are The Prosecutors. Is that a court filing that they did? Yeah. So, you know, you have alibi filing or is that just part of the project? I'm not sure. It's a separate filing. It's literally called an alibi filing. Yeah. I mean, an alibi is an affirmative defense, so I assume they have to, you know, lay out for the prosecution and let the alibi is. Yeah. (upbeat music) - I guess I have the core. I guess I should think about that. This was in a trial brief. - Well, I mean, who knows if they have trial briefs in South Carolina, you know? You know how it is. Every state's different. - Who's going? - Okay. - The Trinity store. - The Trinity store. - I'm not sure. - I'm not sure if you have a mirror. - I'm not going to just chocolate in my mouth and- - There you go. - There you go. - Uh-huh. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - All month long, I'm Pluto TV, streamed the biggest Tyler Perry movies free. Watch your favorites like Midea's witness protection and Midea's big happy family. Join Tyler Perry as he goes on a couple's retreat with Sharon Leal and why did I get married? 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