Alex Murdaugh's Life in Prison and Web of Crimes and Lies - A ＂True Crime Christmas＂ Special ｜ Ep. 974
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Summary
Alec Murdoch was a well-known South Carolina prosecutor. He was a beloved family man, a beloved husband, and a loving father. But in the late 1920s and early 30s, he was beset by health problems, including a heart attack, kidney failure, and kidney and kidney transplant problems. By the end of his life, Alec Murdoch was fighting for his life.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's true crime
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Christmas special. Today we are diving deep into the case of Alec Murdoch, and there are
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updates in this incredible case, believe it or not. His story begins much earlier than the crimes
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that made national headlines over the past few years, and no one has covered the story quite
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like the Wall Street Journal's Valerie Borlein, who wrote the book The Devil at His Elbow. We get
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into everything from Murdoch's family history to the details of his downfall and the new info.
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Valerie, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.
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Okay, so this is all so fascinating. And one of the most eye-opening things I read was about
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Alec Murdoch's background. He comes from a long line of deeply ethically problematic people,
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which I did not know. All you ever heard about him was that he came from this very storied family.
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They were lifelong solicitors or like the prosecutors in their town in South Carolina,
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very well respected. They controlled everything. It was far more nefarious than that. Can you
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Oh, it absolutely was. I mean, I think one of the biggest surprises I had researching this book was
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that every crime that Alec was eventually convicted of had some echo in the past. And that includes like
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violence against women or overtures of violence against women. That includes insurance fraud,
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like by the side of the road. There was an active insurance fraud that started the family dynasty,
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stealing from clients, drug trafficking. There were echoes in the past for every single crime
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we're talking about, even a boat wreck that caused really a traumatic injury. So that surprised me too.
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It wasn't just Alec. It was the history going back to 1920 of this family.
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Yes. I mean, it really does show you, you know, if you have a family, a father, a grandfather who are
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committing crimes and teaching you either explicitly or implicitly that that's okay,
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your odds of becoming a criminal are obviously much higher. But hello, women of the world, pay attention,
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pay attention to your spouse, the guys you're dating. It can work the other way around too.
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And what they come from, who they come from. So this, his great grandfather, Randolph Murdoch Sr.
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basically committed suicide and insurance fraud at the same time.
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That's right. And I was in Hampton just last week. I actually was standing at the train tracks just
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south of Almeda where Alec's, the home place that Alec went the night of the homicides. His great
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grandfather, Randolph Sr. was a very prominent man. I mean, every meal he ate was front page news. Like,
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where was he now? He was the district attorney for four counties in the low country of South Carolina.
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He was, he was very sick. He was 53 years old. He was, he was dying. He was at the end of his life.
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He had, he had kidney failure at a time when there just, you didn't, there was no cure, right? There was
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no dialysis. He was broke. He had been a big investor in the, in a bank and then the bank failed.
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And through the depression, he was just, I found documents down at the courthouse in Hampton where
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he just would say, there's no chance I can ever pay these people back. So he was broke. He was dying
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and he knew how to do one thing incredibly well, which was sue the railroad, which at that time in
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1940 was one of the only entities worth suing. So what happened was he was driving back from a poker
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game in Yamasee, a little town right on the Hampton County line at one in the morning, hottest day of the
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summer, 90 some degrees. He pulls, he stopped short of his home and turns onto a deserted train tracks
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and, and right. And is at the base of it. And as the train is coming and if y'all, if you grew up in
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a small town near a railroad, you know what time the train comes through. The train is coming North
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and you can hear it for miles. It's coming North. It's bearing down on this train tracks. He speeds up
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onto the tracks themselves and they're blowing the whistle. They're flashing the light. It's a clear
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moonlit night. And they see, he sees them. And instead of like driving off, he waves at them.
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And what happens is there's a coroner's jury and the coroner of course was a protege of, of Randolph
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senior. The sheriff was a protege of Randolph senior. There was an inquest the next morning. And guess what?
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The local coroner's jury found that in spite of the testimony of the engineer and others,
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it was an accident and it cleared the way for Randolph Murdoch jr. Alec's grandfather to sue
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the railroad for the equivalent of millions of dollars, which is what he did successfully.
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Randolph Murdoch jr. is old Buster. And old Buster was a real force to be reckoned with. He,
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he was solicitor from 1940 when he was 25 years old to 1986. So Roosevelt to Reagan. And he even
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stayed in that office beyond that time. The legislature finally essentially forced him.
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They created a rule that essentially forced him to retire, but he kept going into the office as a
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volunteer solicitor. So he was, so Randolph Murdoch jr. Old Buster, Alec Murdoch idolized him. He told
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many people that he wished he'd been born in old Buster's day, because in those days, what you said was
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what the truth was. And, and, and, and old Buster was, um, he ruled with an iron fist. He was one of
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those guys that would rather be feared than loved.
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And he also continued fraud and potential violence against women.
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He, so old Buster, there's, there's, um, I was able to pull 900 pages from the national archives of
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the, the records from his trial, his federal trial. The feds charged him with bootlegging,
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actually running the largest bootlegging ring in the South. He was the ringleader. They charged two
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dozen people. Old Buster, Alec's grandfather was, was charged with leading this entire ring in
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Colleton County. And he was, uh, he was, he was, he was, he was accused of taking a cash bribe in the
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hallway of the Colleton County courthouse, which is the hallway that we went in and out every day of
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Alec Murdoch trial. He was accused of, of intimidating witnesses, buying off witnesses. And, and, and,
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and eventually of tampering with the jury by buying off the foreman. And he was one of the only people
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in that entire weeks long federal trial that was acquitted. So there's a history of, of, um, you
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know, Alec Murdoch was, it was convicted of, of drug trafficking. His grandfather was credibly
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accused and narrowly escaped being convicted of bootlegging. So again, this echoes in the past.
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Tell us about the mistress who got on the wrong side of Alec Murdoch's grandfather.
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So there was, there was, there was testimony in Alec's, that Alec's trial, as you remember,
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there was testimony that Alec was somewhat of a, um, a philanderer. And that certainly is a history
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in the family going back generations. His grandfather, Old Buster had, um, had a mistress,
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several, but one in particular who he was in touch with for many, many years. And her name was Ruth Fox.
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And Ruth Fox was married to, um, a local, like a, a North, a Northern baron who came down and bought
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a plantation. And she was from one of the nation's first families, a really impressive woman in her
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own right. And, um, she was, had been, uh, in, in the Navy during World War II, like training pilots,
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which is kind of wild to think about what kind of woman was doing that in the forties. And she met
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Buster and asked for his help in getting out of her obligations. He's like, I know everybody. I'll
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know all U S senators. I'll help you get out of this, out of this bind. They got to know each
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other. And what, you know, a year later, she is pregnant with his child. She goes to, it's just
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such an incredible story. She goes to the house and we're talking about the same house that Alec went
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to the night of the homicides at Moselle. He goes to that, she goes to the house, knocks on the door,
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speaks to Alec's grandmother and says, you know, you have a son. I have a son. These boys should need.
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And the grandmother says, you know, don't let my name come out of your mouth ever again,
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go away. Um, and it was, it was a stunning thing because she had survived essentially. Um, when she
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had told, uh, old Buster that she was pregnant, he had tried to have her killed. She, he hired,
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he had a fixer. The story goes, he had a fixer of one of many who, who laid, laid in wait underneath
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her porch one night and got a little bit too drunk and fell asleep and didn't kill her. So there was just
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like this incredible, incredible echoes throughout this story. Isn't it amazing?
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Yes, it is amazing. I mean, I cannot, you must've been just slack jawed when you read up about the
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direct line from which he came and it's, it makes sense of everything. So it didn't stop there.
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It didn't even skip a generation. Alec's father also had a history of paying people off to cover up a boat
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accident, which of course would set off Alec's own story with a different boat accident as well.
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Well, there was, um, and there was certainly a terrible boat accident in 1998 from the same
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island, like Murdoch Island, where you'll remember the, the, the tragic boat wreck that killed Mallory
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beach in 2019. They took the Murdoch family boat from the family compound, which is called Murdoch
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Island. Back in 1998, um, Alec's younger brother was having a party on Murdoch Island. There was a
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boat there and it's incredible. I couldn't believe it. When I saw the documents, it was, it had been
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seized in a drug raid by the solicitor's office. So by old buster and he liked the boat. So he kept it
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for his own use at the island and everyone, the family used it. So they, it's, it's, it's, it's late at
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night. There's some guests there that wanted to take the boat home rather than the roads because they
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didn't want to get in trouble. They've been drinking for many hours and they, these, these young men
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set off on, um, a boat ride home. And it's tricky. We know from what happened with the, with the wreck
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that killed Mallory beach, it's very shallow waters and places. They hit a shoal and stopped and then
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immediately started back up and didn't realize that one of the guests had fallen overboard and it got
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run over by the motor and, and sustained a traumatic brain injury. And, you know, I've got hundreds of
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pages of documents from the state that show, um, the, the Murdochs were involved in trying to make
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that wreck go away. Even some of the same DNR, the natural resources officers, the, they, even some
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of the same officers who were involved in the Mallory beach wreck were in, they were working that
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night as well. So the echoes in the past are just, just, I, sometimes I couldn't believe it. I really
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was gobsmacked many times in a row. Yes. I same. I'm having the same reaction just sitting here.
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So then of course we get to Alec and this whole thing that we watched this double murder trial
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in which he was found guilty of killing his wife and his own son was set off by that boating accident.
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The second one, not, not the one you discussed, um, where the woman was run over, but more recently
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with the younger generation, while, uh, Alec was out on a boat was drinking and they had an accident
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and Mallory beach was thrown from the boat and wasn't found for some time later. And she was dead
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and that old Murdoch instinct to cover it up, run cover for those involved, or especially for Alec
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kicked in and would set off a chain of events that would ultimately destroy the Murdoch family.
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It's so poignant to look at pictures of Mallory. She was 19 years old when she died. She was just
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full of life. I've gotten to know her, her family over the course of her reporting this story. And it
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was, it was Alec's boat, but it was his son, Paul Murdoch, who was 19 at the time, who was, who was, um,
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who was driving. I mean, I think the facts established that he was driving. He was criminally charged with it.
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And so he, he's, he is incredibly drunk. He drank a lot. I talked with, um, people that knew the
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family. He had been sneaking beer since he was eight years old and, and, and, and at a certain
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point, not even sneaking them. Um, so he was, he was, he was very, very drunk. He had 19 drinks that
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night. His, his BAC when he got to the hospital was 0.286, but he was, he was a, he was a person,
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even at 19 who'd been drinking for numbers of years and had been driving drunk for numbers
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of years, according to, um, people I talked to who were involved in wrecks with him before.
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But so he, he gets angry at his girlfriend, who's one of the, one of the passengers on the
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boat confronts her. She says, you're too drunk to drive. Give everybody the keys, slaps her,
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spits in her face, goes back to the wheel of the boat and, and floors it 20, the equivalent
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of 28 miles an hour. And they're going through a very narrow, very shallow path and hit a bridge
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that fast. And Mallory is thrown overboard and never resurfaces. And what all the evidence,
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I've got thousands of pages of documents, some of them public, many of them, not, not, uh, many of
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them, um, that had not been reviewed before that just showed that there was, when Alec got to the
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hospital that night where these young people had been on the boat was, he went room to room to room,
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trying to get everyone on the same page. He had his, his, his grandfather, old buster's badge
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outside of his pocket, pretending to be a law enforcement officer. And I have his cell phone
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records and have tracked his path that night. Do you remember when he testified that he put blue
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rights, blue lights and siren on the suburban that he was driving? There's, it was almost physically
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impossible for him to get from Moselle where he and Maggie were living at the time to the hospital,
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unless he was going fabulously fast, 80 or 90 miles an hour. And I think it stands to reason.
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And I argue this in the book that he almost certainly used lights to, to get to the hospital
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before the other families and get everyone on the same page. And, but it really was his, his undoing.
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The reason that he said he wanted to live in old buster's time is that, you know, there was so much
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evidence in the video cameras in the hospital that night, so many statements, there was so much,
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everything is recorded, right? You know, and he, he could not outrun modernity. And, and in the end
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that night and his actions, the night of the boat wreck really with the beginning of the end of the
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family. For among other reasons, he was then sued by the beach family. And that in the course of that
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lawsuit, he would have to produce discovery, speaking to his economic status, his financial data,
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and so on. And he, what was, we know separately now running a massive fraud, stealing from his law
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firm, uh, had a massive drug problem or so he testified and was very worried. This is all going
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to come out. He would be exposed. And at, and at the same time, his law firm, was this coincidental?
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It was this coincidental Valerie that like the law firm started an investigation of Alec at the same
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time for possible ethical breaches, or were those two things related the lawsuit and the law firm
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getting interested in him? Well, it's all kind, it's all kind of woven together. And what, what
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happened in the immediate aftermath of the boat wreck is that Mallory's family was having a tough
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time finding a lawyer to represent their interest. Um, in Renee Beach, Mallory's mom tells the story
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of being down at the, at the landing where the boat was, had come to rest and wanting to go down there
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and see, um, where her daughter was, where she was the last time she was spotted. And the, the police were
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very, very kind, but said, I'm sorry, you can't go down there. Here's a case of water for you and your
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family while you wait. And there was a moment where Randolph Murdoch III, Alec's dad and, and Maggie, his wife
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came down in, in their pickup truck and he waves at the officer and waves him through. And Renee Beach
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realized then, oh my gosh, this is not a vigil. I thought I was at a vigil mourning my daughter. This is a crime
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scene. And the family that's been the law in this area for a hundred years is in charge of it. I need
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a lawyer. And she made a critical decision, which is to hire a lawyer to represent the family's
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interest. And that lawyer was a key player and a, and a big character in this book. And his name is
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Mark Tinsley. And there's no, um, enemy like your former friend. He was very close to Alec. He knew
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the playbook. He had a, he had a card key to get in and out of the Murdoch law firm at will. And he recognized
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those relationships. He's like, oh, I know he knows these particular officers because of my own personal
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information. And once he decided to take the case, take the Beaches case, he was relentless in showing
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that, um, that Alec and potentially the officers who were involved in, in protecting the scene were really, um,
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really protecting Paul from charges. And so he filed a lawsuit in very short order. And that lawsuit
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sought, like you said, all of Alec's financial records. It's just a standard part of a civil
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lawsuit to say, how much insurance do you have? What do you, what resources could you potentially
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pay if there was a judgment? And, and Alec knew more than anyone else that he had been robbing his
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personal injury clients, the poorest of the poor for more than a decade. And he knew what any serious
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inquiry would, would do. And so he had to stave that off. And, and in the end it was his undoing.
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So he killed his own wife and his son, Paul, who had been at the helm for that boating accident.
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And it was an attempt to garner sympathy, like to make him a sympathetic character so that his law firm
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would move away, would stop investigating him so that the lawsuit, uh, involving Paul would be less
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strong because you know, the main culprit would be gone and who would put this poor man now through
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the torture of seeing a civil lawsuit through. It was an effort to just change his own financial
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and reputational fortunes. No, I think, I think the prosecution argued that very effectively.
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And one of the things that, um, I think that Mark Tinsley said on the stand is,
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you know, personal injury lawyers don't think like other people. They, their, their gift,
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their understanding of a successful one is, is understanding emotion. Like what motivate,
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what might motivate a jury to, to, um, to pay blood money. And a lot of it in a case,
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they understand what makes people tick. And he knew that, you know, the day of the homicides,
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June 7th of 2021, and I'm sure we'll talk about this. He had been confronted over some of that missing
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money that he had been stealing $792,000, not a small amount. He knew that the law firm was onto him
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and he, he knew also that his father was dying. The, the patriarch of this family who had also
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loaned him a million dollars over time and who he had just been texting with his, his buddy at the
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bank. Oh, I'm going to get another loan from my dad for some money. He was short. And his dad was
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dying. He knew this, this, this lawsuit was pending about his financials. He had been confronted
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over the missing money. And he also knew that Paul was a mess. I mean, sadly, and may he rest in
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peace, Paul's, um, actions, drunken actions did not cease with a boat wreck. There was, there's
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testimony and, and that even just 10 days before he was killed, he was on a boat drinking, taking
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some people out and, and he had to call his father to get out of it. So Paul's behavior was, and was
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not deescalating. If anything, his, his behavior is getting worse. So yes, I think that the state made a
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really effective argument that he needed to do something to become instead of the object of
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suspicion, an object of sympathy. And what more would do that except becoming a, instead of a,
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instead of somebody, a thief, a potential thief, a grieving father, a grieving husband, um, someone
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who was the victim of a horrible crime. And, and for months he was right. It completely changed the
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subject. And he had prior to, um, getting arrested, uh, done what I guess it was his great grandfather
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did, which was attempt to create a suicide situation that would lead to an insurance payout.
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I mean, now it's like kind of all connecting. It's all connecting. And it really is extraordinary. So,
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so over the course of the summer of 2021, he did almost get away with the murder of Maggie and Paul.
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He really did. And he almost got away with the thefts that he's now admitted to dozens and dozens of
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people, millions and millions of dollars by, you know, getting, barring more money, barring money
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from his best friend, Chris Wilson, barring money from, from the bank, getting, getting fronted money
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and trying to repay the $792,000 back, back to the law firm, which he did. And they stopped,
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they kind of let, let it go until, um, and that goes in July and in August until the, the Thursday
00:22:30.880
before Labor Day weekend, his paralegal is in his office looking for some paperwork, which she knows he
00:22:35.040
doesn't like, but she really needed it. She lifts up this folder, finds the check that was missing
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that proved that he had been stealing. So what happens then is the gig is up. Um, Alex confronted
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by his brother, his law partner and many other law partners. And they say, you've been stealing,
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we've got evidence you've been stealing from the firm. You have to go. So he gets fired that Friday
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of Labor Day weekend. And what happens the next morning, Saturday morning, he tries to fake his own
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death on the side of the road. And what he said was an insurance fraud attempt to, to get money
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for his surviving son, Buster. But what really looks like another way to change the subject,
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just like he had done back June 7th with the homicides of his wife and son.
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I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest,
00:23:23.100
and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal,
00:23:26.980
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00:23:32.280
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00:24:14.900
Do we think he did not intend to die then when that, that guy who was next to homeless? I mean,
00:24:25.900
that guy seemed, you know, not like a sophisticated character when he got him to quote, shoot him,
00:24:31.640
but it just grazed his head. That was always so confusing to me. And I'm like, was this some sort
00:24:36.680
of a sharpshooter? How did the guy manage to actually barely connect with him to the point where
00:24:42.280
it looked like he actually had been shot at, but not so much that he actually killed him?
00:24:48.340
Yeah, no, there, there, there are many theories about what happened actually at the side of the
00:24:53.260
road, but, but the man you're talking about, Curtis, Eddie Smith will tell you. And he said it,
00:24:58.440
he's like, if I'd shot him, he'd have been dead. So that what he believes happened is there was a
00:25:04.160
struggle, there was a struggle over the gun. And he has said, he thinks that Ellick was trying to frame
00:25:09.980
him that they were, they were struggling over the gun and maybe Ellick was going to, you know,
00:25:14.380
Ellick was bigger, like six, four, 200 pounds. I mean, can he overpower this, this, um, and Curtis,
00:25:21.160
Eddie Smith is his cousin. Eddie is a smaller guy. He's been out on disability for a number of years.
00:25:26.120
Ellick was a disability lawyer. Um, and then frame him. And you remember when, um, Dick Harpoulian and
00:25:32.200
Jim Griffin, Ellick's lawyers, they said in court filings, they're like, you know, the real killer is
00:25:37.620
Eddie Smith. He was the one who killed Maggie and Paul. And so one of the theories, um, is that
00:25:44.240
Ellick may have been trying to kill Eddie and then say, see, he was coming after me to kill me the same
00:25:49.160
way that he killed my wife and son. And it's strange. I don't know if you remember, but he
00:25:53.920
was paying, he was paying, Eddie was, was cashing a lot of checks for Ellick over a number of years.
00:25:58.680
And the checks accelerated that summer that hundreds of thousands of dollars that Ellick was,
00:26:03.400
was effectively paying, um, Eddie in a way. So was he going to say he was blackmailing me?
00:26:09.700
Look at these payments. There were, there are multiple ways to look at what actually happened
00:26:13.620
there. But one of them is that if you look at the, the, the photos and, and the defense released
00:26:20.300
the photos, they signed a HIPAA release and released all the photos. There are, there are people
00:26:25.000
locally that say, well, that's not a cut in his head. He fell. And that's the gravel on the side of
00:26:30.920
the road that's, that's, that caused him to, to be cut. But one thing I should add about Cousin Eddie
00:26:36.320
is that he's actually a cousin. I remember, I could not believe it, but if you go back
00:26:41.640
more than a hundred years to the civil war, Ellick's great, great grandfather. So Randolph senior's father
00:26:48.220
was, it was an officer in, in the, this, the, in the Southern army. And so was Eddie's great,
00:26:57.180
great grandfather and they were brothers. His great, great grandfather was named Lazarus Murdoch.
00:27:01.460
He was, he was what they call a fire eater. So he was an especially virulent, um, anti he was
00:27:08.500
anti-union. He made these, these, these incredible speeches, um, that got picked up by national media
00:27:15.320
and actually were read by Abraham Lincoln. So Eddie is, he, he says, he's like, I'm half Murdoch.
00:27:20.480
And he's right there. He's, he's a partner. Wow. Do we know, do we ever figure out? And by the way,
00:27:26.420
just for the audience, I'm talking today to Valerie Borlein. She wrote the book,
00:27:30.100
the devil at his elbow, Alex Murdoch and the fall of a Southern dynasty. Um, do we know where all the
00:27:37.400
money went? This is one of the mysteries, right? It just seemed like Alec was taking in so much money
00:27:42.440
via fraud from the law firm, the clients and so on. And where did it go? Like, it seemed like
00:27:48.760
he claimed he just spent it on drugs, but it, the conclusion by many was always how many drugs
00:27:55.920
could that, could he possibly have taken? He took in more than he could ever have spent
00:28:00.280
was the lay person conclusion on the, on the funding. No. And I think, I think, um, you know,
00:28:07.440
one of the key voices in the book is Blanca Simpson, who was the house, the housekeeper at
00:28:11.440
Moselle for many years. And I think the evidence establishes that Alec was using drugs, but I think
00:28:17.320
there's no evidence that he was using the, uh, the amount of drugs and opioids in particular that
00:28:22.000
he says he was. And I had the benefit of, of 10 years of spending. I could see his through some
00:28:28.340
federal exhibits. I could see what he and Maggie spent over the course of 10 years down to like
00:28:33.500
when they, when they would go to the honey baked ham store at Thanksgiving, you could see
00:28:37.220
what that expenditure was and what was so shocking about it. And I think we probably know people like
00:28:42.820
this in our own lives is as soon as money came in the door, it went out. He was, he was overdrawn
00:28:49.280
tens of thousands of dollars multiple times in a year. Maggie would have to call him and say,
00:28:54.760
can you call the bank? I need to be able to, I'm at the grocery store. I need to be able to cash this
00:28:58.940
chain and be able to pay for my groceries. He just, you know, it's, it's, it's extraordinary.
00:29:05.600
It was, you know, they would take a private plane to a USC bowl game when, instead of flying first
00:29:12.300
class or, um, you know, they, they, Blanca told me and, and there's a farm equipment out on Moselle,
00:29:19.620
which is 1700 acres, a huge, huge property, twice the size of Central Park. And rather than fix,
00:29:25.800
you know, a big piece of heavy equipment, they would just put gallons of oil in it every day. So he
00:29:29.940
was spending hundreds of dollars on oil. It was just, you, it's hard to even understand where the
00:29:35.380
money was going. Um, but there is missing money, you know, millions of dollars, the feds say that's
00:29:41.420
still missing. So he spent a lot of it. He spent some of it on drugs. He, um, I think there is,
00:29:47.540
I do subscribe to the idea that he buried some of it at Moselle and PVC pipes. I've talked with people
00:29:53.780
who've been there when those pipes had been dug up, but that you can't, I mean, cash is tough. It's
00:29:58.820
tough to bury, you know, millions of dollars in, in, in dirt over time. There is a theory. And I think
00:30:05.160
the feds have been pursuing it that, that some of the money is offshore and, and was he going to run
00:30:10.880
that summer is, is one of the ideas, but there's, there's, there's the feds say about $6 million
00:30:16.100
that's still missing. So that, that makes more sense that, that we've got millions missing than
00:30:22.000
that. He spent it all on, on the drugs. All right. So then we go to trial. He, he does wind up
00:30:26.980
arrested. This all comes out. Um, there is the, uh, moment he is found guilty. Actually, we have
00:30:35.760
that. Let's just watch that. Stop 51. The state of South Carolina County of Colleton in the court of
00:30:43.580
general sessions, the July term of 2022, the state versus Richard Alexander Murdoch defendant
00:30:51.040
indictment for murder. SC code 16 dash three dash zero zero one zero CDR code zero one one six
00:31:00.120
verdict guilty signed by the four lady. Okay. And that's interesting for a few reasons.
00:31:07.300
One, he was found guilty to old Becky Hill reading the verdict would come to play a major role in this
00:31:15.000
story, which no one knew at the time, but Becky almost got this verdict thrown out because of her
00:31:22.140
behavior behind the scenes with the jurors. And could it still her behavior, get this verdict thrown
00:31:30.240
out? Is that totally settled? I know that we had a hearing in which a different judge said, no,
00:31:36.500
I'm not throwing out the verdict, but could that be reversed on appeal? I imagine Alex lawyers are taking
00:31:43.160
that up. No, it's, it's incredible to watch that footage. I was sitting there that night and I was
00:31:48.740
leaning forward on the edge of my seat, just listening to it. Cause I remember that emotion.
00:31:52.440
Um, and, and, and all of the docket numbers and numbers were like, but what's the answer?
00:31:58.560
So spit it out. So, but we had been in that courtroom. It's very tight corners. It's these soaring
00:32:04.800
ceilings. It's, it was built in, it was designed in the 18 twenties, but very tight quarters. And we had
00:32:09.460
been in there every day, uh, for six weeks. And by we, I mean the, the lawyers, the law enforcement
00:32:14.820
officers, the jury, um, the, the Murdochs, they were across the aisle from me. I could, you know,
00:32:20.800
exchange pleasantries every day. Um, and so it was an extraordinary result to be there that night and
00:32:27.260
listen to the verdict read by Becky. And Becky was really like the den mother of the courtroom because
00:32:32.120
the clerk of court makes sure the jury has lunch, make sure that the press has the credentials or,
00:32:38.680
you know, do they, there's so many people in downtown Walterboro didn't have places to eat.
00:32:44.180
What about food trucks, which they ultimately bought in? She was sort of the, um, the, the
00:32:49.440
principal of an elementary school is what it felt like a little bit. So it's surreal for Becky to be
00:32:54.120
the, the center of so much scrutiny. But what that scrutiny is about is, um, her relationships and
00:33:01.080
potential, uh, talking out of school with members of the jury, many of whom she knew beforehand and
00:33:06.580
many of the jurors knew each other. It's a small town. I always, I always, um, you know, I'm from,
00:33:10.800
I'm from a relatively small town myself in the South. And, you know, if you had a hundred people
00:33:15.700
in church the day before jury selection, you know, five of them would have gotten a jury summons.
00:33:22.180
So, you know, people knew each other and the jury wasn't sequestered. Everybody in town knew who they
00:33:26.520
were. And Becky, you know, knew a lot of them personally. And so the question was, did she talk to
00:33:32.160
them out of school? And did she say things that would prejudice, prejudice them against Alec,
00:33:37.260
particularly when he took the stand? And I'll write this in the book.
00:33:40.260
And had jurors come forward to say, yes, at least one of them said, she influenced my verdict.
00:33:45.740
And it is, it is a small town. And we talked a little bit about the bootlegging case involving
00:33:49.600
old Buster. You know, it's extraordinary, but Becky's grandmother and grandfather and her uncle,
00:33:55.180
who was a teenager, were charged, federally charged with felony, with felonies in that bootlegging
00:33:59.940
ring. They were on Buster's payroll. Oh, boy. Everything is connected.
00:34:04.020
Everything's connected there. But to your question, Megan, I think that we did have a
00:34:08.280
first answer. There was a hearing back in January where the former chief justice of the Supreme Court,
00:34:14.240
Jean Toll, was asked by her former colleagues in the Supreme Court to take a listen to this request
00:34:19.480
for a new trial. She denied it, but the defense is appealing it back to the Supreme Court.
00:34:26.400
They've agreed to hear it, even though it seems unlikely they will overturn their own
00:34:31.060
special, the person that they trusted with this decision. And then also, they're very close
00:34:36.960
allies with Judge Newman, who presided over the initial proceeding. He's very tight with
00:34:42.260
the chief justice, Don Beatty. So I spoke with Dick. I saw him recently in Columbia, Dick Harpootlian,
00:34:49.360
and they see their best chance at a new trial at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond,
00:34:54.220
just a little bit further removed from South Carolina, which is such a small state, and getting
00:35:00.000
fresh ears at this idea of not just did Becky Hill say things to the jurors that were prejudicial,
00:35:07.020
but also did the state apply the wrong standard? And it was a degree that was, it's a measure of
00:35:12.260
degrees. Like, yes, we acknowledge that she talked with the jury, but did it move the needle? And so
00:35:17.840
what they hope is that the federal court will apply a different standard.
00:35:21.800
Yeah, that they, they're going to argue they were held to too high a burden of proof to prove jury
00:35:28.240
tampering, and that a lower standard should have been applied, which would have allowed them to
00:35:32.140
prove jury tampering, which would allow him to get a new trial. The Justice Toll was great when she came
00:35:38.380
in and held that hearing over Becky Hill. The allegations against Becky Hill just got weirder.
00:35:42.520
Justice Toll, I will say, was, I'm sorry, she was, she's just such an extraordinary figure in South
00:35:47.800
Carolina history. I used to cover South Carolina politics when I was a reporter at the state
00:35:52.340
newspaper in Columbia, and she was the chief justice at the time, former Speaker of the House.
00:35:56.980
She's been in public life there for 60 years, and came, was a young lawyer, and this is so
00:36:03.460
extraordinary to me, was a young lawyer in a day, in a time when women weren't even allowed to serve
00:36:08.080
in front of a jury until 1968. Wow. And so she was, yeah, she was talking to all male juries.
00:36:13.220
She did project, when she was up there, I say this lovingly, she, she seemed like a tough old broad
00:36:17.140
in the best sense, you know, like, she wasn't going to tolerate it in that sense.
00:36:19.680
She would love to hear you say that. And she, and she knew the Murdoch, she knew the Murdoch,
00:36:24.120
and she had actually, both in the legislature, I talked with her about this, both in the legislature
00:36:30.140
and on the bench, had, had pushed for laws that would, would, would kind of claw back some of the
00:36:38.440
power that they were using, you know, inappropriately, in her view. So she knew the Murdochs quite well
00:36:44.920
over the course of, of decades. She, she made the comment about Becky Hill that would become very
00:36:53.460
well known. Here it is, top 52. I find that the clerk of court is not completely credible as a
00:37:00.760
witness. Ms. Hill was attracted by the siren call of celebrity. She wanted to write a book about the
00:37:08.420
trial and express that as early as November, 2022, long before the trial began. And that led to bad
00:37:17.180
behavior by Becky Hill, which got this whole thing, you know, mucked up. But do you remember, can you,
00:37:22.960
I'm just, it's been a while since we've covered this, but she also has a son who worked in the
00:37:28.320
courthouse and there was an allegation about him wiping his phone and wiping her phone on the day
00:37:36.780
that they were supposed to turn them over for an internal ethics investigation. It smelled to high
00:37:42.140
heaven. You know, it is, um, I think it's, if you're not from a small town in the rural South,
00:37:49.700
maybe it just, it, it, it boggles the mind, but her son was the information technology director
00:37:56.320
for the County. And that was, you know, it's a, she's an elected official. She, she is, she is, um,
00:38:03.780
but she's also, you know, politically powerful. And some of those jobs are patronage jobs. And he was,
00:38:08.180
he was in that role and is, you know, accused of, of tapping the phone of an admitted County
00:38:14.360
administrator that was communicating with the state ethics board to try to find out what was going on in
00:38:18.780
the investigation with his mother. There were all sorts of wiping the phone, which, you know, his,
00:38:24.180
the lawyers will tell you is a fairly standard move in some defense cases, but it looked highly
00:38:30.300
irregular to a lay person. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because, um, it's such a big case. It captivated
00:38:37.940
so much attention that the center ring of the circus is really Elick Murdoch in the, in the trial,
00:38:43.720
but we're, we, there's so many outer rings with the, with the Mallory beach case, for example,
00:38:48.040
there's another case that's ongoing about, um, whether the convenience store where Paul bought
00:38:54.260
beer, whether the owner of that convenience store has been trying to, um, harass the beach family
00:38:59.800
over the years, that's been going on for several years. Becky is, is facing an investigation into
00:39:04.860
her behavior and that's been going on. So we're in multiple layers of drama with this story. And
00:39:11.740
it's just incredible. Like the layers, I remember sitting in court and watching Elick at,
00:39:15.860
during a break, he was, you know, six feet away from me and he's the center of this. He's the eye
00:39:21.100
of this hurricane. And there's so much swirling around him that one person could stir up so much
00:39:25.020
chaos is really amazing. So now here we are where he's appealing. Uh, he's going to argue Becky
00:39:32.100
Hill mucked up the trial to the point where he gets another trial. We don't love the chances,
00:39:37.600
but one never knows. And in the meantime, the wrongful death lawsuit that Mallory beach's family
00:39:44.440
brought against Alec, is that totally resolved? That was the, the, the remnants of that were
00:39:51.800
resolved this week with, um, a $500,000 payment from her, from the, um, from Alex insurer that had
00:39:59.220
been tied up. And that was paid to the lawyers as past, the paper was filed this past Monday.
00:40:03.280
So that case is, is pretty well wrapped up. Um, did the family, did the family get a, a payment
00:40:10.240
too? The family did it last, not this past summer, but summer of 22, they, I'm sorry, summer of 23,
00:40:17.240
they received a payment, um, largely from Parker's convenience store, this, this convenience store
00:40:23.340
where Paul bought beer, uh, on the order of $14 million. So it was a significant, um, civil judgment
00:40:28.680
that, um, and, and, and I learned a lot about personal injury law in the course of this,
00:40:35.540
of reporting this book, but, you know, the personal, this was considered, you know,
00:40:41.340
what is, what was Mallory's life worth? It is blood money. And so it was, it's a, it's a, it's a,
00:40:47.800
it's a difficult fact of personal injury law that the more money that you get paid is a reflection of,
00:40:53.740
of what, you know, a jury might think your, your, your loved one's life is worth.
00:40:57.580
I'm sure it's a, it's a special form of sentencing for you because every time you get into
00:41:03.740
the car, that money bought or the bed that money paid for, it's got to make you feel
00:41:11.020
awful. And they will tell you, and they will, and they will tell you, Mrs. You know, Pamela
00:41:16.060
Pinckney, Hakeem Pinckney's mother, Hakeem was the, the paraplegic teenager who, um, who died in a
00:41:22.420
nursing home and was robbed by Alec Murdoch twice. She would tell you, she would give back all of it
00:41:28.740
for, for time with her son. It's just, it's this, it's the, the proxy we have in our judicial system
00:41:35.860
to, to make a family as whole as possible, knowing that nothing really ever will.
00:41:40.180
So what, if anything is happening with the other piece of this story, which is the possible
00:41:48.820
murder. There's only one other piece by, by Buster, uh, Paul's older brother of a young gay
00:41:58.380
classmate who was killed on the road, but there's just only speculation that it was Buster Murdoch,
00:42:05.740
not actual proof. And they were going to reopen that investigation in the wake of all of this.
00:42:11.900
Where does that stand? Well, you know, you, you mentioned the, the missing money. There's also
00:42:17.460
the question of the missing guns and the homicide, but the biggest unanswered question is what happened
00:42:21.500
to Stephen Smith. He was the, he was a 19 year old young man who was found in the middle of a road
00:42:26.740
in the summer of 2015. In the course of the investigation, the Murdoch name came up 40 different
00:42:32.400
times. People would say one of the boys or another was involved somehow, but I should be clear. There
00:42:37.900
is no evidence that Buster or Paul, there's no, there's no proof that either one of them had anything
00:42:42.760
to do with the death of this young man. Buster has gone so far to say, you know, to that there's,
00:42:49.280
he had nothing to do with it. He wasn't close to it. It wasn't there that evening. And he's even sued
00:42:54.100
some of the documentary filmmakers who have, who he alleges have, have, have said that he had a role
00:43:00.600
in some way, shape, or form. They certainly haven't laid those breadcrumbs.
00:43:04.500
But, but it is, yeah, you can go through the, you know, it's, it's 90 some pages of, of, of a,
00:43:09.100
of a police report where the name comes up over and over again in very, in very strange ways.
00:43:14.600
So there's always been a rumor that the Murdochs were involved somehow in his death or in making
00:43:20.860
it impossible to find out who was, who, who killed him. But I can tell you that the state grand jury has
00:43:26.860
been, still been meeting over this case and taking and try and is eager to figure it out.
00:43:31.760
It is one that is, it still haunts Hampton County. So we, it, we may never know, but it won't be for
00:43:37.980
lack of interviews and lack of trying because they're active, actively working the case from
00:43:41.860
what I understand. So in the time we have left, what's, what life like right now for Buster Murdoch,
00:43:49.860
the one who, the son whose entire family is, has been killed or is now in jail. And for Alec Murdoch,
00:43:57.040
who was living this life of excess and now is convicted of double homicide, not to mention all
00:44:01.880
the fraud charges that were brought against him separately, which he was also found guilty on.
00:44:07.020
No, it's very poignant. I was, I've mentioned I was in Hampton last week and went by the cemetery
00:44:12.480
and I saw Matt, it took, it took a while, but Maggie and Paul's gravestones have been put up
00:44:18.520
and people will leave flowers there. There's a ceramic dog that was, that looks like Bubba,
00:44:23.660
the, the yellow lab that belonged to the family that's there. And most pointed of all, it's, you
00:44:28.620
know, on, on, on Maggie's headstone, it says, you know, Margaret Branstetter, Murdoch, mother.
00:44:34.680
And on Paul's, it says, Paul, Terry Murdoch, son. And it's, it's incredible that that is how you'd be
00:44:42.340
defined. But, um, the, the person I was with said, what happens to Alec? You know, where is he in this
00:44:47.420
picture? So, um, will he be remembered as father? Will he be remembered as the person that, that killed
00:44:53.800
them? But he's in, he's in prison in the upstate. He has, um, acclimated to, uh, prison life. Um,
00:45:02.740
well, according to what I'm told. And by that, I mean, he has, um, Alec Murdoch is the type of a
00:45:08.620
person who works the system and he has, um, he has relationships. He does, he's, he's a disbarred
00:45:15.620
lawyer, but he's a law, he knows the law and he helps other inmates with their questions. He's,
00:45:20.660
he's using his notoriety to, um, to, to, to his benefit. Um, he, he was, you know, accused by,
00:45:31.480
or, you know, he, they, the prisons system of prisons found that he had been, you know,
00:45:36.980
essentially bribing other inmates to let him use their pin number to make phone calls. He's,
00:45:41.220
he's figuring things out on the inside. Um, but he will never ever see the light of day. Even if
00:45:47.760
there's another trial in the homicide case, the state has effectively got an insurance policy.
00:45:53.000
You remember back in November when he pled guilty to those dozens of financial crimes and they got a
00:45:59.260
that will take him, keep him in prison until he's roughly 80 years old. So the, regardless of
00:46:04.380
whether the homicide is overturned as for Buster, um, my understanding is, you know, he's, he's living
00:46:11.120
in Bluffton, the community just adjacent to Beaufort with, um, his, his fiance is a woman who was in
00:46:18.600
court with him every day. His, his girlfriend from law school, who is a lawyer. Um, he got a substantial
00:46:24.100
settlement from his mother's estate, roughly $500,000. There's a payment. I document the book
00:46:30.720
where he participated in a documentary, um, and, and got several hundred thousand dollars from that.
00:46:36.120
So he has a small amount, not, I'm sorry, not a small, but, you know, significant amount of money
00:46:40.860
to, um, to, you know, start a life. Although it is difficult to see how he does so separate from
00:46:49.520
his family because his last name is Murdoch and he's got that red hair. He's so just, he, he,
00:46:56.660
it would be hard with that, that name and that hair to make an, make a new life.
00:47:02.900
You'd have to go someplace else. I mean, there's a brother, Alex brother seemed non-sociopathic.
00:47:11.380
I perhaps there's some hope there. I don't know. Raised by that man with that family lineage.
00:47:17.280
That's well, and you're right about his, his brothers, um, his, his older brother,
00:47:22.900
Randy and his younger brother, John Marvin are still in the community as well. You know,
00:47:27.360
I was at, I went by the law firm the other day and his brother is older brother. Randy is a partner
00:47:32.320
there and is actively working cases. His younger brother, John Marvin one runs a heavy equipment
00:47:37.220
business. And as you go down the main drag from linking Hampton and Varnville, you see Murdoch
00:47:41.660
rentals right there. So they're still in the community and, and, and, um, and, you know,
00:47:46.760
well-regarded to a degree. Um, but I think that everything's changed with, with, um,
00:47:53.780
with a downfall. Is anyone living at the estate where it happened?
00:47:57.560
So Moselle is the estate where it happened. It actually has been sold and it's been sold in two
00:48:02.300
pieces that the house itself was sold along with roughly 20 acres to, um, to an out of state buyer
00:48:09.160
that whose name was not revealed. And the, the, the Delta, the other acreage was sold to a neighboring
00:48:15.700
landowner who wanted, who wanted the land. Um, you know, it is, I went by there the other day too,
00:48:22.820
just to, to take a look. I had been onto the property during the trial. I accompanied the jury
00:48:29.000
on their, their visit to see the place. It still feels, um, it still seems like a, there's a heaviness
00:48:36.220
in the air out there. It is still, um, a haunted place really. Dick Harputlian said so. And, and I,
00:48:43.500
I, you know, and I felt it as well. Always will be. Wow. Great reporting, Valerie. Thank you. It's,
00:48:49.380
her name is Valerie Borlein and the book again is The Devil at His Elbow, Alex Murdoch and the Fall of a
00:48:56.800
Southern Dynasty. Google it, check it out. Devil at His Elbow. Thank you so much for coming on and
00:49:01.960
telling us the story and the updates. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for joining us today
00:49:08.140
and have a very happy new year. We will be back later this week with some major updates in the
00:49:14.260
Scott Peterson case. See you then. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.