The Megyn Kelly Show - Alex Murdaugh's Life in Prison and Web of Crimes and Lies - A ＂True Crime Christmas＂ Special ｜ Ep. 974

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:00:12.120 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's true crime

00:00:16.500 Christmas special. Today we are diving deep into the case of Alec Murdoch, and there are

00:00:22.400 updates in this incredible case, believe it or not. His story begins much earlier than the crimes

00:00:27.860 that made national headlines over the past few years, and no one has covered the story quite

00:00:32.280 like the Wall Street Journal's Valerie Borlein, who wrote the book The Devil at His Elbow. We get

00:00:38.840 into everything from Murdoch's family history to the details of his downfall and the new info.

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00:01:50.260 Valerie, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

00:01:52.200 Thank you.

00:01:53.440 Okay, so this is all so fascinating. And one of the most eye-opening things I read was about

00:01:59.860 Alec Murdoch's background. He comes from a long line of deeply ethically problematic people,

00:02:09.100 which I did not know. All you ever heard about him was that he came from this very storied family.

00:02:14.280 They were lifelong solicitors or like the prosecutors in their town in South Carolina,

00:02:19.020 very well respected. They controlled everything. It was far more nefarious than that. Can you

00:02:23.400 take us back?

00:02:25.260 Oh, it absolutely was. I mean, I think one of the biggest surprises I had researching this book was

00:02:29.980 that every crime that Alec was eventually convicted of had some echo in the past. And that includes like

00:02:37.380 violence against women or overtures of violence against women. That includes insurance fraud,

00:02:42.840 like by the side of the road. There was an active insurance fraud that started the family dynasty,

00:02:47.760 stealing from clients, drug trafficking. There were echoes in the past for every single crime

00:02:54.220 we're talking about, even a boat wreck that caused really a traumatic injury. So that surprised me too.

00:03:01.040 It wasn't just Alec. It was the history going back to 1920 of this family.

00:03:06.440 Yes. I mean, it really does show you, you know, if you have a family, a father, a grandfather who are

00:03:13.120 committing crimes and teaching you either explicitly or implicitly that that's okay,

00:03:19.060 your odds of becoming a criminal are obviously much higher. But hello, women of the world, pay attention, 1.00

00:03:24.900 pay attention to your spouse, the guys you're dating. It can work the other way around too.

00:03:29.640 And what they come from, who they come from. So this, his great grandfather, Randolph Murdoch Sr.

00:03:39.240 basically committed suicide and insurance fraud at the same time.

00:03:45.040 That's right. And I was in Hampton just last week. I actually was standing at the train tracks just

00:03:50.120 south of Almeda where Alec's, the home place that Alec went the night of the homicides. His great

00:03:56.240 grandfather, Randolph Sr. was a very prominent man. I mean, every meal he ate was front page news. Like,

00:04:02.180 where was he now? He was the district attorney for four counties in the low country of South Carolina.

00:04:07.940 He was, he was very sick. He was 53 years old. He was, he was dying. He was at the end of his life.

00:04:14.840 He had, he had kidney failure at a time when there just, you didn't, there was no cure, right? There was

00:04:19.080 no dialysis. He was broke. He had been a big investor in the, in a bank and then the bank failed.

00:04:25.160 And through the depression, he was just, I found documents down at the courthouse in Hampton where

00:04:30.500 he just would say, there's no chance I can ever pay these people back. So he was broke. He was dying

00:04:35.540 and he knew how to do one thing incredibly well, which was sue the railroad, which at that time in

00:04:41.460 1940 was one of the only entities worth suing. So what happened was he was driving back from a poker

00:04:48.140 game in Yamasee, a little town right on the Hampton County line at one in the morning, hottest day of the

00:04:53.900 summer, 90 some degrees. He pulls, he stopped short of his home and turns onto a deserted train tracks

00:05:00.320 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

00:05:06.460 a small town near a railroad, you know what time the train comes through. The train is coming North

00:05:11.500 and you can hear it for miles. It's coming North. It's bearing down on this train tracks. He speeds up

00:05:17.440 onto the tracks themselves and they're blowing the whistle. They're flashing the light. It's a clear

00:05:23.120 moonlit night. And they see, he sees them. And instead of like driving off, he waves at them.

00:05:29.360 And what happens is there's a coroner's jury and the coroner of course was a protege of, of Randolph

00:05:35.860 senior. The sheriff was a protege of Randolph senior. There was an inquest the next morning. And guess what?

00:05:41.780 The local coroner's jury found that in spite of the testimony of the engineer and others,

00:05:47.520 it was an accident and it cleared the way for Randolph Murdoch jr. Alec's grandfather to sue

00:05:54.100 the railroad for the equivalent of millions of dollars, which is what he did successfully.

00:05:59.680 Isn't that incredible?

00:06:00.840 Is Randolph Murdoch jr. Buster?

00:06:04.540 Randolph Murdoch jr. is old Buster. And old Buster was a real force to be reckoned with. He,

00:06:10.980 he was solicitor from 1940 when he was 25 years old to 1986. So Roosevelt to Reagan. And he even

00:06:18.460 stayed in that office beyond that time. The legislature finally essentially forced him.

00:06:22.760 They created a rule that essentially forced him to retire, but he kept going into the office as a

00:06:26.600 volunteer solicitor. So he was, so Randolph Murdoch jr. Old Buster, Alec Murdoch idolized him. He told

00:06:33.980 many people that he wished he'd been born in old Buster's day, because in those days, what you said was

00:06:39.540 what the truth was. And, and, and, and old Buster was, um, he ruled with an iron fist. He was one of

00:06:45.960 those guys that would rather be feared than loved.

00:06:49.520 And he also continued fraud and potential violence against women.

00:06:55.960 He, so old Buster, there's, there's, um, I was able to pull 900 pages from the national archives of

00:07:02.060 the, the records from his trial, his federal trial. The feds charged him with bootlegging,

00:07:07.980 actually running the largest bootlegging ring in the South. He was the ringleader. They charged two

00:07:13.440 dozen people. Old Buster, Alec's grandfather was, was charged with leading this entire ring in

00:07:18.800 Colleton County. And he was, uh, he was, he was, he was, he was accused of taking a cash bribe in the

00:07:25.680 hallway of the Colleton County courthouse, which is the hallway that we went in and out every day of

00:07:30.080 Alec Murdoch trial. He was accused of, of intimidating witnesses, buying off witnesses. And, and, and,

00:07:37.020 and eventually of tampering with the jury by buying off the foreman. And he was one of the only people

00:07:43.000 in that entire weeks long federal trial that was acquitted. So there's a history of, of, um, you

00:07:51.080 know, Alec Murdoch was, it was convicted of, of drug trafficking. His grandfather was credibly

00:07:56.860 accused and narrowly escaped being convicted of bootlegging. So again, this echoes in the past.

00:08:02.180 Tell us about the mistress who got on the wrong side of Alec Murdoch's grandfather.

00:08:07.360 So there was, there was, there was testimony in Alec's, that Alec's trial, as you remember,

00:08:12.140 there was testimony that Alec was somewhat of a, um, a philanderer. And that certainly is a history

00:08:17.180 in the family going back generations. His grandfather, Old Buster had, um, had a mistress,

00:08:24.440 several, but one in particular who he was in touch with for many, many years. And her name was Ruth Fox.

00:08:30.620 And Ruth Fox was married to, um, a local, like a, a North, a Northern baron who came down and bought

00:08:37.860 a plantation. And she was from one of the nation's first families, a really impressive woman in her

00:08:42.600 own right. And, um, she was, had been, uh, in, in the Navy during World War II, like training pilots,

00:08:50.120 which is kind of wild to think about what kind of woman was doing that in the forties. And she met 1.00

00:08:54.740 Buster and asked for his help in getting out of her obligations. He's like, I know everybody. I'll

00:08:58.780 know all U S senators. I'll help you get out of this, out of this bind. They got to know each

00:09:03.940 other. And what, you know, a year later, she is pregnant with his child. She goes to, it's just

00:09:09.840 such an incredible story. She goes to the house and we're talking about the same house that Alec went

00:09:13.860 to the night of the homicides at Moselle. He goes to that, she goes to the house, knocks on the door,

00:09:19.600 speaks to Alec's grandmother and says, you know, you have a son. I have a son. These boys should need.

00:09:25.600 And the grandmother says, you know, don't let my name come out of your mouth ever again,

00:09:30.540 go away. Um, and it was, it was a stunning thing because she had survived essentially. Um, when she

00:09:37.940 had told, uh, old Buster that she was pregnant, he had tried to have her killed. She, he hired,

00:09:43.560 he had a fixer. The story goes, he had a fixer of one of many who, who laid, laid in wait underneath

00:09:49.900 her porch one night and got a little bit too drunk and fell asleep and didn't kill her. So there was just

00:09:54.260 like this incredible, incredible echoes throughout this story. Isn't it amazing?

00:09:59.380 Yes, it is amazing. I mean, I cannot, you must've been just slack jawed when you read up about the

00:10:05.020 direct line from which he came and it's, it makes sense of everything. So it didn't stop there.

00:10:11.440 It didn't even skip a generation. Alec's father also had a history of paying people off to cover up a boat

00:10:20.080 accident, which of course would set off Alec's own story with a different boat accident as well.

00:10:27.120 Well, there was, um, and there was certainly a terrible boat accident in 1998 from the same

00:10:33.000 island, like Murdoch Island, where you'll remember the, the, the tragic boat wreck that killed Mallory

00:10:38.900 beach in 2019. They took the Murdoch family boat from the family compound, which is called Murdoch

00:10:44.000 Island. Back in 1998, um, Alec's younger brother was having a party on Murdoch Island. There was a

00:10:51.760 boat there and it's incredible. I couldn't believe it. When I saw the documents, it was, it had been

00:10:56.000 seized in a drug raid by the solicitor's office. So by old buster and he liked the boat. So he kept it

00:11:02.240 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

00:11:08.160 night. There's some guests there that wanted to take the boat home rather than the roads because they

00:11:13.220 didn't want to get in trouble. They've been drinking for many hours and they, these, these young men

00:11:18.500 set off on, um, a boat ride home. And it's tricky. We know from what happened with the, with the wreck

00:11:24.620 that killed Mallory beach, it's very shallow waters and places. They hit a shoal and stopped and then

00:11:30.780 immediately started back up and didn't realize that one of the guests had fallen overboard and it got

00:11:35.660 run over by the motor and, and sustained a traumatic brain injury. And, you know, I've got hundreds of

00:11:41.440 pages of documents from the state that show, um, the, the Murdochs were involved in trying to make

00:11:49.160 that wreck go away. Even some of the same DNR, the natural resources officers, the, they, even some

00:11:55.640 of the same officers who were involved in the Mallory beach wreck were in, they were working that

00:12:00.700 night as well. So the echoes in the past are just, just, I, sometimes I couldn't believe it. I really

00:12:05.500 was gobsmacked many times in a row. Yes. I same. I'm having the same reaction just sitting here.

00:12:11.100 So then of course we get to Alec and this whole thing that we watched this double murder trial

00:12:18.540 in which he was found guilty of killing his wife and his own son was set off by that boating accident.

00:12:26.480 The second one, not, not the one you discussed, um, where the woman was run over, but more recently

00:12:31.960 with the younger generation, while, uh, Alec was out on a boat was drinking and they had an accident

00:12:40.140 and Mallory beach was thrown from the boat and wasn't found for some time later. And she was dead

00:12:46.780 and that old Murdoch instinct to cover it up, run cover for those involved, or especially for Alec

00:12:55.220 kicked in and would set off a chain of events that would ultimately destroy the Murdoch family.

00:13:04.120 It's so poignant to look at pictures of Mallory. She was 19 years old when she died. She was just

00:13:08.800 full of life. I've gotten to know her, her family over the course of her reporting this story. And it

00:13:14.220 was, it was Alec's boat, but it was his son, Paul Murdoch, who was 19 at the time, who was, who was, um,

00:13:20.240 who was driving. I mean, I think the facts established that he was driving. He was criminally charged with it.

00:13:25.360 And so he, he's, he is incredibly drunk. He drank a lot. I talked with, um, people that knew the

00:13:32.780 family. He had been sneaking beer since he was eight years old and, and, and, and at a certain

00:13:37.480 point, not even sneaking them. Um, so he was, he was, he was very, very drunk. He had 19 drinks that

00:13:43.820 night. His, his BAC when he got to the hospital was 0.286, but he was, he was a, he was a person,

00:13:51.480 even at 19 who'd been drinking for numbers of years and had been driving drunk for numbers

00:13:56.100 of years, according to, um, people I talked to who were involved in wrecks with him before.

00:14:01.180 But so he, he gets angry at his girlfriend, who's one of the, one of the passengers on the

00:14:06.440 boat confronts her. She says, you're too drunk to drive. Give everybody the keys, slaps her,

00:14:12.280 spits in her face, goes back to the wheel of the boat and, and floors it 20, the equivalent 0.52

00:14:17.980 of 28 miles an hour. And they're going through a very narrow, very shallow path and hit a bridge

00:14:23.060 that fast. And Mallory is thrown overboard and never resurfaces. And what all the evidence,

00:14:29.100 I've got thousands of pages of documents, some of them public, many of them, not, not, uh, many of

00:14:35.040 them, um, that had not been reviewed before that just showed that there was, when Alec got to the

00:14:41.720 hospital that night where these young people had been on the boat was, he went room to room to room,

00:14:46.360 trying to get everyone on the same page. He had his, his, his grandfather, old buster's badge

00:14:52.240 outside of his pocket, pretending to be a law enforcement officer. And I have his cell phone

00:14:57.240 records and have tracked his path that night. Do you remember when he testified that he put blue

00:15:01.080 rights, blue lights and siren on the suburban that he was driving? There's, it was almost physically

00:15:07.200 impossible for him to get from Moselle where he and Maggie were living at the time to the hospital,

00:15:13.280 unless he was going fabulously fast, 80 or 90 miles an hour. And I think it stands to reason.

00:15:19.360 And I argue this in the book that he almost certainly used lights to, to get to the hospital

00:15:24.840 before the other families and get everyone on the same page. And, but it really was his, his undoing.

00:15:29.680 The reason that he said he wanted to live in old buster's time is that, you know, there was so much

00:15:33.960 evidence in the video cameras in the hospital that night, so many statements, there was so much,

00:15:39.080 everything is recorded, right? You know, and he, he could not outrun modernity. And, and in the end

00:15:45.540 that night and his actions, the night of the boat wreck really with the beginning of the end of the

00:15:50.660 family. For among other reasons, he was then sued by the beach family. And that in the course of that

00:15:57.940 lawsuit, he would have to produce discovery, speaking to his economic status, his financial data,

00:16:04.640 and so on. And he, what was, we know separately now running a massive fraud, stealing from his law

00:16:10.340 firm, uh, had a massive drug problem or so he testified and was very worried. This is all going

00:16:16.360 to come out. He would be exposed. And at, and at the same time, his law firm, was this coincidental?

00:16:22.640 It was this coincidental Valerie that like the law firm started an investigation of Alec at the same

00:16:27.160 time for possible ethical breaches, or were those two things related the lawsuit and the law firm

00:16:32.960 getting interested in him? Well, it's all kind, it's all kind of woven together. And what, what

00:16:36.720 happened in the immediate aftermath of the boat wreck is that Mallory's family was having a tough

00:16:41.620 time finding a lawyer to represent their interest. Um, in Renee Beach, Mallory's mom tells the story

00:16:48.000 of being down at the, at the landing where the boat was, had come to rest and wanting to go down there

00:16:54.560 and see, um, where her daughter was, where she was the last time she was spotted. And the, the police were

00:17:01.560 very, very kind, but said, I'm sorry, you can't go down there. Here's a case of water for you and your

00:17:05.860 family while you wait. And there was a moment where Randolph Murdoch III, Alec's dad and, and Maggie, his wife

00:17:13.060 came down in, in their pickup truck and he waves at the officer and waves him through. And Renee Beach

00:17:20.060 realized then, oh my gosh, this is not a vigil. I thought I was at a vigil mourning my daughter. This is a crime

00:17:26.920 scene. And the family that's been the law in this area for a hundred years is in charge of it. I need

00:17:33.960 a lawyer. And she made a critical decision, which is to hire a lawyer to represent the family's

00:17:38.940 interest. And that lawyer was a key player and a, and a big character in this book. And his name is

00:17:43.540 Mark Tinsley. And there's no, um, enemy like your former friend. He was very close to Alec. He knew

00:17:50.680 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

00:17:56.960 those relationships. He's like, oh, I know he knows these particular officers because of my own personal

00:18:02.200 information. And once he decided to take the case, take the Beaches case, he was relentless in showing

00:18:08.920 that, um, that Alec and potentially the officers who were involved in, in protecting the scene were really, um,

00:18:17.500 really protecting Paul from charges. And so he filed a lawsuit in very short order. And that lawsuit

00:18:24.520 sought, like you said, all of Alec's financial records. It's just a standard part of a civil

00:18:28.620 lawsuit to say, how much insurance do you have? What do you, what resources could you potentially

00:18:32.080 pay if there was a judgment? And, and Alec knew more than anyone else that he had been robbing his

00:18:39.380 personal injury clients, the poorest of the poor for more than a decade. And he knew what any serious

00:18:44.400 inquiry would, would do. And so he had to stave that off. And, and in the end it was his undoing.

00:18:51.920 So he killed his own wife and his son, Paul, who had been at the helm for that boating accident.

00:18:59.800 And it was an attempt to garner sympathy, like to make him a sympathetic character so that his law firm

00:19:09.140 would move away, would stop investigating him so that the lawsuit, uh, involving Paul would be less

00:19:18.280 strong because you know, the main culprit would be gone and who would put this poor man now through

00:19:25.160 the torture of seeing a civil lawsuit through. It was an effort to just change his own financial

00:19:30.980 and reputational fortunes. No, I think, I think the prosecution argued that very effectively.

00:19:37.700 And one of the things that, um, I think that Mark Tinsley said on the stand is,

00:19:42.600 you know, personal injury lawyers don't think like other people. They, their, their gift,

00:19:48.600 their understanding of a successful one is, is understanding emotion. Like what motivate,

00:19:53.260 what might motivate a jury to, to, um, to pay blood money. And a lot of it in a case,

00:19:59.820 they understand what makes people tick. And he knew that, you know, the day of the homicides,

00:20:06.240 June 7th of 2021, and I'm sure we'll talk about this. He had been confronted over some of that missing

00:20:11.380 money that he had been stealing $792,000, not a small amount. He knew that the law firm was onto him

00:20:18.560 and he, he knew also that his father was dying. The, the patriarch of this family who had also

00:20:24.660 loaned him a million dollars over time and who he had just been texting with his, his buddy at the

00:20:29.800 bank. Oh, I'm going to get another loan from my dad for some money. He was short. And his dad was

00:20:34.520 dying. He knew this, this, this lawsuit was pending about his financials. He had been confronted

00:20:40.460 over the missing money. And he also knew that Paul was a mess. I mean, sadly, and may he rest in

00:20:45.860 peace, Paul's, um, actions, drunken actions did not cease with a boat wreck. There was, there's

00:20:52.940 testimony and, and that even just 10 days before he was killed, he was on a boat drinking, taking

00:20:59.100 some people out and, and he had to call his father to get out of it. So Paul's behavior was, and was

00:21:04.560 not deescalating. If anything, his, his behavior is getting worse. So yes, I think that the state made a

00:21:11.040 really effective argument that he needed to do something to become instead of the object of

00:21:15.600 suspicion, an object of sympathy. And what more would do that except becoming a, instead of a,

00:21:21.720 instead of somebody, a thief, a potential thief, a grieving father, a grieving husband, um, someone

00:21:28.320 who was the victim of a horrible crime. And, and for months he was right. It completely changed the

00:21:33.360 subject. And he had prior to, um, getting arrested, uh, done what I guess it was his great grandfather

00:21:42.960 did, which was attempt to create a suicide situation that would lead to an insurance payout.

00:21:49.320 I mean, now it's like kind of all connecting. It's all connecting. And it really is extraordinary. So,

00:21:55.120 so over the course of the summer of 2021, he did almost get away with the murder of Maggie and Paul.

00:22:00.340 He really did. And he almost got away with the thefts that he's now admitted to dozens and dozens of

00:22:05.960 people, millions and millions of dollars by, you know, getting, barring more money, barring money

00:22:11.240 from his best friend, Chris Wilson, barring money from, from the bank, getting, getting fronted money

00:22:16.260 and trying to repay the $792,000 back, back to the law firm, which he did. And they stopped,

00:22:22.360 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

00:22:40.740 that proved that he had been stealing. So what happens then is the gig is up. Um, Alex confronted

00:22:46.660 by his brother, his law partner and many other law partners. And they say, you've been stealing,

00:22:51.440 we've got evidence you've been stealing from the firm. You have to go. So he gets fired that Friday

00:22:55.720 of Labor Day weekend. And what happens the next morning, Saturday morning, he tries to fake his own

00:23:00.520 death on the side of the road. And what he said was an insurance fraud attempt to, to get money

00:23:06.880 for his surviving son, Buster. But what really looks like another way to change the subject,

00:23:11.780 just like he had done back June 7th with the homicides of his wife and son.

00:23:17.220 I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest,

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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 1.00

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 0.88

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, 0.96

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 1.00

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 0.98

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.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 30, 2024

Alex Murdaugh's Life in Prison and Web of Crimes and Lies - A ＂True Crime Christmas＂ Special ｜ Ep. 974

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