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Alex Murdaugh's True Crime Saga Continues as He Heads to Court for Hearing · Murder Files Unsealed

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Speaker 1: Right now, like literally today, Monday, June twenty ninth, twenty
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twenty six, there is a man sitting in a courtroom
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in Lexington County, South Carolina, asking for a complete do over.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're talking about a man who is currently
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serving two consecutive life sentences for the brutal murder of
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his own wife and son exactly.
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Speaker 1: And the wildest part of this whole thing, he is
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actually getting that do overs.
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Speaker 2: It's honestly something you would expect to see in a movie.
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The person who was supposed to be guarding the jury
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during his first trial was allegedly trying tod a true
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crime book deal.
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Speaker 1: I mean, you literally cannot write this stuff. Welcome to
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this deep dive everyone. Our mission today is to really
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unpack how we got to this totally unprecedented moment.
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Speaker 2: Right because we are just looking at a simple murder case. Here,
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we are looking at this massive procedural reset of a
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trial that already completely shattered our understanding of the legal system.
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Speaker 1: So most of you listening probably know the broad strokes, right,
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the powerful dynasty, the financial ruin, the murders, that the
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hunting is state, and that massive twenty twenty three trial.
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Speaker 2: But We aren't here to just recap a Netflix documentary
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for you. We have a huge stack of source material today.
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Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, We've got the recent South Carolina Supreme Court rulings.
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We've got the actual forensic data logs and the brand
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new defense motions that were just filed.
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Speaker 2: And we're going to break down the actual mechanics of
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his financial frauds, the digital forensics that initially caught him,
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and the constitutional law that just unraveled his entire conviction.
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Speaker 1: Which brings us right back to square one today's status
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conference before Judge Debra McCaslin.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, but to understand why today's hearing is sending shockwaves
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across the country, we really have to understand the sheer
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weight of the name Murda in the South Carolina Low Country.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because when we say, you know,
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a dynasty, I think people just picture old money in
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country clubs, right exactly.
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Speaker 2: But this was much more functional than that. This was
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a century long basically a localized legal monomally a.
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Speaker 1: Monopoly on the law itself. It's started way back in
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the early twentieth century with Randolph Murdoch Senior.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he founded a law firm that eventually became Peters Murdaw, Parker,
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Elksroth and detrich Or PMPED for short.
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Speaker 1: And for over one hundred years, three consecutive generations of
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the Murdoff family served as the elected solicitor, which is
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basically the district attorney.
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Speaker 2: Right, that's right. They were the solicitor for the fourteenth
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Judicial Circuit, which covers five entire counties. And they did
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this while simultaneously running their massive private.
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Speaker 1: Law firm, which just sounds so crazy to me. The
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mechanism of that dual power is it's just critical to understand.
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Speaker 2: It really is. For eighty six uninterrupted years, a Murdaw
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held the power to decide who got prosecuted and who
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got a plea deal in that region.
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Speaker 1: And at the exact same time, their private firm, PMPED
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was dominating civil litigations, suing railroads, suing corporations, and bringing
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in multimillion dollar settlements.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they were a powerhouse. And when you dominate both
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the criminal prosecutions side and the civil litigation side in
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a small rural area, the personal and professional networks just
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completely merge.
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Speaker 1: I keep trying to think of a good analogy for this,
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and it's almost like a modern day feudal monarchy, or
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maybe like a casino where the house sets the odds,
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deals the cards and also employs the cops who patrol
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the floor.
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Speaker 2: That is a great way to put it. The corruption
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is almost baked into the sociology of a system like that.
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Speaker 1: I mean, how does a system like that not inherently
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corrupt the people running it. If you want to sue
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an insurance company, you hire them. If you get arrested,
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you face them.
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Speaker 2: Exactly. A local judge isn't just some impartial referee. He's
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probably someone the Murdos helped get elected. The local sheriff
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is the guy Alex invites out to hunt on his property.
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Speaker 1: And that property is a huge part of the story. Mozelle.
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They bought it around twenty twelve, and it's this sprawling,
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seventeen hundred acre estate near Islenton.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was practically its own kingdom. It had dog kennels,
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an airplane hangar, river access, just miles of dense forest.
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Speaker 1: It's where Alex, his wife Maggie, and their two sons,
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Buster and Paul lived. From the outside, it really looked
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like the absolute pinnacle of Southern affluence.
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Speaker 2: But that kind of extreme isolation can breed its own pathology.
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The network that protected them from scrutiny also created this
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massive blind spot for the community.
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Speaker 1: Right because everyone just assumed they were too successful, too
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rich to be engaging in petty criminality.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, and that presumption of total legitimacy is exactly what
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allowed Alex to execute one of the most prolific, long
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running financial frauds in state history.
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Speaker 1: Which brings us to the pressure cooker. We have to
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talk about the money, because while the murders capture the
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world's attention, the money is what built the trap.
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Speaker 2: Over the course of about a decade, Alex Murdaw systematically
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embezzled between eight and twelve million dollars.
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Speaker 1: Twelve million dollars, and he wasn't doing some complex Wall
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Street short squeeze or offshore accounts, oh.
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Speaker 2: Not at all. He stole directly from his own clients,
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from extremely vulnerable people who have suffered catastrophic injuries, from orphans,
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and even from his own law firm partners.
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Speaker 1: How does a highly successful attorney justify stealing from people
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like that while living on a seventeen hundred acre estate.
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It's just so dark.
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Speaker 2: It's incredibly dark. And what's fascinating here is the actual
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mechanics of the theft. He relied heavily on a banking
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loophole and just the sheer weight of his family's name.
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Speaker 1: Okay, break this down for us, because he set up
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this fake bank account right under the name Forge.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. So in the legal world there is a very real,
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highly respected company called Forge Consulting. They specialize in something
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called structured settlements.
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Speaker 1: Let's pause there, because structured settlements is one of those
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legal terms that gets thrown around a lot. What does
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that actually mean.
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Speaker 2: Basically, when a plaintiff wins a massive personal injury lawsuit,
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instead of handing say a twenty year old quadriplegic, a
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lumsum of five million dollars, the court uses a company
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like Forge Consulting to structure the money.
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Speaker 1: Ah okay, so it goes into like an annuity or
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trust that pays out a set amount every month.
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Speaker 2: Exactly. It's meant to protect the client's long term financial
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stability for the rest of their life.
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Speaker 1: So when a case at PMPEED settled, the defense's insurance
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company would write a massive check and it was supposed
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to go to the real Forge Consulting.
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Speaker 2: Right, but Alex went down to a local Bank of
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America and opened a DBA account doing business as account
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under the name Richard Alexander Murdau DBA Forge.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow, So when the checks came in, he just
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told his firm's accounting department to make them payable to Forge.
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Speaker 2: Yes, and the accountants, assuming it was a legitimate consulting
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firm they worked with all the time, just cut the checks.
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Speaker 1: And then Alex literally just walks those checks down to
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the bank and deposits them into his own personal account, just.
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Speaker 2: Walked right into the bank, and he used that money
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to fund his extravagant lifestyle, payoff massive mounting debts, and
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feed a severe, completely consuming opioid addiction.
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Speaker 1: The audacity is just staggering. He was relying entirely on
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the fact that no one in his own firm would
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dare to audit a Murda.
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Speaker 2: And no bank teller in that county was going to
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question the powerful, famous attorney depositing checks.
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Speaker 1: God And I think the most heartbreaking example of this
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is the Gloria Sadderfield case. She was the family's housekeeper
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for over twenty years.
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Speaker 2: Right she was she practically helped raise Alex's sons, and
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in twenty eighteen, she suffered a fatal fall on the
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front steps at Moselle, and the.
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Speaker 1: Way he handled her estate it just reveals the absolute
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depths of his narcissism.
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Speaker 2: He actually attended Gloria's funeral, and at the funeral he
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convinced her grieving sons to sue him.
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Speaker 1: Wait, really he told them to sue him.
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Speaker 2: Yes, he told them his homeowner's insurance would pay out
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a massive wrongful death claim and that he would personally
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make sure they were taken care of.
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Speaker 1: He even introduced them to a close friend of his,
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another lawyer, to represent them, so he basically controlled both
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sides of the lawsuit exactly.
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Speaker 2: And the insurance companies ended up paying out over four
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million dollars for that claim.
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Speaker 1: And her sons, the boys of the woman who raised
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his own children, they never saw a single dime of
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that money, did.
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Speaker 2: They, Not one penny. Alex routed those settlement checks straight
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through his fake Forge account, and when the sons asked
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about the money, he just deflected and blamed the legal
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system for being slow.
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Speaker 1: It's just evil, but he was basically running a classic
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Ponzi scheme right, constantly needing new settlements to cover the
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missing funds from the old ones.
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Speaker 2: That's exactly what it was. But a scheme like that
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requires absolute total secrecy. Nobody can ever look at your books.
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Speaker 1: And in twenty nineteen, that secrecy was threatened by something
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completely out of his control, the boat crash.
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Speaker 2: Right in February twenty nineteen, Alex's nineteen year old son Paul,
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took the family boat out after a night of very
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heavy drinking.
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Speaker 1: And he crashed it into a piling under a bridge.
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Several of the kids on board were severely injured, and
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a nineteen year old girl named Mallory Beach was killed.
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Speaker 2: This is the catalyst for the entire collapse of the
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dynasty because the boat trash didn't just bring criminal charges
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against Paul, it.
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Speaker 1: Brought a massive civil lawsuit. The Beach family sued the
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Murdaws for wrongful death.
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Speaker 2: And in a civil lawsuit the plaintiffs have the right
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to discovery. They can demand a forensic accounting of the
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defendant's net worth to determine punitive damages.
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Speaker 1: So they wanted to see Alex's financial records, and if
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he had to produce those, the whole house of cards
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comes down.
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Speaker 2: The missing millions, the fake Forge account, the stolen Sadderfield
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money would all be exposed in open court. He was
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looking at immediate disbarment and decades in federal prison.
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Speaker 1: So the prosecution's theory was that this boat crash litigation
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was the wind that was about to knock.
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Speaker 2: Him over exactly. There was a critical hearing in that
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civil case scheduled for June tenth, twenty twenty one. The
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plaintiff's attorney was relentlessly demanding those financial disclosures.
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Speaker 1: The pressure must have been unimaginable, as legacy, his freedom,
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his identity, it was all evaporating.
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Speaker 2: Which brings us to the humid, heavy night of June seventh,
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twenty twenty one, just three days before that critical financial hearing.
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Speaker 1: Let's outline the timeline of that night because it is
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so crucial. According to the state, Alex lured his wife
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Maggie to Mozelle.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, she had actually been staying at their beach house.
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Paul was also at the estate that night.
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Speaker 1: And sometime between eight fifty pm and nine pm, down
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by the dog kennels, completely away from the main house,
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Maggie and Paul were brutally murdered, the violence.
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Speaker 2: Of the crime scene is as difficult to even process.
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Paul was shot twice with a twelve gage shotgun.
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Speaker 1: Once in the chest and then a second catastrophic shot
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to the head, and Maggie was shot five times with
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a zero point three hundred hour blackout semi automatic rifle.
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Speaker 2: She shot while running and then executed it very close range.
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Speaker 1: And then Alex calls nine to one one at ten
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verse seven pm. He sounds frantic, claiming he had been
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asleep at the main house, woke up, drove to visit
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his ailing mother, and found the bodies when he got back.
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Speaker 2: And from the very first interview with law enforcement that night,
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sitting right there in the police cruiser, Alex established a
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very rigid.
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Speaker 1: Alibi, floating emphatically multiple times that he had not been
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down at the kennels at all that evening before leaving
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to see his mom.
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Speaker 2: Right he claimed the last time he saw them was
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at dinner.
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Speaker 1: I have to stop and ask about the weapons, though,
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because if this was a coordinated hit by unknown assailants,
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like the defense later claimed, why use two completely different,
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extremely messy weapons.
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Speaker 2: That's a great question. Criminologists look at weapons choice very closely.
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A professional hit is usually quiet handguns suppressors.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels chaotic, almost improvised. Using a shotgun and
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a zero point three hundred blackout rifle seems insane.
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Speaker 2: And the state proved those weapons actually belonged to the
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family by matching showcasings found around the estate to the
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crime scene. It suggests a deeply personal attack, like a.
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Speaker 1: Family annihilator scenario where there's massive overkill. But why two
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different guns if one person is committing the murders, switching
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weapons in the middle of it is so weird.
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Speaker 2: The state's theory, and it's compelling from a behavioral standpoint,
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is that it was a deliberate attempt at staging the scene.
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Speaker 1: Oh to make it look like multiple shooters.
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Speaker 2: Were there exactly by using two drastically different weapons, Alex
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was trying to create the illusion of a team of assassins.
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Speaker 1: He wanted the cops to show up, see a shotgun
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victim and a rifle victim and immediately think it was
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a hit squad seeking revenge for the boat crash.
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Speaker 2: Right. It was a calculated performance to misdirect the investigation
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from minute one. He wanted to change his status from
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a fraudstraw on the verge of ruin to a grieving victim,
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and he thought.
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Speaker 1: The community sympathy would force the civil attorneys to drop
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the financial inquirers. And honestly, local law enforcement treated him
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with immense deference. Initially they did.
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Speaker 2: They didn't secure the scene properly. They let his friends
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and law partners literally walk through the property that night.
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He really thought he had outsmarted them.
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Speaker 1: Because he planned for human investigators. He had manipulated human
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systems his entire life.
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Speaker 2: But what he failed to anticipate was the silent, totally
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incorruptible testimony of digital forends.
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Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. This is my favorite
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part of the case, the digital ghost, because while Alex
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is telling police he was asleep at the house, a
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piece of data on a cloud server was waiting to
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destroy his story.
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Speaker 2: The Snapchat video. It is the absolute turning point of
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the entire investigation.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so at exactly eight four four pm, palmerdaw was
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down at the kennel's. He's holding a friend's dog, Cash,
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and he takes a quick fifty second video on his
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phone for Snapchat.
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Speaker 2: The video is super shaky, mostly just focused on the
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dog's tail, but in the background you can clearly hear
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three voices having a casual conversation about.
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Speaker 1: A dog with a burden its mouth right, and the
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voices are Paul, Maggie and unmistakably Alex Murdall.
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Speaker 2: The time stamp on that video is devastating eight point
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four to four pm. And the forensic analysis of Paul
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and Maggie's phones showed that both devices ceased all meaningful
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user activity around eight four nine pm.
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Speaker 1: Wait, meaning what, they just stopped texting.
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Speaker 2: More than that, they stopped reading text, their screens locked,
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and their orientation data showed the phones hit the ground
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and didn't move again.
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Speaker 1: Okay, explain orientation data. How does a phone actually know
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it hit the ground?
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Speaker 2: So modern smartphones are packed with gyroscopes and accelerometers. They
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constantly log their physical orientation.
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Speaker 1: Whether you're holding it in portrait mode or landscape mode.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, or if it's lying flat on a table. They
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also log the backlight turning on or off every single
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step you take.
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Speaker 1: Wow, and the digital footprint showed both victims were active
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walking around right up until exactly eight four nine pm.
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Speaker 2: Yes, and at that exact minute, the phones registered sudden
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violent movements, dropped to the ground, and went dark.
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Speaker 1: So the snapchat video proves Alex was at the crime
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scene at eight four four pm, and the digital data
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suggests the murders happened at eight four nine pm. That
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is a five minute window.
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Speaker 2: The power of that evidence just cannot be overstated. When
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an alibi relies on human memory, a defense attorney can
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easily create reasonable doubt.
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Speaker 1: Right, they can say the witness was confused or it
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was dark out.
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Speaker 2: But you cannot cross examine a time stamp on an
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encrypted server. The metadata is absolute.
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Speaker 1: And the telematics from Alex's own vehicle tightened the news
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even further, didn't they.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Vehicle telematics are essentially the black boxes of modern cars.
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The infotainment system and the onboard computer record basically everything.
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Speaker 1: Like when the door's open, when it shifts out of park, GPS.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, yeah, and the exact speed. The data showed Alex's
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Chevy suburban fired up at nine euro six pm. He
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drove to his mother's house at erratic, extremely high speeds.
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Speaker 1: The data completely contradicted every single timeline he gave to
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the police. Paul essentially testified from beyond the grave with
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that video.
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Speaker 2: You really did once that snapchat video surfaced, Alex was trapped.
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His entire narrative collapsed, and he had to completely pivot.
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Speaker 1: He eventually admitted he lied about being at the kennel's right,
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but he tried to blame it on his opioid paranoia.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he claimed the drugs made him distrust law enforcement,
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so he lied out of fear. He said he went
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to the kennels, checked on the dogs, and drove back
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to the house before the murders happened.
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Speaker 1: The state argued that the window was simply too tight.
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You're placed at the scene of a double homicide five
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minutes before the victim's phones.
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Speaker 2: Go dead, using family owned weapons, while sitting on a
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powder keg of financial.
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Speaker 1: Ruin, which sets the perfect stage for the twenty twenty
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three trial in Coleton County. Walterboro, South Carolina became the
16:18
absolute center of the true crime.
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Speaker 2: Universe, and this trial was just a masterclass in legal strategy.
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On both sides, you had Prosecutor Creighton Waters building this massive,
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circumstantial mountain of digital and financial evidence.
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Speaker 1: And on the defense side, Dick Carputlian and Jim Griffin,
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two absolute legal titans, fighting this war of attrition against
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the physical evidence.
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Speaker 2: Their strategy was to highlight the complete lack of direct
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physical evidence connecting Alex to the actual shooting, and honestly,
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they had a strong point.
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Speaker 1: We really need to dive into that because the high
16:50
velocity spatter on Alex's white T shirt was a massive
16:54
deal before the trial. Everyone was talking about it, and
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then it basically evaporated.
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Speaker 2: What happens high velocity impact spatter is a very specific
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type of blood stain pattern. When a bullet strikes a body,
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it atomizes the blood, creating this fine mist like spray
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that travels backward towards.
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Speaker 1: The shooter, and initially a state expert claimed he saw
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this microscopic spatter on the white T shirt Alex wore that.
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Speaker 2: Night, But the defense brought in their own experts who
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proved that the testing process was totally flawed. The shirt
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had been treated with chemicals, and there were serious issues
17:29
with how the state handled the evidence.
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Speaker 1: So the defense basically argued that the state destroyed the
17:33
shirt during testing and that the results were false positive.
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Speaker 2: Yes, and they hammered the fact that there was no
17:38
murder weapon recovered, no bloody clothes hidden in the house,
17:42
no direct DNA connecting into the guns.
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Speaker 1: So the state's case was incredibly strong on the timeline,
17:47
but physically they lacked a true smoking.
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Speaker 2: Gun, and that lack of physical evidence might have actually
17:53
been enough to secure a hung jury.
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Speaker 1: If it weren't for the climax of the trial, the
17:57
moment that law schools are going to be debating for decades,
18:00
Alex Murdaw taking the stand in his own defense.
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Speaker 2: Taking the stand as a criminal defendant in a murder
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trial is the ultimate high wire act without a net.
18:10
It is generally advised against by almost every defense attorney.
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Speaker 1: Because it completely shifts the burden of proof in the
18:16
minds of the jury right exactly.
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Speaker 2: Instead of asking did the state preve it beyond a
18:20
reasonable doubt, the jury start asking do I believe this guy?
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Speaker 1: Taking the stand? Is the ultimate gamble? So why did
18:27
he do it? Did his hubris just take over?
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Speaker 2: It was pure hubris. You were dealing with a man
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who spent thirty years in courtrooms manipulating juries. He genuinely
18:37
believed that if he could just look these jurors in
18:39
the eye, he could charm them.
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Speaker 1: He felt he had to explain the lie about the
18:43
snapchat video himself.
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Speaker 2: But that testimony was a complete dual edged sword because
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the judge allowed the prosecution to question him extensively about
18:52
the financial frauds to establish his motive.
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Speaker 1: Oh Man, So for hours, the jury watches this man
18:59
sit there and admit admit to the most heinous financial
19:01
betrayals imaginable.
19:03
Speaker 2: He admits he stole from quadriplegics. He admits he looked
19:07
Gloria Sadderfield's grieving sons in the eye and lied to
19:11
them while stealing their money.
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Speaker 1: He admits to running a massive money laundering scheme. By
19:16
doing that, he gave the jury undeniable proof of his
19:19
capacity for profound deceit.
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Speaker 2: The prosecution didn't even have to convince the jury that
19:23
Alex Murdau was a liar anymore. He was confessing to
19:25
it on the stand.
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Speaker 1: The cross examination essentially cornered him. You lied to your clients,
19:30
you lied to your partners, you lied to the police
19:32
about the night of the murders. But you want this
19:35
jury to believe you are telling the truth right now.
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Speaker 2: It was devastating. Even though he tearfully denied shooting Maggie
19:41
and Paul, the jury saw a man who was completely
19:44
unmoored from the truth.
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Speaker 1: And on March two, twenty twenty three, after six weeks
19:48
of exhausting testimony, the jury deliberated for less than three hours.
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Speaker 2: Three hours to review weeks of forensic data. They came
19:55
back with guilty verdicts on all counts, two consecutive life terms.
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Speaker 1: It really appeared to be the definitive end the legal
20:02
system had worked. A powerful man was brought down by
20:06
the digital evidence he couldn't control.
20:08
Speaker 2: But the environment that surrounded the trial, the media circus,
20:12
the daily live streams, the documentaries, was exerting a pressure
20:16
on the court room itself that no one fully appreciated.
20:19
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the twists that literally no one
20:22
saw coming. The reason we are recording this deep dive
20:25
today the Becky Hill bombshell.
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Speaker 2: Colton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill.
20:30
Speaker 1: To understand why this is so explosive, we need to
20:33
clarify what a clerk of court actually does. Because a
20:36
clerk is not a judge and they aren't a lawyer.
20:38
Speaker 2: Right They are essentially the administrative engine to the courthouse.
20:41
They handled the scheduling, the filings, and crucially they manage
20:45
the logistics of the jury.
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Speaker 1: They ensure the jurors are fed transported and shielded from
20:50
outside influence, right like they are the gatekeepers of impartiality exactly.
20:54
Speaker 2: They are tasked with protecting the absolute sanctity of the
20:57
jury room.
20:58
Speaker 1: But shortly after the trial concluded, defense attorneys Harpoutlian and
21:01
Griffin filed a motion that sent shock waves through the state.
21:06
They produced sworn affidavits from several jurors alleging jury.
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Speaker 2: Tampering, and not just minor tampering. The allegations detailed a
21:14
profound breach of protocol by Becky Hill herself.
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Speaker 1: What exactly did the jurors say she did.
21:21
Speaker 2: Jurors stated that during the defense's presentation of evidence, Hill
21:24
would make passing comments instructing them not to let the
21:27
defense distract them. Unbelievable, And when Alex Murdau took the
21:31
stand to testify, she allegedly told jurors to watch his
21:34
body language very closely, insinuating that his demeanor indicated guilt.
21:40
She even had private conversations with the jury.
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Speaker 1: I person, it's like the referee betting on the game
21:44
while they're officiating. The obvious question is why would a
21:47
clerk of court risk federal prison to influence a jury
21:51
in a murder.
21:51
Speaker 2: Trial, and the answer is almost too cynical to believe.
21:54
The allegations, supported by emails and texts, suggested she was
21:58
actively trilling to secure a guilty verdict because she believed
22:00
it would make for a more lucrative ending to a
22:02
true crime book. She was secretly writing.
22:04
Speaker 1: A book she was writing during the trial.
22:06
Speaker 2: Yes, and she did in fact publish a book titled
22:09
Behind the Doors of Justice just months after the verdict.
22:13
Speaker 1: How does the system protect itself when the people administering
22:16
justice are corrupted by the allure of a Netflix documentary
22:19
ra a book deal.
22:21
Speaker 2: Legally, this creates an absolute nightmare. The defense immediately filed
22:26
for a new trial, and in South Carolina, these post
22:29
conviction relief motions are incredibly complex.
22:33
Speaker 1: Right. Initially, a retired State Supreme Court Justice Gene Tole
22:37
was brought in to hold an evidentiary hearing on these
22:39
tampering allegations, and.
22:41
Speaker 2: Her initial ruling was shocking. She actually denied the motion
22:43
for a new trial.
22:44
Speaker 1: Wait, really, even with all the evidence against Hill.
22:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, she essentially concluded that yes, Becky Alba abhorrently, she
22:51
live under oath and she was driven by a desire
22:53
for fame. But Toll rule that Hill's comments didn't actually
22:57
change the juror's minds.
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Speaker 1: She applied a sort of heart harmless air logic, like
23:01
the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming anyway, so it
23:03
doesn't matter exactly.
23:05
Speaker 2: But the defense appealed that decision immediately, arguing that Toll
23:09
applied the wrong legal standard entirely.
23:12
Speaker 1: They argued that jury tampering by a court official isn't
23:14
a harmless error you can just weigh against the evidence.
23:18
It is a structural defect in the trial itself.
23:21
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, If the
23:23
process is rigged, the outcome is invalid regardless of the evidence.
23:27
Speaker 1: Which brings us to last month, May thirteenth, twenty twenty six,
23:31
the South Carolina Supreme Court issues a unanimous decision that
23:34
completely depends everything.
23:36
Speaker 2: It is a landmark ruling in constitutional law. The Supreme
23:40
Court overturned Justice Toll's decision and threw out the murder
23:43
convictions entirely.
23:44
Speaker 1: Their written opinion was blistering. They called Becky Hill's interference
23:48
breathtaking and disgraceful.
23:51
Speaker 2: The Court made a very specific, crucial distinction here. They
23:54
ruled that when a state official actively tries to influence
23:57
a jury. The defendant's constitution right to a fair trial
24:01
has been violated at a foundational level.
24:03
Speaker 1: The court stated that we cannot allow a verdict to
24:05
stand if it was produced by a corrupted system, because
24:08
doing so would destroy a public trust in the judiciary entirely.
24:12
Speaker 2: The constitutional right to a fair process must supersede even
24:16
the most compelling, circumstantial evidence of guilt. The system cannot
24:20
tolerate state sponsored tampering.
24:22
Speaker 1: No matter how much society wants a specific defendant to
24:25
go to prison, and the fallout from this has been chaotic.
24:29
Becky Hill resigned in disgrace.
24:31
Speaker 2: She has faced state ethics investigations and criminal charges regarding
24:35
the sharing of sealed evidence.
24:36
Speaker 1: And in a bizarre twist of fate, Alex Murdau, the convicted,
24:40
confessed fraudster, has actually filed a civil lawsuit against her
24:44
for violating his civil rights.
24:46
Speaker 2: It is an absolute inversion of reality, which is exactly
24:49
why today's status conference in Lexington County is so monumental.
24:52
We are hitting the ultimate reset button.
24:54
Speaker 1: Let's analyze the legal battlefield today. We are before a
24:58
new judge, Judge Deborah Caslin, and the state led by
25:02
prosecutor Alan Wilson is aggressively pushing for a swift retrial
25:05
by the end of the year.
25:06
Speaker 2: They're projecting absolute confidence, stating that the digital evidence is
25:10
just as damning today as it was in twenty twenty three.
25:12
Speaker 1: But the defense is walking into this retrial with a
25:15
massive tactical advantage that they just didn't have the first.
25:17
Speaker 2: Time, right, huge advantage. They have had three years to
25:21
dissect the state's entire playbook. They know exactly how every
25:25
witness responds on cross examination.
25:27
Speaker 1: And furthermore, they are no longer fighting a two front war.
25:30
In twenty twenty three, Alex was defending against the murder
25:33
charges and the sudden revelations of the financial crimes.
25:37
Speaker 2: But now the financial crimes are totally settled. He pleaded
25:40
guilty to them. He was sentenced in twenty twenty four
25:43
to forty years in federal prison for the financial frauds.
25:46
Speaker 1: He is effectively never getting out of prison regardless of
25:49
the murder trial. So the defense is filing aggressive pre
25:52
trial motions to severely limit the state's case.
25:55
Speaker 2: Let's look at their change of venue motion. They are
25:57
demanding the trial be moved entirely.
25:59
Speaker 1: Out of the low Country, arguing that these intense local bias,
26:03
the years of Netflix documentaries, and the massive taint of
26:06
Becky Hill make it statistically impossible to seat an impartial
26:10
jury in the Fourteenth Circuit.
26:11
Speaker 2: And even more significantly, they are filing motions to exclude
26:15
the financial crimes from the new trial altogether.
26:18
Speaker 1: Oh wow, because in twenty twenty three, the state used
26:20
the financial crimes to prove motive that he killed his
26:23
family to distract from his imminent.
26:25
Speaker 2: Ruin exactly, But the defense is now arguing he's already
26:29
serving forty years for that. Bringing up stolen money in
26:32
a murder trial now is purely prejudicial. It just paints
26:35
him as a bad guy without proving he pulled the trigger.
26:38
Speaker 1: If the judge agrees to sever the financial evidence from
26:41
the murder trial, the state loses its entire motive.
26:44
Speaker 2: They would have to present the snapchat video and the
26:47
timeline to a jury, but without being able to explain why.
26:50
Speaker 1: He did it, and without the financial pressure cooker, the
26:52
murders look like a random, inexplicable act of madness, which
26:56
is so much harder to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
27:00
Speaker 2: Defense is also pushing hard on forensic vulnerabilities. They are
27:02
demanding new advanced DNA testing on touch DNA.
27:06
Speaker 1: Touch DNA specifically the unknown male DNA that was found
27:11
under Maggie Murdaw's fingernail.
27:12
Speaker 2: Yes, touch DNA is microscopic cellular material left behind when
27:17
someone makes physical contact with an object or person.
27:20
Speaker 1: And in the chaos of the first trial, this unknown
27:22
DNA was sort of overshadowed by the digital evidence.
27:25
Speaker 2: But in a retrial, the defense will absolutely make it
27:28
the centerpiece of reasonable doubt. Who is the unknown male
27:32
who struggled with Maggie?
27:34
Speaker 1: With faded memories, the taint of Becky Hill and double
27:37
jeopardy protections lurking, isn't a retrail incredibly dangerous for the prosecution?
27:42
What if the second jury sees the lack of a
27:44
murder weapon and says not guilty?
27:46
Speaker 2: It is a massive gamble governed by the rules of
27:49
double jeopardy.
27:50
Speaker 1: Double jeopardy prevents a person from being tried twice for
27:53
the same crime, right, so how can they retry him?
27:56
Speaker 2: Because Murdaw's conviction was overturned on appeal due to a
27:59
procedural air jury tampering and not due to a lack
28:03
of evidence, Double jeopardy does not apply to this retrial,
28:06
ah okay.
28:07
Speaker 1: But if a jury acquits him this time, it is final.
28:10
Speaker 2: Absolutely final. But the defense has their own immense challenges.
28:14
The financial costs of mounting a second multi month defense are.
28:17
Speaker 1: Staggering, and Alex's assets are largely frozen are seized at
28:21
this point. Physically, he is a totally different man too.
28:23
Speaker 2: The powerful, towering patriarch who swaggered into the courtroom in
28:27
twenty twenty three is gone. He appears gaunt, degraded by
28:32
years of incarceration and withdrawal from that massive opioid addiction.
28:36
Speaker 1: He looks like a defeated inmate. It is going to
28:38
be a grueling legal war of attrition, testing the very
28:42
limits of post conviction relief.
28:44
Speaker 2: But as we step back from the legal motions and
28:46
the DNA testing, we really have to look at what
28:49
this entire saga has left in its wake.
28:51
Speaker 1: The cultural imprint of the Murdaw collapse is profound. It
28:55
has held a stark mirror up to society, exposing the
28:58
deep systemic wealth inequality in the rural South.
29:01
Speaker 2: Where one family could essentially operate above the level for
29:04
a century. It also demonstrates the devastating, indiscriminate nature of
29:07
the opioid crisis.
29:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, addiction is often stereotyped as a problem of poverty,
29:11
but this case shows how a multimillion dollar habit can
29:14
hollow out a person living on a seventeen hundred acre
29:17
state just as thoroughly, leading.
29:18
Speaker 2: To profound paranoia and total moral.
29:20
Speaker 1: Collapse, and the state itself Mozelle has become this strange,
29:24
dark monument. The true crime tourism surrounding this case is
29:27
deeply unsettling.
29:29
Speaker 2: People literally drive down these rural roads just to take
29:32
selfies at the gates where two people were brutally murdered.
29:35
Speaker 1: Mozelle is almost like the American version of a haunted castle,
29:39
a monument to wealth built on a foundation of rot.
29:42
It's changed hands, It's been subdivided and relisted.
29:45
Speaker 2: And this raises an important question about media ethics. Did
29:48
the intense, relentless investigative journalism aid in bringing down a
29:53
corrupt dynasty that local law enforcement was too afraid to touch, or.
29:57
Speaker 1: Did the true crime industrial complex turn a horrific, thick
30:00
family tragedy into sheer entertainment.
30:02
Speaker 2: Because it was precisely that entertainment value. The desire to
30:06
monetize the spectacle with the book deal that ultimately corrupted
30:10
the court clerk and undid the conviction.
30:12
Speaker 1: The media snake essentially ate its own tail, breaking the
30:14
justice system it was supposedly monitoring.
30:17
Speaker 2: And lost in the noise of the Netflix specials and
30:19
the legal maneuvering are the people who can never get
30:21
a reset button.
30:22
Speaker 1: Buster Murda, the surviving sun is left trying to navigate
30:25
complex inheritance battles while attempting to live a normal life
30:29
under a massive spotlight.
30:30
Speaker 2: And the victims' families, the Sadder Fields, the Beach family,
30:33
and Maggie's family. They're all still tethered to this endless
30:37
legal nightmare, seeking closure in a story that refuses to conclude.
30:42
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? As we wrap up
30:45
this deep dive into the Murdaw source material, let's just
30:48
take a final look at the incredible dark arc we've traced.
30:52
Speaker 2: We started with the architecture of a century long rural
30:55
legal monopoly, a dynasty that controlled both sides of the courtroom.
31:00
Speaker 1: We broke down the mechanics of a decade long financial fraud,
31:03
fueled by addiction and enabled by a banking system that
31:06
refused to question power.
31:07
Speaker 2: We examine the forensic realities of a brutal double murder,
31:11
the digital ghost of a snapchat video that trapped a patriarch.
31:15
Speaker 1: And the hubris of a trial strategy that exposed a
31:18
monstrous capacity for deceit. And finally, we unpacked the constitutional
31:22
crisis sparked by a court clerk's ambition.
31:24
Speaker 2: It serves as a stark reminder that the pursuit of
31:27
truth in a courtroom requires more than just compelling, circumstantial evidence.
31:30
It requires an uncorrupted process.
31:33
Speaker 1: The American justice system is ultimately a human institution. It
31:37
is only as infallible as the flawed, ambitious, and sometimes
31:41
deeply corrupt individuals tasked with operating it exactly.
31:44
Speaker 2: The human element is the ultimate wildcard.
31:47
Speaker 1: And that reality leaves us with a lingering thought for
31:49
you to carry with you as the legal maneuvering in
31:51
Lexington County begins anew. Think back to that expectation of
31:56
finality we crave from the courts. If Alex Myrdle's defense
31:59
team executed to their strategy perfectly this time, if the
32:02
financial motive is excluded, if the touch DNA creates reasonable doubt,
32:06
and he is legally acquitted of the murders in this retrial.
32:09
How do we as a society process the reality of
32:11
a man who we know is a confessed monstrous fraud
32:15
walking away innocent of the ultimate crime. If the system
32:17
functions exactly as it is designed to and it sets
32:20
them free, does true justice exist in a courtroom or
32:23
only in the legacy you leave behind.