Episode 650: Alex Murdaugh Part III - Under The Capri Sun

There's no place to escape to. This is the last podcast. On the left. Right up your glade. That's when the cannibalism started. Who's that? Oh, yeah! Now, try. What's on trial here? Are you on trial? Hot, hot, hot one. Hot one today. A hot one. Lord, Lord, Lord, I can't even believe how the judge even holding his hammer. This kind of case don't give me the vapors. Oh, you know what I love? We've got to know right now. Podcasts are not on trial here today. We're covering a capital crime of more than one. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. I didn't get the sweater vest memo. I'm sitting here with two pastel-wearing sweater-vest morons. Do you know who I am? Do you know who my diddy is? I was listening to Strawberry Wine all morning, getting in the mood for today. Listen, all right, I don't care. I love Wagon Wheel. Wagon Wheel makes me cry. 17. They did my circumcision to Wagon Wheel. They used the Wagon Wheel. I wish I could have gotten my face more red. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like that's what I'm really missing. Hey, we can always stop and just put you under a lamp for a couple hours. Oh, there it is. There it is. There's that wind burn from illegally driving a boat. Yeah, I'm going to meet you by the dogs. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with the pink and gray Henry Zebrowski. Thank you. Now, Eddie, we have to remember today, we have to distinctly separate ourselves today in our South Carolina representation. Yeah. Because we're headed into the trial. We're going to head into the whole thing with Alec Murdoch. And this is really where we're going to head towards full on podunk, yip-yi-yay, fucking big old knees in the sky, South Carolina loyal. Hey, man, I love fireworks. I like butterfly knives, you know, and I like fighting my family. We got to remember. So if you're going to be Dick Harpootland, you're down there. Oh, okay. If you also in the prosecution right the prosecution he coming down here He a famous Alec Murdoch he famous for trial He a trial lawyer He was on the head of the trial lawyers because he a trial One man he done killed his whole damn family You see that? I've seen it, I've seen it, I've seen it, I've seen it. Because we have to separate it from Alec because remember, Alec is up here being like, Oh, the tales of what we weave. Oh, the tales we weave. Remember, that's the crying timber of a guilty man. Yeah, how about, God damn it, Danny, why'd you let me take that boat? He's dead. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. We've also got with us today the color of pastel green that Ed Larson is wearing today. I don't think I've ever seen that in nature. Yeah, man. It's my feaster green. I call that, you know what that is, man? Republican foot green. And here we are at the conclusion to our series on Alec Murdoch. Yep. So when we last left the Murdoch family, Paul had just been responsible for the death of his friend Mallory Beach, who'd been killed in a drunk boating accident in which Paul had been driving recklessly, to say the very least. Alec Murdoch, of course, had come to the defense of his horrible shit stain of a son immediately upon hearing of the crash and had arrived with his father, Randolph Murdoch III, at the hospital where the survivors were being treated that very night. Now, instead of inquiring after the safety of the young adults who'd been injured as a result of his son's actions or asking what the progress was on the still-missing girl, Alec Murdoch had gone from room to room to tell the kids that if investigators asked them who was driving, they were supposed to say they did not know. I did none of that. That is absolutely slander. No, I was just a-skittering. I just was a-skittering and I was just a-tinkering. That's a big thing that's going to come up today. A lot of skittering and tinkering. A lot of skittering and tinkering. Well, the purpose of this was to muddy the waters of the investigation. And that's if a proper investigation were to ever even happen. And that's a tragedy in and of itself, Marcus. Yes. See, because of the Murdoch's connections, the authorities were doing their best to make Paul's many crimes go away. But after years of the Murdoch's expecting people in the Lowcountry to either fall in line at their word or remain too terrified to speak up at all, an attorney named Mark Tensley had finally decided that the Murdochs were, to put it simply a bunch of pieces of shit And someone needed to finally stand up and take them down When you openly kill a cute little blonde girl that it That's really it. In America, yeah, you're done. You're done. No matter what. I found it interesting because for those of you that obviously you guys know I watch a lot of body cam footage and a lot of trial footage. A lot of interrogation footage. A lot of interrogation footage. But part of what I really like is this is what I would call justice porn, which is what I like. go watch the two-hour put-together cross-examination of Alec Murdoch. Because they talk about this night a lot in the cross-examination because they really wanted to talk about his reputation. And what I found interesting, which I did not know until I re-watched this, was all of the stuff with the solicitor's badge. Yeah, yeah. So he would use the badge of his father, and he would use this fake deputy badge he got, too. Well, it wasn't his badge. It wasn't his father's badge. He had both. It was a volunteer solicitor's badge. But then if you look at the paperwork of the badge, it's not volunteer at all. He is a full official deputy of the fucking, he's a cop. Assistant solicitor. I think that's what it was. If you listen to the way Murdoch talks about it, it's all, he plays it down and then you look at the fucking paperwork. All that is being said, he would leave the badge on the dash of his car when he was driving. Number one to get picked up when he was drunk driving so the guys would leave him alone. Of course. And the second. Second was in the footage of the hospital, he's waving that badge around and he talks about how he didn't bring the badge to the hospital. But he's and that's how he got behind everything. He's waving there. And that's also the reason why everybody was automatically listening to him, because he was acting like a police officer. Yeah, he probably wasn't even saying, I'm Alec Murdoch. No, no. Now, Mark Tinsley took the Beaches case after most of the other attorneys in the low country had turned them down, but not because Tinsley was an outsider. To the contrary, Mark Tinsley had dealt with the Murdochs plenty and had even once considered Alec Murdoch to be a friend. But Tinsley was a man of at least some principle, and he had finally soured on Alec Murdoch's cynicism after practicing law with him for years. Tinsley was particularly disturbed by how easily Murdoch could summon tears during closing arguments. A couple of times, after fake crying, Murdoch would sit down next to Tinsley and ask him, quote, Now you don't think that was too much now, do you? Yeah, like a fucking asshole. You should see him in the trial because he does it It him because also he stops the sniffle and then the snorting Because it seems to be he laid off the oxy for the trial Just a little bit Well he had to Now Tinsley said that he also took the case because he had a daughter around Mallory Veach's age. But, it seems like the moment that Tinsley truly said, fuck this guy concerning Alec Murdoch, was when Alec boxed Tinsley out of a million dollar fee on a big case. You don't fuck with a lawyer's money. Nope. After that, Alec Murdoch was open season as far as Mark Tinsley was concerned. So Tinsley jumped at the chance to take Murdoch down when the Beaches gave him the opportunity. And it was such a clear that he was going to win. Yeah. You know, everyone knew it. And he's like, I'm going to get this motherfucker. I got him dead to rights. And he was happy to do it. Oh, yeah. Now, by the end of March, Mark Tinsley had filed a wrongful death suit against multiple members of the Murdoch family for the death of Mallory Beach. He limited it to people above the age of 21 because Paul was still a minor when the crash occurred. Specifically, Tinsley filed against Alec, Randy III, and Buster. Randy III got involved because he had allowed minors to consume alcohol at his home and leave drunk. Buster was in it because he'd given Paul his old ID to buy alcohol underage, the alcohol that Paul was drinking that very night. And Alec was named because he had allowed his minor son to purchase and drink alcohol on a regular basis. This was proved by the copious number of pictures on the Murdoch family social media in which Paul was very, very drunk. Remember that about your social media? It doesn't get deleted. Yeah, even the stories. You think it's gone. It ain't gone. You get it. No. Yeah, because whenever these social media companies get subpoenaed, they flip. They just give it. And they magically have it all. Yeah. Apple's cool, though. Remember when they wouldn't give the money to those people? To San Bernardino gang, they wouldn't hack the phone. Yeah. So, hey, good on them. They're trying. Now, filing the suit had been necessary because Alec and Randolph's tactics in pressuring witnesses and influencing investigators had worked to a certain degree. But even with their meddling, Paul still faced three felonies, including causing bodily injury, boating under the influence, and manslaughter. He was facing, I think, 25 years if he got the maximum sentence on all three. And the guilty, that's really what the guilty get in there is really what will in there is really what will superpower the civil suit. Well, none of that would matter, of course, if nobody could prove that Paul was driving the boat. And the Murdochs were pulling out all the stops to get Paul out of serving a single day in jail. For Paul's lawyer, the Murdochs called up an old friend of Alex's grandfather. Old Buster's friend was State Senator Dick Harpootlian. Oh, there ain't no reason to be mad with old Harpoot because he was just doing his That's all he was. He's a simple state senator. That's all. He's a simple senator. He's just a friend. Alex is a friend. Bring the fucking firing squad back. Dick Harbour. It's more humane than the electric chair is what I'm telling you. We got to bring back this firing squad and shoot these men in the head. Also, guess what? It's a lot of fun, too. It's nice to see their hair. explode on contact with an iron jacket bullet in it and have a melon-like bust. And you know, why not let's just go and put on a lottery round here to see who all South Carolinas want to get in on that firing squad. And I'm going to go ahead and put my name in the back so I can pride myself. It's expensive electrocuting these people. I defended that man and I still want to kill his guilty acts. Ed, you interviewed Dick Harpoot, Leah. Yes. What was your vibe on Dick? My vibe on Dick was he wanted to sell his book. And he is friends with the Murdoch family. There's no question about it. He's known him pretty much his entire fucking life. That was the one thing that I felt like I never saw anyone talk about. That's why I brought it up. I was like, you were also a county solicitor. You were fucking hanging out with Big Randy all the time. He was like, yes, we were very close. I was like, yeah! it's a definite conflict of interest but that shit don't matter apparently no and i also think that dick knows which is what he sat here and you can see why he was so sad which is that he knows that this this story is the end of a very simple time in south carolina yes and a very and he was really sad to lose that simple time when the truly innocent times when a white man can kill anybody he likes. Even another white person. Even another white person if he felt it was properly justified because his son was involved It was just a late term abortion Yeah that all She only 20 She was 20 years That fine When it comes down to it, they were Democrats. Yeah, they were Democrats. Don't forget, Dick Harpootlian was a Democrat. No, Democrats, they love, we love abortion. I love abortion. I think it should be fucking mandatory. I don't think kids should live. So I say fuck them. Yeah, get it. But he is still fighting very hard to get Alec his retrial. It's not going to happen. Now, Dick Harpootlian was a household name in South Carolina. He was possibly the most well-known solicitor in the state. Famously, Harpootlian had been the one who had sent serial killer Pee Wee Gaskins to death row. That's a part of the truth. And Harpootlian had gained further fame after Gaskins had tried to have Harpootlian's three-year-old daughter kidnapped. But again, what do we know about Pee Wee Gaskins? He was a liar and a moron. He did actually try to get the little girl kidnapped. But anybody can. I could call anybody to try to get somebody kidnapped. I could try to get I could try to kidnap all day. Who do you want to kidnap? Secret secrets. Well, by the time of Paul's boat crash in 2019, Harpootlian was one year into being a state senator. And although he only served from 2018 to 2024, he had enough influence nationally where Joe Biden appointed Harpootlian's wife as ambassador to Slovenia, of all places, in 2021. It's a low pressure one. It's a low pressure one, but you do not get an ambassadorship unless you do someone a favor, which means that Dick Harpootlian had done someone a favor and had enough power to do a favor. Joe Biden! Joe Biden! I'm going to have to get rid of all my merch I'm going to have to get rid of my Joe Biden dick sucking sleeves I'm going to have to get rid of my Joe Biden toe dick sucking sleeves you got a lot of dick sucking sleeves this is because honestly my arms get cold he really does now that's all to say that even though the standing of the Murdochs in the low country community had lowered over the years their name still had enough power to call down a senator to defend their dipshit after said dipshit son had killed a young woman in a drunk boating accident. Because that would be a waste of Paul's life, Marcus. Oh, of course, yes. Why would we ruin this young boy's life over one simple misunderstanding? It was a mistake. One tiny, tiny mistake. He's got so much future behind him. Ha ha he dead And the Murdochs still had enough money at their disposal to make it worth Harpootlian wallet He didn do this shit for free Reportedly his retainer was half a million dollars That's why motherfucker ran and did it is because he knew they were liquid enough to fucking get it. And guess how they were liquid enough? Because Alec Murdoch was stealing from old people and children. That's probably why Harpootlian's trying to get him out again. Yeah. Because he had another half a million dollars. But also, again, it's because these guys all know if you could erase the sins that you're connected to, you go back to innocent too. That means Dick Harpootlian's always been right. The whole system's always been right. And no one's ever abused it. No one's ever done this wonderful, simple place. No one would ever turn Hampton County into a place of murder. No. Now, with Harpootlian's help, Paul Murdoch never spent a fucking day in jail. While it was standard for accused criminals in South Carolina to take their mugshots in Prison Orange, Paul's mugshot was taken at his hearing, in the hallway, outside of the courtroom, in his street clothes. Never went through processing, never spent a day, never spent an hour uncomfortable. Just trying to make sure it was never a crime. This, of course, greatly angered attorney Mark Tinsley, who saw exactly what the Murdochs were doing. The Murdochs used every trick at their disposal to push Paul's trial back again and again. And circumstances only worked more in the Murdochs' favor when the court shut down in 2020 due to what? COVID. What? Remember? Do you think that they had something to do with COVID coming here? Do you think that Alec Murdoch went to China? Do you think that he went and he was just like, first thing, he was like, where's the lab? I want to see where the lab is. Where's the most COVID? And he goes right in there and he's just like, I'm going to cough on the cough in my mouth. Cuff my dark, dark eyes. Cuff my eyes. Is there anyone around here that I can eat a bat? Can I eat a bat somewhere around here? Come meet my pangolin. Hey, listen. Anybody want to meet my pangolin? Now, listen to me, Chinese lady. Listen to me, Chinese lady. I can't help but see, but your eyes are pink and juicy. I just want to lick them. Let them look at those big old crusty pink-filled eyes. Well, much of the Beach family's hopes for justice therefore rested on the wrongful death suit. But the constant delays had hardened their resolve. So when it came to making the Murdochs pay, the Beaches decided that they wouldn't settle for anything less than $10 million. Y'all. Now, the case did go to mediation in September of 2020, but Alec opened negotiations. He always got a fucking bit He theatrically turned out his pants pockets like a hobo and then said You can get any money from me because I don have any I broke Yeah Yeah It because he was moving his money into his wife's name. Well, Mark Tinsley believed that this statement was bullshit one way or another. So he filed a motion that would force Alec Murdoch to disclose his net worth and provide a detailed breakdown of his finances. Now we don't want to go all trouble all that. We don't want to be getting in all that and wasting the court's time and wasting my time, wasting your time. But a lot of it's buried in the field. Yeah. That's why I'm saying we don't want to waste everybody's time having to find these documents, having to source these documents, having to read these documents. No one wants to do that. All right, let's all go down. Let's go down tippies. All right, why don't we go down tippies? Pickle shots on me. Pickle shots. Tinsley, however, had no idea that even though Alec Murdoch had spent years embezzling millions from the Murdoch firm, PMPED, Alec's finances were about as big of a mess as what you'd expect from a guy with an oxy habit of dozens of pills a day. See, by 2020, Alec was drowning in debt. He'd also lost a ton of money in 2008 during the financial crash, and he'd fucked up a lot of real estate deals. That's what I didn't understand, too, is that that's a part of where all the money went, is that I don't even know what it means by land deals going wrong. I don't know what that means. I think you buy the land and you expect to sell the land or flip the land and then no one buys the land. And so you just have to keep paying for the land. It's because it's in this shitty county that your family made so awful. Oh, it's because Hampton County's garbage. Well, Alex banker accomplice Russell Lafitte was moving massive amounts of money stolen from Alex clients from account to account to keep this whole thing going. From boat to boat, we move the loot. don't you worry I've got it covered in my five French slaves alright how about if we bury the money sure take the gold from the port to the starboard then back to the port bury the money well even a quick glance at Alec's records would show that Alec Murdoch was a crook and besides the financial shell game Alec was also writing hundreds of checks to his cousin Fast Eddie remember he wrote I think 437 checks. And it's definitely an ironic nickname. Yeah, Fast Eddie. Yeah. And Fast Eddie was allegedly using that money to fund not only Alex Oxihabit, but also finance operations for And it's definitely an ironic nickname. And it's definitely an ironic nickname. Yeah, Fast Eddie. And Fast Eddie was allegedly using that money to fund not only Alex's oxy habit, but also finance operations for a potentially massive drug ring with tentacles throughout South Carolina. In other words, disclosing his finances was the absolute last thing that Alec Murdoch would want to do. And the pressure to fix everything somehow, some way, began to slowly build over the next year of Alex's life. Because, you know, these crimes and these trials, Eddie, you don't know it yet, but they're so embarrassing for the family. And it's so hard for the family to go through. My parents never found out about my trials. See, that's how stressful they were. They're dead. I didn't kill them. That's how stressful they were. I didn't kill them. Well, you could make an argument that I killed my mother. Because I gave her diabetes and then she died of diabetes. She chose to have you. You could have been an abortion. That's right. Which you should have been if I was president of the United States of America. Absolutely would have been, and so would have I. If I was an abortion, they would have taxidermied me and put me on a wall. You'd be in the Mudder Museum right now. For using a new, like, Ed Gein tea cozy. Even though Tinsley had filed this motion, making it likely that others were going to look under the Murdoch financial hood, Alec was in too deep to stop the game now. He continued embezzling and defrauding his clients. He never paused once. Not even after the murders, he kept doing it. And underneath all this mounting stress, Alec's life began falling apart in all the ways that mattered most to Alec. By mid-July 2020, Maggie, amidst rumors of Alec engaging in affairs, both paid and unpaid. I just like see him. You remember Chris Farley from that movie in Tommy Boy, when it cuts to him, his old red face, and he's all like high and shit. She comes in the living room and he's like With a prostitute who's like stuck on his penis And he's just like honey I need help This all just been a big old mistake How many times she's done that How many afternoons were spent like that Fair amount It's like Lloyd Bridges in Airplane Oh I picked the wrong week Stop fucking prostitutes Stop swole up I must got nervous I'm stuck inside of her Kind of like a Rottweiler who's having sex with a Bichon Frise I need you to knock her out so that she relaxes, because obviously right now, she's very agitated, super agitated, looking to get off. So what you going to have to do is Maggie go get my claw hammer Come on Maggie If I don finish you can leave Drop drop If I don finish I can pay her Maggie moved out of Moselle and into their beach house on nearby Edisto Island. Reportedly, she told a friend that she just couldn't stand to live with Alec anymore. At the same time, Paul Murdoch's trail of destruction over the years was starting to be spoken about more openly. When boat crash survivor Connor Cook, oh, Cottontop, the one they originally tried to blame the whole thing on. They kept trying to blame it on him. When he gave his deposition in the boat case, he alluded to the other mysterious deaths that have been linked to the Murdoch family in recent years. Connor alluded to the death of housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, specifically that Paul maybe had pushed her down the stairs in a fit of rage. But he also alluded to Paul's role in the murder of Stephen Smith. According to what Connor alluded to, Paul helped Buster dispose of the body. Of course he did. If that was in fact what happened, they're tight brothers. You commit crimes together. See, I still feel like Buster's too much of a waterhead to do fucking anything. Doesn't mean that he wasn't there when something happened by accident. I totally understand, but Buster's head shaped like a portobello mushroom. He just wanted to make fun of his head. I get it now. He's so ugly. He looks like a light bulb. He looks like the character from SpongeBob. Patrick. He's got that head, and there's something about it. I don't think his brain works right. I don't know if he's even capable. We'll talk about it. It's like his toupee is a jellyfish. Sure. Fly from your plane. Now, in addition to problems with Maggie and Paul, Alex's father, Randy III, was also dying from lung cancer right around this time, and Alec's mother was quickly declining due to Alzheimer's. Perhaps worst of all when it came to family legacy, though, was when Buster Murdoch was thrown out of law school for bad grades, but especially plagiarism. Ooh, somebody's not good at school. Turns out if you just push through your entire life, you can't magically know it all when you get to college. Yeah, exactly. Now, Alec figured that he could Murdoch this whole thing by paying a lawyer $60,000 to get Buster back in, likely using money stolen from the glorious Satterfield settlement. But in the end, the University of South Carolina told the Murdochs that it'd probably be best if Buster just stayed away for a little while. Why don we revisit this in a year And then maybe the year after that And then maybe the year after that And then we see how much money you donate to us Yeah dude And then you see that picture of him Buster sitting there with this fucking gross half He's got a jacket on, and he's got jeans on with no socks and no shoes. His feet in the fucking sand. That fucking disgusting animal. That fucking disgusting rodent bastard. I hate you dressed like this. I hate him. I hate him so much. It does make you angrier. It really does. It makes you so much angry. I don't like it at all. Can you imagine me driving around South Carolina dressed like this? Every day being like, we're going to need to talk about the Lake of the Earth crash. God damn it, come here. You kind of understand them better. Sort of. Yeah, why they're so uncomfortable and miserable all the time. Sort of a suck. Ultimately, though, it seems what probably pushed Alec over the edge completely was when Maggie met with a divorced lawyer in Charleston in April of 2021. And this lawyer advised Maggie to start, quote, gathering numbers. Now, one of the themes that we brought up over and over again in this series is that Murdochs don't divorce. Murdochs do, however, murder, which brings us to the motivation behind not just the murder of Maggie Murdoch on June 7th, 2021, but the murder of Paul Murdoch as well. Now, this year, this is just my personal theory on this. I ain't saying this is the be-all, end-all, because Alec still to this day has not said what his motivation was, nor is there any concrete proof for anything. This is just what I think may have happened. We do have an extremely detailed walkthrough of what they believe, how the shootings went down, that tells, to me, this story very clearly. Now, Alec might have found a way to somehow avoid disclosing his finances in the Mallory Beach wrongful death suit. Maybe he might even be able to put it off indefinitely. I think it was pushing. He was pushing and pushing and pushing it. But a divorce would trigger a full audit of his finances, an audit that he could never get away from. And Maggie was almost certainly about to file for divorce. Plus, with so many other humiliations piling up, including Paul and Buster's respective fuck ups, some of them fatal fuck ups. I don't think that being the first Murdoch to divorce was going to sit well with Alex's ego. They were also the first Murdoch family to really flex the money angle of stuff. So Maggie very much so knew that a lot more money was accessible than what he was getting paid Maggie therefore had to go But remember that Alec Murdoch was a lawyer His family had prosecuted dozens of murder cases over the decades and Alec Murdoch knew how murder cases worked He knew for example that he would be the main and only suspect if Maggie Murdoch was the only murder victim because nobody else had the motive to kill Maggie Murdoch Paul Murdoch however was a different story altogether See, the Murdoch name had not shielded Paul Murdoch from criticism in the death of Mallory Beach like it had so many Murdochs before. But more importantly, no other generation of Murdoch had also had to contend with the scourge of social media. The death of Mallory Beach had become a story in the true crime world. You're welcome. I was one of these guys. Yeah, and plenty of people inside and outside the Lowcountry were weighing in all over the internet quite aggressively on this rich boy who was getting away with killing a pretty young girl. Paul did it, and I'm glad he's dead. I wish you could have died in jail. Yeah, that is true. Well, threats were being made by strangers. Low-key threats, but threats nonetheless. less. There was also, of course, the Beach family themselves, who were getting more and more frustrated with how slow the process was going in bringing Paul to justice. Finally, there was Anthony Cook, Mallory Beach's boyfriend, who was also on the boat that night and had since cut ties with Paul completely. In other words, while there was only one person with motive to murder Maggie Murdoch, many, many, many people had the motive to murder Paul Murdoch. And so while Maggie was ultimately the target, Paul provided a revenge narrative that Alec hoped would throw cops off his personal scent. You know, if they hadn't killed the nanny, she would have been a suspect. Exactly. That's why it's important to keep your nannies close. Keep your nannies close. According to Paul's friends, the whole people were coming after Paul thing was horseshit. Oh, total bullshit. Yeah. This town, right? Because I want to remind people of where this is and who these people are. Like, Alec, the first thing he said was like, Pawpaw have many enemies. You know, like, that was like the first thing, and we'll get into it. Yeah, they called him Pawpaw. Right, yeah. Which is fucking weird to call your son. It's real weird. That's what we called my Pawpaw. My grandfather, my Pawpaw. Now, as far as why Alec was so willing to use his son as a pawn in the murder of his wife. A pawn pawn. A pawn pawn. Now, as far as why Alec was so willing to use his son as a pawn in the murder of his wife. Now, as far as why Alec was so willing to use his son as a pawn in the murder of his wife. A pawn pawn. Paul had proved since the death of Mallory Beach that he was not only expendable, but a true liability. That's always a problem. Bad combo. Paul, yeah, being expendable and a liability. Holy shit. Paul had proved to Alec that he could not be trusted because Paul had not only continued to drink heavily on a near constant basis. Paul had also continued drinking on boats with friends. And if you ask why people still hung around Paul in this environment after a girl had been killed, you might as well ask yourself why young blonde women continued hanging out with O.J. Simpson until the end of his days. Some people just aren't that bright. People also just love money, access to a free boat. They love when someone else is paying for shit, so they will just go take it and decide to just deal with whatever company is there. Yeah. And near the end of May, right around the time of Alec's 53rd birthday, authorities had stopped Paul with a boat full of drunk kids from going out onto the water. Instead of arresting Paul, the cops just took his booze and called Alec to come take care of it. He wasn't a minor at this point. He was 22, but even so. He was driving a boat drunk. You never get to do it again. No, and you called your daddy again. And he, like, the whole daddy thing comes back into play. Oh, he didn't call daddy. The cops called daddy. That's what I mean. and they all called his fucking father, and then you're just being like, you're just giving your, never give your father too many reasons to fucking kill you. Because you never know. Well, this had been at least the second time that Paul had been caught by the police operating a motor vehicle while drunk since the death of Mallory Beach. That's just the second time he'd been caught by the cops. But because Paul was a Murdoch, the cops kept letting him go. So Alec knew that it was only a matter of time before Paul killed again. Now, coincidentally, this incident on the boat occurred just about a week or two before the murder of Paul and Maggie. So it seems to me that this was the thing that made Alec decide that his son was too much of a liability to continue the Murdoch name and was therefore expendable. And that's my personal theory for motivation as to why both Maggie and Paul were murdered that night. Heck of a theory. Makes total sense. and then also it's why he had the two separate guns and it's why he set it up because then we're also going to see the other narrative right so revenge is one revenge is a big narrative revenge fueled by drug like you know drug network that another thing the idea of assassins sure Assassins came out to Hampton County He really does and we get into it later but you know he really does try to introduce as many possible motives as he can think of. He's like, well, you know, there's Crooked John, but I would never blame Crooked John for something like this. But if there's Murderin' Matthew, that's just a nickname. It's because of how many sliders from White Castle he can eat, but that's all about it. But I could say, but we don't know where he was at the time of the crime. Yeah, that's right. It is interesting that Paul killed Mallory in the same place that her last name is. The beach. Yes. Oh, wow. And then he got killed in the same place that his last name, the dogs. Murdoch. That's an interesting... Stay away from parks. I love parks. I love parks. That's a view into Ed's mind. It's a view into how Ed sees the world as just sort of like words floating around and he just came. Beach. Beach. She was there. Dog. Dog. I like dogs. I'll see dad on the show. Shit's not been good to see on the show. You're just lucky there's nowhere Zabrowski's lived. No, we don't know. Now, Alec woke up late and alone on the day of the murders. According to author Valerie Bauerlein, Maggie was not living at Moselle by this point. Instead, Maggie was out at the beach house in Edisto, about an hour away. The only person at Moselle who was tending to Alec on June 7th was the housekeeper they'd hired after Gloria died. This woman, a former prison guard, was Blanca Simpson. A person they completely underestimated. Blanca was coming over that afternoon to stock up on Capri Suns for Alec, specifically orange pineapple tango and mountain cooler, because Alec got grumpy if the fridge wasn't always stocked with his favorite flavors. Mountain Cooler's gooder than a bitch. So bad. It's no Pacific Sun, but it's fucking awesome. I'm just like, what's the last time you had a Capri Sun? I actually, I took a sip not too long ago because I keep them in the bottom drawer in the fridge for whenever the kids come by. Sure. Yeah, because I like it. They're like, they hurt me now. Dude, I love my mouth. That shit's like crack for the kids. You give it to them, they all start ripping at the trees. of like clawing at each other. It's hilarious. Yeah, that's why I don't think it was even the hot seat that put Alec over the edge. It could have been the Capri Sun Now we getting into the Twinkie defense Ted Bundy was right Now the jury they wrong Blanca showed up a little afternoon with the Capri Suns to find Alec getting ready for work But she noticed that he looked extremely tired and disheveled, like he was still wearing his clothes from the night before. Blanca therefore fixed his collar and sent him out the door to his job at PMPED at about 1230 in the afternoon. Oh, I was going to hope you say that Blanco fixed his collar and then jumped on him and started biting at his neck. He started screaming and then electricity. Wow. Very often he did the thing. These supers are crazy. Very often the guy kept, every time they call him, right, for work, he's always the, I'm there, I'm on my way, I'm in the car. you know in his underwear yeah covered in fucking fast food wrappers shoving oxy in his mouth now we don't know for sure if alec woke up that day planning to murder maggie and alec i actually don't think he did i actually don't think he was planning it that day i think he was waiting for the day well i think that he was prepared for the day and knew that the day would come and that was He knew it was coming soon and it would happen any day and that it just happened to be that day. Yep. What we do know is that one more pressure point, perhaps the biggest one of all, was put on Alec just after he arrived late to work that afternoon. Because Alec had fucked up at PMPED the same way that he'd fucked up with attorney Mark Tensley. You don't fuck with a lawyer's money. See, after PMPED had won a big settlement worth nearly a million dollars a few months prior, Alec had neglected to pay out the other attorneys who'd worked on the case. He'd gotten sloppy and had either forgotten or he just decided to not pay them. Instead, he had kept the entire settlement check, about $700,000, all for himself. PMPED, therefore, started looking into Alec's books, and the chief financial officer had been asking a lot of questions, much to Alec's annoyance. He didn't think anyone was ever going to question him. By June 7th, the CFO was planning to fully confront Alec about the missing check, but just as she was in his office, about to get into it with him, Alec's phone rang. So almost like if it was in a movie you say it was too convenient You say this is fucking deus ex machina The call was from Alec brother who was delivering the bad news that their father Randy III was back in the hospital with pneumonia and was sure to die soon The CFO, therefore, dropped their line of questioning and pivoted to consoling Alec Murdoch about his father's impending death. Alec, however, had just been handed a reason to call both Maggie and Paul back to Moselle that night. He got a hold of both of them and said that they all needed to go see Big Randy before he died. You gotta come on home. You gotta go see Pippi. We gotta go see Pippi. We gotta go make sure we get that money. You gotta get Pippa. Go kiss his lip. Yeah, Pawpaw, come see Pippi. Pawpaw, there's Pippi. Now go get Pippi kissed. be a treat. Give us a chance. Give us a chance. Show me the child. Oh, bastards. You know, and then this is the same thing where he's like all beat up about his dad and stuff, but I feel like it all comes down to the fact that he knows that it's fucking over. Well, yeah. I mean, when the CFO's asking questions, he ain't getting out of it. Yeah, because he also thought, he just thought it would never happen. Also, the other reason to get him out of it, I'm sure he's in his mind and gets all these people out of so many things is when you pretend to be the fucking victim. Of course. Oh, yeah, dude. This was a godsend to him. He loved that his father was dying. It gave him the exact... I feel like he doesn't feel emotions. Alec Murdoch is one of those people that every single thing is a way to capitalize on other people. So when that happened, he was just like, fuck yeah. When Alec got a hold of Paul, Paul said, Fuck it, sure, yeah, I'll be there later. And Maggie reluctantly agreed. But she texted a friend to say that Alec's request was fishy and that she thought that Alec was up to something, but she didn't know what. And part of it's to remember why he's such a big fucking liar is because throughout all of this, he's like, me and Maggie, we're the happiest we have ever been. We were nothing but every night I sang to her to sleep. I thought of a song and I made up a song. age not a different song about how we could have met. You know, like, no, she was not living with you. Well, they were also keeping it far under wraps from just about everybody because even Blanca, their fucking housekeeper, she was not living with you. And you're like, no, she was not living with you. Well, they were also keeping it far under wraps from just about everybody. Because even Blanca, their fucking housekeeper, seemed to not know that anything was going on. It's because Maggie, I think, was starting to understand that something bad might happen. Yeah, they were keeping everything on the down low. Well, she was smart. She fucking got her divorce lawyer in Charleston in a different county. On the side. She did it all on the side. That's how you got to do it. But she didn't get out. Sadly, very, very sadly, she did not get out fast enough. Yeah. Well, Maggie was nevertheless on her way to Moselle by that afternoon. And with both Maggie and Paul guaranteed to be at Moselle that night, Alec Murdoch presumably began psyching himself up to murder his wife and youngest son. Woo! Woo! Magna! No! Magna! No! Magna! Get your glory! However, it does beg the question, and this is a question that just dawned on me today. Did Paul and Maggie ask why Buster wasn't there that night? What did Alec tell them? And how did he make sure that Paul and Maggie did not text Buster about the visit? Did Alec tell Buster to stay away that night? And if he did, did Alec give a reason? Perhaps, did Alec give Buster the real reason? Buster! Well, it's not in the text messages, right? No. He probably just didn't want him there because he knew what he was going to do. and he didn't want to kill him. Well, I know. He was going to be a ninny about it. He was going to be like, no, daddy, no. Oh, daddy, I sure wish there was a way we could figure this out. But what I'm saying is that how did he keep Buster away? Because, you know, of course, if Paul and Maggie are going, hey, Buster, you coming on out? And Buster's like, well, I don't know what for. How did they keep, how did Alec keep him away? Because remember, he wants to keep Buster alive. He doesn't want to kill Buster. He told them all different reasons. Buster, I believe, had an alibi. I believe Buster, the reason why he wasn't brought in do fully was because he was i want to say he was with friends he was specifically not there that wasn't the night that they were going to necessarily go to visit pp and mumui or whatever their fucking grandparents name is who fucking gives a shit right yeah they were going to go visit them that was like one of the reasons i think that's what he told maggie paul was there because ostensibly paul was working on the that the land that night right he was doing this dumb shit tinkering and skittering whatever they do right whenever they go he said they go around We mess around I going to go out with Paul Yeah you you on the atv you gotta check the land you gotta go check you gotta go check the property speaking of beginning yeah we going over here going to go in the log over here yeah you're trying to do a frog going over here talking to a bird you know i mean like fuck you dude and so i i that is why i think buster literally just couldn't be there paul was there for another reason maggie was told to be there for another reason i think paul was just as surprised to see Maggie, and by the time all of that was happening, Paul was not surprised to see Maggie. Paul and Maggie had texted that day because Paul had asked, like, what are we eating? And she said, Albronca made us kibb steaks. Country fried steak. So they knew, yeah. Buster was in there. Their last meal was fried steak. Yeah, chicken fried steak. Incredible meal. Yeah, called Steakburgers. I don't like it. I like chicken fried steak. That's a real Southern thing I like. I like a nice soul food deal. Now, Alec arrived back at Moselle around 6.40pm on June 7th while Paul got there about 20 minutes later. The two of them got into their ATV and took a ride around the property specifically to look at some trees that their new groundskeeper had damaged. Paul, giggling like an idiot, took videos of his dad fucking around with one of the trees for Snapchat because Paul was constantly on his phone. Because he had canceled his Facebook account because of the crimes, but he still loved his Snapchat. Yeah. Then, Paul and Alec went back to the house at Moselle, where they were soon joined by Maggie. The three of them ate dinner together, then went down to the dog kennels, where they kept their hunting dogs locked up day and night like a bunch of shitheads, so Paul could check on a dog that he was watching for his friend, Rogan Gibson. Oh, you mean Ro-Ro? I fucking hate these fucking people. I hate these fucking wastes of space. Do they call him Ro-Ro? Yes. This is a part of when he gets on the stand, Alec Murdock. Why do they all talk like they're babies? Because They infantilize everything to make it sound not as serious. They do everything like this. It's over familiarity. It's this thing. Meanwhile, they're all getting paid. Every one of them is on the fucking payroll. But he's calling them Ro-Ro and Bing Bong and Grandma fucking Snappy and all these dumbass Southern nicknames. And each one of them, it's like, and they have to correct him on the stand because they're like, who's Ro-Ro? He's like, well, that's Rogan, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, you've never referred to him as Ro-Ro before. And he's like, we all call him Ro-Ro. And there's Paw Paw and, you know, Grandma Dippy and all this kind of shit. It's like, fuck you. Yeah. It this sort of like it this false folksiness that is supposed to like Wealthy I would not call us wealthy I would say you know we will blast We blast I never consider us a wealthy or important family We don't think in terms of that. Yeah. Well, you want to make a jury like you, seems simple. And then he crouches like this. He's so small. He's so delicate. Even though he's six foot four. Now, Alec's plan was simple, although it was hastily put together. He was going to kill his wife and son down at the kennels, go visit his mother in town to establish an alibi, then quickly head back to Moselle where he would, quote-unquote, discover the bodies. Oh, no! Oh, God! And so Alec, Maggie, and Paul went out to the dog kennels a little before 845 that night. Maggie played with her dog Bubba, and Paul went to go check on his friend's adorable little chocolate lab cash who had an injured tail. Poor puppy. Now, we don't know exactly when Alec began his short murder spree, but we do know that Paul was still alive at 8.48pm because that is when he sent his last ever text. You up? Yeah, it's 8.45. A friend of Paul's asked him for a movie recommendation so Paul told his friend that he should watch the remake of A Star Is Born, the one with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. It is fucking awesome. Do you think that pushed him over the edge? Because it's the worst A Star Is Born. Yeah, of course. Within minutes of sending that text, Paul Murdoch would be dead. The real recommendation is that Chris Christopherson's A Star is Born. Now, that's incredible. That's an incredible film. It's really good. And technically, the Judy Garland A Star is Born is also a classic of cinema that you should watch ahead of time. I didn't bother with that one. Yeah. Isn't the Chris Christopherson, isn't Barbara Streisand in that as well? Oh, yeah. No, she's incredible. I love Barbara. That's A Star is Born. Whatever Paul's saying is horse shit. Yeah. Another reason I'm glad he's fucking dead. I am happy that that was his last movie. Yeah. Now, Alec had two guns with him that night out at the kennels, a shotgun and an AR-15 rifle. While Paul was in the small feed room at the kennels, investigators believe that Alec laid the AR-15 against the room's outside wall without his family seeing him approach with the guns. Or hell they may have seen Alec walking around with two massive guns because there were so many fucking guns on this property at all times that any one of them carrying one or two guns wouldn have even merited a comment like hey what are you doing with those guns Yeah because they loved it That fine I going to sneak up on my family First I got to remove my slide-on sketchers. Put on my compression socks so that my veins don't make any noise. And then I'm just going to sneak, sneak, sneak out there. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Shh, shh. Real quiet. Hey, Dad, you want to shoot some dogs? Oh, wow, son, what an amazing idea. Whether or not Alec was being sneaky, once he laid the AR-15 in position, he picked up the shotgun and approached Paul in the feed room, where he fired a single blast into his son's chest. I literally think it was like a spin move. I could see him doing like a round the corner and just blast. Now, Alec probably thought that this would be enough to kill Paul, But even though Paul was a bastard, he was also a tough bastard, and the initial blast was not enough to take him down. After being shot, Paul began walking toward Alec, who was standing just outside the doorway to the feed room. Neither out of fear or panic, Alec crouched down next to the door, and when his son walked through the doorway, Alec fired upward at close range. This, of course, was the fatal shot. It completely separated Paul's brains from his head and turned his face into a loose mask of skin that barely settled upon the skull. The blast set bits of bone flying into the feed room ceiling and Paul's red hair mixed with his blood splattered against the doorframe. As undignified in death as he was in life, Paul had been killed wearing a t-shirt that said, in big red lettering, Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. See, but this is why these shooting patterns are also the reason why we know it was not done by a professional. A professional would have done it correctly. I mean, like, seriously. Are there professionals there? Yeah, but no, if there were, no, if this was a, an assassin. Oh, so he was saying it was an assassin, not like a murder out of, you know, passion. That they had prepared that many people had come to do this. This is not a one-man operation. This is a several-person operation that came here and systematically murdered his incredibly canny family. Now, it's thought that Maggie was a fair distance away when Paul was killed, and she probably came to see what had happened after hearing the two shots. But by the time she saw her son's dead body, it's likely that Alec had already picked up the ARC. fair distance away when Paul was killed, and she probably came to see what had happened after fair distance away when Paul was killed, and she probably came to see what had happened after hearing the two shots. But by the time she saw her son's dead body, it's likely that Alec had already picked up the AR-15 that he had set aside. This, however, wasn't due to Alec planning on shooting his wife from a distance. Instead, it's speculated that Alec believed that if he killed Paul and Maggie with two different guns, then investigators would think there were two shooters, because what single person uses two guns at the same crime scene? I'm only the smartest criminal in all of South Carolina. But it's likely that once Maggie saw her youngest son lying on the ground with his brain splattered all over the place, Alec had already fired, shooting her in the stomach and upper thigh. Another bullet went through her wrist, shattering her tennis bracelet, which scattered the ground with tiny diamonds. It's thought that Maggie then fell to her hands and knees, where Alec shot her again with the fatal bullet, one that was powerful enough to go into her chest and travel all the way up her body into her brain. Alec then walked up and fired one more shot into her head, execution style, to make sure the job was done. And by splitting his wife's skull open with that last bullet, Alec Murdoch had removed both the possibility of divorce and his inconvenient son. Wow, I get it now. what when bam thank you man no just this whole scenario and this is what points to the fact that somebody who's never killed somebody before they really are this is a very sloppy it's extremely sloppy for a hit but also he knows how to get away with this shit he thought he did yeah well obviously i yeah i i think that uh What he did is that it was just he tried throwing too much too many ingredients into the soup. But I think he should have stuck with one story and gone with that. But he just he threw too much shit out there. Well, there was one thing he tried to pull back and it'd be the thing that sunk him. And there was nothing he could do about it. Now, after committing the murders, Alec also committed to his alibi. After changing clothes, he called Maggie's phone, then sent her a text saying he was going to go check on Mama. And interestingly, in quick succession, Alec then called his son Buster a fellow attorney named Chris Wilson and his youngest brother John Marvin John Marvin also was quite adept at cleaning up crime scenes In the past he been the one who had gone down and removed the boat that had killed Mallory Beach from that crime scene. Well, this was all before Alec arrived at his mother's house at 9.22 p.m., about 30 minutes after the murder. Alec then went up to check on his mom, then spent a small amount of time watching TV with his mother's caregiver, who said Alec looked fidgety. Alec was only at his mother's house for 20 minutes before leaving to head back to Moselle. I'm just skittering. I'm just skittering out of tinker. That's how I'm doing. You want to skitter and tinker with me? Come on, come on here. Hey, have this pill right here. It's going to help you skitter. Ever done that in your skitter before? Right. Now you're skittering. I ain't got time to skitter. I got to go. I'm going to rush. I ain't got time to skitter. I got to scoot. There's a difference between scooting and skittering. Now let me explain. Yep. And after that, I got about two hours of skedaddling. Oh, you know how skedaddling goes. Alec then called Paul's phone a couple of times. Do people ever Irish skedaddle? Continue. I'm sorry. I just never heard that. Alec then called Paul's phone a couple of times and texted Maggie a couple of times as well, texting things like, babe, call me back, just to make it all look good. Alec also, sometime between the murders and the visit, either disposed of the murder weapons or hid them where someone else could get rid of them later. To this day, neither gun has been found. Or his clothes. Yeah. I believe that was a John Marvin job. Well, I mean, according to one, I believe, YouTuber who sent a drone onto the Murdoch property, he did capture video of John Marvin and Buster removing guns from the property. Yeah. Yeah. In plain day. Literally in the sunshine of the day. Yes. Finally, though, Alec Murdoch returned to Moselle at 10 p.m. and arrived back at the kennels at 10.05. With everything in place, Alec then placed his infamous call to 911 to give the performance of his life. And I remember, Alec, before I make this call, okay, assassins have entered in Hampton County. All right, think about it. That's your motivation. Assassins have entered in Hampton County. All right? What do I? Oh, okay. Now, Alec, actually, you don't know if they're assassins yet. We don't know yet. We don't know yet. We blame no one. We are just open to facts. We're open to facts. We're helping the investigation. We're open to facts. And after you make this call, you can have a little reward of a couple oxys. Okay, then what do you do? A couple oxys and you have a Capri Sun You wash them down And if I don get arrested by the end of the night then I can have a bowl of Fruity Peppers with the sugar on top That be nice And then I can watch my favorite videos I can watch all my favorite videos. I love Theo Vaughn. I think I want to go, you know what my favorite video is? I like that one where that hippo be shitting. Oh. Oh. Oh, that hippo be shitting. Oh, Robbie, my diddy. Is that in the colorblind glasses? I like the colorblind glasses. I also like the ones where the women are getting shot in the head. Oh my God, I killed my wife. All right, let's hear the call. Hand-to-handing now in a one-way-air emergency. All right, that's really all you need in here. My wife and child have been shot badly. I've been trying to figure out how to get my voice to do it. It's so hard. My wife and child have shot badly. There is probably a hint of actual pain in there because he realizes what he's just done. Well, no. It was Eddie. It was really hard on him. Yeah. That's the only thing you understand. It was super difficult for him to do it, and it really bummed him out. We never think about the annihilators in the family. What does it do to the annihilator? Because then guess what he is? Alone. Yeah. is to go through it all alone. He's got Blanca. That's right. He's got Buster. Oh, he's got E-Honda. He's going to be there. He's got his dad for another couple hours. Sure. Now, the first authority figure to arrive at Moselle parked near the dog kennels about 20 minutes after Alec Murdoch made his call. The deputy saw Paul's body first, lying face down with his brains at his feet. He then spotted Maggie, who was 30 feet away, lying face down on the grass. Now, before the cops had even taped off the scene, Alec immediately began deflecting the blame elsewhere. He said that his son had been in a boat wreck a few months back, which was weird because the boat wreck had been over two years earlier. Yeah, he's making it all up. Alec also said that Paul had been getting threats and, quote, He's been getting like, like, like punched. Yeah, he goes, punched. He's getting like, punched. Yeah. He's getting like, punched. And this is like when there's one cop on the scene, and the dead bodies are still in the background and he throwing out options Alex immediately is throwing out like that guy oh who that guy oh my god there a big owl yeah it certainly helps you not get cuffed yeah that's what he was he wasn't he wasn't cuffed yeah they fucking went to his house they did the little plinth and take him to the station took a year before cuffs would go on him for these murders But despite Alec's best efforts, investigators immediately noticed a few things about the scene that didn't add up. These are great cops tech. This is one of those few stories where it's like the cops actually did their fucking jobs in this. Best as they, well, best as they could with all these fucking people around. I can't believe it, honestly. You could, like, the fact that they even, because he, for all intents and purposes, OJ Simpson was right. Alec Murdoch should have walked. The fact that these guys actually put this all together is huge. And I think it also tells you— Sled is huge. Sled is huge, but it also tells you why a prosecution must have all of their fucking ducks in a row before they charge someone with a crime. They have to have the case. It's why it takes so long. Even though you can know that someone has committed the murder, when you're dealing with somebody like Alec Murdoch, who is ensconced in the criminal justice system, whose family is the criminal justice system. You gotta win. And when you see him on that witness stand, he is evasion. Yeah. He cannot answer a simple question at all. He won't, because he's always assuming you're trying to catch him in something, which makes you look extremely guilty. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, as opposed to other investigations in which the Murdochs took control immediately, the lead officer in this investigation had grown up two counties away. They had no fucking clue who Alec Murdoch was. The right guy showed up. Under the supervision of an unbiased investigator, the other deputies noticed that there were no signs of an ambush, no footprints leading to or from the woods, no obvious defense wounds, and no signs of a struggle. All this, of course, pointed towards the likelihood that Paul and Maggie were killed by someone they knew. All these little things matter. Also remember, though, at the time, too, Alec is throwing his badge around. So when they also first showed up, the first thing is they go into his car and you see the badge right on the dash. Now, by the time the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division showed up, that sled, a group of a dozen civilians made up of family, friends and acquaintances of the Murdochs had already arrived. But even though these people crowded up the scene and made it difficult to collect evidence, authorities still quickly surmised that Alec Murdoch had indeed killed his wife and son out. had already arrived. had already arrived. But even though these people crowded up the scene and made it difficult to collect evidence, authorities still quickly surmised that Alec Murdoch had indeed killed his wife and son out there. They just had to prove it. Now, Alec's interview with investigators on the scene conducted in Alec's SUV was rife with lies, half-truths, and wild fucking stories. The most obvious lie was that Alec claimed that he'd rushed to the bodies and taken both of their pulses to see if they were alive. But if he'd done that, he would have been both bloody and muddy. Alec was squeaky fucking clean. He was so clean, they went on to notice that he smelled like fresh laundry. Yeah, because he went and changed. And he went and showered. Detectives also noted that Alec had freely admitted to handling Paul's phone without them asking if he had done so. Yeah, he was just like, I was just looking. I was looking at it. He'd also given two explanations to two officers as to the reason why Alec, a former prosecutor, had handled evidence at a murder scene. He was like, I was just trying. I was just trying. Well, he told one investigator that he'd reached into Paul's pocket to get the phone so he could check something. Exactly. I wanted to check something. But he told the other officer that the phone had fallen out of Paul's pocket on its own accord, and Alec had gently placed it back on the body. This inconsistency was, of course, noted by investigators. Yeah, because he knew he was all over his son's phone. Yeah, he was trying to get to something. He was trying to see if he had recorded anything, but that fucker was locked up tight. Because that was the thing is that what they say, you could see it. He pulled it out of his phone. guess what it was linked to to open? His face. Yes. Guess what he blew off of his body. I'm not even joking. Guess what he blew off of his body. His face. So he went to go, he literally went to go try to do it quickly and was looking at his faceless son that he just murdered and realizes he couldn't open the phone and then I could see he had a little mini attack. You know, and then went like, realize what he's done. Dropped it. Yep. Well, finally though, in an attempt to throw as many suspects at investigators as possible, Alec brought up their new groundskeeper, a guy named C.B. Rowe. Alec said that Rowe wasn't working out, but then tacked on an insane story that the groundskeeper has supposedly told Paul. Now, my thing is, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus here. I don't know who would do something like this, obviously, but I did hire a professional murderer to work on the field. Yeah I knew he would Well professional I mean he murdered for the government I don know if that makes him a professional How do you call him temp to perm Well supposedly this groundskeeper C Rowe had told Paul that when Rowe was in high school he got into a fight with a bunch of black guys And an undercover FBI team undercover at Rowe's high school had seen him fight, and he was impressed by how he handled himself against black guys. Wow. So, he fought black guys? Black guys. The FBI was like, oh my God, nobody can fight black guys. Hey, wait a second. My job. Wait a second, hey. They're fighting black guys. We need to hire them. Because I'm afraid of black guys. Nobody fights black guys like the FBI fights black guys. That's Martin Luther King Jr. Yeah, it stands for fight black guys individually. Well, so impressed. And this is according to Alec. And Alec is telling this story in his SUV an hour after the cops showed up to find his wife and son's dead bodies outside of their fucking dog kennels. I don't think he did it. Alec's saying, so impressed was the FBI that they put Roe on an undercover team with three Navy SEALs whose sole job was to murder Black Panthers from Myrtle Beach to Savannah. And that's supposedly what Roe did before coming to work as the Murdoch's groundkeeper. isn't a groundskeeper like you don't hire one unless he has some kind of like shady fake story right you need that's it's not a groundskeeper unless he has a story like that yeah well I mean it helps right yeah think about the guy that helps your dad yeah how many horrific things has he told you none he doesn't tell me anything horrific because he knows to keep because he's actually done horrific things to keep it to himself because he hasn't done those things he'd be Confessing the crimes. You know, it's good to hire a groundskeeper that kills panthers, you know, in case any show up. Well, you want the cat panthers. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Sure. But also, you should re-home them. You should be killing them. He did say specifically radical black panthers. Although, he might have been like, they were radical black panthers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tubular black panthers. Yeah, they were awesome. No, no, no. So, I've been made to ruin a black panther party. And then he used a half pipe to smoke oxy. when they're investigating him or grilling him he in the front seat which I found very weird he in the front seat and there are people in the back seat that are reaching up and like you know he crying and boohooing about I found it I saw his brains. And they're you know, they're grabbing onto his shoulder. But they're also very suspicious. So let me, help me understand. Anytime a cop says, help me understand, you're fucked. Also just like putting their hand on his shoulder and stuff like that. it's i feel like is a good tactic just like treat him they make him think he's winning and just let him keep talking dude you know what's funny is that i actually have completely even reversed it just sitting here thinking about that yeah it makes a lot of sense it makes him really fucking comfortable yeah it really makes him think that oh i've gotten away with this already haven't i and he can really start fucking lying and then because the lying is what gets you later it's all of the peak and putting it all back together well they know that they all have to play good cop all at the same time with it. Like with Alec Murdoch, you have to play good cop all the time because he's telling so many lies and he just keeps talking because he wants to talk. He thinks he's so fucking clever. So you just keep this guy talking and he's eventually going to tell enough lies where you can just start tripping him up. What he should have done is should have just been fucking sad and puking and unresponsive as like anyone would who just lost their entire family. Well, that was one of the big tells for the investigators on the scene immediately because they said that, you know, when they showed up to murder scenes, usually relatives are inconsolable. Yeah, beside themselves. And they're like, why are you, they say things like, why are you here? Why aren't you out trying to find these people? Why aren't you out trying to find them? Why are you talking to me? Why you should be out there? Yeah, and Alex is like, well, why don't we go sit down in my SUV for a little while? You know, maybe we can get chat and I can tell you what's going on. You know, it's, it's been hard. No, he talked about it like it was a, he had the same feeling like it was something like, like a building collapse on the farm or if like something bad like that wasn't involving the death of your family he was just acting like it was just this big old like oh he'd acted like someone had come on uh to his and shot a couple of his dogs yes that that's how that is this the same level of emotion he was showing was the level of emotion i would show if someone had broken in my house and killed my dog i mean i'd show an extreme amount of emotion yeah i actually honestly i'd be way more upset if something happened to car me than paul you know i mean i'd be way out killed If you do something to car me, I'll fucking kill you. Yeah but I would say I going to show more emotion if my wife was murdered than if my dog was murdered Yeah that a great question and he showing more dog murder level of emotion Guys at home ask your wife what she thinks. If you're with your girlfriend or wife, just be like, who do you love more? Stop the show right now and ask them right now, who would you be more sad about if they died? The dog, the pet or me? Do it right now. Ruin your afternoon. All I know is, I don't see Julie spoon-feeding pumpkin into my mouth and she does tootsies. Back to Alec and the SUV. After he told them about the groundskeeper and the Black Panthers and all that bullshit, he added he didn't really think that their groundskeeper killed Paul and Maggie, but, you know, Ro, his history, it's worth pointing out. You might want to look into it. It's worth pointing out. Now, there was a fair amount of evidence at the scene, but it would be an incredibly long time before investigators could access it. Most important, of course, was Paul's phone, but investigators couldn't unlock it. None of the Murdoch family knew the password, and Paul had never synced to the cloud. And they also didn't want to keep trying passwords and get locked out permanently. The other big piece of evidence was quite possibly the dumbest piece of evidence I've ever heard of in a murder case. Found next to the gun rack in the Murdoch gun room was what else but an empty bag of Capri Sun. Yay! Got him! I don't know if it was mountain breeze or pineapple cooler. didn't say in the court documents. It's mountain cooler and pineapple breeze. Okay. Thank you, Eddie. Please, I don't want to get these letters. All those fucking sunheads out there. Well, according to the testimony of the Murdoch's housekeeper, Blanca, there weren't any Capri Suns in the house on the morning of June 7th, not until she stalked back up, and Alec did not take one with him to work that day. That meant that Alec had to have had that Capri Sun that afternoon. So investigators suspected that Alec downed one more sweet, sweet Capri Sun and absentmindedly dropped the empty bag like a fucking assassin flicking away a cigarette just before he grabbed the shotgun and the AR-15 that he used to kill his wife and son. I honestly, I can totally see Capri Suns can make me want to kill my family. Totally. Capri Suns could make me want to kill my family. Investigators also spoke with Rogan Gibson, Paul's friend, the one who owned the dog that Paul was looking after. Rogan said that he had spoken with Paul at the dog kennels that evening and he had heard Alec and Maggie talking in the background. Now, that's hearsay. That's not proof. He didn't record the conversation. But it did put Alec at the scene and it directly contradicted the claim that Alec had made over and over that he hadn't been out to the dog kennels at all on the night of the murders prior to finding his wife and son's dead bodies. That's a very important thing. He said he did not go out there until 10 o'clock that night. And he wasn't there. Fucking Ro-Ro ruining everything. Yeah, fucking Ro-Ro. Somebody call Bing-Bong. Somebody call Grandma Snappy. Tell her what's going on and fucking dig her out of her fucking grave. Tell Gro-Gro or whatever, these fucking idiots, I hate Southern people. I don't know. Hey, hey, hey. I love the Southern people. Come on. All right, come on, man. Come on. You're getting too passionate. Yeah. It's the best. It's the best. You're just too sweaty, I think. Yeah, it's the ro-ro and the pow-pow. It's fine. It's fine. It's just a different way of referring to people. I hate pow-pow. We can have a good time down there. No, of course. I'll show you a good time. I just hate the little nicknames. Oh, like nobody in Queens has fucking nicknames for each other? Yeah, but they're fun. It's like fuckface and shit. Robbie Two-Times. Jimmy Dix-a-lot. Chew me the bat. Fly from your grave. And so investigators had no other suspects besides Alec Murdoch. They were, in fact, so confident from the beginning that when they announced the double homicide, they made sure to say, without naming their suspect, that there was no danger to the public here whatsoever. They were so sure of it. The murders, at the very least, had the effect of taking the heat off Alec Murdoch in the wrongful death suit that the Beaches had filed against him. Because the morning after the murders, the judge in the Mallory Beach suit canceled the upcoming hearings set for June 10th, three days later. So he's just like, I did it. Did it, yeah. And of course the judge did this out of sympathy. And this was extremely fortuitous for Alec because this was the hearing in which Mark Tinsley had compelled Alec to produce his financial records. This may have actually been a third motive for the murders. He might have wanted to produce sympathy to buy time, figure out some other way of fucking getting out of this. Yeah because now he so fucking down the oxyhole He is just a full monster at this point Yeah but investigators were not the only people who were looking at Alec a bit sideways after the murder of his wife and son Seems like people in the Murdoch circle figured that it might be a good idea to let Randy III know, just before he died, just how big of a piece of shit his son Alec really was. As Randy the third lay on his actual deathbed, a visitor who knew about Alex money juggling told Randy the third that Alec had asked him for two loans in the weeks before the murders for no less than six hundred thousand dollars. Jesus fucking Christ. After Randy III was told about this and was told about the murder of his daughter-in-law and grandson, he supposedly grabbed the lapel of his visitor's jacket, pulled him close, and in full Southern drama form said, quote, What has become of this family? You are my number one. bring me to the brothel unfortunately for andy the third was one of the last things he ever said because on thursday june 10th three days after maggie and paul's murder and coincidentally on the same day that his son's financial crimes were supposed to be exposed to the entire world, Randolph Murdoch III died at the age of 81 with his family's bullshit legacy fully and deservedly in tatters. See you now. You failed. That's it. You failed at everything. Now die. Now. Bye bye. Bye bye. Now the Murdoch double homicide quickly became national news. And before long, the deaths of Stephen Smith, Gloria Satterfield, and Mallory Beach were also being bandied about on Facebook posts, Reddit threads, and of course, podcast galore. Yeah! It was a podcaster's feast in these days. It really was. It was one of my, it's still one of my favorite stories in the world, and it just kept giving. Yeah. For Alex's part, he was continuing to insist that the murders were connected to the outrage over the boat wreck, subtly pointing investigators towards Mallory's boyfriend, Anthony Cook. Maybe you ought to look at that Anthony Cook boy But since there was no evidence to support the outsider theory and there was only evidence that Alec had done it investigators continued searching for solid proof that Alec was the perpetrator because they knew that only a sure kill shot was going to put him in prison for good Iron-clad case. Yeah, and if Cook did it, it would have been in the kitchen. Funny enough. Funny. Funny.com. Stick it to the thing. Let's fucking shoot him in the head. Let's drop him in the swamp. Someone should kill me by dogs. I'm fine with it. By dogs, you mean like next to dogs or with dogs? I want them to lick me. Oh, that's cute. I would never do that to you. I would never make dogs kill. Well, to put even more pressure on Alec Murdoch, investigators announced on June 22nd that they had reopened the Stephen Smith murder, citing new evidence gathered while investigating the double murder at Moselle. They made sure to state in public the Stephen Smith murder and the double murders at Moselle are linked. However, we still don't know what that evidence is or if any evidence ever even existed. It may have just been a tactic, just a ploy to put some pressure on Alec Murdoch. The Stephen Smith murder is still open. Yes, it is still open. And it did, you know, it triggered. I mean, they exhumed his body. Yeah, we found out that he definitely didn't die by being hit by a car. Well, I mean, there's arguments. Some say that the autopsy shows that he may have been hit with a side mirror. Yeah, sure. But again, that still points to accidental death and then the kids trying to just cover up an accidental death, which I do think while they were doing something nasty, an accidental death happened, and then they just childlike try to cover it up. It's so rare that someone just sticks only their head into the road. It's super hard to do. Super hard to do. Now, once things settled down a bit after Paul and Maggie's funerals, PMPED continued their investigation into Alec's finances, sympathy notwithstanding. By September of 2021, two paralegals at PMPED had found hundreds of checks made out to Alec's fake Forge account at Bank of America. And these paralegals had compiled a damning case accusing Alec of stealing millions. They had him dead to rights. and after the case was presented to the partners all of the partners, even Alec's own brother, had no choice but to fire Alec. They couched it however in Alec oxy because the oxy had only gotten worse and more obvious after maggie and paul death they all used this oxy ed addiction as like a cover oh yeah no it was the only thing they had like it was like to give them a sweep it they sweep it away and there's also seem like it almost is it's like an it's an insanity defense almost because then it's like he wouldn't in his right mind yeah he would have never have done this yeah so therefore don't send him to jail because he was on Oxy. Come on. Yeah. Also, you're on that much Oxy. I mean, it's pretty, I guess, like, the wrong word is impressive that you're able to kill a double murder. Do you know what I mean? You know, to move that fast? Hey, we're going to get into it, like the whole Oxy thing. I mean, because while he was an addict, he was what you would call a very functional addict. Yeah. He was also what we said before. He's one of those guys that takes Oxy and makes him filled with energy. Yeah. Well, the other thing, though, is I think, like, you keep saying that he was gacked out. I think one of the things that, remember, he also was diagnosed with ADHD. So a lot of his constant movements and fidgetiness, that's due to the ADHD. I'm talking about the snorting and the huffing and the lip sucking, and that is what he does. Yeah, now that's different. But he's constantly like, look at me, I can't fucking stand still for two seconds. And look at the size of my ass. Wow, here we talk about this. No, it was the snorting. It's the snorting, it's the back drip. You can hear he has a back drip going on. There's something happening inside of him. You're crying, you're snorting. He has no wetness. When the cops showed up, man, he was fucking clean. Yes. Oxy-clean. That was good. Well, Alec's brother was chosen to break the news that Alec was no longer welcome at PMPED, telling Alec that he could resign or be fired. Murdoch, though, like he was the fucking David Berkowitz of financial fraud, just said, quote, I always knew I was going to get caught eventually. I'm surprised it took y'all that long fucking prick but also what he does it's humility it's this thing again being like ha well that's a little old mistake I made and I can't believe you guys run up on that one there is egg on my face what is a boy to do oh the tangled webs wee wee scrambled eggs all over my face now I think that Alec thought that he was just going to walk away from PMPED having been fired. And that was it. But the day after Alec was told... That's bad enough! Yeah, it's bad enough. But the day after Alec was told to leave, his now former firm called up SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, PMPED. Alec was told. That's bad enough. Yeah, it's bad enough. Alec was told. That's bad enough. Yeah, it's bad enough. But the day after Alec was told to leave, his now former firm called up SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. PMPED laid out everything with SLED to cover their own asses. And that, of course, triggered a full criminal investigation into Alec Murdoch. Don't forget, too, they didn't do anything until the lawyers lost money. Yes. This was September 4th, they didn't even fucking look into it for a second. Couldn't give a fuck what happened to the little children that were paralyzed and the old people that he literally just took all the money from, it was when they finally took money from the inside and then they had to cover their own asses so it didn't look like they were stealing money too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this was September 4th, 2021, which ended up being a very eventful day in Alec Murdoch's life for multiple reasons. On this day, Alec Murdoch also made his infamous call to his cousin, Fast Eddie, to engage in activities involving firearms that are still somewhat of a mystery. So according to Fast Eddie himself, Alec called him up and met him on the road. After making a bit of small talk, Alec straight up asked Fast Eddie to shoot him in his big dumb potato head because investigators were going to prove that he was responsible for Maggie and Paul. That out at Moselle that night, quote, Things just got all fucked up. Things just got all fucked up. Now Fast Eddie, of course, said, Hell no, I ain't going to fucking shoot you. So Alec said that he was just going to do it himself. And he took off. I'm just going to... Well, I just do it myself. I don't need you to do anything. I do it. I don't need anybody else. Well, he did that thing. He's like, you know, Fast Eddie, we're close, right? Like, you know, Eddie, we're like brothers, ain't we? Okay. I'm going to need you to shoot me in the head. Right now. Right now. I'm going to need you to shoot me. Like, pardon? Pardon? Right. Hey, listen. You see this? What is it missing? A bullet hole. Period. I need you to do something about that. Well, Fast Eddie drove after him, but when Fast Eddie caught up to Alec again, Alec had stopped his car on an isolated stretch of road. Alec got out, but was supposedly holding a gun when he did so, acting very erratically. You know those noodle guys in front of the car sales place? Now, Fast Eddie was, of course, also armed. So, to scare Alec out of shooting himself, Fast Eddie claimed that he fired a shot above Alec's head. Because that really like when someone is holding a gun the best thing to do to make them not use the gun is to shoot your gun in the air Calm listen kids i mean it does work in every western yeah but it because that all fast eddie has seen fast eddie's never dealt with this before he was fast on the draw well he had to be i don't think he was it sounded like all this was a slow rollout when we fired the shot above alex head Fast Eddie said that Alec fell like a fainting goat and he hit his head on some rocks on the side of the road. He absolutely did do. And after that, Fast Eddie pretty much said, fuck this. And he just left. Yeah, he was just sitting there like, well, this is fucking stupid. You know, for three seconds he was so fucked up that he thought he was dead. Oh, yeah, of course. He was just like, oh, my God, heaven is just like Hampton County. It sucks. Now, that story is just dumb enough to be true. I... But if that is indeed what happened, then the knock on Alec's head must have restored his will to live. Because Alec Murdoch immediately found a way to spin this to his advantage. Every single thing in his life he spins to his advantage. See, after Fast Eddie left, Alec called 911 and told the dispatcher that he'd been on the side of the road with a flat tire when a young man with really, really short hair... Really, really short hair. Had driven up and shot him in the head. Now, absolutely nobody believed Alec's story for a multitude of reasons. When this hit the news, I'll always remember the day in side stories when this hit the news. And I was like, this is incredible. This is one of the, this is such an amazing turn of events. I remember you did like, you ran into my office and you were like. He faked committed suicide. He was trying to jump and shoot himself. Bacon shoot himself with that. It was the best thing in the world. there were no bullet holes in his car uh and the wound on his head was so superficial that it just needed to be cleaned and bandaged have you seen it yeah i mean it it doesn't look like a bullet grace it looks like he fell on some rocks yeah it looks like yeah it's good gravel marks yeah but even though everyone gave him just a uh-huh sure whenever he told the story alex still gave a description of the so-called shooter to a sketch artist and it just so happened that the person that Alec described looked a hell of a lot like Anthony Cook, Mallory Beach's boyfriend. And he came up with that shit like in fucking 10 minutes Like that he gonna fucking that he gonna he fell on the side of the road He asked his cousin to shoot him in the head but you know he missed his cousin left and he like I bleeding Wait a minute. God damn it. I'm bleeding. What would Patton Oswalt say? You know, like, he's just trying to figure out his improv, man. This is when you just, the first thing to describe someone who just tried to kill you is short hair. Really, really short hair. Really, really short hair. Really, really short hair. Not the height, not their skin color. Really, really short hair. But you know what I'll say? I think he did say, he's a white fella. You know what I'll give you? I'll give him one, the only piece of credit I'll give Alec. He didn't just put it on some random black guy. He had every, he definitely could have, didn't. He didn't. Yeah, he didn't. He really could have. He could have ruined a whole, but you remember when they sent the Sherry Papini? Yeah. The whole thing, making them go interrogate every single Mexican lady within 150 miles, like what she did? Yeah. You don't know why that's there. It's kind of funny. Yeah, I guess there is that. Yeah. It's good to know he's not racist. Well, he is bad in that way. Now, once Alec was at the hospital, he pressured an employee to borrow their phone, and he very stupidly used that phone to call Fast Eddie. This suspicious call, after Alec's suspicious behavior, led Sled to search Fast Eddie's house, where they found a ledger of alleged drug deals that had Alec all over it. Why is he writing these down? Alec, 5,000 oxy. Many, many pills for Alex. Illegal Oxy for Alex. Alex, 10,000 pills. Getting more. Need to order more Oxy for Alex. It's so funny to listen to Fast Eddie talk now, because he's such a fucking idiot. Because he's, I mean, his trials. He's a groundskeeper, you know? No, Fast Eddie was just, like, he's like a mechanic. Yeah. But the thing is that at the very least, you should know that if you have a trial coming up in the future, do not do a documentary talking about the crimes that you were accused of. Tell it to Karen Reid. Yes, yes. I know. But Fast Eddie's like on the Netflix documentary. Yeah, you know, they say I was a drug dealer. I wasn't a drug dealer. Like, you know, every once in a while I get an envelope and I'd shake it and it sounded like, you know, like a rat snake. You know, it sounded like a rat snake. Because it's just like I thought maybe the pill's in there, but I didn't think it was pilled in there. And then I just threw it all in the back. But I just, every once in a while, I go to an airstrip and I pick up a big box from this little plane and I didn know there was anything in it I didn check I didn check on nothing I didn ask no questions I thought we were selling maracas One of my favorite things too and that also the one where he was just like I asked Alec is this money laundering And he said no. Yeah. He said no. And I said, all right. I believe him. Whatever worked for Alec. Yeah, I believed him. Well, Slent also subpoenaed Fast Eddie's bank records and added the hundreds of checks written to Fast Eddie from Alec for the extremely suspicious amounts just under $10,000 to the ever-growing investigation into Alex's financial crimes. And so, with Fast Eddie's checks in the mix and Alex's supposed attempted murder bringing the Murdoch name into the news once more, SLED finally announced that there was a full criminal investigation into Alex's funds. Specifically, they were investigating the death of housekeeper Gloria Satterfield and the handling of her estate. And with the confirmation that Alex Murdoch had not only stolen from needy clients, but it also profited off the death of his housekeeper, the news media turned against Alec Murdoch completely. Not even Fox News is coming to his fucking aid this time. The final humiliation came when Alec was sued by PMPED, who had no choice but to pay back all of the money that Alec had stolen from their clients. Eventually, the firm dissolved and reformed without the Murdoch name, which effectively erased the nearly century-long legacy that Alec Murdoch's crooked family had worked so hard and so sleazily to build. So that prison call when he gets the word that they're changing the name of PMPED, he's like, Oh, I don't know why they had to go all the trouble of that. Yeah. And you're like, again, you just don't fucking understand that you're a fucking multiple murderer, you psychopath. Yeah. And Randy Ford. Yeah. You've got to be so fucking mad. So mad. You ruined everything. Yeah, because, I mean, I remember Alec has three brothers. You know, like there's Randy the Fourth, there's John Marvin, there's another one floating around out there. Yeah, you're going to fucking, I'm going to, John Marvin sucked my fucking dick. Yes. That's actually a very personal thing for someone to do. You're right. You're actually right. It really is. This is quite intimate. I should think about that. Trust him to do that for me. I don't know. Actually, you should think about that. I don't think it'd be an enjoyable experience for you. Actually, you know what? You're right. Yeah, personally, I'm married. The only person who can do that for me is my wife. Legally. John Marvin should suck Randy Forrest's dick. I'd see that. I don't care. Personally, I'm married. Personally, I'm married. The only person who can do that for me is my wife. Legally. John Marvin should suck Randy Ford's dick. I see that. That's where my money should go. Okay. Well, with all of this hanging over Alex's head. Why do you think they call him Buster? Exactly. We're not even talking about that. I'm sorry, Marcus. It's fine. Well, with all this hanging over Alex's head, he brought attorney Dick Harpootlian back into the fold, along with attorney Jim Griffin, to defend him. Harpootlian and Griffin managed to get Alec into rehab by blaming all of his crimes on his oxy-addiction. But as soon as Alec got out of rehab, he was arrested for his financial crimes. Finally. At least they let him go through rehab. They did. And that was very controversial in itself because they let him go to rehab out of state. He's still getting these small favors being done for him here and there. But the favors that they all have to call in, they are dwindling very quickly. Yeah, it's all running out. Now, Alec was indicted on 48 counts pertaining to his financial crimes in November of 2021. With the Murdoch name in tatters, his bond was set too high for him to pay. I think it was $7 million. So Alec was sent to the Richland County Jail. Incredibly, though, after Alec got his bearings, he actually seemed to enjoy jail. As author John Glatt put it, Alec was a lifelong hustler who adapted easily to life behind bars. where Alec was dealing with million-dollar settlements on the outside just a year prior, he was now haggling with criminals using honey buns and Pop-Tarts. But the principles were basically the same. Alec even bragged in jailhouse phone calls to his surviving son Buster how he had mastered the jail's barter economy. Buster listened, honestly sounding both bored and embarrassed, as his father boasted about winning six soups, four beef sticks, and a bunch of crackers for betting on NFL games with other prisoners. That's great, Diddy. Now tell me, can you kill me next? I want to die, Diddy. Can you please shoot me? I am saying, when I was in jail, I was very surprised at how little they all wanted to watch football. We talked about this, and they watch Cops. Yeah, they watch Cops, and they love Smallville. And there's something we talk about, it almost has a sleepover vibe sometimes, if you're in jail. No, yeah, but not where Alec was, because he was with the violent guys. Yes. Well actually at this point he not quite with the violent guys is he Because he in the jail for financial crimes right now Yeah Oh Yeah But he is in gen pop Because when he first got in he got a black eye because he got into a fight with a guy over a weight machine And then he was put into the medical wing kind of to keep him away from the other prisoners. And he told Dick Harpoot, he was like, you know, I kind of got a little soft, but I bet I could take some of these guys in this medical wing. Yeah, you're like, these guys are all just, they're all completely delusional. He also does a call with John Marvin where he's just like talking about how hard it is for him to get his ibuprofen. And he needs to get more ibuprofen because he's hit his ibuprofen limit. And he's got shoulder issues because he's working out all the time. You see him now. He's lost all that weight. It looks great, right? And that's the problem is that he needs his brother to put money in another guy's commissary so that he could get him to buy him ibuprofen for him, which is also a crime. So he's already breaking all the jail rules over the phone, willy-nilly. Yeah. But as the months ticked by with Alec in jail awaiting trial for his financial crimes, SLED was still doing everything they could to find evidence that would form a strong enough case to finally indict Alec in the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdoch. See, they still had Paul's phone, but they were afraid that they'd be locked out permanently if they tried too many codes. Eventually, one of the detectives reached out to the Secret Service for help. But the agent on the other side said, just try the little idiot's birthday. It's always a birthday with these guys. And sure enough, when they finally said, fuck it, and just punched 0414 into Paul's phone, voila, phone unlocked. And the evidence they needed was found almost immediately. And that's all like Alec is just sitting there being like, is my how dumb's my son? He's sitting there wondering, gauging, how stupid is my son? what is he going to do what is he going to do to fuck this up you know i mean like that style like you're like and then i bet you there's a hot second where he's like i might actually get away with this yeah at the very least you know like just gonna have to deal with the financial crimes yeah not gonna have to deal with the murders man you know alec was pissed off as hell when he found out the code was oh was his birthday he's like i should have tried it or he's in there he's like can't remember his birthday yeah or he's sitting there he's like Fuck, fuck, fuck. Well, unbeknownst to Alec, Paul had recorded a video at the dog kennel minutes before the murder. Paul had tried to FaceTime with his friend Rogan to show Rogan his dog tail injury just a couple of minutes before Alec killed everyone But since the reception was bad Rogan had only gotten audio which is when Rogan heard Alec in the background. But after the FaceTime failed, Paul took a video to send later. And while investigators watched the video of Paul trying to get a good shot of the dog's tail wound, they heard, much to their great relief, Maggie shouting in the background about her dog Bubba catching a bird. Then finally, they heard big ol' puss face himself, Alec Murdoch, calling after Bubba as well. With his extremely distinctive voice. Come here, Bubba! Come here, Bubba! Come here, Bubba! This proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Alec Murdoch was indeed at the scene after he said over and over again that he wasn't. Finally, though, investigators got one more piece of strong evidence. Months after sending away Alex Shirt to a crime lab for blood testing, the results finally came back positive. Microscopic blood spray invisible to the naked eye was indeed found on Alex Shirt, which meant that even if he had not been the one to pull the trigger, he had been there when they were killed. He was wearing some kind of covering. And so on July 14th, 2022, over a year after the murders were committed, Alec Murdoch was finally charged with the double homicide of his wife and son. Get him! Dick Harpootlian had gamely decided to stay by Alec's side until the end. After Alec was charged with murder, along with the dozens of other crimes, Harpootlian agreed to defend him in this case as well for, of course, another sizable retainer. He's getting his. Murder is a bigger charge than financial crimes. And so it was Harpootlian and attorney Jim Griffin at Alec's side when his trial began in January of 2023. Appropriately, a portrait of Alec's grandfather had to be removed from the courtroom during the trial. And that portrait of old Buster was never hung again. Burn it! Hopefully one day they'll hang Alec, though. Now, Harpootlian's original defense rested on Alec's claim that he had not gone out to the kennels that night prior to finding the bodies. And Dick had reportedly believed Alec when he said, I didn't kill nobody. I was never out there. I don't know what happened. And that was Dick's whole thing. I actually kind of again I don feel bad for him but I do think that he was he also was taken in in He was And so was Jim Griffin Like that like the way that Jim Griffin talks about in the first season fans of Alec in the first season of the Netflix documentary before he was charged with the murders, like the way Jim Griffin, like he had to have felt like such a fucking moron with how much, how much confidence he had talking about Alec Murdoch's innocence. That's his job. Yeah, of course. But the way it went down was wonderful. Honestly, it makes me want to hire him. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I don't think Dick Arbutley is a bad person to call if you need help. He's a great fucking lawyer. Yep. If you're an update, we are not against defense attorneys here. No. You have to be properly defended in court. We know that more people, like people are innocent and go to jail. It happens. And it's because they have bad lawyers. So you need to have a good lawyer, no matter what side you're on. But reportedly, old Dick was stunned in the silence when he was shown Paul's video, the one where Alec can clearly be heard calling for Bubba in the background. And so Harpootlian was reduced to just saying over and over again that Alec, he just didn't do it. And he was hoping that the jury would just kind of say, all right. And during his opening arguments, Harpootlian told the jury, quote, As you sit right there and right now, when you look at him, you have to believe he's innocent. He didn't do it. So basically Dick's defense was just look at that face, that sweet, sweet face. So pretty. I ask you, is that the face of a murderer? People say I've got the eyes of a cockatiel. They say that I've got the lifeless, lifeless eyes of a plush doll covered in blood. But I wouldn't say that's true But if you do give him the death penalty I want to make sure we do shoot him You gotta shoot him It's a bit of a pet issue Of mine That we must shoot him In the head if he does get the death penalty But listen Alec I gotta just say honestly It's way more humane this way It's much better than the electric chair Think of the money the state will save Think about shooting you in the head It costs $40 in electricity to kill someone with the electric chair. That's $40. The bullets, $15. Easy to do, and we're using the bullets anyway. Lethal injection will not work on you. You could take too much oxy. electric chair. That's $40. The bullets, electric chair. That's $40. The bullets, $15. Easy to do, and we're using the bullets anyway. Lethal injection will not work on you. You could take too much oxy. He's got thin bangs. Now, the solicitor in charge of prosecuting this case, Creighton Waters, didn't just have an amazing southern lawyer name. This is Creighton Waters, solicitor of the 14th district. Good thing he wasn't on the boat. Yeah, that's right. Dude, that guy's a fucking murderer. Yes. Also, goddamn good at his job yeah and he absolutely wiped the floor with dick harpootlian and jim griffin he worked 12 hours a day every day to make sure that alec murdoch went down he does this thing too in his cross-examination where he's like well i'm gonna try to save you some time here and he's just like we're not saving any time here we're gonna do this as long as we want to do this we're gonna sit here you're not gonna cut the time down no and it's like awesome it's watching him squirm That fucking moron should never put himself on the fucking stand. He really thought that his Lex Luthor looking face was going to win in that room. That's hilarious. But it has so many times in the past. I know. That's what he's good at, convincing a jury to fucking let someone off. But it's also the first time he's killed his family. So when he makes his next family and he kills them, he'll know way better. That's true. Well, besides the kennel video and the bloody shirt, Waters had also managed to get a hold of Murdoch's GPS data from his SUV, which tracked Alec's every movement on the night of the murder. But what really sunk Alec was a total unforced error, a mistake made by megalomaniacs the world over in criminal trials. Against the strong advice of his attorneys, Alec Murdoch took the stand in his own murder trial, where he was ripped to shreds by Creighton Waters. When asked about why he lied so much, specifically about the kennel video, Alec claimed that it was the oxy that made him all fuzzy, and that one lie simply led to another. And about his trail of lies, Alec famously said on the stand, quote, Oh, what a tangled web we weave. And he just said it so casually. He's like, oh, what a tangled web we weave. You know, I'll go, oh, what a tangled web we weave. It's just, you know, I lied, whatever. Because he's trying to act like, again, it's this minimizing of his involvement. Yeah, always minimizing. Whenever someone says that in a trial they should just get beat by the bailiff But he going to get it in jail I mean the judge when he fucking sentenced him he brought it up And he like you said oh what a tangled web we weave He hated it so much The judge actually brought it up in the sentencing. Well, it's because this idea, again, it's this cutesy folklore thing. You killed your fucking family. Yeah, no, no. Folksiness has no place in a murder trial. But when Alec Murdoch said, oh, what a tangled web we weave, Creighton Waters made Alec detail that tangled web. He made him talk about his financial crimes. He made him talk about all the bad shit that happened to his clients as a result of his financial crimes. He even made him talk about his habit of using his volunteer solicitor's badge to get out of drunk driving tickets. But most of all, Creighton was able to prove that Alec's claim that he was fuzzy because of the Oxycontin, that didn't hold water. See, while Alec was an addict, he was a fully functional addict who was regarded as an extremely competent lawyer throughout his decades of addiction. By the end, Alec's attempt at going up to charm a courtroom one last time backfired completely and served only to shatter any remaining credibility that Alec may have had. Good! Yeah. Now, Alec's defense was frail at best. Their strongest witness, for example, was a forensic engineer who claimed that the angle of the shotgun blast that killed Paul would have made it impossible for the 6'4 Alec Murdoch to be the killer, which discounted the fact that man is capable of crouching. It is not. I mean, not both. Well, instead, this expert insisted that the shooter could have been no taller than 5'2", which, to put it in a perspective, Ariana Grande's height. What'd she do? Where was she? Also, the Olsen twins. I'm thinking, where were they? Yeah. Where were those little girls? Los Angeles, probably. Oh, wow. New York. Good for them. Oh, wow. Yeah, also New York, AC. Yeah, I heard they're in the village. Yeah, wow. Good old times. Now, by the closing arguments, Dick Harpootlian was said to be a shell of his former self. As Valerie Bauerlein put it so well, Harpootlian sat at the defense table, quote, as motionless as a sphinx while the case failed around him. Jim Griffin was therefore left to close, but couldn't do any better than saying that the jury should vote not guilty because the state didn't have enough evidence to 100 percent prove Alec Murdoch's guilt. We having a dis apparently there a big issue currently with jury educations about the idea of what a shadow of a doubt means Well that why Casey Anthony went free Yes and they having a problem telling him It being like no it doesn We're now going on to the other side. Just because there isn't a picture of him and video of him actively shooting them and then their dead bodies, them standing up saying Alec Murdoch murdered me. That's not how it always is going to be. Yeah. But since the case was so weak, the jury was incredibly quick to deliver a verdict. Only one juror had to be swayed, but not because Harpootlian and Griffin had made their case. Instead, this juror flat out could not believe that a person could kill their own family. She thought that it was literally impossible. This is why it's like, these are our peers. That's a good pick for Harpootlian. Oh, yes. It's a very good pick for Harpootlian. He's like, that one's mine. I told you I'd pick her. Oh, yeah. I knew that would be good. I could tell by the way she held that tea cozy coaster in her body. But after the rest of the jurors assured this sweet moron that it was indeed very possible and that it in fact happened every single day somewhere on this earth. God, you think the idea of teaching her single-handedly every single incident of familial side? Yeah. That's got to be amazing. Andrea Yates. Yeah. There's just a secret. Be like, this one, this one, this one. I don't know. Gene Simmons. And it's just like Chris Watts. Yeah, Benoit. Chris Watts and Chris Benoit. And Chris. Chris is a bad name. Alec Murdoch was finally found guilty for the murders of his wife and son and was subsequently sentenced to life in prison. Three hour jury deliberation. Three hours. I mean, that's incredible. And an hour of that was them convincing some moron that, yes, family members do kill each other. Yes. I wonder why they didn't give him the death penalty. I am actually wondering that myself. I do believe it is. There are aggravating circumstances that have to be hit. There are things that they do with, like, they flesh it out. And I bet he was a part of the sentencing where they kind of talk about, like, aggravating circumstances. Like, you know how when, like, one of our favorite things, when someone murders somebody and then they, like, pull out their uterus and choose with it and then, like, make their face a puppet and stuff like that. Yeah, I know all about that. And they rape the body a bunch. They'll be like, I'm aggravated now. Yeah, yeah. That's aggravating circumstances. But if you just murder your family, I might be right. SideStory is L-P-O-T-L-O-G-M-I-L-E. But at pretty certain he just didn hit certain factors that activate the death penalty I think it the last break that he ever got Probably Might be Now as far as the peanut gallery in Alec Murdoch life went his banker, Russell Lafitte, negotiated a plea deal for his role in the embezzlement of funds and could be released from prison as early as 2027. You're free to sail the seas again. And I'll find the treasure under the axe. His other partner in embezzlement, however, Corey Fleming, decided to fight. That was the wrong move. And Corey Fleming was sentenced just last year to pay $3.75 million in restitution, in addition to a term of 13 years in prison. Unlucky number. And it is. It is. Those, of course, were Alec's partners in his financial crimes. Again and again, the question arises as to whether or not Alec Murdoch had any partners in the murders. specifically in the cleaning up of the murders. And while they cannot prove it, the prosecution did believe that someone helped Alec by at the very least disposing of the gun. Somebody had to. They didn't find him. They found him nowhere. Now, you'd think the likeliest suspect here would be Fast Eddie, but I don't think Alec would have trusted him with something this important. He'd still be hiding. He's slow. I think that Fast Eddie literally is just like, the most I can do is pills. the most you really want to fucking depend on me i want to do this for you but you do not want me to do this for you know what i'm saying i'm trying to help you by not helping you well instead i personally think and again this is just my opinion that buster was the other person involved here and possibly john marvin see i still feel like john marvin was top position buster i think a buster I don't know if Buster's the sharpest crayon in the box. I don't think he's able to do it. Well, listen to this. I think Buster, I've known... He's an Eric Trump. I've known many Busters over the years. He's not an idiot. He's not stupid. I think Paul was probably dumber than Buster was. Oh, yeah, Paul was mean and a fucking little rat. Yeah, I think Buster's just kind of lazy. And like you said, he was handed everything his whole life. So when it came time to actually do work, he didn't know how to fucking do it. You know, he just coasted. Ben, listen to this. Let's just get into this for a second. If you'll remember, Buster's life was pretty much over after he got kicked out of law school. And the only thing he had left in this life was what his... Ben, listen to this. Let's just get into this for a second. Ben, listen to this. Let's just get into this for a second. If you'll remember, Buster's life was pretty much over after he got kicked out of law school. And the only thing he had left in this life was what his father could offer him by being a Murdoch in the Lowcountry. That could have been quite a bit. Could have been. Buster, therefore, had motive to do whatever his father asked him to do. Yes. As for proof, I got none. Nothing. Bubkiss. But there is a very suspicious jailhouse phone call in which Alec seems to be asking Buster to go out to Moselle to do something. We just don't know what. And this call, by the way, was made after Alec was arrested for his financial crimes, but before he was charged with murder. So if there was any evidence out at Moselle, like, say, the murder weapons, SLED hadn't found anything just yet. Let's listen to this call. What you doing? Nothing at Greenfield. I got you. Is Brooklyn with you? She is. Well, good. Y'all hunting? We're going to this afternoon. Let me tell you what you ought to do, Buster. I think them damn feeders were full over there at Moselle. If you felt like going back there, I bet with nothing going on, I bet there's deer all over them things. I don't mean that. What's that going to do for me? What's that going to do for me? Kill a deer? I'm not going hunting out there. I don't blame you. I was just making you know. Buster, also I wanted to tell you this. I just remembered this. You know, they replanted those sunflowers. Do you have any interest in hunting that field? No. Do you care if I let Jim do it? No. You sure? Yes. You want me to come to call you if we hunt? Well, I should be out by then. Jim who? Jim Griffin. Oh, let him hunt deer out there or what are you talking about? No, I'm talking about, I didn't know if you wanted to hunt doves out there. If you do, then I want you to do it. If not, then I'm going to let him do it. You know how to facilitate a dove hunt? What? I said he knows how you want a dove hunt out there no not at all all right now that call could be interpreted in multiple ways you know it could be alex speaking in code what's dove hunting what's deer hunting it also could be buster being simply reluctant to return to the place where his mother and brother were murdered just so he could bag a deer yeah it was also that his father's insistence but there are some very interesting sentences some very interesting things that buster says for example how to facilitate a dove hunt that's a big one let me get to that here in a second first one what's that going to do for me how that's a very interesting like when he asked like you know what do you get like you want to go out and hunt deer because he's telling them that the deer feeders have been full out in moselle no one's been out there. There's probably a ton of deer everywhere. You can go out there. And he says, what's that going to do for me? Which is a weird thing to say. That's a very strange thing to say. Sure, shit sounds to me like Alec wanted Buster to do something that Buster didn't want to do. And when Buster said he didn't want to do it, it sounded like Alec asked if Buster cared if Alec's other attorney, Jim Griffin, did it instead. And also what gets me is the question, does Jim know how to facilitate a dove hunt? I don't know what the fuck that means. I grew up going on dove hunts. I've been on dozens of dove hunts. I've been fucking shot on a dove hunt. You just shoot the doves, right? The only thing you need to facilitate a dove hunt is a shotgun and a box of shells. You don't have to facilitate a dove hunt. You walk into a field. Drunk teenagers do it every day. You walk into a field with a gun and you shoot dove. That's it. Also, a prison call is an audio medium just like this, which you don't hear in an audio medium. It's something like this, which is you're not hearing it because you're listening to a podcast. What are you talking about? No one has any idea what you're doing right now. Exactly. It's exactly why. It's because it's a prison call. So if it's on a prison call, you can hold a piece of paper up against the window with the thing written on it and no one's going to know what it is that you're saying. He is calling them from home. Yes, but they all, or there are also calls where he goes in. This is a phone call. But I'm saying before this, you can communicate visually on the prison call that can allow them to then set up other things later on. So you can start, this is the code. Yeah. Then you can go and talk about the code. Code for dove hunt. They do it all the time They did a Corey We seeing right now in the Corey Richards trial She just got nailed for that because she was going into the prison calls hold doing witness tampering by holding it up against the fucking plate glass So what you think the, uh, the guns are in the fucking sunflower field. I think there was a river. Well, I mean the sunflower field does come up on the day of the murder. Um, they were out, uh, was it Paul and, uh, Alec, uh, the Snapchat video that, uh, Paul took, it was in the sunflower field. So they were in the sunflower field on the day of the murder. the sunflower i mean who knows what's out in the sunflower field but he was out there alec was out there on the day of the murder you like to believe they searched it you'd like to believe they did and they probably did but who knows i mean there might be something out there maybe deer feeders like code for something you know maybe there's something there in the deer feed who knows but it does sound extraordinarily suspicious there's just a lot of suspicious shit here too many family members have been murdered yes and this to be an innocuous phone call yes and too many family members have been connected to and or convicted of murder in this family for you not to listen to their phone calls with a little bit of suspicion like they earned it yeah i'm not gonna give them credit now yeah they earned that suspicion now while it is unlikely that buster is ever going to be investigated or even questioned in the murders of his mother his brother stephen smith for that matter his life is still for all intents and purposes over the murderous murdoch legacy that Buster was counting on, the one that Buster's father and his father's father had used to coast through life, it's just as ruined, tasteless, and bloody as the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am t-shirt that Paul Murdoch was wearing on the night that Alec Murdoch killed him. I gotta get one of those. And all of this happened because one family decided that they were the kings of their own little slice of America. But in America, as it's been since 1776, men who believe they are kings always And I mean always get what's fucking coming sooner or later Just like Alec Murdoch T public and get yourself a wham bam Vicki BAM sure yeah go to spread shirt and get the way don't get that sure that's spread shirt spread don't get the wham bam thank you man if you want the only place to get that shirt is from a merch booth at a Nugent concert or Spencer Gifts if you don have a Spencer Gifts local you can buy that shirt You might be able to buy I don know if Gadzooks is still open You can maybe buy it there. All Paul ever did was finger somebody. Well, you know, what a great fucking series, buddy. Yeah, you, everyone. Really good work. Thank you. You as well. I'm glad we could probably never talk about these motherfuckers again. Until he gets killed in prison. We'll see what Buster does. Or until the appeal. Yeah, we never know. I mean, as far, the last I checked, Buster still, like, he lives, I think, in Beaufort County. He just got married. He got married to Brooklyn. Yeah, May 3rd. Yeah, and his friends, we actually got many messages saying that they played golf around Buster. They know where Buster goes shopping. They know where he goes to the gym. They know all the kind of stuff. So Buster's being very much so watched. He's not returned to law school either. No. I wonder why. he's got to live somewhere you know yeah well hopefully he gets into politics yeah let's let's hope so buster murdoch our next attorney general we need some good democrats in there shake it up we get buster murdoch kyle rittenhouse you can finally get me to the voting polls don't you want me there my favorite guy something i love better than a bunch of tubby little fucks ruining life for other good tubby fucks come to patreon.com slash podcast 11 you could pay money to join us live for last stream on the left 6 p.m pst some things have changed in our patreon one thing it has not changed is that you could still absolutely get last podcast on the left and side stories ad free podcast form on patreon yeah you're also going to get the new video of our brand new movie podcast that ed and i are doing last letterbox on the left that will be, the audio will be on SiriusXM, the video will be on Patreon. You're going to get that, you're going to get a new watch-along series with fucking Ed Larson, and then the new top tier $25 givers to our Patreon can submit videos that we will show, and then we are going to shoot a wholly separate last podcast, last stream on the left, after dark scenario, in which we will be doing it just for the Patreon, so you'll be able to watch those videos on your own, and they don't go to YouTube, nobody else gets it. It's for you. I'm just going to start putting last blank on the left last prolapse on the left wait until I get my last colonoscopy last hemorrhoid on the left nothing changes with the stream the stream is exactly the same Last prolapse on the last. Last prolapse on the last. Last prolapse on the last. Wait till I get my last colonoscopy on the last. Last hemorrhoid on the last. Nothing changes with the stream. The stream is exactly the same. It's going to YouTube. People were asking about that. It's going to the same. This video, you're going to see on Netflix. Yeah. Check that out. All right? Just check that out. It's right there. Side stories still coming out. Everything's exactly the same. Go check out our YouTube pages for LPN TV, someplace underneath LPN Romantasy, No Dogs in Space, and The Foreign Report. You can still go over there. Go check it out. Take it out. And don't forget to come see us on tour. We're going to be going to all sorts of cities over this year, this year of our Lord. 2020. 2026. Tomorrow, you can see us in Philadelphia at the Met. Get your freaking heinies out there. That's a big-ass theater. We sold a shit ton of tickets, but we still got a couple left. Come and see us there. I can't wait. You know, that's where they filmed 12 Monkeys. Really? Yeah. In the shitty theater place? Yeah. It's the Met. Oh, that's amazing. How cool is that? And then they fixed it all up, and now we get to perform there. Oh, yeah. We played in a bunch of shooting galleries over the years. Gentrification. It real It kind of amazing February 28th Austin Texas March 13th Indianapolis April 25th Cincinnati May 29th Pittsburgh June 27th Grand Rapids Michigan July 17th, Tulsa, Oklahoma. And July 18th, Oklahoma City. Oklahoma. That's where that fucking place is. Also, there's a whole bunch of shows. Side stories added a bunch of shows. Just go to lastpodcastontheleft.com to find out what shows we're doing by you. And if you want to see me do stand-up, go to anytunes.com to look for all dates there. We love you so much. I can't wait to meet you and shake your hand because I just want to shake your hand. I want to shake your hand. All right, guys. Well, hail Satan. Hail your hand. Yes. And hail Bird Luger, Kevin Barnett. Yeah. Our boy. Seven years today, man. Jesus fucking Christ. I love you, man. I miss you so much. Yeah, we do, man. Every day. He's up in my room. It's good to see him looking down upon me. That's right. I slapped Julie's ass for him today. Really great. That's nice. That's nice. I know he likes that. That's nice. I'm going to go home and play some Dark Souls. Hell yeah. For him. That's a great idea.