Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Alex Murdaugh Court Clerk's Ghostwriter Tells All as SLED Confirms Criminal Investigation

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Neil Gordon co-wrote a book about Alex Murdaugh's double murder trial with Clerk of Court, Becky Hill, who's come under fire for plagiarism and allegations of jury tampering. Gordon is revealing how he discovered the plagiarism and where he'll donate his share of the profits from the sale of the book. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with Gordon and FITSNews founder Will Folks about Hill's mysteriously missing county-issued cell phone in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show about the biggest stories in crime.HOST:Angenette Levy: twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. Becky Hill, the clerk of court in Alec Murdoch's double murder trial, is officially under criminal investigation for jury tampering and using her job for financial gain. Could it be related to her book, which contained plagiarism? Her ghostwriter is here to tell all, and where he might be donating part of his profits from that book that's become part of a Southern scandal. I'm Antoinette Levy. It's Wednesday and this is Crime Fix, Law and Crime's look at the biggest stories in crime. The hits keep coming for

Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill. SLED, or South Carolina's Law Enforcement Division, which investigated the murder of Alec Murdoch's wife Maggie and son Paul, has confirmed it has two criminal investigations open into Hill. A spokesperson told me in a statement that the one investigation regards alleged interactions with the jury in the state versus Richard Alexander Murdoch, and the second is regarding allegations she used her elected position for personal gain. We Newsled was investigating the jury tampering allegations leveled by Alec Murdoch's defense team because of his motion for a new trial, but calling it a criminal investigation takes things to an entirely new level. The second part, using her elected position for personal gain, that possibly has

to do with her book, Behind the Doors of Justice, co-written by a man named Neil Gordon. Now this isn't the only trouble that Hill could be in. Her son, Jeff Colt Hill, faces a wiretapping charge, accused of eavesdropping on a county employee. Fitz News says it was to keep his mom up to date on a pending Ethics Commission investigation regarding the book and other allegations. Becky Hill was served with a search warrant for her county-issued phone late last year. Here's Fitz News founder Will Foggs with information on the phone that Hill turned over to SLED. They received a cell phone. The problem is it's not the cell phone they were looking for. The warrant that was tied to the wiretapping investigation of Colt Hill, Becky Hill's son,

specifically specified a Samsung device, the phone that Becky Hill used during the double homicide trial of Alec Murdoch last winter. That was the device that was sought, but what they received was an iPhone, which apparently, according to our sources, has very limited evidentiary value. And so the question is, where is Becky Hill's original phone? But that has really, Ingenet, led into a bigger question of alleged obstruction, not only involving that device, but also the phones of her son, two of which have allegedly been destroyed, two of which were turned over to investigators after they were restored to factory settings. And again, we still don't know whether we have the right cell phone for Becky Hill. So a lot of drama with the phones down here in South Carolina.

Her son was obviously the head of IT for Colleton County. But do we know, was there a cloud attached to the phone? Anything on her phone related to county business would have been a public record, including texts, emails, anything of the sort. Was clearly a government device. And what's very interesting is that as the ethics investigations into Becky Hill were escalating, her son took the step of removing her phone line from the county and into a personal account for Becky Hill. So at the very moment where the ethics investigations were starting to gain some intensity, where Becky Hill was starting to come into the microscope, they took the cell phone off of the county plan and put it on Becky Hill's personal plan. Now, what they didn't do

initially anyway was return the device. And what's interesting about that is that the cell phone that Becky Hill used during the trial, again, this government-issued Samsung device, she was apparently still using that up until September the 5th. And if you want to know why that September the 5th date is important, that's the day that Alec Murdoch's attorneys dropped their motion accusing her of tampering with the jury. So all of a sudden, that phone is then gone. So according to folks, SLED did not get the phone that they were looking for. Now Hill's ghostwriter for Behind the Doors of Justice, Neil Gordon, is distancing himself from Becky Hill and her scandals. He tells me SLED agents contacted him and his wife in the last two months, specifically asking when his wife met Becky Hill. Gordon

discovered the plagiarism late last month, which Hill has admitted to through her attorney, citing deadline pressure, which of course was self-imposed since the book was self-published. Here's part of my discussion with Neil Gordon, where we started by discussing how he discovered that plagiarism right before Christmas. Well, there was a big email dump that occurred on December the 21st, a Thursday. I remember it very well just before Christmas. We were getting ready for Christmas in the background and I spent Thursday evening for six hours looking through emails that were released from Colleton County, Becky Hill's

emails that occurred between her and different people. And I discovered actually Friday morning that there was an email, page 1644 of her email, and I discovered it was between her and a writer with the BBC. And it looked a little bit odd to me for a couple of reasons. She was emailed by the BBC along with a producer at the BBC, and it just seemed a little odd. And then I noticed a long text. And the material started off with, on the 12th day of the trial, Alex Murdoch stared straight ahead, and I said, that's the opening of one of our chapters, and I said, oh my god, Becky, and I kind of held my head, hands on my head, and I was very concerned, and so I picked up one of our books, and that was the beginning of our preface. And then I kind of matched everything up and then I went ahead and I called Becky just to kind of understand if maybe there was some understanding that she had with this writer.

And after probing a little bit, that wasn't the case. And so I was extremely disappointed and pretty upset and felt a bit betrayed and just proceeded to try to make things right as soon as I learned about the plagiarism. You know, one of the things, you know, I think the explanation that was given to you or that you gave was that there was deadline pressure to get this book out. It was self-published. So what was the deadline pressure that she was feeling? Because she could have put this book out whenever she wanted to. Did she want to just be first? And I know if you work for a big publishing house, they probably have people that go through these things to ensure that this is not happening. Sure. Fair questions. When we first got together and chatted, we discussed that we would like to be the first book that comes out because this was such a big case. Not only did we want to be the first book that came out, but we knew that there was a pending boat trial that was going to happen that was going to decide

the fate of Alex Murdaugh's son, Paul Murdaugh, and that was scheduled for around August the 1st. So we spoke with the people that we paid, our literary agent and an editor that kind of helped us with proofreading and development of the chapters. send us back questions for you to answer, for us to format the book, to get the front cover and the back cover design done, and to work everything out with Amazon. That would have given a couple of months for that. So that was around the time. May 31st was really our deadline. And on June the 2nd, I got a PDF that was the work of Holly from the BBC that Becky had sent. And Becky had sent it and mentioned to us that she had been taking notes through the trial and just sort of wrote it from her notes and that this would help us, I guess, with our word count. Gordon runs a business news website, and in journalism, there's probably no worse crime than plagiarism. It's literally stealing someone else's work. Gordon said he reached out to the BBC reporter in the hope of salvaging the book.

Well, I wrote Holly, the author of the article, on that Friday, December 22nd, very soon after I spoke with Becky on the telephone, and she was extremely upset. She said, under no circumstances do you have permission to use my work and the BBC attorneys will be getting in touch with you. And that was about it. And it's been, I guess, about two and a half weeks later, and we have yet to hear back on it. But my understanding is, and I had a little bit more communication with Holly, and my understanding is Becky reached out to Holly as well. So Gordon said he and Becky Hill decided to pull the book, but it appears that was easier said than done. And all of the publicity about the plagiarism actually helped sales a lot. It's now a best

seller on Amazon. 900 paperbacks that Amazon had in stock sold. The contract, Gordon said, allowed Amazon to sell the remaining books in stock, despite him pulling the plug on the audiobook. I obtained a copy of an ethics opinion Hill had requested last spring. It clearly says that public officials were not supposed to use their positions for economic interest for themselves. Gordon told me that a media lawyer told him and Hill that they had the green light to move forward with the book. So how much money do you expect to bring in from the sales of the book that could not be halted? And how much do

you get from that? Oh, sure. So there's some general expenses that you have in general in producing a book and other types of administrative costs and such. But we get basically a few dollars per book would be our net share after expenses. And so whatever monies that we receive and separate from that, Becky Hill receives her share separate from that. So we receive a few dollars per book as a net share. And for every single book that comes in. So at $900, it's probably a little bit more than $2,000. It's $2 in change that we receive. So whatever that ends up, we are going to donate that to some charities in the Lowcountry. There's been so much good that has come out of so much bad in that area. Gloria Satterfield's family have started a foundation in her honor. Stephen Smith's family has done the same for scholarships to help people with their education.

And there's also some other really good foundations and scholarships in the Lowcountry. So all of those proceeds are going to go. I don't know where it stops. I can tell you they don't have any more hardcover copies in stock. As you mentioned, there's no Kindle, there's no audio book. So it's whenever the paperbacks run out and the sales have been slowing down. So you're looking at a different, a couple of different charities, whether it's the Gloria Satterfield Family Foundation, possibly the Stephen Smith Family Foundation. You're looking at places that, you know, you feel could really benefit from the money, even if it's not, you know, a huge amount of money. Oh, yeah, of course. And Jeanette, it's very, very important to my wife, Melissa, and I

that charities benefit from something that happened that I would say was very, very bad. We're trying to turn this into something good and help people in the future. We expected no books to be available once the box unpublished was checked back on December 22nd. We did not understand first-time self-publishers that Amazon has a right based on the algorithms of how sales have gone over the last several months that they may overprint some books and warehouse them. And that's exactly what happened. You know, I think when we first spoke back in September, you were defending Becky. There's been a lot of information, though, that's come out. You know, her son has now been charged with wiretapping. Her phone has been seized through a search warrant by SLED. Things are not exactly looking up for her.

You know, that doesn't none of that means she tampered with a jury. But how are you viewing all of this now? Looking back on it? Well, on a personal level for our family, we seem to have been intertwined because the book has been at the center of this from the moment the press conference occurred on September 5th, now through plagiarism, which is calling into question her integrity and her credibility. And that may come up actually at the upcoming evidentiary hearing. So it's very disappointing. I was mentioning to someone, it almost feels like we've got caught in the Becky blender and we really don't want to be.

Melissa and I have been married now for 16 years, and we've always been entrepreneurial storytellers. Her with her photos and me with my words. And this was the first chance we had to work together on a book project. So it started out so wonderfully, and unfortunately, it has taken a turn. I continue to try to see the good in people and to be trusting and know that everybody is human and makes mistakes and so forth. And all I can do is be honorable and tell the truth and be as transparent as possible. But Neil, does it bother you that had you not gone through that trove of emails, that she would never have said anything to you about this and

that she knew full well that she stole that article from the BBC reporter? She would have continued to allow this book to sell and would have kept that from you. Obviously, she came clean. She had to. She couldn't deny it. The proof was it was too unrefutable. But she wouldn't have told you ever. Yeah, I felt very betrayed by that. And it was kind of brazen because there were quotes from several prominent attorneys in that chapter that was lifted, many of which probably read the book and may have wondered about this because they never spoke to Becky. They never gave an interview to Becky. I heard about that from one such attorney who said it never gave an interview to Becky. I heard about that from one such attorney who said it never gave an interview to Becky. So it was kind of brazen to think that that could have been hidden forever and ever. Doesn't seem very logical to me. Are you still in close contact with Becky,

speaking with her every now and then, or how is that going? I haven't spoken with Becky since we had a discussion back on December 22nd about the plagiarism. who helps run the business side of Wind River Media LLC, which is the corporation that takes care of the publishing of the book. He's very helpful in terms of figuring out all of our expenses, paying the bills and such. So I am in touch with him, but I have not been in touch with Becky. So you don't know if Becky Hill and Tommy, her husband, plan to donate their portion of the recent sales or their profits to charity or whether or not they plan to keep them? I have no idea. I reached out to Becky Hill's lawyer to ask what she plans to do with her share of the profits from the remaining sales of the book.

At the time of this recording, I had not yet heard back. That's it for this edition of Crime Fix for Wednesday, January 10th, 2024. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being here with us. We will see you back here tomorrow. Until then, have a great night. You can download Crime Fix on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your favorite podcasts and new episodes post each weeknight at 6 Eastern time on Law and Crime's YouTube channel. Daniel Camacho does our video editing. Our head of social media is Bobby Zoki. Our senior director of social media is Vanessa Vine. Savannah Williamson is one of our producers.

Diane Kay and Alyssa Fisher book our guests. And Brad Mabey is our audio editor.