Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Alex Murdaugh Files Bombshell Lawsuit Against Clerk

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Alex Murdaugh has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the former clerk of court whose actions led to him being granted a new trial. Murdaugh's suit claims Becky Hill's comments to jurors during the trial violated his civil rights and now he wants her to pay. The suit comes after the South Carolina Supreme Court found Hill's conduct with jurors "egregious" and "shocking." Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes through the allegations in the lawsuit in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can start your claim in just a click without having to leave your couch: https://www.forthepeople.com/CrimeFixHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest 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.

I mean, this thing had more holes in it than Swiss G. Now that Alec Murdoch has a new trial for the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son Paul, a second fight is unfolding behind the scenes. He's now going up against the woman the state's highest court, says may have tainted the jury that convicted him, and it changes everything. I'll explain. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy, and this is Crime Fix. Before I get into this latest twist in the Murdoch case and Alex's new says, of a lawsuit, I want to tell you about a law firm called Morgan and Morgan. It's a firm that's

been fighting for the people for more than 35 years and has recovered more than $30 billion for clients. The proof is in the track record with more than a thousand lawyers across 100 offices nationwide. Hiring Morgan and Morgan is like hiring an army to go into battle for you, a team that will fight hard to get their clients the compensation they deserve. Not all law firms are the same. one and you may be beat before you even start. If you're ever injured, you can check out Morgan and Morgan and their fee is free unless you win. For more information, you can go to for the people dot com slash crime fix, click the link below or scan that QR code that you see right there on your screen. Alec Murdoch is getting a new trial for the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul,

the Supreme Court of South Carolina, made no bones about it. The court's five justices wrote that Alec Murdoch's right to a fair trial was violated in part by the now disgraced clerk of court Becky Hill. And now Alec Murdoch wants Becky Hill to pay for that sin and pay handsomely. He outlines why in a new lawsuit. I'll get to that shortly. But first, a quick recap in case you haven't followed along. Becky Hill ran the Colleton County Courthouse where Murdoch's double murder trial was held in early 2023, she was in charge and even read the verdict. The state's high court found that Becky Hill made improper comments to the jury, or at least attempted to do so when she told jurors not to be fooled by Murdoch's attorneys and to watch him closely, meaning Murdoch,

when he testified. The Supreme Court's five justices wrote that Hill egregiously attacked Murdoch's credibility and his defense. They called her jury interference shocking. Now, Murdoch is getting a new trial and the Attorney General's office is vowing to retry Murdoch quickly. Well, obviously we're disappointed and we disagree with the court's decision, but we respect the court and we respect the process. And, you know, I've been doing this a long time. It's unfortunate, but, you know, you just dust yourself off and go do the job again. And that's what we plan to do. Right now, we still could potentially seek rehearing. We could potentially seek cert from the U.S. Supreme Court. And we are going to, you know, discuss that internally a little bit.

But I think right now, you know, from my perspective, our goal is just to take this thing up again and get it as soon as reasonably possible. And, you know, I certainly think we would be looking for some time in the fall or before the end of the year. But obviously we will get with the assigned judge. The defense is going to have their own position on that. And ultimately, the judge will decide, you know, what date is set. I also asked Creighton Waters, the lead prosecutor on the Murdoch cases, how the state's high court saw attempted jury tampering with Becky Hill. But he and his prosecutors didn't when it came to Hill, who was later charged with perjury and misconduct in public office. She pleaded guilty to those charges.

The perjury had to do with the fact that she, in violation of a court order, sealing those crime scene images that we tried to protect from being leaked out, allowing members of the media to take pictures of it. That's what her perjury charge was. And let me be clear. We never once said that Becky's conduct was okay or anything like that. What we said to the court, and this is also what Judge Toll found after interviewing and having that hearing with all those jurors was that these comments were not such that swayed this jury. And again, our argument was after six weeks of trial, Judge Newman there, 75 witnesses, 550 exhibits, the prosecution team, the defense team, all of that evidence that a few, um,

untoward comments from the clerk just didn't sway the day. And that's the argument we made, and that's what Judge Toll found. The Supreme Court, and I understand them not wanting to sanction this kind of conduct from a court official, they saw it differently. That's their prerogative, and so we move on from there. But Justice Toll did say she did not have credibility. She had credibility issues, essentially. So. Right. Our, and what Justice Toll found in her order, in our position was it was about the jurors, not about Becky. No one was here to rely entirely on Becky. We relied on the jurors. 11 of them said that there was no possible effect whatsoever. And one of them who did

kind of him and haul, the judge identified some issues with that person's testimony. And so that's what we relied on. And again, that's what Judge Toll found. Supreme Court saw it differently. And again, that's their prerogative. Now to the federal civil rights lawsuit, Alec Murdoch, has filed against Becky Hill. We filed a lawsuit on behalf of Richard Alexander Murdoch Sr. versus Rebecca Hill. In this lawsuit, we filed it under the federal civil rights statute, 42, United States Code 1983, to redress constitutional deprivation of rights. Those rights were Alex's right to a fair trial, a right that him be tried.

before an untampered, untainted jury. With the South Carolina Supreme Court's ruling, it has been a judge as a matter of state law that she deprived Alec of his constitutional rights, deprived him of a right to a fair trial, and as a result, we've got to do it all over again, which nobody wants to do. The federal lawsuit alleges jury tampering by Becky Hill,

and it claims Alec Murdoch spent the $600,000 he had from retirement accounts on his defense for the murder trial. Murdoch is suing Hill for that amount and possibly even more. The damages that we've alleged include the over $600,000 that was spent trial in the first case and other compensatory damages. Now let me be clear. Alec Murdoch owes a lot of people, a lot of money. None of this money that is recovered will go to him personally. And the purpose of this lawsuit is to hold Becky Hill accountable for what she did. She has not been held account at all for her conduct. And two is to investigate exactly what she did, which we'll be able to do through the course of civil litigation. We have subpoena power. We can take depositions. And so we're, we're going to be able to understand the entire scope.

her conduct. She's yet to be thoroughly investigated by the state, and she's not been held accountable by the state. And that's what we hope to do. That's what we intend to do. And that's what we will do with this lawsuit. Murdoch's defense team is looking to investigate the allegations of jury tampering by Becky Hill. The attorneys are wondering, was anyone else involved in trying to influence this jury? Once the trial was over, we don't have the power to subpoena. We don't have the power to really investigate it all. All we did was after the trial was looking to the jury misconduct, and we went around, rode around in Colleton County for a couple months through the swamp,

on the dirt roads, to find these jurors and asking questions. But once a judge is appointed, and I think we got an order on Friday that the Chief Justice has said, once the remitator is issued, which means right now the Supreme Court has the case, They got to remit it to a trial court and he'll do that we think in the next couple weeks. So at that point, then we will have some people, then we will have the ability to investigate. Now, we were given some information through the discovery during the motion for new trial stage. Have they, is that all they've done? We don't know.

But if that is all they've done, that really wasn't much of an investigation. really don't think they've done much of an investigation, but we certainly plan to. And let me say this. This also was a Freedom of Information Act served on SWED to get additional information. We've seen that too. Does it make sense to have the agency who has an inherent conflict? They want the conviction sustained investigating whether it was valid or not. I mean, It just seems ridiculous. And again, I think the Attorney General's fault is not asking for some independent. He could have gotten a Sheriff's Department of it.

Leon Lott folks or the sheriff up in Spartan, not Spartan, but Greenville, have a very sophisticated sheriff's department. Charleston also. Use them. But SLED is invested in affirming the conviction. They don't want to find any fault. I mean, that's just human nature. So we think there's going to be plenty of things that weren't looked into. And we want to look into those.

And the question is, Jim and Phil and I've been talking about this. Did she do it alone? Did she have somebody help her with this? And if you were sitting in the judge's chambers like we were, when she brought in information on the jury, you would call the egg lady, we call Myra Crosby, listened to what she had to say. One time it was totally made up about some Facebook page.

The second time, inexplicably, an anonymous email came to the judge. We weren't told about it. It was investigated by the Attorney General's office, and Sway, without us being involved. No guardrails on that. But, I mean, and call us naive, because we were. We didn't press that.

And I looked back on it. We should have, with 2020 hindsight, we maybe should have taken a a little more aggressive. But we still couldn't have needle that onion back then. But we will now. One of the areas that Murdox attorneys say they want to investigate, what was really behind this effort to remove the juror known as the Egg Lady, juror 785, Myra Crosby? But we have a lot of questions that we would like answer. You know, was she a lone wolf? Was she doing it just for the, you know, souring of celebrity, which she definitely was?

And then I'll tell you, this removal of the egg lady juror is very suspicious. And that really wasn't a part of the case. We do make it a part of our complaint. We point out all of the inconsistencies of what she said. According to Judge Newman, that the egg lady, Ms. Crosby's ex-husband, had posted something on Facebook, which we now know was a bald-faced lie, or someone lied her. I mean, it makes no sense. Myra Crosby's lawyer, Joe McCullough, has asked a judge to lift protective orders on the material

related to the jury tampering investigation so SLED can release the material to him. At the time of this, recording Becky Hill's lawyers have not responded to the lawsuit. It was just filed. And it's not clear where or when Alec Murdoch's retrial will be held. The defense says next year, the state wants Murdoch retried this year, if possible. Murdoch's team says they have received new evidence since the first trial, and there's other information they plan to exploit. Well, we pointed out during the last trial that they did find a male, unknown male DNA

who was not related to any Murdoch or any of Maggie's family under her fingernail. That was not really followed up on. We asked that they follow up on that before the last trial. We don't have possession of that DNA, so we can't do anything with it. We can, perhaps, with a new case, back to square one, go and seek an order from the court to compel them to send it off to CODIS. CODIS is the national DNA database. So, I mean, if we were in charge and we had the facilities, the forensic lab, they had the sled, and we had search warrant abilities, we would have done things a lot different.

and more timely. A lot of that opportunity is lost, and so that's unfortunate. John, we've gotten a lot of information. People are out there working on behalf of Alec for free, kind of like we are, and they've unearthed some really interesting stuff, and they've turned a significant amount over that to SLED. We'll be curious to see if SLED has done anything with it or will do anything with it. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has said the death penalty may be back on

the table for Alec Murdoch in a retrial which has irked Murdoch's defense attorneys. Clearly, he is not talking to the lawyers in his office. He's probably talking to his political consultants who thought that was a good soundbite for his governor's campaign. The law is clear that he cannot seek the death penalty if it is due to vindictive prosecution. That is, and here's the question. What does he know today he didn't know for? five years ago. Why is he saying he's going to seek the death penalty? Is there some new piece of evidence? So we're a little sick and tired, and we've seen this process since the beginning of this case, where Alan Wilson plays politics as opposed to playing prosecutor. He's got great lawyers,

great lawyers on his staff. He should listen to them, defer to their judgment. Coincidentally, He has not looked into the attempted jury tampering of Becky Hill. We're going to talk about a civil suit in a minute. But clearly the statute says whoever tamperes with a jury or attempts to tamper with a jury is guilty of a crime. Judge told fact findings were clear. Becky Hill attempted. The Supreme Court last week, Becky Hill attempted. So please, Alan, focus on your job and not the politics.

In response, Alan Wilson issued the following statement. This case is being treated exactly as it should be as a brand new trial. Every legal option is on the table and those discussions are happening as they should happen with the dedicated prosecutors and staff within the Attorney General's office, not as part of some campaign apparatus. In 2022, the legal and practical realities surrounding the death penalty were very different. South Carolina had not carried out and, execution in more than a decade. That has changed and it is one of several factors that must now be considered as we move forward. Mr. Harputlian himself acknowledged that the Becky Hill matter was previously referred to and reviewed by an independent prosecutor. Those issues were already evaluated outside of our office. What is disappointing is watching Dick Harputlian and Jim Griffin spend their time trashing sled and attacking South Carolina law enforcement instead of treating this matter with the seriousness it deserves. At the end of the day, our responsibility is simple.

Follow the law, protect the integrity of the process, and ensure justice is pursued fairly and professionally. When a retrial happens, there's one witness who is expected to return to the stand, Mark Tinsley. He represented the family of Mallory Beach, who was killed in a boat crash in 2019. Paul Murdoch was driving that boat, and Tinsley was suing Alec Murdoch for the crash when Paul and Maggie were murdered.

He also represented Murdoch's financial crimes victims. Do you anticipate that that will be allowed next time because really the defense is saying like everything wasn't going to fall apart as the state contended? But what is your thought on that? And do you think that testimony from you will be allowed next time? I do think it is. I think it's probative. I think it's relevant.

I think the court clearly acknowledged that in its opinion. that everything was going to fall apart or ELEC saw a way to derail this train that was coming down the tracks. There are really two different things, right? The dog doesn't necessarily have to bite you for you to be afraid of it. And so, I mean, ELEC above anyone in the world at that moment knew the significance of the discovery of these financial crimes. He was facing 800 years in prison. He's pled guilty to these crimes. And so the consequence as a result of discovery is something Ehrlich would have known.

Even he didn't have the currency to be able to stop once that string was tugged and everything began to unravel. So, you know, he knew it. And, I mean, I think that there's probably a moment where he is concerned about what Jeannie Sechinger is doing and the law firm is doing. But he has snowed those people for years and he has gotten by with it. Mine is more pointed. is more relentless. And so all of those things from Tony Satterfield questioning, what is this? I'm reading about a settlement in this article to this upcoming hearing, to Jeannie Secondger and Chris Wilson and the bank. And there's all these things that are going on

that really lead him to this crazy but inevitable conclusion in his sick twisted mind. This is the only way to stop it for me. I have to be a victim. My father's about to die. The sympathies are going to be in my favor to begin with. And this will give me the breathing room or end it completely. Alec Murdoch maintains he did not do this. He maintains that he is factually innocent of this crime. Not that the state didn't prove its case, I mean, which he would say as a lawyer, but that he's factually innocent.

Is there any world in which you could see that he did not commit these crimes? No, no. And, you know, I mean, I see people speculate that, well, Well, he knows who did it or he was there and somehow that lessens his culpability in this. But one, I don't believe that's the case because Ehrlich was such a master manipulator. He would not have allowed someone to have that power over him. Somebody helping get rid of the guns and clean up? No, I don't think so.

I think it's all him because he wouldn't let somebody into this conspiracy that he had with his crazy self. You have said in the past that you believe, it's your belief, that he's, he had been planning this for some time that this wasn't spontaneous. I mean, some time has passed now. Do you still hold that belief and tell me about your belief, about when you believe your belief that he set this in motion? Because he is now, he's now an accused murderer. He is no longer a convicted murderer.

So the most successful liars weave some element of truth into their lie. Right. And so I don't, I didn't, that didn't, wasn't something I just thought of. It was what he actually said to his sister-in-law that whoever had been planning this had been planning it for a long time. And so I agree with what he said. And it wasn't until after we sort of begin to discover everything and the picture comes into focus that there's a moment in the civil case where I understand that at least conventional wisdom would be, ELEC would not want Maggie sued in the civil case, right? Maggie's credit card that Paul uses,

not just the night of the boat crash, but historically, repeatedly before that to purchase alcohol. Maggie owns half the boat. There's, I mean, there is liability as it relates to Maggie. And so I sent requests to admit because ELEC wasn't as vocal on social media, and this is a thing in civil cases where we say admit this guy's glue and then we don't have to call a witness to prove that it was blue. And so if Elicit admits that Maggie knew these things that were documented in her post on social media

and that knowledge is imputed to him for purposes of entrusting this boat to Paul negligently, well, then I don't need to sue Maggie. But he denies it. And he denies it November, December of 2020. So months before the murders. And it didn't make sense to me at the time. And I, because you can't really assume that I'm not going to sue everybody because I have sued everybody. Didn't suit, I hadn't sued Paul at that time.

I hadn't sued Maggie at that time. But there, you know, there's strategic reasons that I had concerns that Ehrlich would try to fix a jury. And so this was a way that I kept him honest because I can always come back and sue them after. And I made that clear to him. What does trial two look like to you? I think it's an abbreviated version of the first trial. I think that some of the things where the dots might not have connected probably fall away.

I think that you'll, you know, the lie is the thing that Ellick can't get away from. Three people go to the kennels and one liar returns. And so how do you convince 12 people that I've lied about everything? And you're talking about the video. I'm talking about the kennel video. Yeah. And so, but his lie, it's still out there. And he still has to address it. And he's still unable to address it, in my opinion. And so I think that that's going to continue to be his Achilles heel in this next trial.

Alec Murdoch remains in protective custody at a prison in South Carolina. He's serving a 27-year sentence for financial crimes, along with federal time for the same crimes. We'll stay on top of all of this, of course, and bring in the very latest as it happens. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.