Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Real Story Behind 'Murdaugh: Death in the Family' Revealed by Killer's Lawyer

Episode Date: October 25, 2025

A new show streaming on Hulu, "Murdaugh: Death in the Family" is a dramatization of Alex Murdaugh's financial crimes and the murders of his wife, Maggie, and his son, Paul. The show includes a star-studded cast and has received mixed reviews. One of Murdaugh's lawyers, Dick Harpootlian, takes issues with some of the storytelling and casting. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with Harpootlian about the show in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Dick Harpootlian https://x.com/HarpootlianSCProducer:Jordan ChaconCRIME 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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. It's not a serious effort to tell the story. It is a serious effort to monetize misery. Alec Murdoch's lawyer, not a fan of the storytelling in the news show based on the case that puts South Carolina's low country on the map. I take a look at the series, the claims it makes. the reviews it's getting and what Murdoch's lawyer has to say about it.

Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. You know, the line between truth and entertainment, it can blur when storytellers rip a story from the headlines and turn it into a TV show. Well, that's one of the criticisms of Murdoch, a death in the family, a show now streaming on Hulu. And one of Alec Murdoch's attorneys, Dick Harputlian, believes the show has taken some liberties with the Murdoch story. He'll join me shortly to discuss what he thinks of the show and what it has gotten wrong in his opinion. Alec Murdoch is an admitted thief and a liar. We covered his financial crimes extensively here on law and crime, but Murdoch to this day claims he did not murder his wife, Maggie, and son Paul. He testified to that during his trial, which I covered

gavel to gavel in early 2023. Here's a look back at some of Alec Murdoch's testimony on the stand. On June 7th, 2021, did you take this gun or any gun like it and shoot your son Paul in the chest in the feed room at your property off Moselle Road? No, I did not. Mr. Merti, did you take this gun or any gun like it and blow your son's brains out on June 7th or any day? or any time. No, I did not. Mr. Murdo? You take a 300 blackout

such as this and fired into your wife Maggie's leg, torso, or any part of her body? No, I did not. Did you shoot a 300 blackout into her head causing her death? Mr. Griffin, I didn't shoot my wife or my son any time, ever. When you went back to Moselle on the morning of June the 8th,

did you know whether you took a shower there or took a shower at Almeda or took a shower at all? No, I know we took a shower at Moselle. I did not take a shower before I left Al Mita. We basically got up and went to Moselle. Maggie's mom and dad they were there they were coming tell them see them we got up and we got up from Mount Meada and we left and we went to Mosel and you and do you know Do you even recall SLED coming in and searching the house for anything on the 8th? I knew that, I mean, I knew they were doing it, yeah.

I knew they were doing it. But I don't remember. I wasn't out in that gun room and I'll see all that video and all that. But I knew Sled was coming in there. I mean, we made, I mean, we, we made the house available for them to come in there. So, I mean, I can't tell you details, but yeah, I remember it. Did, did you at one point just tell Slead they had the cart blanche to search anywhere, any time? I told Slead they could do anything, anywhere, anytime that they wanted to,

anything to do with me, my property, my cars, even though I didn't own the car, I would get my law firm on the cars. I would have the people. They had full, whatever they wanted, they were welcome to. Now Murdoch called 911 on June 7th, 2021 and reported that he had found Maggie and Paul shot to death. Assistant Attorney General Creighton Waters grilled Murdoch on cross-examination. You've already testified as other people that you were still able to function as a lawyer over the years, despite the pills that you were using. Is that correct? Yes, sir.

And you were able, of course, during this period of time to engage in these relatively complicated thefts that increased over the years that we've just talked about, despite the pill usage. Is that correct? I was. I was. All right.

And you were also able to, during this time period, convince your staff that nothing was amiss with all of these exhibits despite your pill usage. I mean, most of those didn't require convincing my staff, but just so we're on the same page again, I acknowledge that I certainly allowed them to be misled. I certainly allowed them to do things that I shouldn't have done on my behalf, knowing that they trusted me. And remember that video of Alec Murdoch at the dog kennels right before Paul and Maggie were killed?

Get back, get back. Get back. Quit, Cash. Come, quit. That's okay. Come here. It's not bad. Come here, Cash.

Shit. Come here. Cache. Hey, he's got a bird in his mouth. Baba. Hang on, Baba. That's a guinea. This is a chicken.

Come back, come, gosh. Come back, catch, quit. Now, you could hear Alec Murdoch's on that video, but it wasn't discovered until months after the murders on Paul Murdoch's phone, and Alec said he was. He wasn't at the kennels that night. So you're telling me, I never responded to Jim Griffin. Is that what you're saying here today?

I'm telling you... Are you saying that you ever before yesterday reached out to anyone through yourself or through your attorneys and reached out anyone in law enforcement of the prosecution and told them the story about the kennels? Are you telling me that? What I'm telling you... Answer my question first, please, sir. Answer my question first.

Did you ever reach out to anyone in law enforcement or the prosecution and tell that story? And tell that story that you told this jury yesterday about the kennels before yesterday. Did I ever reach out to law enforcement to say, I want to tell you about the kennels? No, sir. I did not. This is the Fifth Amendment line. Pardon? This questioning about him volunteering information on these charges violates his Fifth Amendment rights, and we strongly object. Any more, we have to make a motion.

He brought up. The objection is overruled. was ultimately found guilty after the jury deliberated for about three hours. The State v. Richard Alexander Murdoch defendant, indictment for murder, SC code 16-3-010, CDR code 0116. Guilty verdict. He's appealing his convictions for Paul and Maggie's murders, claiming clerk of court Becky Hill tampered with the jury. She's now facing charges of misconduct and public office, perjury and obstruction

of justice, but not jury tampering charges. This new eight episode series released on Hulu does take some creative license in depicting the real life case of Alec Murdoch and the events involving his family. It's a compelling dramatization. It's a TV show. And it has a star-studded cast, including Oscar winner Patricia Arquette, who plays Maggie Murdoch, actor Jason. and Clark plays Alec Murdoch and Gerald McRaney portrays Alex's father, Randolph. These are really good actors and the creators acknowledge making editorial changes to the narrative to capture the emotional truth of the story, but even minor timeline shifts and fictionalized things can create misconceptions. Now, don't get me wrong. The series did get the broad strokes

of the case right. The 2021 murders at the family property, the 2019 boat crash involving Paul and even Alex's long-running financial problems. The opening scene begins with the moment that Alec places that fateful 911 call, but after that scene, the timeline, it takes you back to February of 2019 and the horrific boat crash that killed Mallory Beach. So I want to bring in somebody who has been intimately involved in the Murdoch case from the very beginning and still is. He's Dick Carpoolian, one of Alec Murdoch's attorneys.

And he still is his attorney working. on his appeal for a new trial in the murder case. So, Dick, you watched the new Hulu show. Well, a little bit of it. I got to tell you, it's hard to stomach. It's not very good. And fantasy. It's a, it's a fictional soap opera. The facts, or at least the factual allegations they make are the facts they rely on for this thing, are just not true. Now, what are some of the things that are not true, like specific examples? Because we know in real life, you know, real life makes for the best drama. Tragedies make for the best dramas.

And we had talked, you know, earlier about how you kind of looked at this as almost like a soap opera take on what happened. What are you seeing in this show that doesn't ring true to you? Well, I mean, this may not matter to anybody else, but. After the boat case, there's a trip that the entire family in this movie takes to the Bahamas. Never happened. And while they're in the Bahamas, all this fantasy of infidelity or attempted infidelity by both Maggie and Alec. Never happened. The trip never happened.

So that obviously didn't happen. There's Maggie talking to somebody. talking about how she caught Alec in a fling a year before and she was seeing a divorce lawyer. Never happened. And by the way, if in fact there was any evidence or inference that she had caught him in some infidelity, or there was any infidelity, whether she caught him or not, and she'd gone to see a divorce lawyer, why would the prosecution would have put that in evidence in trial? that in trial, at the trial, that would be much better motive evidence than this, you know,

killed him to distract from his financial misdeeds. I mean, that, and by the way, at the end of the case, the prosecutor argued the jury and his arguments of the jury said, don't worry about motive, disregard motive. So they had no motive. And that would have been a lifeline for them if there was any truth to it whatsoever. And there wasn't. You know, the prosecution, their motive that they told the jury about was the fact that Alec was under this huge financial strain, you know, his financial mess was going to be exposed. And, you know, that day he was working on the financials for the boat case. And, you know, he needed a distraction. He needed to buy time. And this was the way to do it. That was essentially what they told the jury. And the jury. And the judge, and the judge, jury, the jury believed it, obviously. He's sitting in prison, serving two life sentences for the murders of Maggie and Paul. So, I mean, what else is there that you believe is not true? Because you believe that they took some artistic license and some, you know, liberties with the story here and took some things that were out there a long time ago that we've heard about. Like this whole thing about Maggie.

wanted to divorce and things like that but not true i mean people magazine ran an unnamed source saying that no one ever came forward and if there was a divorce lawyer out there that she went to see he had a duty to come forward and tell the prosecution in the state maggie came to see me she said my notes indicate she said alick had beat her or stolen or done something never came forward there's no evidence whatsoever and and by the way There's several reasons that at least one major reason that Alec got convicted that has nothing to do with the evidence. That is the Kirk of Court, Becky Hill, fixed the jury. I mean, a judge has found that she talked to jurors, attempted to influence jurors, and she told one of her assistants,

Alec needed to be found guilty, so the book she was writing would sell more copies so she could buy a lakehouse. And this is the court the court who talked to jurors, and I submit did much more than that to make sure there was a guilty verdict. We didn't know that was going on, but a subsequent hearing, everybody, everybody, everybody concluded that she had was trying to, she was trying, had on several cases tried to persuade the jury to convict Alec. I want to go back to the divorce lawyer thing. And, you know, after the trial, I remember seeing some interview on a competitor's air about a manicurist. And, you know, they didn't show the manicurist face. But, you know, she was saying, oh, yeah, I did Maggie's nails. And she was looking to get a divorce.

She wanted to leave Alec. Did you? And you're saying there was nothing in the discovery. We never heard that during the trial at all. But you said there was nothing in the discovery about that whatsoever about. about Maggie being unhappy, wanting a divorce, anything having to do with that? Everybody we talk to, her sister,

her girlfriend she confided in. I mean, maybe she would tell a manicuric thing she would not confide in her sister, her mother, her father, Buster. I mean, nobody saw anything or heard anything from her about a divorce or divorce lawyer. But maybe maybe the manicurist, and by the way, where was that manicurist at trial?

Again, if the prosecution had that kind of testimony that was credible, we would have heard it during the trial because it's a much better motive than trying to distract on this financial investigation. By the way, the evidence was it was not going to be any imminent problem because of the auditor's comments to hurt him that day. that the boat trial, the lawyer four that was involved in the boat trial indicated it'd be months before anything might be discovered about his finances in the boat trial. So that's bunk. All of that is bunk. Is there anything else specifically that you can point to that you saw in the show that you think it just doesn't ring true?

It's not accurate. Well, they think, well, they conflate the timeline, just. It's hard to sort of sort of all that out. But again, I only watched an episode and a half. And it was so inaccurate and so, look, they've got me being played by a guy who has an accent like fog-horn, clayhorn. I mean, it was just horrible. And when Paul and I didn't stand in the courtroom, I lean over to him and say, stand the fuck up. I mean, I don't think I've ever said stand the f*** up to any defendant, let alone Paul.

And, of course, he doesn't say St. Okay, so, I mean, it's just... You didn't like that you were made to look like Foghorn Leghorn, the big old rooster from the cartoons. Right. And last night, I'm told I didn't stop watching it, that Alec is in one episode, the one they showed last night, his phone cell phone goes off he looks at it and across the screen it says dick harpoon him me he picks up the phone and says dicky poo how you doing today no one in my life has ever called me dicky poo not even your life never in my life has anybody called me dicky poo and don't you

call me dicky poo i will never call you dicky poo ever i mean it's just stupid this is stupid stuff who writes a script and puts in there, have Alexei, call his lawyer Dickie Poo. I mean, it's just makes, it's not a serious effort to tell the story. It is a serious effort to monetize misery. This, I guess, is based on the life of or the story of or the story through the eyes of this Mandy Matney, who hosted a podcast about the, this and caught some fire during the case. She's been, you know, she has a lot of fans, but she's also received a lot of criticism, you know, for her tactics and things of that nature. So do you think that's part of why this show is the way it is? I don't know. I mean, I'm assuming

she had some input, but what are your thoughts on that? Well, I think her claim to fame early on in the in the murdaw trial murdoch case was that she had sources at swed state law enforcement division they were giving her confidential information the biggest break she got was that she reported that sweed had seized alex shirt the night of the murders and sweat tests had come back and shown there was blood spatter on his shirt blood spatter is a fine mist that's that's um generated when somebody is shot and typically comes back onto the shooter and it was Paul's blood and that was reported held months and months and months maybe a year before his trial 90 days before the trial my office Holly Holly Miller in my office is looking at all the records that they furnish us and

they literally furnished us hundreds of thousands if not millions of documents was going through and you've got to look at all of. I mean, it's a criminal case. You got to look at every everyone. So she opened a folder that was supposed to be a witness. Can't remember the witness's name? Not really relevant. And then there was a sled report from the sled chemist indicating that the blood on Alex's shirt was not human blood. Now that was consistent with what he had told us that that was a shirt he went he went fishing in a lot and after he caught a fish he might gut it put a fine spray on him so she was putting out sled propaganda that it was human blood and was paul's blood and by the way um the fact that it wasn't given to us in that in the

normal fashion here's our here's our test results and and more importantly when they tested the shirt they destroyed it so we had no opportunity to to run our own task so she's out there pumping this out for the prosecution she was not she was a partisan she was for the prosecution see expressed that from the get-go and so i mean if she helped write this movie it's very very explicable as to why it is she believes well she believed and by the way the the sled agent that didn't give us that report, denied knowing that it wasn't human blood, admitted on the standing lied to the grand jury in this case. And most recently, was confronted with hiding evidence on another criminal case. So he-

David Owen. Pardon me? David Owen. Yes. And so she's his apologist because he was her source. Interesting. Well, I am going to watch a little. bit more of it. I just, I think it's, you know, obviously causing some headlines. You know, it's gotten some good reviews, but it's also been panned. You know, Patricia Arquette, she's a good actress. Great. And by the way, everything I saw her, she did a great job. The guy, Jason Clark, is playing Alec, uncanny resemblance. His accent is believable. The things they have in the script for him to do didn't happen, but that's not his fault. He didn't write the script. I think that the guy playing Randolph, the grandfather who was a good friend of mine, does a credible job.

I mean, I'm not, except for the guy playing me, I'm not really complaining about any of the actors. Well, I think they miscast him. They miscast him, and whoever, he's the only one in the show that's got that accent, so I don't quite understand. I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm not from down there. So you can hear my, I mean, do you hear some syrupy, southern foggorn, clayhorn accent here? I don't think so. Yeah.

So no quibbling with the acting. You think that acting was laudable, with the exception of you being miscast, the Dick Harpootly and character. Your issue is with the telling of the story and the inaccuracies. Well, inaccuracies and they do things for effect. Like that Dicky Pooh thing last night. Why do that? I mean, that's just maybe Mandy doesn't like me. I don't know if she's writing a script.

I don't know who wrote the script, but whoever wrote the script didn't know the story. Didn't, you know, you might want to read the transcript and the trial if you want the facts. And most of what is in this show is not in the transcript. Well, there's certainly a story being told on Hulu, but you have a story to tell as well, don't you? So tell me about this book that you've written.

I'm really interested in reading it, and it's about a case you prosecuted years and years ago. 1983, I prosecuted a guy named Donald Peeley Gaskins, and he is the largest mass murderer slash serial killer in the history of South Carolina. I convicted him of his 14th murder. He had 13 prior convictions, including pregnant women, babies. I mean, he just killed at will.

I convicted him of taking a contract on a death row inmate while he was serving a life sentence that is peewee. He smuggled in a quarter pound of military grade C4 plastic explosive, a blasting cap, constructed a device, and blew his head off. He was a voracious killer. I got to know him pretty well, got to be on a first name basis with him during our trial. Wow. And he just go over and be like, like hey pee we how's it going well i mean he was so disarming when he first time first turning went to he walked by and he said hey dick how you doing i've never been on first night of place with the defendant and of course you reflexly say okay pee we how about you and as the that took like between the hearings and the trial eight weeks um and you know one of the

it's in the book but one of the seminal scenes is at a lunch break during the trial Pewey was such so affable and engaging he convinced the guards to let him eat in the courtroom at lunch not down in the holding cell so he'd be there sitting in the courtroom eating his lunch with the guards around I'm sitting there at my table the prosecution table working on the afternoon witness and he says dick dick he said we want that's how we talk about this voice what do you want peewee he said you know you're a lot like me he said what do you talk He said, you like killing.

I said, what do you mean I like killing? He said, I'm watching you. You like killing me. You're enjoying this. I said, no, no, no, no. I'm not like you and I'm not enjoying killing you. I'm doing my job. I'm seeking justice.

He said, you know, I spent most of my life in prison. In prison, your view of justice depends on whether you're giving it or getting it. He said, when you get in it, you get in it, it don't feel like justice. But he thought I enjoyed killing him because he enjoyed killing. And we were on a first name basis. And, you know, and never really prosecuted him. He was electrocuted in the electric chair. Two weeks before he was electrocuted, he tried to have my four-year-old daughter kidnapped. So to hold hostage, while I was in the DA, I could get him up to my office. And he was.

could escape from there. But the law enforcement got wind of it, diffused it. We lived with sweat agents with machine guns for a couple weeks until he was executed. But he was very smart, had a like a cold of miscreants and ex-cons and runaways around. He killed a bunch of them, but just used them anyway. He wanted, had an affinity for a young girl, married a 14-year-old. I mean, he's when he was 40-something I mean he he you know he was the epitome of evil and this book um dig me a grave is about all the murders and about him and how he got you know where he ended up and how I got and it ended up in a courtroom prosecuting him so it'll be out in December you can pre-order it now um the reviews we're getting at least internally are good

I want it's something I wanted to get off my chest for 30 years and between the pandemic and finishing the Murdoch trial I got the time to do it yeah well I can't wait to read it thank you so much for talking with me dick harputley and it's good to talk with you as always great thank you so much enjoy being here and that's it for this episode of crime fix I'm angianette levy thanks so much for being with me I'll see you back here next time Thank you.