Doomed to Fail - Ep 5: Don’t Murdaugh Your Fam - Alex Murdaugh & Henry VIII

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

Join us for episode 5! Today two exhausted hosts walk through two stories of patriarchs of families who do a lot of absolutely crazy shit! Taylor brings the story of Henry VIII and his six wives, lots of violence was promised - and delivered. Farz takes us south to the tell the gothic story of Alex Murdaugh and the crumbling of a southern law dynasty.Follow us on Instagram & Facebook!  @doomedtofailpodhttps://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpodSome Sources:Lust, Lies And Empire: The Fishy Tale Behind Eating Fish On FridayCollaborativeDivorceTexas.comNoble Blood PodcastAnne of 1000 Days - the movie Photos of Anne & Henry via Creative Commons Photo of the Mercer House from 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' just for fun and also from the creative commons. Photo of Alex Murdaugh from NBC News  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Hello and welcome to Doom to Fail, the only podcast in existence where we advocate not killing your family. I'm Fars, joined by my co-host Taylor, and every week we'll bring you two stories, one historical and one true crime of relationships that were doomed to fail, and call out the red flags as we see them. Taylor, how are you doing today? Oh, I'm good. How are you? I'm tired. We are recording this incredibly late for our usual recording schedule because I spent the entire day moving.

And, yeah, I'm ready to just kind of collapse. Great. Well, I'm glad that we're doing this to wind, wind down your day and then you can, I don't know, watch a movie, go to bed, unpacked tomorrow. Yes. Don't worry about it today. Yes. And I also want to call out thanks to everybody who's been listening and who has been providing feedback, especially about my terrible audio quality. I have no idea how this is going to actually sound once I upload it.

But I will say that I now have a much more professional setup and hopefully it's going to sound a lot better than it did before in the past. And you look great. We got to work on, I'll work on my podcast face, and we can get this on YouTube because you look very profush. Yeah, the mic in the face, it helps. I think in response to feedback, this is me talking slow. America, I am really trying hard, so you can make me slower by lowering the speed of your podcast. Yeah, Taylor has one speed, and it's fast forward. This is me trying.

This is me trying my absolute fucking best for you. right now. Absolutely. So what is our signature drink going to be this week? Cool. So we have two drinks this week. One of them is a signature cocktail from South Carolina where our true crime story takes place. It's sweet tea vodka. So you see tea bags in a jar of vodka to make the concentrate, but it's it for a few hours and then when the vodka gets dark, you can pour it over iced, add some lemon juice, simple syrup, and then add some water or syrup as well because it's going to be just vodka. And I told you that I have something to say about this because after college, my roommate and I, we bought a Brita specifically for filtering shitty vodka through. So we would

buy like the worst vodka possible, put it through the Brita like six times. Then we put it into jars with like pears or tea bags or strawberries or like something and let it sit for like a few weeks. And then it was freaking delicious. And we just probably should be dead because we would drink like a teacup of like vodka that tastes like tea and it was delicious and um i hear that's really easy to over consume given how yeah because you don't really taste the vodka no it's just like delicious like the pear one was so good and you're like this is juice and you're like no no no no no no you just drink glass of vodka and not you're asleep yeah this so i looked up the recipe for this and i was surprised at how detailed it was because i thought it would just be just take some

vodka and pour some tea in it. But no. Right. No, you're not like mixing it with like a pre-made, like a Lipton. No, you're not. You're creating a concentrate then, you know, the added syrup and lemon juice. It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. That's the key is also the danger. Yes.

Yeah. As with a lot of things Southern, it is a little bit more ornate than one would assume. Well, I can't wait to hear more from the South when you do your story. The drink well mine's alcoholic too i tried my best but i whatever my my drink for this this episode is meed i've

you ever had mead it's like a sweet wine is it's not the thing germans make right where no in a rock pot no that's like a mold wine okay i have no idea what it is so a mead is like a sweet wine that you like drank in like medieval times and i had mead for the first time when i was studying abroad in London in grad school. And my friends and I went on a tour of the Tower of London, bought a bottle of mead and then drank it on a boat on the Thames. So that's exactly where our story takes place. So imagine yourself drinking mead or sweet tea or whatever you want, just in regular sweet tea, no booze. And I'll will jump in to talk a little bit about Henry the Eighth and his six wives. Love it. So six is a lot of wives. We'll talk about maybe.

one in particular where a big thing happened and a big change happened but I also want to give a little bit of like background into what we're talking about and where we are. So Henry the 8th was born in 1491 and what do you know about Henry the 8th?

Anne Boleyn. I only know Anne Boleyn. That's it. Okay. And what happened to her? She had to have been killed. Yes. Yes. She was she was beheaded. So there's a little bit of beheading in this story and lots of blood. I promise violence and I have violence in here.

But the reason... Same committed. Yeah. The reason that we're getting to violence talking about this is like because Henry the 8th couldn't get divorced and there's some reasons that he wanted to be divorced and we'll talk about those. But I was like thinking, why can't Catholics get divorced? Like God says no, but like why?

Like why is that the rule? And I went to collaborative divorce, Texas.com, which has a really actually great history of divorce. And other cultures are okay with it. Like we talked about with Pocahontas and Kokowum. So who wants like this couple in the village to be yelling at each other all the time? No one. So you let them get divorced and who cares?

In some places they make it really, really hard. And I'm like, why do they make it hard? And so from my like seven minutes of research on collaborative divorce, Texas.com and being who I am, I think it's just to control women. because then if you can't get divorced, then, like, you don't have to pay back the dowry. You don't have to, like, apologize for the things that you're doing to this person. You can just, like, abuse them and everything is fine, and you don't have to. And I guess that goes both ways, but there's no, like, admitting to your guilt or anything.

You just, like, have to stay married. And also, they wanted to, like, make sure that, like, they were their kids were there. So they're, like, adultery is a crime punishable by death. So you have to only be with me and have my kids. kids a lot of this is like thinking about your birth line and her being hereditary be related to you know anyone in your line um which is dumb so i wrote down that this is dumb and i also was thinking about another catholic theory that i have and i was thinking about why you can't meet on Fridays when you're a Catholic and i have this theory that has not backed by anything that like it's probably because the meat would be bad on Fridays and people were getting sick and they were like let's stop it's like make a reason of people not to eat meat on Fridays. I don't know if that's true, but that's like what I feel like. There has to be an economic reason for all these roles, you know.

That makes sense. You know, yeah. So that's what I'm thinking. But anyway. Economic or control of others. People. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. So I was just like on a rabbit hole thinking about that. And I found an article on NPR called Lust Lies and Empire, the Fisy Tail behind eating fish on Friday. And it was actually, Henry the 8th is actually, I was just thinking about that because I was thinking about Catholicism, but Henry the Eighth is actually tied to eating fish on Fridays. So in, before all of Henry the Ace's stuff, like leaving the Catholic

church, you would only, you would eat fish on Fridays. You wouldn't eat meat. And it was because you couldn't eat anything with a womb for whatever reason. Really? Wait, that was the reason that you had to eat fish? Yeah. And like, I don't know. Yeah, that was a justification. Yeah. And so like in the article, they're like, I guess you could eat a lizard, but like no one wants to do that. So they were eating fish. I mean, yeah, I didn't know fish. I never thought about it. Me either. And I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think like, well, then where do the eggs live? I don't know. This is, I don't know. This is how you go down rabbit holes. Whatever. So, but actually, so fish is super easy to take on a road. So you could dry fish and go on

the boat for six months and like, you dried cod for that whole entire time. And so people were doing that and going and like, you know, using it a lot when like, you know, there wasn't a lot of, you know, other meat available. But once the, there's so many Catholic holidays where you couldn't eat meat. So you ate fish. And so after Henry the 8th left the Catholic Church, people could eat meat again and things got really, really bad for the fishing industry. And they were pissed because they were like, well, because if you come down to it, people would choose a hamburger over a fish, you know. And people, yeah, people were like, oh, okay, I'd rather do this. And so then Henry the 8th son, when he becomes king later in our story, brings back

the no meat on Fridays to people to help the fishermen, which I just thought was interesting. And then another thing that I thought was fun is in the 1960s, the Pope relaxed some of the rules on eating fish and eating meat on Fridays. And then that also was a big blow to the fishing industry. So it happens over and over again when the church makes these roles and they have like huge economic impacts. And then the filial fish at McDonald's was invented. I was just thinking about the filial fish. I'm so glad you brought up.

That's literally why I was invented. There was a guy who owned a McDonald's franchise around in a big Catholic neighborhood and he wasn't getting any business on Fridays. So he made a filet fish. So did you know what the precursor to filet of fish was? What? It was grilled pineapple between buns. Yeah.

That sounds terrible. I mean, I've never had a flay. I don't think I want to have a flail fish. So I wanted to, because my mom loved them, and I was like nervous, I was going to like them and, like, always want one. And then I have one with my mom, and she was like, this is not the best flair fish I've ever had.

And so she wants me to try it again because the one I had was not very good. Yeah, I'll get around to it. You know, once I've exhausted all the McRibbs, then maybe I'll try a flail fish. There's cheese on it, which I don't want to end found. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So anyway, that's a little bit of history about fish and the Catholic Church, but there's all these rules. So we're in a time period of the world where the Catholic Church has a lot of power, and there's a ton of rules. So on October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther starts the Protestant Reformation. So people were paying the Catholic Church to get into heaven because, of course, they were. And at the same, this is the same time that all this stuff is happening with Henry the 8th. And basically, Henry the 8th is saying throughout this whole story, well, I'm the king and God does

I want. So whatever I want to do is what God wants. Of course, yes. Yeah, because that's what you're saying. My understanding of the world, is that that is kind of the assumption is that I'm here because I was chosen to be here. Yes, exactly. So he's going to use that when he's, like, making his decisions to change some things about the church. And then I wrote, what are the differences between Protestant and the Church of England and Catholicism? And then my next bullet is, I don't care. Like, I don't know. I kind of looked it up. It's like, there's always, always like matrices of like very like beliefs that people believe and and whatever so either

way there's differences and there's reasons why they people move to different ones and so people are leaving the church for various reasons so i want to pause here before i actually talk about henry the eighth and all of his wives this can be like a nine-hour podcast i'm going to do it in like ten minutes so we're really going to like rush through these ladies but these relationships were all all doomed and I wanted to pause and talk about the royal family in England because while researching this I was like actually good for you Megan Markle for saying out loud that this shit's dumb because it's always been dumb but like people haven't said it in a while maybe and like hereditary lines to power are dumb like even like our most recent Queen Elizabeth she was only in line for the

thrown because her uncle who was the first one in line married someone else I had to quit you know so you do you know I was born in the UK no yeah I was born in Newcastle and I had zero interest or affiliation with anything that has to do with the core of the UK which is the royal family I never cared don't know I have no idea what the genealogy looks like what any of that like who succeeded who because of whatever reason like it's all foreign to me and i i kind of like it i kind don't think that my brain needs to apply itself towards learning that shit no literally who cares it's really dumb and so i mean long story elizabeth who just died her dad was the king but he was only the king because his brother who was the king before him wanted to marry a woman who had been

divorced and they wouldn't let him and so he quit being king to marry this like other woman but like his kids would have been in line then Elizabeth was in line so it's just like any little thing can move these lines around and whatever so Henry's like one of the last kings in the house of Tudor I don't know what that means it's like very complicated

but it's pretty much just like the rich get richer so the king's speech wasn't that guy the one that took over because the other guy wanted to marry the divorce woman yeah and then wasn't she a Nazi or something Wallace Simpson I don't know she was American

okay maybe it was like more he has some association or affiliation with or like empathy i don't know i'm probably talking about i'm probably going to cut this out i know i think that that i think you might be right that is ringing some bells because i do know that like um jfk's dad was the ambassador to england during that time like during right before world war two and he was like let's just hear what hitler has to say come on he had some problem i believe you know so that's not great So possibly, possibly. But either way, it's all, it's all bullshit. And a lot of people are going to die.

Just cousins, fucking cousins, and just, you know, marrying. Yeah. So many people are about to die, like, for money. It's real dumb. But, but anyway, so here we go. So Henry's 8th is actually the second son of King Henry the 7th. He's born in 1491, and his brother Arthur is set to take the throne. So Arthur, the older brother, marries Catherine of Aragon.

she's from Spain she's really young like a teenager and she marries she marries Arthur and that marriage is never consummated and I don't really know why it sounds like they were just young and like didn't really know again like what to do or weren't able they weren't able to do it and I believe that because Catherine of Aragon was a very very Catholic and what happens next depends on like her honor and her her virtue and all these things so I believe her when she says that that was not consummated Because Arthur dies pretty young before the marriage was consummated. So the king, King Henry the 7th, still wants to have an alliance with Spain because that's really important for money. So he marries his second son, Henry, to Catherine.

And they get around that by saying that because the first marriage to Arthur was never consummated, that Catherine can marry Henry. And Henry becomes Henry the 8th. So much revolves around virginity and purity and, like, purity. it's just like oh my god so dumb so she swears up and now she's a virgin it's okay they um so i have a little timetable so at this point his first wife katherine she's 24 and henry the eighth is 18 so she's actually older than him because she had been married to his older brother so she's older than him when they get married and they're married for like 23 years so they're married for a long time during their relationship they have one child it's a girl boo girls no one wants a girl and it is

Mary and Mary becomes like Mary Queen of Scott's Bloody Mary the one that will that is like in the history books for wanting to keep like Ireland and Scotland and parts of the UK of the UK whatever Catholic so her mom is very Catholic

Mary is very Catholic she is the first daughter of Henry the 8th but there's no sentence. Bloody so this is the Mary that you can say Bloody Mary in the mirror three times and she shows up? No that's like a weird ghost but Bloody Mary is like

the violent queen they just have the same name like I don't think it's like Mary Cota Scotts that comes up in the mirror I think it's like someone else I might be confusing this with Candyman

oh so good we can we can't have a about that oh I think Candyman's a love story I can talk about that later it is oh for sure it is yeah same age we don't even have to argue this great great I didn't see the second one but

I will. So he's married to Cafeter of Aragon. She's, he's the king, she's a little bit older, and he needs a son. And he's like, why won't God give me a son? Why won't my dumb wife give me a son? Why can't she just do it? Like, that's possible to just, like, be like, oh, I'll give you a son. I choose son this time. But the part, the part that's confusing is that they all need daughters for these alliances. So why are they pissed when we have daughters? It's true. And he's like, I don't want to talk to her. And you're like, why? Like, I watched a movie from this. the 60s called Anne of a Thousand Days with Richard Burton playing Henry the 8th and it's real good and like real dramatic but he definitely is like I will never talk to this daughter I hate her you're like but you're right they need to have daughters anyway because they have to like sell them off yeah and like yeah short-sided these people are very short-sided agree so he's super upset he wants a son he's obviously in the meantime having a bunch of affairs and as we'll see that adultery is

punishable by death unless you're him of course like he can do every once but like the woman would is for death. So he gets a woman named Mary Bolin pregnant. Guess who Mary Bolin is? I think that would be Anne's sister. It's her sister. So he gets her sister pregnant. She's like one of his mistresses, which is super gross. And he also gets another. And so she has a son, actually, named Henry Carey. But he doesn't really want to marry her. And it couldn't marry here anyway because she's not a virgin, which is so dumb because you're like, it's your fault. Hold on. Who was it a virgin? Mary Bolin

because she was having an affair of Henry He didn't want to marry her And he's already married and all these things So he didn't like take that extra effort To marry Mary Bolin She just had like a bastard child And so it didn't She had to have been a virgin

Even if she was a virgin When they started hooking up I think it's like a little bit of that Actually maybe a little bit more of like He was already married And didn't want to go through all the hullabaloo Of like legitimizing this child Which I don't really know

why. Yeah, all right. It sucks to be Mary Bolin. It's just, I think that's the takeaway. Yeah, sounds like. Yeah. It sucks to be married to this guy or in his orbit, it sounds like. Yeah, and I feel like a red flag is like, if a dude got your sister pregnant and abandoned her, he's not a good match. Yeah. Yeah, that's a big red flag. He also, Henry also has another son with another mistress and that son is also named Henry and another Henry Fitzroy. And that's only one he acknowledged for whatever reason, but he became like a Duke or something. but wasn't in line to be king because he wasn't an official child. So he's definitely like out there, like having babies,

but he's sick and tired of having no sons with his wife. And the only thing he can do is get in the old because he can't get divorced because of the Catholic Church. And they really won't let him like do anything. So all of a sudden, he's like, I'm sure that Catherine stopped with my brother when they were married and that she's been lying to me for 23 years. So because of that, he can say,

that makes Catherine of Aragon his sister because she slept with his brother, and that makes it incess, and that makes it annulable. That is so many leaps in logic. So many leaps and so dumb. But he actually gets it ends up leaving the Catholic Church to be able to officially just make it a divorce because the church won't give him an annulment because they're like, that's dumb. And they won't give him a divorce because they don't do divorces. So this is when he starts the Church of England and becomes head of the church,

specifically so we can get divorced. and that's like eighth grade history you know the ego the fact that you could start your own religion and get people to kind of convert over to he's a cold leader he's almost a cold leader yeah absolutely and similarly so many people are going to die and he gets asleep with everyone he's exactly a cult leader yeah yeah so poor katherine is like this is BS like i never that's not true it's my virtue but she gets kind of exiled back to where she came from and until her death She's like, I'm the rightful queen of England, and she wants her daughter, Mary to, you know, go back and rule and make England Catholic again, which she does in some way, shape, or form via violence. So now that he can get a divorce, and I'm thinking, like, why is he doing this?

Like, this is crazy. It's so much work and so much violence. And it's just because she can't have a son and he really, really needs one. Like, he really, really needs that legitimate son. or you know he's going to lose his line and lose his like heirs to the throne so he can't like he has to have his illegitimate son so he has like really no other choice so he meets a lady in waiting before he gets divorced of course and it's mary boleyn's sister anne boleyn so anne boleyn is really like the reason that he did all of us because he wanted to marry her and and not be married

to catheter varegonne anymore so anne boleyn she was like a of like a little bit of like a mid-level status. She spent some time in France, comes back to England. The king, like, falls in love with her, you know, whatever that means. And eventually, like, maybe she loves him to, maybe it's a power thing. And by the time they get married, she's already pregnant with his baby, but it's, like, okay, because he's divorced. So a lot of, so many selective rules. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of you have to do for this. So she has a, people in England are mad, because I actually really loved Catherine. They saw how devout she was, like what a good wife she was. so they're pissed and like annoyed that he's married to anne anne is either 32 or 26 when they get

married it's like not clear how her exact date and henry is 42 so if she's 32 and he's 42 i feel like that's fine yeah that's reasonable yeah so they get married and she's pregnant right away and she has guess what baby she kind of baby she has uh i would assume inbred well it's fine but it's a girl so we don't like obviously we have another girl and her name's Elizabeth and Elizabeth is actually going to be Queen Elizabeth like the first Queen Elizabeth and a whole bunch of crazy stuff happens with her that is a whole other story so can I interject here yes please there's been female monarchs yeah like why do you have to have a son if you're the king because as we just you just explained your daughter could also be the head

of state right and she does become that but i guess i don't know if that was the rule before this maybe before this it was all just all sons and then they changed it and maybe this is impetus for changing it because you'll see later that they like have to change it they have to give it to Elizabeth. If that was the case, then it kind of does track, given like, where humanity was at that point in time, that it was easier to invent a church to try and get a divorce than it was to change the rules and let a female be the head of state. Exactly. So I wanted to bring this up later, but I'll bring it up now. I'm a Disney channel. They have, speaking of Disney. On the Disney channel, they have these, like, really funny five-minute videos of Olaf from Frozen retelling fairy tales. And it's like just him and it plays all the characters. And it's, like, just him and it plays all the characters. And it's, It's really funny. And he does Aladdin. And in Aladdin, he's talking about how Jasmine can't be, can't be the ruler because she's a woman.

And he goes, he's like, well, it's too bad. Your dad can't change the rules that he literally made up. Like, of course, that's exactly the point. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. So he has, as a son. He has Elizabeth.

And Elizabeth and her half-sister Mary later will start a bunch of wars about religion, but not yet for now. Anne is trying to have another baby, but tragically there's a bunch of miscarriages and some stillborn babies. So she does give birth to her son, but he is born stillborn. And right now I'm thinking like,

why wouldn't she just buy a baby from someone? Like, wouldn't you do that? If you were like, I all I have, the only thing I have to do is make a son, why don't I just like find another white dude and buy a baby from him? him and pretend it's mine you're making out you're you're kind of doing like a henry the eighth situation here where you're making a lot of leaps in judgment and assumptions here like there is

somebody out there who's like transacting babies and and also like what happens because you in theory have either faked a pregnancy at that point or you actually are pregnant then you got to dispose of that baby it just gets really complicated it feels like oh I guess I guess you're right and I guess that makes sense it does it is also more gaming of Thrones because you know how in Game of Thrones is all these babies but you're guaranteed somehow to have your dad's hair color in Game of Thrones? Oh yeah for sure for sure. But like Elizabeth and Henry the 8th actually both have red hair. So I guess you just find another ginger and be like this one is yours, Henry. You know, whenever you were describing his plan on getting annulled, the whole

incest thing, I forgot for a moment that we're talking about a king. and so this was not somebody just sitting around like waxing poetic on his own this was probably a team of like the most elite members of society trying to devise away yeah you could probably you probably bring that tag team back together to figure out how to sell a child and buy a new one yes so now I'm back on she should have done that I could go either way but I feel like maybe she tried and it didn't work out but either way she never has a boy and Henry's like this is this is bullshit i have to leave he's already like um eyeing someone else one of one of her ladies in waiting and so now he wants to divorce anne but he's embarrassed a little bit he's like we have to get divorced like this isn't going to work and she won't do it but he charges her with having a bunch of affairs and in one of the podcasts i listened to about her life they were saying that she totally had all these all these affairs but i don't believe that because that would literally be life or death for her you know so i feel like i would feel like she'd be more

likely to buy a baby than to have an affair because as you'll find out like she gets killed for having an affair that she didn't even have so yeah spoiler alert and dies so he had he accused her having an affair and he wants a divorce and or like an annulment because of that and she won't do that because if she does then elizabeth is out of line to be queen so if they get divorced or annulled then that like delegitimalize legitimizes i don't know legitimatizes their marriage legitimizes whatever

so they do that then Elizabeth is no longer in line for the throne and she won't do that so they accused her of adultery

they they declare that she's guilty and her and like five dudes who are accused to having an affair

with her including her brother are all executed so the dudes are executed by acts and then Henry does one favor

for her and gets a fancy fresh French executioner to use a sword and do like one swift. Why's that a favor? Because otherwise it was like an English shoot hacking your head off.

Oh, so it was going to take a lot longer. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. So we got the top executioner to do it. So Ann dies and the next day, Henry gets engaged to one of her ladies in waiting, Jane Seymour. So I always think it's hilarious that Jane Seymour is also the name of the actress who plays Dr. Quinn Medicine woman. I was going to say that sounds so familiar.

Isn't that like, it's just weird. That's her name. And then there's also this Jane Seymour in history. But third wife, Jane Seymour, Henry is, you know, allegedly in love with her. She does have a son. So this is his son, Edward. He will be King Edward the seventh eventually or the sixth. Oh, my God, Roman numerals.

Edward was the sixth later. So it's plague time. So the people don't really get a lot of time with Jane, but she's around. And they seem to like her. She's a very dutiful wife. And unfortunately, after. She has, Edward, she dies a couple months later from complications of the birth. So that's just another thing of like having babies is really hard even now, but even then

it was just like awful and disgusting. It was probably an infection that ended up killing her. So that must have been really painful and awful. So Jane dies and Henry's sad, but he needs to make more babies. He's had that backup son. He's that spare. So he already has one. And he marries a woman named Anne of Cleves.

So Anne of Cleaves is his fourth wife, and let's look at this, my thing. So when he married Jane Seymour, she was 28, and Henry was 45. So we're starting to see a little bit of a gap. Anne of Cleves, when they get married, is 25, and Henry is 49. So this is a little gross. Yeah. So Anne doesn't speak English. She only speaks German, but she is brought by Henry's advisor, Cromwell.

sets them up and eventually crombo will die because henry doesn't like this marriage and so he kills was like one of his oldest friends because of this but that marriage was never consummated between henry the eighth and anne of gleaves and it's for a couple reasons that people think it was one he just like couldn't do it because he was old her and starting to you know lose his veracity and you say 48 yeah but he was also like really overweight and like it was the 1500 so i feel like i don't know 48 is probably like 82 yeah yeah i say not great he's not he's not great at this time and she's doesn't really know what's going on either so they definitely had a thing where like she was like oh he kissed me and her leg's in the waiting

were like that's not going to do it pun like that's not going to i'm not going to make me be that way i read a thing about him forever ago that i don't know if it's true or not but i heard that towards a latter stages of his life he was so overweight that they had to create these mechanical devices to just move his body around. Like, he wasn't able to, like, actually be ambulatory on his own. He definitely has an infection from, like, a hunting accident in his legs. And his legs produce so much pus. He has to wear a different pair of pants every day.

Ugh. So much detail. So fucking gross. So he sat in, like, the pinnacle of health at this moment. Okay, so they, now Henry wants us marriage and old because he's like, we're not having sex, we're not going to have a baby. I don't think she's very pretty. I don't really like her.

She doesn't speak English. She was engaged. She knew all this. I know. Okay. There's a story that like maybe the painting he got of her was like a little bit generous. So he was like, this is what I expected. And...

Oh, that's right. He would have gotten a painting of her. You know, like he like didn't know... You get a painting and be like, I guess this person looks fine. Yeah. We'll marry them. And he... Also, she was engaged when she was like six as like another like political thing.

And he used that as a reason for the annulment. as well because he was like she you know wasn't she was never mind to begin with whatever so that one actually got annulled and he gave he gave anne of cleave some money and she got to live out her life she actually became good friends with him afterwards like once their marriage was over they became friends and she was you know really good friends with his children as well so she's kind of in the picture later she wants to marry him again and they're like he's like no no nah not really but Why? So Anna Coosters is like around.

So now he needs to marry someone else. And he wants to marry someone like smoking hot to prove that he can like have sex with someone. So he finds another lady in waiting. And her name is Catherine Howard. So she's his youngest bride. She's 16 and he's 49 when they get married. So that's gross.

Catherine Howard is very pretty. She has a history of flirtation. So she allegedly went to this all girl school when she was very young that had reputation for like letting boys sneak in at night. you know like teenage stuff and she doesn't have any kids with him they're not married for very long and she probably does have an affair with one of his guards named Thomas Cool Pepper so he finds out and he's pissed and he doesn't want to be made a fool again so he charges her with adultery and there's some people who confess that they've seen her with Thomas and so everyone

gets their head cut off Catherine her friends who were like her the witnesses on the stand Thomas's head gets cut off and it gets put on the London Bridge on display, which is fun. That is fun, Taylor. You know, like, that's fun. So they're all, they're dead. That's the last one. That's the fifth wife. And then his final wife, her name's Catherine Parr.

She is, so this means he's married, of all of his wives, 50% are Catharines, 33% are Anne's, and 17% are jeans. So he just married like a lot, a lot of Catharines. and gap in par is a widow she's been married two times before not seven like that song and she was involved in the education of henry's children she was very smart she published books on prayer i think she's one of the first women in england to publish a book so super smart and when he went traveling he would leave her in charge they were never going to have kids because at this point well she was an old maid at 31 and he was 52 so they probably weren't going to have any kids but he wanted to like have a companion so he was married to her So for this time, I wrote, he's leaking. He's not doing well. And there's other, I mean, obviously during this whole story, there's like huge political things happening that I'm not even talking about, but we're talking about like this man's

desire to have an heir and his desire to continue to be king. So Henry dies in 1547. He leaves her money. So he leaves his last wife, Catherine, some money. And she marries Jane Seymour's brother. So Jane Seymour, the wife who had died after child, her brother marries Henry the sixth wife and it's a counter that she really loved him and like this was a person that she had actually wanted to marry this is her fourth marriage because her first

three husbands died and it sounds like that'd be really fun except it does sound like that they got queen Elizabeth as a child to look after her and the husband wants to marry her so he like molest slash courts her when she's very young um while he's married to jane which is terrible and she Elizabeth has like tons of problems growing up and a lot of it probably is because of this abuse that she suffered at this time living with her dad's like widowed wife and her step-uncle it's very confusing so it's so I mean that's the thing that okay so this is why like I said earlier I never go deep or have gone deep on royalty and royal families is because it's so weirdly interconnected it's like this guy

he's fucking like related to that guy when his sister married that uncle and the cousin and it's just yeah just confusing yeah and then either way poor Jane does die at the age of 36 she gets pregnant which is a surprise because she's 36 and she dies

after childbirth as well because having babies is awful yeah and so she dies from that eventually too and so I mean the moral of the story is what happened is there's a moral What happened is Henry the 8th needed an error. He did anything he could to get it.

So his son, that he, his Edward, his son did become king when Henry the 8th died. He was only king for a few years and then he died. He was a teenager when he died. And then his sister, Elizabeth, became queen because she was officially the next in line because Mary was not because her parents had gotten divorced. So the good news is Anne Boleyn did get executed. for a reason she knew why she was doing it and she was doing it so her daughter could become queen and she did so she got what she wanted like later in life so good for her except she died really young and tragically and yeah do you think that when your head gets cut off that you are still

awake for like a couple seconds i hope so i hope so i mean i don't know i think that's probably the better way to be killed isn't it i mean it sounds swift when it's swift i don't like the the whole hack in at your neck thing that you mentioned earlier yeah i hate that do you think that if you were in that position do you think the people who were royalty those in those days they ever have moments for like why am i doing this like i could just like selfish like how much how hard would it be to selfish nobody's trying to kill me nobody's trying to poison me i don't have to be executed because i'm not having sons like i don't know i feel like i i feel like a simpler life would be preferred Yes and no. I feel like now you can easily be like Prince Harry and be like I'm going to live in L.A. and calm down. But I think then if you weren't like in the court, you were like living in a pile of shit. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like London was like disgusting and it was like plague time. And so I don't know. I feel like there was a big jump between a regular person and royalty like bigger. I mean now it's a huge jump but I feel like even then it was like even worse.

Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, the reason Game of Thrones is, as popular as it is, is the sheer intrigue and fuckery that goes on. It's just like a byproduct of being in that position. It's just, it's fascinating because all the stuff that's happened, that happens, like, I mean, minus the dragons and, like, other magical things, it's all stuff that's happened. And, like, we're super fascinated, I think, as, like, a, right now in our media with, like, medieval time living. I mean, there's Game of Thrones. There's the Lord of the Rings that are kind of. of like medievally. I watched all Willow, which was the delight. There's, you know, it's always

something that you want to feel it's like courtly thing. My husband was watching Star Trek and it kind of felt courtly. Like, there were like kings and queens and all those stuff. So I don't know, people love that shit. I am recently. So recently these markets started up in Austin that I now regularly attend and they're witches markets. And it has the air of a Renaissance fair. it's it's so fun it's just people go yeah people just make stuff and then they show up and they have little booths and yeah like this this necklace is from a wishes mark yeah yeah 15 bucks what's it's it's supposed to do it's supposed to do something no it's tiger's eye it's supposed to just be like a good luck thing oh yeah yeah i have some crystals here yeah yeah i have this black one

that's supposed to like calm me down and like help me focus like obviously like why would i system i believe to believe that this could do this when I'm like very mad about belief in general but I don't fucking know so I'm hanging out on my crystal I got I got a big crystal too from the wishes last wishes thing I love it I want to go next time and that sounds really fun hey you brought up Megan and Harry I probably have a controversial opinion about that what is it like you know what you're getting into I know and it's like it's like it's not the role of a spouse to like show up and just derail everything that you have known and you're I'm not saying that it I'm not saying that it's good I'm not so like defending the royal family by any means yeah if I'm if I'm married

into like a old-timey family that was like that's just how they that's all they've known and it's like no you're gonna change how you're gonna be and this like who are you like I I totally agree I felt that way until yesterday when I like maybe I'm leaning 20% on her side but I'm like yeah this is kind of dumb and like it's about having ended so like if you can be a part of that ending after all these like hundreds of years and like millions of people dying for no reason then like that's great so i kind of felt a little bit on her side for just a second yesterday but most of the time i feel like that like Kate middleton understood the assignment yeah you just like be pretty and do charity work what you think was going to happen i feel like she did like a disservice to

her husband which is like abandon like be outcast from everything you know Like, because Diana, his mom was also, like, their family was also of royalty of some kind. Like, it wasn't just a coincidence that him and her and King now got together. Like, there was a reason for that. Like, they were intent. Anyways, whatever. Well, just like Henry of Ace waves. Like, that's why.

It's like all for like political purposes and like all these things and like very silly. And I, I'm going to try to flip my skepticism to being to enjoying what Megan's doing. Because I'm like, fuck these guys. you know yeah yeah i'm okay with it but i wasn't until yesterday when i was thinking about all this stuff and i was like man if ambolin could have like had a podcast she'd be like the fuck is going on yeah yeah i'm boleyn don't get married to try and change that person yeah 100% um awesome cool paler thank you for that um i do want to call the fact that i feel a little bit low energy today given the fact that I spent all day moving. And so I will try to liven myself up

as I started speaking. Okay, I'm ready. Moving sucks. Yeah, it sucks. It's so bad. I know. It's the worst. Every time I give like a bag away to like the thrift store or to charity or whatever, I'm like, this is a bag that I don't have to move in the future. I'm always like happy to get rid stuff so far between the two houses i've done eight runs personally with my pickup truck today a giant mover took pretty much whatever was left i still am going to have to go do like two three more runs at the old house like it is yeah anyways i'm ranting it's not reflective of what we're talking about here anyways so let's get on to the true crime story of the week and i got to tell you taylor and i've told you this i texted you about this last night i absolutely just

love this story so much it just feels so old-timey in southern and not like a texas southern way and like a really like just gritty fucked up southern way well i think that you know i know that one of our we want to like you know tie our episodes together but i also want to like surprise you with what i'm telling you so i'd have to figure how we do that but i do think that there's a connection between these two stories because it's about like dynacies and people need to be in charge right yeah that's actually a really good way to put it so also Also, just so everybody knows, me and Taylor don't talk about our stories beforehand, but for the most part. So last night, I texted Taylor that I'm really excited about today's podcast because it's about this particular family.

And this was a huge news. And me and Taylor pow-out about it years ago when it first came out. And so she does know the topic of this conversation, but for the most part, we don't actually discuss it. But getting back to this family, this is the story of the Murdaugh family. Murdaugh? No. No. Murdoff?

Murdof? You're supposed to know. I didn't do that enough research. I'm going to go with Murdof, Murdoch family. Okay. Because it's D-A-U-G-F, like laugh with a D. So Murdof sounds right to me. Fine. Okay.

Whatever. This is the story of the Murdof family. And I can't stress enough that this is an actual true story. It's going to, it's going to smear into like fucking Scooby-Doo territory, but it's actually like a true story with like a really, really real family. It has the ambiance and intrigue of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Did you read that? I love Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Oh my God. I love it. I was talking to someone years ago and they said Savannah and I went like, ah, and then I came to Savannah? And I was like, no, I just fucking love Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil so much. Yeah. So I've read the Cliff Notes of it and actually like it feels like something I should probably making that like incorporate into an episode at some point because it's a fascinating tale amazing

characters it's just which i want to actually get into here in a sec so in general southern gothic vibes have always intrigued me you're not from the south taylor i'm not no and but given we literally just said i think the answer to this is yes but when i say so or not yes but i think you're going to have an answer for this when i say southern gothic what comes to mind immediately was the season of American horror story where there are witches in New Orleans. Is that close? You know what I thought of? Have you ever seen the skeleton key?

Yes, with Kate Hudson? Yeah, it's witchy. It's like gritty. It's like, I love it so much. It's just so humid. That's my only problem. Mosquitoes. Lots of mosquitoes.

Lots and lots of mosquitoes. So Southern Gothic is defined as literature, stories, movies, etc., that include a presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses, grotesque characters, dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation. That's a lot, right? I love it, yeah. And this story is all of that. All of it.

I'm so excited about this one. Side note, I obviously did a deep dive into what Southern Gothic is, examples of Southern Gothic literature and content and I was wondering what is the corollary to that in the north and there isn't actually I don't know exactly why that is but in general it's considered that American Gothic is the closest corollary to southern Gothic in the north I mean I imagine here's what here's what I would think like the history of the south is different than the history of the north you know and like they from the very beginning they were divided over a whole bunch of stuff mostly slavery but obviously like they you know lost that big old war they won't can't get over and like I feel like maybe that is like a cloud so I actually have a paragraph in this outline that I sketched out or crossed off that's all about why Southern Gothic exists in the way that it exists tying that directly to essentially not just slavery but the inherent desire to not progress forward and not to have things change

and how the cruelty of that and the evils of that instilled directly ties to this what's being described here irrational horrific and transgressive thoughts desires and impulses grotesque characters like it's all one continuum yeah so Totally. Cool. Let's go ahead and get into the main characters that we'll be discussing. We have Alex Murdof. He's the main person we're going to be talking about today and the patriarch of this family. We're going to go really deep in Alex's background here in a moment. We have Maggie Murdof. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, Taylor.

I'm sorry. Does he pronounce it Alec? No. He doesn't? Okay. It's A-L-E-X. Totally. Okay. Continue. Yep. You have Maggie Murdof, who was Alex's wife. They married in 1993. And you have Paul, who was at the time of the events that we're going to discuss, Alex's 22-year-old son. They also have another son. He's semi-relevant, but not really.

I'll talk about him for like a second. So let's dive in Alex's background. To say this guy was privilege would be doing a disservice to the word privilege. He was Uber privileged. He was Kennedy family levels of privilege. I remember when this story first broke, and I'm sure you did to Taylor, because you brought up the dynastic nature of families. how this prominent South Carolina legal family and I was like, am I supposed to fucking know that?

Like, am I supposed to know every family that's like a big shot in their fucking backwater town? Right. The side note of having a really good mic now in the mic setup is everybody can probably hear every sound my dog is making in this room. I only heard it just now. Look, I didn't hear her until right now.

Okay, good, good. I heard like a bell. Was that her? That was her, yeah. Okay. I'll figure out a new routine for her. She'd get two dogs so they can hang out with each other. If I didn't have my family here in the other room, then I would just put Luna in her kennel,

but then my mom's going to start being nervous about it and try to let her around. Oh, they're all here. Everybody's trying to help me move, so. Aw. Okay. This family was legal royalty in South Carolina. From 1920 to 2006, three members of the family served as a district attorney for the 14th Circuit. Wow. I can't think in terms of circuits, like the 7th,000. size and scope and all that shit.

So let's just say that they were the DA for five highly consequential counties because the county makes more sense to me. Okay. 1920 to 2006, that is back to back. That's three members who held office, the same office for 86 years. So they were in. They were not primary. There was not like, you know, they weren't being challenged for this.

Totally. The only lawyers that I know, well, said to you, but like I know, I can name some of the like injury lawyers in Las Vegas because they're billboards all the time you know but like yeah I like the ones who do the commercials where they like slam a big hammer down yeah so people actually refer to these five counties is a Murdoff country like that is it is colloquial their name is a colloquialism that's the extent we're talking about here totally Taylor have you seen nothing but trouble yet yeah yes but I was like really young as far like a really long time ago. And I feel like if I tried to make a husband watch it now, he would not watch it.

So we should probably watch it together. When's the last time you saw it? It was like a month ago. Oh my God. How was it like, how was it? Have you had you seen it before? No, no. So I mean, that was the whole thing. Like our favorite podcast keeps talking about nothing about troll. We're supposed to see it. And one night I was like, whatever, I'm just going to finally get around to watch again. It is fucking horrible. Like it is, it is a shitty. It is a shitty fucking movie. It's fun. It's fun because you can see Dan Aykroyd having fun. can tell he really, really relished that moment. And so out of love of Dan Ackroyd, I enjoyed that piece of it. But the reason I bring it up is that Bobo, who is Dan Aykroyd's character and

he runs a podunk little town where he's kind of like the judge or the jury and everything. That's kind of what this is. Like this family, we're going to get into it. Like the amount of influence like i'm so understating it right now yeah no and you're and it sounds like a lot yeah yeah and by the way when i say this family i'm talking about Alex's father's side of the family like this is all lineage from Alex's father's side um and like from what i can gather like this family just doesn't lose in addition to their public service i.e the DA stuff um they also run a really prominent civil litigation firm as well even the way they became prominent in civil litigation is kind of shady because they don't lose like they'll find the fucking way to get

to the outcomes which like I kind of admire um don't don't be a crap don't have a criminal lawyer have a criminal lawyer yeah exactly that's exactly right do you remember that it wasn't breaking bad i didn't make that yeah yeah that was uh sol's yeah yeah um again we aren't a legal procedure show but there's this concept i'm going to go into in law around jurisdiction. And a court has to determine if they have jurisdiction over the parties and to the claim

to accept a civil case. There's a reason why I'm bringing this up. It's called subject matter of jurisdiction. In a lot of cases, it is not up to the person, the plaintiff, who files a lawsuit, to decide where they're going to file. A certain court has that jurisdiction, and others do not. In South Carolina,

they passed a law that made the concept of forum shopping. I'm using quotation marks. This is a term of art. super easy. That's what really led to the success the Murdof family's law firm because they're so prominent and because forum shopping was so easy, they could choose to file claims in places in districts and in courts where they knew the people that would get the outcomes they were looking for. Does that make sense? So as the lawyer, as like the person hiring the lawyer, you could do like, I choose to do it in a place where I know I'm going to have good representation or the lawyer would say like oh listen i know the chief of police in jonesville let's go there the person

filing the claim doesn't know shit right okay they're going to their lawyer and saying how much money can i get for this accident they're like oh yeah we'll figure it out they'll find the claim wherever they know where their golfing buddy is the judge yeah asked for a bench trial right and and move forward so anyways like that that that's a big part of this is that this family again all the chips in their favor. It's kind of like the movie of The Firm. I'm referencing a lot of movies today. You've seen The Firm, right?

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's kind of like they just seem like they would basically do anything to maintain their influence and power in this, think of the woods. Part of the firm I remember is when they were dancing in the living room and Tom Cruise turns the music up because you know his house is bugged. It was such a, yeah, it was such a happy, awesome movie when he's like, he's just like a happy go lucky you know law student and then it's just got just derail so hard most of the following

that I'm going to list off to you really has nothing to do with the main story that we're talking about but it is pertinent to the type of people that we're talking about the following our list of let's just call them events that this family has been involved in number one in 2015 a gay teen named stephen smith was found dead on a road in one of these Murdof counties it was rumored that Alex's other son, Buster, was involved in a relationship, like a sexual relationship with Stephen, the death was ruled a hit and run at the time, and they had no suspects. Local papers that I read all but came out and said that this family covered this up and made it seem like a hit and run. So an investigation actually just restarted into this kid's death,

because now that everything happened that I'm going to go into, they're like, uh, something, there's more to this story. I feel like, I wish you hadn't said his name of Buster in the middle of telling that story because the story is terrible and it's also a fucking delight that his name is Buster. And it's just, of course I am. It's just like, it's so funny and hilarious. Like, could you imagine? And like, did you know that Job in Arrested Development was named that way after Jeb Bush?

Seriously? Because Jeb Bush, his name is his initials. His name's like Joe Edward Bush. And that's what. wow really job's name is is like john oliver bluth or whatever it's incredible yeah i didn't know that it's making fun of him because jeb bush's name is his initials except you missed it because it wouldn't be john because job is g obi oh right right yes they would call him gob anyway it's just hilarious to be named buster these days and i can't believe that you

would call them that but also i feel like you meet rich people all the time named like pussy willow you know They're like, oh, this is poppy, you know, like, I mean, if you come to the witch's market, you'll meet a lot more of them. But anyway, that story is terrible, and I'm so sorry for that poor boy's family, and that's absolutely awful. Yeah.

And in the second thing, yeah, of course. And presumably they're going to get there because, like I said, the case has been reopened. The second side track here is in 2018, their family housekeeper of the Murdof's, Gloria fell down the stairs of their state and ultimately died. The circumstances of this were suspicious for a number of reasons,

but the most telling of which was Alex trying to steal the proceeds of this woman's life insurance policy. Like, steal it. Not like, he wasn't in charge of it. He wasn't going to, like, be the, you know, the executor of her state or anything. He was outright just going to steal it. This part, I dug so deep, Taylor, to find the answer to this. is she was insured to the tune of $4.3 million. What?

That's crazy. I mean, I don't know if you have life. I have life insurance. My life is not worth $4.3 million. No, I have like my work life insurance. Yeah. And yeah, it's not that much. It's very much, much, much less.

So I don't, so I don't get how, whatever. Like that's just, it's in bold here of like keep digging, trying to figure out why her life sure's policy was the way that it was but anyways that's number two of weird fuckery of this family the third and really the biggest and one that actually is pertinent to this story is in 2019 paul the youngest son went out boating with friends drunk as shit wrecked the boat and killed his friend mallory as a result and to show how much influence his family actually had after the accident paul wasn't given a field sobriety test he wasn't taken to jail he wasn't booked he was in handcuffed nothing

he just called his dad his dad's like i'm going to come down i'll take care of it privilege like these people are fucking yeah like you can kill some privileged i'm looking up how many people die falling down the stairs and i'm like i can't tell of this what i just found is just um the u.s but i think it is because it's from the national safety council guess how many people die you're falling down the stairs okay because if you include old people it's going to be a lot it's at least 10,000 it's 12,000 yeah it's more than i thought yeah continue but i mean there's probably not many like 30 year olds who are dying falling downstairs right i would assume the bulk of that 12 000 are going to be like seniors yeah

probably i heard that like falling as a senior is literally the biggest health hazard like yeah they could kill you you're right it's terrifying um but yeah that's awful and and also for that poor girl dying in a boat accident yeah yeah except except it unlocked a lot of things. So that accident sounds like it kind of started everything that we're about to go into. So going back to that part of it, suffice to say that Alex had his hands in many white collar crimes, given the fact that he was trying to have his appropriate funds and he's doing cover-ups and all the other shit that I just went into. As part of the lawsuit that was filed by Mallory's family against the Murdof's because of the wrongful death

suit that they were going to file. financial records were being requested or more accurately Alex was going to be compelled to reveal a ton of financial information that just would not have looked good this date is important a hearing was scheduled for June 10th of 2021 that was to decide whether Alex would have to turn over his financial records in relation to the death of the girl on the boat yeah yeah how why well because part of it is that when you tabulate damages in civil cases. Oh, you know to their net worth and all that? You need to know like what you're going after, what assets are available, what you're actually asking for. A lot of times what you're going to do is look at lost potential earnings in the future, pain and suffering, and things like that.

And it's usually a proportion of what that person can give. Got it. And so that's part of what they're asking for. it's it's always the trail of money that fucks people like remember this folks like if you're if you're doing shady shit the issue is never getting the money the issue are the waypoints that money takes as it travels before it gets to you yeah and you were also not the king of england to just another thing you know i feel like this guy probably thought that he was like untouchable because he was like the lawyer king of the county but you're like it's not the same like you can't

I mean some some people are like above the law and they shouldn't be but this guy's not above the law he just thought anyway right yeah he sounds kind of like the combination of arrogance mixed with stupidity but because he's so privileged he doesn't know that because he's like everywhere I go, the C's part. So like I'm a fucking, I'm great, you know. Yeah, totally. So I'm going to get the red flag number one. I don't know very much about Maggie, but she did a really interesting thing around this time. Around the time of pre-being compelled to reveal financial information by the court, she hired a forensic accountant to look into her own family's finances. You know what a forensic accountant does, right?

yeah like looks at everything with a yeah yeah it's like a personal audit of your own finances like where did money come from how to get so she knew something was wrong but was hands off enough to not know exactly what i'm kind of going to blame maggie for this for reasons i'll get into a little bit later it seems that as early as 2016

the super obvious shady financial shit was kind of right under her nose like she was a part of it in a way Mm-hmm. Like, there's no way she didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. What I'm going to tell you later on happened in 2016, I mean, I think anybody would have just had, like, alarm bells ringing in their head. Mm-hmm. So things are unraveling. Alex is about to be forced by the court to give up his financial secrets. And if that doesn't get him, his wife's forensic accountant surely will. It's also worth knowing that by now, at this point, Alex and Maggi are estranged. They live separately at one of their beach homes. They're kind of just like walking past each other and whatever. They're not like really close.

That is a very, very blue family of them. God, you're right. I love that you brought up the rest. I need to go back and watch for us for the moment. I mean. Okay, another quick sidetrack. I'm going to run through the TLDR of just what we know of Alex's financial fuckery. His trial actually started three days ago.

We're recording this on Saturday, January 28th. So a ton more is about. to come out. But here's a short list and I'm going to leave out a ton of details because otherwise just this section alone could be 45 minutes and you'd fall asleep driving. So here is the shit Alex is accused of stealing or at least attempting to steal his housekeepers, 4.3 million dollar life insurance claim. His death client's life support mysteriously being unplugged after Alex represented him in his traffic accident and then handling the wrongful death suit that followed $800,000 to $1 million of that settlement went missing.

A woman was killed in a crash who Alex represented. She never received, or her family never received $112,000 of that settlement. Another woman's family, another woman who was killed by a drunk driver was told, was told by this, Alex, that the settlement was 30,000 when it was actually $180,000. Yeah, I mean, drop in the bucket. his financial crimes alone amount to misappropriating around $8.7 million. Wow. So the thing about that, $8.7 million, and what I mentioned earlier, he never got the $4.3 million of that life insurance policy was trying to steal.

So like $4.30, it is just $8.7 that he actually got around to stealing. So that's Alex for you. Chris. Let's get to the murders. He should be jail for that alone. So I'm going to talk about that. The prosecutors on that piece said something really, really interesting that I'm going to get to. So let's get to the murders, because obviously there's going to be murders.

On June 7th of 2021, so three days before his motion is to be heard, Alex calls the police saying he found the bodies of his son and wife at their hunting lodge. They'd been shot repeatedly with different weapons. Convenient. He had that happened at a hunting lodge. What? Yeah, it all tracks, right? Alex says that during the killing, he was with his parents who conveniently for him have dementia. So that's his alibi.

Reminder, again, Alex and Maggie weren't close to this time. Apparently Alex wanted to meet up with Maggie that night, and Maggie had texted her friend that Alex sounded, quote, fishy and quote, up to something. She didn't want to go. Like her alarm bells were ringing. but Alex had told her that hey let's go visit my father together and Maggie was like fuck that I'm not I don't want to try that

so how long but they were married for like 93 to 21 so what is that 30 years 28 years yeah yeah okay it's a long time yeah it's legit right flag number two that I wrote here is listen to your gut

if your gut tells you someone is giving off bad vibes there's probably a reason for that. Totally. I mean, you've had that experience right before Teller where like somebody invites you out or somebody at, like you're with someone and like for whatever reason like, man, I don't know what it is about you.

I just don't fucking like you. Yeah. You're like, I just got to go. Yeah. Yeah. And that was the case here. Like Maggie legit was like I'm not doing this. And he just insisted and insisted and insisted and then finally she relented. It sounds like she was so close. I mean, not that she's innocent

but it sounded like she was close to leaving. But then also, we're talking about how when you're leaving an abusive relationship, whether, however abusive he was, like, psychologically, he's obviously crazy, like you, that's such a dangerous time. So, like, what did she know that he didn't want people to know? You see, you're getting into motives right now, and applying motives here is going to get really murky. They were not in an abusive relationship for what it's worth.

Apparently, they seemingly had, like, this, like, charmed, you know, king and queen of the court vibe in South Carolina. Right. I just mean like he's, I guess I'm thinking that like she's like he's being weird. Yeah. Yeah. There's something going on with him.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So like I said, Maggie ultimately relented to this assistance meeting at the lodge. We're kind of going to leave this part of the story here. Maggie arrives. Her son Paul is there. Alex calls the police roughly an hour after their estimated time of death.

And that's it. So we're going to move on. seven weeks go ahead, sorry. I want to know what I'd tell me later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're definitely going on. We're going to go back.

Great. Seven weeks after this event, so in September, Alex resigns, quote, unquote, from his family firm because they too had gotten wise to his financial shenanigans. Like he said, resigns a nice way to put it. They just told him a pack of shit and get out, basically. He had devised so many ways to swindle money, fake invoices, fake bills, fake out.

hours work charging personal expenses to his clients in the firm funneling money through multiple bank accounts it's weird how he was smart enough to do all of this and not smart enough to know that it was a complete house of cards postures also called this a Ponzi scheme remember when i brought that up in the tote like they also say who's Ponzi scheming himself essentially just the same way tony tote was it gets this piece alone gets so complicated because he was also really close friends with the president of this secondary bank that was like on the side that he was using to funnel all this money he did a lot of fucked up shit and brought a lot of people into his issues yeah totally um the thing that the thing i don't really understand is given his prominence

he would have been fine as just like a normal civil litigation lawyer yeah it was reported that his annual salary was around $250,000 a year. I think that's an understatement, though, because it sounds like he was a partner in the firm, given that it was family. And if he was, he would have been part of their profit sharing. Right.

But even without it, I would assume $250,000 in South Carolina. Like, it's not $250 grand in L.A. Like, in South Carolina, it's probably a super comfortable life for a family of four, right? Yeah, it's a lot of money. Did you watch the Bernie Madoff stock on Netflix?

so like same with him like he had a legitimate business that was doing well but he like needed I don't know like control or like more or more and more and you're willing to do stuff that you know is illegal to get more and you're like when is enough enough and it's probably never probably never I don't think these guys have that pause button and Alex definitely didn't so as an example of conspicuous consumption that made no sense given his income and that shockingly nobody got on caught on to the lodge where his son and wife were ultimately killed it was a 1700 acre estate well this was not some dear lease in the middle of shit fuck nowhere immense the property was listed for sale after these murders at 3.9 million after the murders so like you would imagine that it's probably that probably means worth like six seven million right without fucking ghosts haunting the property. Totally, totally.

Wow. Yeah, like the house in celebration that was so much less than others after someone murders their family in it. Yeah, yeah. They also had a beach house. Like I said earlier, that's where it magna and Alex were mostly living.

And that was recently sold for just shy of $1 million. Again, looking at this, like you just go off of like the market rate after the murders 3.9 women. That's like $5 million in property. Yeah, totally. You know, nobody bought themselves. How's this guy?

If you're like a fellow lawyer or you're like, how the fuck is Alex? Well, I think I would assume it was family money. Actually, yeah, that's fair. You know, I'd be like, oh, you're from a line of rich people. I imagine that you have property. Yeah, actually, that's a really good point. My mind, I mean, obviously I don't come from that. So my mind went to like, if I just start,

like buying Lambeau's all cash, people should ask questions, right? No, I'd make a call. Yeah, exactly. So going back to how aware Maggie was or wasn't, one thing Alex did in 2016 is convey the 1700-acre estate to his wife for $5. So it seems like Alex started to suspect that this house of cards was eventually going to collapse. Right. What's so fucking stupid about it, though, is that Maggie's will was never updated.

So there was a 2005 version of this will that said in the event of her death, everything conveys to Alex. Mm-hmm. So he later tries to unenherit the property so that it wouldn't be considered part of his assets and that it could convey to his son Buster. So let me. So he should have given it to, so he gave it to someone, but he needed to give it to someone else. she should have not killed his wife well yes that's our overarching theme but no because if he didn't kill his wife and he just went down for the financial crimes then creditors wouldn't be able to attach the property to his debts but because she was dead it came back to him it conveyed back

yeah okay I know Taylor I know we're don't kill your spouse oh stop it if you're thinking about it Don't do it. Like I said, we're the only podcast in America who consistently advocates against murdering your family. So we should- Others are really for it. Yeah, we should get gold points for that. Yeah, yeah.

So that was the entire idea. The entire idea was he knew in 2016 something was about to go down. And he wanted to keep the bulk of his net worth, which is in these properties, out of creditors' hands, in the court's hands, so that eventually it could be inherited by his son. That was the entire idea around this. And then, like, how he connected the dots, like, let me just kill her. And like, well, yeah, motives will get into that in a minute. Anyways, so we're back to the events.

The next day, the day after he is booted out of his law firm, Alex claims that he was shot in the head while changing a car tire. Do you know this? I forgot this part. Fucking incredible. It's so incredible. Oh, my God. Tell me more.

he apparently had one of those Shug Knight headshots where it just kind of glanced him so physically he was totally fine he went to the hospital he was there for like a couple of hours and he was he dipped 10 days after this event i love this detail 10 days after this event his oxy dealer a guy named Curtis was arrested for conspiring with Alex to shoot him with the intent on killing him so his remaining son would receive a $10 million insurance payout So he knows a guy named Curtis, who spells him Oxy, who he called, listen, and I know a lot of folks who like slang and it's all good. I don't know any that I would call and say, I want you to be a part of an incredibly intricate insurance fraud scheme. Well, who else are you going to call if not your drug dealer? So he couldn't kill himself. He didn't know this. But in most, so in most, this guy's not, like, he's actually, I don't, again, I don't think he's that smart or that good of a lawyer. He, like, practiced law the way I practiced law. So he could have

killed himself because in South Carolina, you can kill yourself and still get the insurance pay on. Most states, you can't, right? Most states can kill yourself, you can't get the insurance out. He didn't know that. That's why he, that's why he called Curtis and was like, buddy. He just was, like, watching movies where you learn you can't do that. And, like, wasn't actually checking the law yeah that's so funny okay just keep picking this picture this guy playing fita at home and getting this phone call like anyways oh my gosh oh my goodness oh that's so funny it only took 10 days like it was yeah that's how long i took for them to arrest him i don't understand i'm so i'm so sorry but like i feel like if i had a gun i could kill you

I don't think I could graze your head if I, I feel like I could do it. It's his oxy dealer. Like, we're not talking like a trained assassin. This is not like the- I think it'd be much harder to graze someone's head on purpose than it would be to kill them. Dude, this guy was about good times.

Like, he's not out there, like, trying to run down cartel members. Like, this is not like a John Wu movie. Like, right, right. Odd choices being made. Alex later admitted to coming up with the whole scheme because of course he did because Curtis didn't think of this on his own I'm sure

yeah and like I said like yeah he could just he literally killed himself and it would have been totally cool and fine wow it's so funny that he didn't know that I mean yeah that's ridiculous continue um so let's recap okay at this point your kid is responsible

for sure for killing one kid your other kid maybe killed another kid you certainly had a hand in killing your wife and kid you've been fired and you've tried killing yourself which you actually could have done the last part

first earlier yeah yeah what again going into the motive like why didn't the sequencing of events he just like absolutely not I'm not going to give any man money to his wife and his other his first kid he wants to give it all the buster

yeah maybe he just fucking hated them I don't know the money is in the banana stand buster's the golden child God, I hope I wish you only had one hand too Oh my God It's so good

So Taylor Like if you were in this situation Right What would you do Like would you go to jail forever Or would you find a way to get the fuck out I feel like I would go to jail forever Because I would give up

But I also can't imagine being in the situation Because I feel like I wanted to be better decisions But if I were I mean I don't know What are your choices Like, I feel like there's a choice. I'd be like, oh, would I, you know, want to die by suicide and not go to jail? Obviously, he's, like, not able to do that.

So, I mean, that's a terrible thing to say, too. I apologize. But, like, I don't know. It's a tough, it's a, it's a, if you're staring down the rest of your life in prison, I don't know what you do. So I'm for sure running. Like, no questions asked. Like, not even a single second of doubt. I've already planned this out.

Yeah. Stop telling me. I wrote, like, multiple bullet points on how it's going to. So the secret that nobody knows is that you have to do it before your passport's flagged. So the second, like, you don't wait until the shoe is about to drop. You dip two weeks before the shoe's about to drop. Got it. Like, way before you're about to kill your, like, in 2016, when he was going to

complete the property, that's when you did. He should have just left. Yeah. You don't wait until your kid kills another kid in 2019, you know he's going to, come on. Paul probably did a lot of fucked up shit, right? Like, killing Mallory probably wasn't the first sign that something was going to have a call. So he probably knew what was going on. But yeah, you just go leave, go to a different country, get a bunch of travel check, find a bunch of friends in different countries, send them your travelers checks and your credit cards.

Have them charge shit on it. So then now you have multiple tracks. Oh, that's smart. And then it's a, that could be a cool social network idea. But anyways. that's okay of ideas um well i'm glad you told me all of this but also you just implicated yourself if you try to run away but that's a great idea but it can be anyone right i can be Greek I'd be Hispanic I can be you know Italian like I'm I'm I'm I'm like ethnically androgynous

I think is a term maybe okay so we're going back to the story like I see said, the trial just began. So we don't know much more than what is being kind of stated here. But I have some thoughts in general on the case in cases like this I want to go into with you. So as I was digging in the story, it occurred to me that the only things I remember about this case were prominent lawyer's wife and kid are found dead. And then months later, prominent lawyer whose wife and kid were found dead is shot in the face and survives. right that's kind of all I really I didn't know about like the the boys potentially killing people or all the financial crimes yeah yeah and the more I learned about this guy and what he was up to the more cure it got and it made me think about the salacious versus the nuanced parts of true crime like I went super deep on this and the things Alex was involved in you could write a treatise on just his financial crimes and that shit's boring but it does paint

a picture of a person who went to get the salacious part of the like it leads to the salacious part of everything the insane

boring financial white collar bullshit is why all the rest of this stuff ends up happening right so that's like the red flag yeah yeah I wrote down to this

really did remind me a lot of the tote family for reasons that I I mean, for reasons, like, you would know if you listen to that podcast, this one is engrossed me out the way that one did. Things that he did just don't seem as like, I don't know. It doesn't sound like, well, I don't know you're going to tell me more, but it doesn't sound like he was, like, in the house with their dead bodies for a week.

It was just less depraved. I don't know how to describe it. Like, I mean. But also, that's terrifying because it sounds like it was, like, very, like, systematic, you know, just like, I don't know. Yeah. But it reminds me, it reminds me a lot of that. just like a lot more elaborate version of that

and that people just weren't asking the right questions around like what this guy's inner workings of his finances were and we just thought that this guy was incredible nobody really won't went further than that and your point actually makes a lot of sense to me now we're like oh it's probably just family money so don't ask right like why so I don't know

like good point I didn't think about that way yeah I feel like you don't buy a hunting lodge you like inherit it but he maybe bought it yeah I don't know maybe he bought it but like it feels like something I'd be like oh I assume that my rich friend Muffy has the hunting lodge. Yeah.

It's same with people who have boats, right? It's always that risk around with the boat. Exactly. It made me think a lot of like how with these situations, these stories, it always kind of boils down to two things. It's money or infidelity. That's basically it. And somebody feeling like they're going to get left behind.

Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah, like it sounds like in this case, obviously money was a big factor in it. And Maggie was aware, but she probably became aware a little bit too late. As I said about this, as I said about his trial for the murders, the financial crimes haven't actually started yet. They haven't been scheduled or anything like that. And I told you I'd come back to this. Apparently, just his financial crimes alone would be enough to keep him in jail for the next 900 years. I'm not exaggerating. I swear, like, if he was convicted

and given mandatory minimums, it would total between 900 and 1,000. years. Well, that's a lot of time. He sounds like a criminal. Jesus. Yeah. The part I don't totally get is how he thought killing his family would help with the financial stuff. Right. That's what you're saying. Like, I guess, I mean, I think it sounds like he just didn't want his family to get any of the money. No, so what the prosecution has been saying about the murders was that it was to distract everyone from his financial crimes. Oh. Yeah. He was trying to get a away with that and he was like oh well if i kill my family then nobody's going to look at me like you don't kill your family that makes that makes things worse or maybe better because maybe they were

annoying yeah i think i just don't i mean i don't know you don't kill don't kill people and that's crazy yeah the dots just aren't there like you know his defense to all of this is that someone was upset with his son for causing mallory's death on the boat and that person is the person who probably killed them we don't know who it is there's no there's a thing that's the only sure sure right like is he trying to find the killer like fucking he's working on his first draft of if i did it right um random fact that you might know given your podcast diet Alex's defense attorney is a guy named Dick Harputtlyan.

Does that ring a bell? No. Damn, okay. Who's he? So he was the prosecutor in South Carolina who prosecuted and got life before he got, ended up getting death, getting life for pee-wee-askins. Do you remember him? Yeah, yeah.

The redneck Charles Manson. That's the final truth. The final truth? That's the final truth. That's funny. that was like in the 1930s but I guess not no no it was it was not so now he's his defense attorney

so yeah and he sounds like a real piece of shit actually um he said like he says like random casual racist things about the judge who is African American he's just not like he doesn't sound yeah he doesn't sound like he's really gone forward with the times in South Carolina

but yeah yeah that is um that's the Murdof family and hopefully once his trial wraps we'll do like a little post script and discuss what happened so but he did he shoot are they did they get how did the mom and the khan died did they get shot in the hunting watch yeah the guy's shot in the head multiple times had multiple guns did they find the guns yeah they're there yeah they found the guns so i don't the details of the guns i've seen pictures of them so i know they have them but i don't know the details of whether they were able to, again, his son killed somebody and nobody

asked him a single question and didn't book him. Yeah. Like, it wouldn't be that big of a stretch of the imagination with him. I'd be like, hey, can we take gun residue off your fingers? Like, what are you talking about? Why would you do that to me? I'm Alex. And I feel like it's, the other thing is, if he hadn't have done that stage to try to kill yourself thing, maybe he could have kind of more so like it was like that made him so look so much more guilty

than anything else ever could it wasn't stage he was trying to kill himself and he failed like that's just don't understand I feel like I'd be like do it again I don't understand that makes no sense

you like I have like one bullet so I don't like this guy probably didn't know that his story was national news Like, I mean, I think at the time we were living in L.A., right? Maybe. Yeah, maybe.

And we were hearing about this. Yeah. Like, his front page news, because it was just an insane story. And it's like, did he not know that people were paying attention that this wasn't in, like, the backwoods of South Carolina? Like, this was national news. I mean, maybe not. He tried to shoot himself with Curtis in the head, and Curtis fucked up because he's probably high on fucking oxies and

I don't think Curtis gets high in his own supply he feels yeah you think Curtis is a good reputation I do that yeah I don't that no no no I don't because I don't understand how you can not if someone's asking you to do that I don't understand how you don't do it

I don't I guess I mean I guess if you you can check not oh my god this is terrible I'm not checking out because obviously I don't think I could physically do it maybe he got like sick and like when I can't do it but either way I mean, I guess all the things, it's confusing because you're like, why are all these people making these decisions that seem super irrational? And like you were saying, like, he could have, he could have died by suicide and by law, the money would have gone to Buster and that would have been what he wanted. But then he just didn't do that.

Like, people are just making, like, weird irrational decisions. Yeah. Yeah, actually, actually, what would have happened, like, if I remember anything from family law is because his wife, died before he died, all of her assets conveyed to him. So when he died, if they had filed a suit, which they had on the financial crimes, and on the wrongful death crime, that would have not gone to Buster. It would have stayed with the court until a resolution was reached with his former clients and creditors. But no matter how he died.

yeah his only out would have been to either have his wife change her will then kill her so that it would convey to buster that's actually the only way to do it yeah he should have done that he should just killed her he should just like gone her taking her to the family law office change the who gets everything when she dies and then killed her then or just not at all or it's not just not at all yeah i'm trying to do the math on how to actually get this i'm trying to figure how the fuck do we get buster paid um yeah how um tell me more about how the the southern gothicness of this have you seen pictures of this family yes when when i hear the term grotesque characters i think of these guys i well i think of the sons and the dad mostly not the mom necessarily

they just seem i thought of savannah too i know that south kielman i know it's in georgia or not South Carolina, but I thought a lot of like Savannah heat, humidity, like discomfort that you have to like rebel in and being of this like elite status there where like, you know, you're the king of fucking a place that nobody wants to really be king at. And I don't know, it just all kind of like gave me this like southern witchy vibe. of, like, of course you're also involved in killing teenagers and, you know, like, all the other things. Yeah, I feel like in, like, the, I feel like the nighttime is very loud because there's, like, bugs everywhere, you know, and the humidity is, like, hanging. And then, like, the obviously, minute in Garden of Good and Evil, it's very, like, creepy and witchy, but also there's, like, they have these, like, wonderful, like, social gatherings where, like, everyone is just, like, I think it's like, you know, you're thinking of a heavy,

a heavy nighttime vibe because of the air and because of the bugs and because of the humidity and, you know, weird stuff happens. It's also like loud but quiet and, yeah, I don't know. There's a part of it that like is hitting me a little bit that when you're in the South, again, growing up in Texas, within certain socioeconomic status, there is absolutely no diversity. everybody dresses the same has the same teams love the same sports go to the same bars they end up marrying the same and the only things that stand out is when someone's

different and when they're different there's an animus attributed to them that results them becoming famous like or famous for wrong reasons like in you know the garden of good evil right like like it's there's a piece of that that resonates with this story for me which is everybody was different because nobody was in this fucked up world of privilege mixed with also just constantly doing shady shit like it's um it's very compelling yeah and it was definitely like about to from crashing down any some in some way it was no way it wasn't going to crash down it's also interesting to me because like I don't actually find these people that come that um sad like I don't feel the same way that I felt when I talked about the toad family and like

those kids went through because I'm yeah do I really give a fuck about Paul Paul sounds like a shithead yeah no absolutely absolute shithead like sure like am I'm not happy that the 22 year old kid is dead obviously he could have turned out you could have been something different but he said he grew up in this family like he was whatever I'll just get fucked up and just drive this boat and whoever died like I don't know These people just don't seem sympathetic to me. Yeah. I agree.

I agree. Yeah, I'm curious. I wonder what's going to happen. I wonder if he's going to, like, confess and tell everybody what happened or not. Because I feel like there's no, I'm pretty sure he did it. Nothing else makes any sense, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. Dick Hart-Prulyan's argument is that there's video of him with Paul, like, having a great time planning a tree like hours before this murder. I mean, he's like, how can, this guy possibly live with a switch and it's like he's clearly a sociopath I didn't say this but like I glanced over it

but like that guy was the one that he that they think he unplugged the life support from he was in a horrible accident where like he needed round the clock support like he couldn't live on his own anymore

he was in an assistant living facility and at that place is when suspiciously this plug came out and that's why he ended up actually ultimately dying so like he had the upside of the initial suit for the accident and then he had the upside for the wrongful like he's clearly like a fucked up yeah mentally it's like yeah of course you could potentially kill a son after playing with him but yeah of course anyways that is the murdof family yeah and i think i mean to tie them together

i think there's something that'd be like oh my family's always been safe because we've always done things this way you know and so he probably thought himself above the law because his parents his like his lineage being like the district attorney and all those things for you know almost a hundred years you know all of that is like it makes you feel like you can do whatever you want and then there's times like king henry the eighth could do whatever the fuck you wanted you know like in in in a way where he was like okay well if i cannot do things like do something against the church then i'm going to just not have the church anymore and you're like okay okay and like the cults bluffing did it you know so I think there's like and he was and there was so much violence then we see so much less now

honestly even though we see so much violence but um if he sick Alex Murdoch sounds like someone who could have easily just like been a violent person in a different time you know like the extent that certain status people will go to to get what they want that's what it is get what you want like I want to marry 17 women in Manhattan so I can have a son. Like, I'll do whatever it takes to get what I want. And I have the ability, yeah, and I have the ability to do it. And this guy's like, I make $250 grand a year.

That's not enough. I need millions and millions of property. And so I'm going to do whatever it takes to get there. Like, it's just, yeah, yeah. Chill out, guys. Chill out. Like, be happy with what you have. Oh, my God.

Like, you had a good job, but, like, calm down. Yeah, yeah. And there shouldn't be a monarchy anymore and don't kill your family. The only podcast in America that advocates that. Yeah, good for us. Good for us being on the right side of history with this. I know, right. Controversial topic.

We're doing fantastic. I hope this audio quality is much better. I think you sound great. I will only know for sure after I finish editing this, but thank you for the feedback, everyone. Yeah, thank you. And follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Doom to Fail Pod. Send us messages. Let us know if you have any ideas, any questions, any new news.

we'd love to, you know, do a follow-up and talk about it. We'll definitely follow up this one because there's more to come here, I'm sure. And I'm excited. Thank you, Forrest, after your long day, for joining me anyway. Thank you for being patient with me. Of course. Awesome. No problem.

Bye all. All right. Thanks, ma'am. See you later.