Doomed to Fail - Ep 5 - Part 2: You can just leave your family, calm down! - The Murdaugh Family Murders

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

Join us on a trip to a time before Alex Murdaugh was convicted of killing his wife and son - when we were just talking about his arrest and the horrible things he was accused of doing. We dig into this truly Southern Gothic tale - we imagine there are cicadas in the air, the humidity is hazy, and everyone is pretending to be nice but probably wants to murder you. Dramatically.Today's re-release is the Murdaugh Family Murders.Pictures via NBC news and AI // we asked for Southern Gothic & we had originally asked for Henry VIII in the south and that is great too! 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]  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] 

Hi everyone, Taylor from Doomed to Fail. Today we are re-releasing our episode on the Murdoch family murders. Since then, this actually has been, I guess, resolved because the patriarch Alex is actually in jail now and has been convicted of murdering his wife and son. And I think they've opened up a second case or another case for the other son, Buster, because he probably killed someone as well. So it's wild. It's a southern gothic tale, as we like to say. Hope you enjoy. See you on the other side.

In a matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A. 019. Cool, okay. Thank you for that. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Okay, I'm ready. Moving sucks. Yes, so, 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 of 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 remember 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 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 dynocies and people need to be in charge. Right? Yeah. That's actually a really good way to put it. So 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 Murdoha family. Murdoch, Murdoch? Murdoch. Murdof, Murdoch? You're supposed to know. I didn't do that enough research.

I'm gonna go with Murdof, Murdof family. 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 veer into like fucking Scooby-Doo territory, but it's actually like a true story with like a really, really real family. It has the ambience and intrigue of midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Did you mean? I love midnight in the Garden of Good and Hall. Oh my God. I love it. I was talking to someone years ago and they said Savannah.

and I went like ah and then like have you been to Savannah and I was like no I just a fucking love minute in the Garden of Good and Evil so what yeah so um I've read the cliff notes of it and actually like it feels like something I should probably make an 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.

But given what you 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. I love it so much. It's just so humid. That's my only, it'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 then overall angst-ridden, sense of alienation. That's a lot, right? I love it. Yeah. And this story is all of that. It is all of it.

I'm so excited about this one. Side note, I obviously did a deep dive into what like 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, 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, 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. It's all one continuum. Yeah. So. 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 talked about today in 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 i thought it's a l-e-x totally okay continue yep uh you have maggie murdoff who was alex's wife they married in 1993 and you have paul who was at the time of the events 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 the word privilege. He was Uber privileged. He was Kennedy family levels of privileged. I remember when this story first broke, and I'm sure you did too, 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. I heard like a bell. Was that her and she a bell? That was her. Yeah. Okay. I'll figure out a new routine for her. Is she get two dogs so they can hang out with

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 gonna start being nervous about it and try to let her around yeah they're all here everybody's everybody's trying to help me move so oh hold on Luna place yeah let me let me see if I can just let her out okay Okay. Can you hear me? Oh, yeah. You were far away for a second, but you came back.

Okay. You ready? Yes. 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 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 right you know they weren't being challenged for this totally the only lawyers that i know that 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 um so people actually refer to these five counties is a Murdof, Murdof 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. I saw it 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. What was 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. You can tell he really, really relished that moment. And so out of love of Dan Aykroyd, 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.

Mm-hmm. Even the way they became prominent in civil litigation is kind of shady. Mm-hmm. 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, don't have a criminal lawyer. criminal lawyer. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. Do you remember that? It wasn't breaking bad. I didn't make that. Yeah, that was Saul's. Yeah. 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 of 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 as the as 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 file the claim wherever they know where their golfing buddy is a judge.

Yeah. Ask for a bench trial, right? And move forward. So anyways, like that's a big part of this is that this family, again, stacks 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, 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, 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, God, 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 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 that 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 so i feel like i wish you hadn't said his name buster at 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 I just of course I am it's just like it's so funny and hilarious like could you imagine and like um did you know that job in the rest of development was named that way after uh Jeb Bush Bush seriously because Jeb Bush his name is his initials his name's like Joe Edward Bush and that's what Job's name 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-O-B. 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 to 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 witches, market you'll meet a lot more of them 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 in the sense of justice yeah of course and they 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 the 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 ex-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 because she was insured to the tune of $4.3 million. what that's crazy i mean i don't know if you have life insurance i have life insurance my life is not worth 4.3 million like no i have like my work life insurance yeah and yeah it's not that much it's very much 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 wasn't handcuffed nothing he just called his dad his dad's like i'm gonna 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 give me at least 10 000 it's 12 000 yeah that'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 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 that's awful and and also for that poor girl dying in a boat accident.

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, so if I say that Alex had his hands in many white-collar crimes, given the fact that he was trying to misappropriate 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 Murdofs 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 come? 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 um 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 anyways right yeah he 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 fucking i'm great you know yeah totally so i'm gonna 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 account to look into her own family's finances you know what a forensic accountant does right yeah like looks at everything with a yeah it's like a personal audit of your own finances like where did money come from how to 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 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 there

in their head 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 Maggie are strange they live separately at one of their beach homes so they're kind of just like walking past each other and whatever they're not like really close that is 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 rest of development um 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 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, 4.3, 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. that happened at a hunting lodge. What? It continued. Yeah. 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 a 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 so long time right flag number two that I wrote here is listen to your gut if you're 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 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 like yeah you're like i just got to go yeah yeah and and that was the case here like maggie legit was like i'm not doing this and he just insisted insisted 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 remember 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 they seemingly had like this like charmed you know king and queen right work vibe in south carolina um right i just mean like as like he's i guess i'm thinking that like she's like he's being weird yeah recently you know there's something going on with them yeah yeah

yeah so like i said maggie ultimately relented to this assistance meeting of 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. Okay. Go ahead, sorry. I want to know more, but tell me later.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're definitely going on. We're going to settle back. Great. Seven weeks after this event. So in September, geez, beers catch up to me. 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 a shouldn't get out basically he devised so many ways to swindle money fake invoices fake bills fake 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 with a tote like they also say he was Ponzi scheming himself essentially just same way Tony tote was um 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 grand 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, a lot of money. Did you watch the Bernie Madoff doc on Netflix? So, like, same with him. Like, he had a legitimate business that was doing one. 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 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 least 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 they probably mean this worth like six seven million right without fucking ghosts haunting the property totally totally wow yeah like like this house in celebration

that was so much less than the others after someone murders their family in it yeah yeah they also had a beach house like i said earlier that's where it man and alex were mostly living and they that was recently sold for just shy of one million dollars again looking at this like you just go off of like the market rate after the murders 3.9 1 that's like 5 million dollars in property yeah totally you nobody bought themselves how's this guy if you're like a fellow lawyer are you like how the fuck is alex like 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 like my mind went to like if i just started like buying lambos all cash people people should ask questions right no i'd make a call yeah exactly um so let me go back uh hold on you're good all good i'm back i left you're good i'm back i left you all good so so going back to how aware maggie was or wasn't one One thing Alex did in 2016 is convey the 1700 acre estate to his wife for $5. Hmm. 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 he should have given it to, so he gave it to someone, but he needed to give it to someone else. He should have not killed his wife.

Well, yes, that's our overarching theme. 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 conveyed back yeah okay i know taylor i know we're not don't kill yours don't stop it stop thinking about 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 her family so we should others are really for it so yeah we should get a goal point yeah yeah so that was the entire idea the entire idea was he knew in 20 something was about to go down and he wanted to keep the bulk of his net worth which is in

these properties out of creditor's hands right court's hands so that eventually it could be inherited by his son that was the entire idea around this and for in that and then like how he connected the dots like let me just kill her and like I 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 head shots 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. Ten 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 that his remaining son would receive

a $10 million dollar insurance payout. So he knows a guy named Curtis who sells him oxy who he called... Listen, and I know a lot of folks who like slaying 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? It's not your drug dealer. So he could have killed himself. He didn't know this, but in most, so in most, this guy's not, like, he's, 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 say you can kill yourself you can't get the insurance pal he didn't know that that's why 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 you just keep picking this picture this guy playing fifa at home and getting this phone call like anyways oh my gosh oh my goodness oh that's so funny 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 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 be much harder to graze someone's head on purpose than it would be to kill them he dude this guy is about good times like he's not out there like trying to run down cartel members like this is not like a john woo 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 it's ridiculous continue um so let's recap okay

Okay. At this point, your kid is responsible for sure for killing one kid. Your other kid may be killed another kid. Right. 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's just fucking hated them i don't know the money is in the banana stand busters the golden child um god i hope i wish he only had one hand too that'll be incredible 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 make 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 not able to do that. So, I mean, that's a terrible thing to say, too. I apologize.

but like I don't know if it's a tough it's a 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 you are 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

convey the property, that's when you did. 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 make with Paul. So he probably knew what was going on. But yeah, you just go leave, go to a different kind of. 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 that now you have multiple tracks and then it's a that could be a cool social network idea but anyways um that's okay i've 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 i can be anyone right i can be greek i could be Hispanic. I can be, you know, Italian. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm, like, ethnically androgynous, I think is a term. Maybe. Great spot to be in. Okay, so going back to the story, like I 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, yeah, totally. 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 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 to the salacious part of the it leads 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 yes i wrote down to this really did remind me a lot of the tot family for reasons that i mean for reasons like you would know if you listen 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 know it doesn't sound like well you 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 but also that that's terrifying because it sounds like it was like very like systematic you know just like yeah 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 we just thought that this guy was incredible nobody really won't went further than that then 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 it yeah i feel like you don't buy a hunting lodge you like inherit it but he maybe bought it yeah maybe he bought it but like it feels like something i'd be like oh i assume that my rich friend muffie has a hunting lodge yeah it's it's same with people who have boats right it's always that rich friend with the boat exactly so it 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 in somebody feeling like they're going to get left behind um 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 and it said about 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 in a thousand years well that's a lot of time he sounds like a criminal 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 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 away with with that and he was like oh well if I killed my family then nobody's gonna look at me like don't kill your family that makes that makes things worse or maybe better because maybe they were annoying yeah i think i just 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 anyways um his uh his defense uh is someone uh oh yeah that's right 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 nothing. That's the only thing. Right. Is he trying to find the killer? Like, fucking, OJ? Like, what are you doing?

He's working on his first draft of if I did it. Right. Random fact that you might know, given your podcast diet. Alex's defense attorney is a guy named Dick Harputt Leon. 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 yeah 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 um really gone forward with the times in South Carolina but yeah yeah that is that's the Murdof family and hopefully once this trial wraps we'll do like a little post script and discuss what happened so but he did he shoot are they did they how did the mom and the Kondai did they get shot in the hunting watch yeah the guy's shot in the head multiple times 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 kills somebody and nobody asked him

a single question. It didn't book him, like fingerprint. Like, it wouldn't be that big of a stretch of the imagination with him, 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 that stage to try to kill yourself thing maybe he could have made it 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 like I have like one bullet So 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 kind of 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

but 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 uh 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 know 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 I can't do it but either way I mean I guess all the things that'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 that would have been what he wanted but then he just didn't do that like people are making like weird irrational decisions yeah um is yeah actually actually well 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 right 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 changed the who gets everything when she dies and then killed her then or just not at all or it's not don't just not

not at all yeah i'm trying to do the math on how to actually get this i'm trying to figure out how the fuck do we get buster paid um yeah how um tell me more about how how the the southern gothicness of this yeah 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 savanna too i know that's south carolina i know it's in georgia not south carolina but i thought a lot of like Savannah heat, humidity, this comfort that you have to like Revelyne 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 course you're also involved in killing teenagers and no like all the other things yeah i feel like in like the i feel like the night time is very loud because there's like bugs everywhere you know the humidity is like hanging and then like the obviously minute a 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 trying to cool off and like survive and like be together. That one you definitely heard.

And you're breaking out, Taylor. Oh, no, why? Yeah, you're totally breaking out. No, oh, it says my internet connection is unstable. Elon. Okay, you're good now. Okay. No, I just 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 they go to 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 and 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 I'm crashing down in some way there was no way I wasn't going to crash down it's it's also interesting to me because like I don't actually find

these people that come that um sad but 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 happy I'm not happy that a 22 year old kid is dead obviously he could have turned out he could have been something different but he said I mean, 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 a video of him with Paul, like having a great time planning a tree like hours before this murder. He's like, how could this guy possibly flip 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 a he was in a assisted 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 um shit yeah that's horrible dude yeah 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 parent his like his lineage being like the district attorney and all those things for you know almost 100 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 they call it's bluffing did it you know so i think there's like and he was and there was so much violence then if we see we see so much less now honestly

even though we see so much violence but um if he said 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 hat so i can have a son like yeah 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 of millions of property and so i'm going to do whatever it takes 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 controversial topic we're doing fantastic um 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 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. way. Thank you for being patient with me. Of course. Awesome. No problem. Bye all. All right. Thanks, fam. See you later.