Hidden True Crime - MURDAUGH MOTIVES: Power and Multigenerational Trauma and Shame PART 2

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

A psychologist's take on the Murdaugh family crimes. Recorded LIVE in front of our YouTube audience: Saturday February 25, 2023 Forensic psychologist John Matthias unravels how the Murdaugh family secrets play into the possible motives for murder, PART TWO Alex Murdaugh has been convicted of killing his wife and son. The family has had a legal dynasty in South Carolina for 100 years —ever since Alex's great grandfather Randolph Murdaugh opened his first law firm in 1910. In the late evening of June 7th 2021 Alex called 911 after he says he found his wife and son shot to death at their rural hunting lodge. Months later —To the shock of many in the area—the influential Alex Murdaugh is arrested and charged in the death of 52-year-old Maggie and 22-year-old Paul. How could this happen? What are the motives? The killings are not what started the unraveling of the family’s tangled history. Forensic Psychologist John Matthias uncovers how the family's history of secrets play into the possible motives of murder. HIDDEN: A TRUE CRIME PODCAST is: CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY REINVENTED. Join a forensic psychologist and journalist (who happen to be husband and wife) on a journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind and the unconscious motivations that drive human behaviors in order to understand the world and ourselves.  DR. JOHN MATTHIAS is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist with 30 years’ experience in both clinical and forensic work. He serves as an expert witness for the federal government and has consulted on numerous high-profile cases for District Attorney’s offices and defense attorneys in several states. In the forensic area, Dr. Matthias has developed expertise in personality assessments, hidden behavioral motivations, complex trauma and criminal psychology. In the clinical realm, he has worked with numerous victims. He received his Master’s degree in Marriage, Family and Child counseling, as well his doctorate degree, from the University of Southern California.  Dr. Matthias graduated with honors in philosophy from Princeton University, and he won the prestigious McCosh Thesis prize while there. In high school he graduated valedictorian from a large public high school in Chicago where he was chosen to participate in a ground-breaking valedictory study that continues to this day.  Dr. Matthias is an adjunct assistant professor in the University of Nevada Las Vegas clinical psychology doctoral program. He supervises UNLV doctoral students on forensic assessments, clinical case formulation, and various therapeutic approaches to clinical work. LAUREN MATTHIAS worked as an anchor and reporter for ABC, NBC, and FOX News in Idaho & Salt Lake City, Utah. She spent a decade reporting on a diverse range of topics from high profile crimes to Presidential visits. Most recently, she reported for Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate News4Utah. In 2015 she received the Idaho State Broadcaster’s Association Best Reporter award. She left the reporting world to produce Hidden True Crime with her husband Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist. Your support helps produce oyr podcasts/videos. We have big plans to explore the true crime terrain in a way no one else has attempted.  WEBSITE: https://hiddentruecrime.com/ YOUTUBE:https://www.youtube.com/hiddentruecrime TO SUPPORT:  https://www.patreon.com/hiddentruecrime https://paypal.me/hiddentruecrime https://cash.app/$hiddenTruecrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Thank you for your endless support. A True Crime Podcast. A forensic psychologist and a journalist explore the hidden motives behind unthinkable crimes while examining our deepest fears along the way. We covered shame in the Murdoch family and it was really well received and we have had a lot of questions and a lot of comments. And so this is part two. For those of you that have not heard that first podcast or YouTube video, you can listen

to it on YouTube or a more edited, concise version on our podcast, hidden a true crime podcast. You can go ahead and listen there. I want to turn the time over to my better half, my co-host, Dr. John Matthias, who also happens to be my husband, hence my term babe for those new to our channel. You're following the Murdoch case. A lot of people say, why are you calling him babe? Well, we are married. Where do you want to start tonight? when it comes to the Murdoch family and their power and shame part two. Let's begin just by recapping some of the main themes we talked about. So I introduced the idea of what I call Lord Acton's dictum,

which is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I read a piece from Mahali Shiksen Mihai, who's a well-known psychologist, and he essentially says that he believes that Lord Acton's dictum is maybe the closest thing in social sciences that we have to a law. I don't know if I agree with that, but he seems to think that this notion of power and power corrupting human beings is pretty universal and pretty accurate. And so I think we started there because I wanted to show that the Murdoch family has had a lot of power. They've always had a lot of power. they've been in the solicitor's office for many, many years, and they've had a private law firm,

and that means that they've had the power to decide cases that enter and leave the judicial system, and they have the power to accept clients that are part of that same system. So this is a family that has always had a great deal of power, and I think there's certainly the potential here for some corruption based on that power, and we're going to talk about that. That was the first piece of the puzzle I introduced last week. the second piece of the puzzle was what I called a shame-bound family system. And I explained that shame enters the Murdoch equation fairly early on through Randolph I first.

And the reason I said that was because Randolph I was because Randolph I was in a train accident in 1940. And the family goes to court and essentially argues that that the train, wreck was an accident and that Randolph I first was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, didn't see the train coming, the conditions at the train crossing were horrible, and hence the accident. However, if you go back and examine the documents surrounding the accident, we cited an article at the time that was quite detailed about the accident, but if you examine the accident, it certainly appears much more like a suicide. I can't prove that, but it does appear to

be a suicide. It does appear that Randolph I first was waving at the train engineer. He was not on the tracks at the time. And then as the train approached to within about 40 yards, the car lurched onto the tracks, and he was instantly killed. So I explained that calling that accident a suicide is a very different situation than saying that it was simply an accident. And the reason that's true is because it would be very shameful, I think, for a family like the Murdox to acknowledge that their grandfather was involved in a suicide attempt. And in fact, if you think about this notion of power and if you think of Lord Acton's dictum about power, power is quite opposed to something like shame. Power opposes weakness. And shame is often seen as a type of weakness, a type of vulnerability.

And so the origins of the family Murdoch myth begin with this accident. And the reason that's true is because this accident sets the stage for a great deal of family wealth. The family acquires a monopoly on, well, maybe not a monopoly, but a fairly large proportion of accident cases involving trains are tried in Hampton County by the Murdox as a result of that accident or as a result of that. I'm going to call, I don't believe it was an accident, as a result of that suicide. There's potential shame involved at multiple levels, not only the shame of Randolph-1 committing suicide, but in some sense, the shame of knowing that this family wealth is acquired over generations by this type of event, by this type of incident, by a suicide. So I think the origins of this family are quite interesting.

When I think about this more, I think of Willie Lohman and Arthur Miller's Death of a Sal. in the sense that Willie Lohman ends up committing suicide in that story because he's a reasonably unsuccessful Salsman and he wants to pass insurance money onto his son, Biff. You have shades of Willie Lohman there in the sense that Randolph, the one, is quite successful. So I don't mean to imply that he's doing this because he's unsuccessful. So he's quite successful, but I think he's very depressed. And we talked about the depression last week. In fact, I think that's one of the family secrets.

That's one of the initial family secrets is the fact that Randolph 1 is very depressed. And again, depression isn't consistent with power. People that are depressed are oftentimes, like it or not in our culture, they're seen as weak. And I'm saying this, by the way, as someone who struggled openly, I'm open about my own depression and my history of depression. So I don't see it as weak. But power, people in power, often are not willing to acknowledge. that mental health issues can be a sign of weakness, and that depression in particular is a sign of emotional weakness.

And so you have the trauma of this accident, which in and of itself can create ripples across generations, but you also have this secret that no one in this family is willing to talk about. And the secret is that great-grandpa, a round-off the one, is probably very depressed, and that plays a role in his desire to commit suicide. With his depression, I think Randolph, the one has some similarities to Willie Lohman in the sense that he's thinking,

I'm really depressed. You know, his health was deteriorating. He lost some money in the Great Depression in the 1930s. And perhaps he's thinking, let me do this for my family. I know that my son, Buster 1 will pick up the baton here, take this to court. He'll make us a lot of money. He probably doesn't anticipate, however, that Buster 1 will essentially require a monopoly on these types of cases, train injury and train accident cases, which is going to make this family a ton of money over time. It's going to set the stage for this family's wealth, in fact, for many, many years, for 66 years.

So you have a trauma, you have a secret, which is that this is depression probably, that's not being processed. The trauma's not being processed. There's probably a certain amount of grief here that's not being processed. So you have a bunch of denial going on. And you have, in that sense, you're really setting the stage for this trauma and this shame to get passed on across generations. So this is setting the stage for multi-generational trauma and multi-generational shame. A couple people have asked about this idea of transmitting trauma. I'm going to read a quote here, which I think does an excellent summary of explaining the impact of family trauma across generations.

So multi-generationally, this is from a book by Gallet Atlas. It's called Emotional Inheritance, a therapist, her patients, and the legacy of trauma. This is page 11. She says, quote, we inherit family traumas, even those that we haven't been told about. Working in Paris with Holocaust survivors and their children, the Hungarian-born psychoanalysts Maria Torrick and Nicholas Abraham used the word phantom to describe the many ways in which the second generation

felt their parents' devastation and losses, even when the parents never talked about them. Their inherited feelings of the parents' unprocessed trauma were the phantoms that lived inside them, the ghosts of the unsaid and the unspeakable. It is those ghostly experiences, not quite alive, but also not quite dead, that we inherit. They include our reality, invisible in actual ways.

They loom in, they leave traces. We know and feel things, and we don't always recognize their source. I love that quote, because I think you have something like that here with the Murdo. You have these phantoms that linger across generations. I would call those phantoms shame. There's other ways we could label it.

But these phantoms, these ghosts haught us often through generations. In fact, when I think about the Murdoch family, I sometimes think about another person from South Carolina, and that is Pat Conroy and the Prince of Tides and his wonderful book about culture, the culture in that area and the culture of dealing with trauma and what it's like to process trauma in the South, in particular for him, I think. But Conroy is very concerned with this issue of dealing with these phantoms,

dealing with these ghosts that tend to haunt us across generations. There's no question in my mind that the Murdoch family is struggling with this. They're struggling with accurately naming the suicide for what it is, which is a traumatic event that's probably the likely resumptial. result of their great-grandfather's depression. And so by calling it an accident and not really processing it, I think they're really setting the stage for this type of drama, this type of trauma to really continue for generations

with the underlying motif of shame. When I'm thinking about Papp Conroy, I want to read a quote from the Prince of Tides that I could see any of the Murdox discussing in their family across the generations. For those who know the Prince of Tides, the main character is Tom Wingo. Tom himself has suffered trauma. I think there's some parallels to Pat Conroy himself, by the way.

But this is Tom talking about family history. Tom says from the Prince of Tides, Tom says, quote, this is what makes me crazy in this family, dad. I can't stand it when I state a simple fact about this family's history. and I'm told by you and mom that it didn't happen. Wow. And so it's not hard to imagine Tom Wingo or, let's say, Buster, asking a question to his mother about the accident and being told it was just an accident. Don't worry about it.

It wasn't a big deal. Sure, it happened, but your father wasn't depressed. Your father was fine, right? It's a version of that. And I can picture every generation of Murdox saying something similar to this and being told, again, from the Prince of Tides. I can't stand it when a simple fact about this family history, when I ask a question about this family's history, and I'm told by you and mom that it didn't happen. So there's this distortion of reality about what really occurs. And because of this distortion, there's really this inability to process this.

trauma. And when you add on the layer of power, and when you add on the layer of being in the solicitor's office for years and years, you start to negate any possibility of processing that shame because shame is seen as weakness. And so over time, the shame gets passed on. It's never discussed. It's never processed. It's denied. People are told it doesn't exist. And over generations, you start seeing this play out in very negative and symptomatic ways. And we'll talk about some of those in a little bit. I want to point out that Pat Conroy is considered one of the leading voices in southern United States literature. So it's very interesting that he is discussing this.

And he also won the same award as Grandpa Hansom. Isn't that right, John? He won an award, which is one of the highest honors in South Carolina, accord the order of the Palmetto. It's actually, I think, quite interesting to compare and contrast those two because they couldn't be different. You know, I think of, when I think of handsome, and handsome, by the way, is my reference to Randolph the Third.

He's not always called handsome. His grandkids call him that or did call him that when he was alive. But it's interesting to think about those two receiving that award, because when I think of handsome, I think of the boat accident with Paul. and Mallory Beach and Morgan and the six people in the boat from 2019 and Hansom showing up almost instantaneously at the hospital where Paul was, trying to cover up who was driving the boat. Both Paul and Alec worked tirelessly that night

to really try to implicate Connor Cook as the driver of the boat so that Paul wouldn't get in trouble. So on the one hand, you have Hansom, who wins this order of the Palmetto at the hospital, trying to cover up a crime, trying to keep it secret, trying to create more secrets, trying to create more multi-generational trauma in this family. And Alec is doing the same. And then you have Pat Conroy, who also wins the Order of the Palmetto, writing books about the South.

And his, this is my take on it, but one of his main goals, I think, is to really promote the idea of openness and transparency and honesty in his work. that Conroy's work is concerned to a large degree with the very things we're talking about in the Murdoch family, the secrecy and the traumas and the cover-ups and the denial of what's going on. And so Conrad's work is really about openness over secrets. And it's about sharing trauma rather than hiding trauma. And it's about expressing emotions rather than suppressing emotions. All the things that we see with the Murdox, Pat Conroy is actually taking. taking a stand against those types of things.

So that's one of the reasons I love his work, by the way, because it's very courageous. And the character in the Prince of Tides, the character Tom Wingo, he ends up facing his traumas head on. It's very difficult for him. He tries not to, but he does. And I really applaud Pat Conroy, and I really love his work because of his desire

to really dig deep into some of these impediments and not just the South everywhere. We all deal with trauma, but some of these impediments to openness and some of these impediments to fairness and justice and these impediments to dealing openly with trauma rather than trying to suppress it. They both won the Pometto,

but interestingly enough, Pat Conroy seemed to have an incredible view being from the South of exactly the type of family, the Murdoch family, family is and was and where they came from. In fact, one of our viewers the other night made a comment about how they wished that Pat Conroy was alive so that they could get his take on the events going on. And I agree.

I would love to know what Pat Conroy would think about the Murdoch situation and what's going on. And there's no doubt he lived in Beaufort. And there's no doubt that he would know the Murdochs and he would know their power in this community. So it would have really been fascinating to see what he would have. he thought. Lemisa asks Lauren and John, what do you make of Alec never, ever being able to talk about actual relationships and connection? One of the repercussions of multigenerational trauma is precisely that.

You have this near total suppression of emotion and affect. And so you get families that stay on the surface, families that are much more concerned about decorum and superficial appearances than they are about what's beneath the surface. And again, this speaks to the idea of power. The power opposes power in many ways is about strength, but it's also about, to some degree, appearances and superficiality, whereas shame is very much the opposite.

Shame and some, you know, and let me stress too, there's shame can be healthy in the sense that shame can lend itself to a moral compass, and shame can lend itself to humility. And so in that sense, shame can be a very healthy emotion. It can put a check on too much pride or too much hubris. So I don't want to say that shame is always bad. The issue is how we deal with shame and how we avoid it,

whether we are able to process it in a healthy way or whether we completely avoid it. And so when we avoid it, that's when the problem comes in, that when we're not willing to feel the shame or acknowledge the shame, it becomes, as Crayton Waters said the other day, it becomes potentially an extraordinary provocation. I agree with him on that. Do you think Alec is aware of his shame? In general, I would say no.

I think he has a very, very difficult time feeling and certainly expressing his shame. I think that he would struggle to express it. I think when he feels it, he wants to avoid it. So we've talked about Randolph once. Let's deal a little bit with this expression of shame through the generations. We didn't get to that last time. So let's get to Buster, who's Randolph II, Randolph the second.

Buster in 1956 is indicted by the federal government for bootlegging and being involved with apparently an illegal distillery and somehow transporting this illegal distillery. And during that process, he forces the government to release the, list of witnesses, even though many of those witnesses are people that he knows and people that are involved in this illegal operation. And apparently what happens during this process, during this indictment, is that many of these witnesses are threatened and intimidated, and therefore, when the trial comes along, they don't talk. And at the end of this process in 1956,

Buster ends up being acquitted. But at the end of that process, at the end of the trial, The judge admonishes him publicly. And the judge basically says something like, you should be ashamed that you threaten these witnesses. You should be ashamed of the fact that these witnesses were intimidated. You're the solicitor in your area in South Carolina. You should know better than this. And the judge has something to the effect of,

if I were you, I would resign your position. This is an embarrassment for you to go back as the solicitor in South Carolina. And so what does Buster the first do? He goes back, he doubles down, he takes on more cases, he consolidates his power. Right. And so here you have this moment of shame, public shame actually, and the response of Buster the first is not only to disavow any shame and not only to ignore what the judge says, but to actually go back and flaunt it, to flaunt the power.

to increase his power. And Buster the one, by the way, was known to be a pretty hard-chargy, no-nonsense-type guy. He did not like to lose. He would let you know that. I guess he was a pretty colorful character. But the point is that here you have this moment of shame

in the next generation, and it's completely ignored and disregarded. And so you can see, here again, you can see how this shame, system is progressing across the generations. Let's go then to Randolph the third, and that would be handsome. So I'm going to refer to Randolph the third is handsome from here and out. In other words, though, I just want to clarify this moment of shame rather than looking into that moment, he consolidated his power. So I think the point I'm making is that in the first generation,

you have this suicide, which is a potentially shameful event, but it's avoided at all cost. And it's name something else. And then when this huge moment of shame comes up again, the same thing happens. Instead of processing it in a healthy way and saying, you know, maybe the judge has a point, maybe I shouldn't be in this position, maybe this is an abuse of power, maybe I haven't really examined what I'm feeling here, that maybe I did threaten these witnesses, whatever, right? He has a chance to reflect on this moment and to make some changes, but he doesn't. He doubles down. He consolidates power even more readily than he had in the past. And so the cycle continues.

And that brings me to Hansom, who is Randolph III. Let's talk about an expression of shame in the third generation. And that would be that in 1976, Libby, who is Hansom's wife, in November of 1976, Libby writes a letter to the local newspaper. And in the letter, she describes her obituary. I don't believe that Hansom knew about this moment, by the way, but this is a deeply embarrassing moment for Hansom, who, again, is a third-generation solicitor.

He has a tremendous amount of power. There's a lot of speculation. I'm sure the locals know better than I do, but there's a lot of speculation that he's engaging in a lot of affairs, that he's a philanderer, and his wife knows this, let me knows this. And so this is an attempt to draw attention to some of these affairs. She doesn't talk about it openly in the obituary, but the general, I think that what she's doing here is she's trying to embarrass her husband and maybe to get him to pay more attention to her.

She's expressing somewhat something of her power here, I think, something of her control of the situation. She wants more attention. She wants him to focus more on their marriage. And this is how she's expressing it. argue that this is a very passive-aggressive way of expressing it. But nevertheless, this is a deeply embarrassing moment for the Murdoch family, no doubt. I hate to say, by the way, like, I try to imagine how handsome reacted to that fake obituary, by the way, and I don't have the feeling that it went well. This is such an interesting moment to me. I've never known someone

to publish a fake obituary to make a point. Clearly, they needed a a way to have a voice. And so it is an interesting moment that she does this. Also, the other interesting part is that we never hear from Libby again. So whatever the aftermath of that incident was, it was apparently taken care of. You know, I'm glad that I hope that Libby wasn't hurt in that process, but I have to believe that that things were handled probably in a fairly stern manner. So I don't know. But Libby had a lot of courage. And here, again, we have this expression of shame that comes up in 1976 with handsome. It's squashed.

It's not dealt with openly. The next day, there's a retraction. So the very next day after Libby writes this obituary and it's published, there's a retraction that she's not in fact dead and that the obituary was false. And so once again, we're seeing how this family avoid shame, how they avoid dealing with uncomfortable situations and how this gets perpetuated across the generations. Yes. And then? And then let's get into Alec. This is a really important moment, by the way, in the Murdoch story, and I haven't really heard it talked about too much. But it involves Alec.

This occurs when Alec is in law school. He's 25 years old. He goes to a bar at Hilton Head Island. He's been drinking a lot. He's there with a lot of his drinking buddies from law school. It's believed that potentially we don't know for sure, but some of his buddies that he later associates with for his financial schemes, including Corey Fleming, maybe present for this moment. But he's been drinking a lot and he goes up to the bar. He wants another drink. The bartender refuses to provide him a drink.

Alec becomes quite upset by this, says something to the effect of, don't you know who I am? Does that sound familiar, by the way? that's something that Paul, that's a refrain that Paul would echo over and over again. Don't you know who I am, I'm a Murdoch. So you see it here. So again, maybe there's some, you know, like father like son here, there's some similarities here for sure.

Goes to the bartender, he wants to be served, bartender refuses him, he challenges the bartender, he starts getting aggressive, they get into a little bit of a verbal altercation, and the bartender summons the bouncer, or one of the bouncers at least. The bouncer comes over. Alec is not happy. He wants his alcohol and he wants it now. The bouncer tries to intervene and all of a sudden a massive bar fight breaks out. According to eyewitnesses at the time, Alec pounces on the bouncer.

He starts punching him. He's quite aggressive. it is surely a moment of violence on Alex's part, an indisputable moment of violence. There's actually a Marine present who's a witness. He notices that he makes the comment in a statement to the police that quite clearly the clients were at fault and not the bartender and the bouncers. But it turns into this horrendous altercation. The police are called.

One of the bouncers is severely injured. It has to be taken to the hospital. The deputies arrive or Sled, who apparently, according to Alex, Sled, doesn't like him now, I guess. But back then, they didn't seem to have a problem with the Murdox because the deputies allowed all of those involved in the altercation to go to the hospital. They told them to meet them at the hospital. The friends never showed up at the hospital. In the meantime, Alec was driven home. He lived 67 miles from Hildenhead from the bar.

he was given a ride home by a state trooper. He was issued a ticket for the incident, but there were no formal charges that would have been more severe, like an assault charge. Those were never issued. He's driven home by a state trooper, many miles, 67 miles home.

The tickets were quickly dismissed the next day, and so this incident was essentially swept under the rug, completely swept under the rug. I mean, multiple things have been swept under the rug, but this was a moment of, violence that was swapped under the rug. I think this is an important moment for a couple of reasons. Number one is, yes, this is an instance of violence that I presume the prosecution can't use this because the record of it is slim and they would probably have to find witnesses from the time.

Most of the witnesses would have been his friends. And my guess is his friends are going to be unwilling to testify that he engaged in violence. But this is a really important moment for a couple reasons. Number one is the violence that I think the critical component that's missing from the prosecution's case is showing that this is a violent, moody person with a quick temper, quick to anger. And somebody like that could potentially commit murder. If you have a sense of entitlement when you're 25 years old where a bartender tells you can't have any more drinks and you refuse to accept that limit and you engage in violence to get your way, who knows how far you can go.

But we talked about this last night a little bit. I think that the struggle the prosecution is having or the prosecutors having at the moment is going from painting him as a pathologically lined swindler to painting him as a pathologically lined swindling murderer. I don't know if this incident can somehow be recovered in this trial or, And by the way, so this is not the only incident.

When he was in his 20s, this was a fairly regular, apparently, according to some sources we have, this was a fairly regular event for him, that he would go to bars and start drinking and get aggressive, just like Paul. Paul has the same history. In fact, the nickname for Paul, Timmy. His alter ego. His alter ego, right. When Paul's been drinking too much and he becomes aggressive, his friends have nicknamed him, And so you have with Alec, you have Timmy here as well.

And he goes out drinking. He becomes aggressive. If he doesn't get his way, he's prone to getting into fights. And so you do see some history of violence. You do see some history of acting out. You know, the prosecution, I think probably for some fairly clear reasons, they're not able to bring this into evidence because almost almost all of these incidents were dismissed or hidden or expunged. from any record that Alec would have had.

Surprise, surprise. So this is also, by the way, this would be a symptom of shame. So here we are in the fourth generation with Alec, and this type of acting out would be, I think, attributable to impart this avoidance of shame. We're seeing it play out here. With Alec, I think we see it played out in terms of his drug addiction,

the financial crimes, here with the violence, through his mood swings. There's a lot of ways in which with his compulsive, his compulsive spending, his compulsive partying, his compulsive traveling,

he's hiring $60,000 private jets to take him to the Super Bowl, to take him to college football games. He's jet-sitting all over the place. Michelle just said something, and I want to emphasize this. because a couple other people have said this too. Hidden true crime, I hear what you're saying about him getting into fights

with others when he was younger, but don't we all do stupid things when we are young? The answer is yes, but he's 25. He's a young adult at this time. I mean, I'm going to get, you know, I'm willing to give the guy a pass when he's 17, 18, 19, maybe even early 20s. Sure.

He's in law school. He's preparing at this point for a professional career. and he's still getting into fights. He's 25. There's some stories that even after this event that he's getting into the similar bar fights. So 27-year-olds don't typically... And this isn't, I want to point out, too, the only example of violence we've seen of him. I know I'm jumping ahead, but as many people have pointed out, Fitz News, interviewed a woman,

a sex worker who claims that Alec was violent towards her several times. I know that people have shared that link. So this is something that we're using as an example, but it's not the only example out there. Here's the important point I want to make with the violence, not just how it could be shame-related, but more importantly, as a forensic psychologist, a big part of my job is evaluating risk factors for future violence.

and one of the biggest, maybe the biggest risk factor for future violence is a past history of violence. That's why it's critical. It doesn't even really matter. It's true that violence committed when you're a teenager might be a little less significant than violence when you're an adult, but he is an adult. And he's engaging in violence. And therefore, that increases his risk of future violence. Because it's still unusual. I mean, you could attribute it to the drinking to some degree and maybe the privilege, you know, his family privilege and entitlement and that kind of stuff.

But ultimately, the alcohol is not the cause of the violence. It's a catalyst that underneath all of those layers, underneath that the alcohol is simply a catalyst and disinhibitor that's bringing out those underlying aggressive impulses. He has those aggressive impulses. That's the issue. That's the most important issue here is the violence isn't just because he's stupid and young and he's having fun. No, this is somebody who has a temper

and he has violent and aggressive impulses and those are coming out. That's what's important here. And that makes him a risk for future violence. In fact, one would say it makes him a risk potentially for future murders. Thank you. Right. That is what you do as a professional in your career is assess risk. And that is a major red flag of risk. And none of this would come up in court, by the way, because there was no psychological evaluation performed.

There doesn't have to be a psychological evaluation here because the defense doesn't want it. Number one. And number two, he's saying that he's innocent. So he's saying he's not guilty. So there's really no mental health issues that are entering this trial simply because his competency is not an issue, his sanity is not an issue, and the defense certainly doesn't want to bring in a psychologist to say that he's a psychopath. There would be a huge risk in the defense requesting a psychological evaluation because it would not benefit them. If somebody like me came in to assess him and I found that he had, let's say, some antisocial. features, which he does, drug addiction is an antisocial feature. Financial fraud is certainly a major antisocial feature. When you say antisocial, you're not talking about someone who like to sit home and not go to parties. You're referring to the DSM. Yeah, right. Anti-social personality disorder.

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I'm referring to the DSM. I'm not diagnosing them, by the way. I'm simply pointed out that antisocial features in someone are going to be a risk factor for future violence. Right. And you're also, again, you're saying these are features of someone. You're not saying he has it. Right. He has elements of antisocial.

He fits some of the criteria for antisocial personality disorder. But that doesn't mean that he is. He's a diagnosable. Right. These are things that you would check off in the DSM. And I'm explaining why the defense does not want a psychological evaluation because somebody like myself who would go in there could potentially paint a portrait of this guy as someone who's quite capable of future violence.

Obviously, they don't want to put that into evidence. That's why you're not seeing any mental health professionals in this case. Somebody pointed out that the judge did order a psych eval at one point, but I don't think that it, as you point out, would ever be brought up in the trial because there is not a reason. And that was probably brought up in the context of maybe his supposed suicide. Yes. So that's different.

There's no way the defense would want a psychological evaluation because it's not going to paint a positive portrait of their client. And also, by the way, if I sit down with someone like Alec Murdoch and I ask him about these bar fights, if he lies to me and says they never happened and I have the records that say they do, we know he's a liar anyway, but I can portray that in my report, that this is someone who's denying any type of violence, even though there is violence, and that denial increases his risk. Thank you for explaining that.

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in a little more detail. Let me pull this up. I'm excited for you to explain this. I drew it for John, but I didn't know what I was drawing. I said, I can't wait for you to explain this to us. Here we go. This is the benefit of having YouTube rather than just a podcast. We all get a look at this.

Lauren actually drew this for me because if I drew it, nobody would be able to read it. So yes, my handwriting is illegible. So I had Lauren do this, which is infinitely, better than my drawing. But for mental health professionals, by the way, if any of you were out there watching this, this is my symbols here may not be the symbols you recognize in the genogram. My symbols are based on Mnuchin and Murray Bowen, and they're sort of a hybrid set of symbols for myself. One of the problems with the genogram is that there's no universally agreed upon symbols. Some people use the work by Mary McGoldrick. Some people use Mnuchin, some

Some people use the notations by Murray Bowen. So I am using symbols that are a little bit oversimplified here. But I think they'll be clearer to our audience. Let me just introduce the genogram. So we've got Alec and Maggie. They're married. You can see they're connected. The marriage is represented by the fact that they're connected by the black line below them.

Then their two children are Paul and Buster. Buster's the oldest. So he's on the right. Paul is the youngest. You'll see a broken line through Paul and Maggie that indicates that they're presently deceased. I have a series of red squiggly lines drawn between Alec and Maggie. That indicates that, in my opinion, that there's marital conflict and discord, even though defense will tell you that they're a perfectly happy couple. I would dispute that. I think that there's some problems there. I think there's some conflict in that marriage.

I then have a red squiggly line drawn to Paul with Alex and Maggie. That is also indicative of conflict and turmoil in those relationships. I then have, you can see the green lines, there's three of them. That means that there is a close affiliation between those people. So I have the three green lines from Alex to Buster. I have the three green lines from Maggie to Buster. That indicates what I would call a meshment that I think Alex and Maggie are very close to Buster.

And you can see that with the green lines. And then I have a yellow circle drawn around Alex, Maggie, and Buster. And I'm going to explain all that for you in a minute. I also put Morgan up because Morgan was with Paul for four years. I have the two red lines drawn on that line to indicate that they're no longer in a relationship, obviously. They actually broke up in 2019 after the boat accident. But I think Morgan's an important piece of this puzzle potentially, so I put her up here. What I didn't draw, what I probably should have drawn was a red squiggly line between Morgan and Paul.

That would indicate that there was a lot of conflict in that relationship, a lot of turmoil. Paul and Morgan were breaking up all the time. and getting back together. One of the things they didn't say in the Netflix documentary, which I've heard, I can't verify this, but that when Morgan would threaten to leave Paul, Paul would then threaten her if she left the relationship. He would threaten her with violence.

I think that's one of the reasons why Morgan leaves and comes back and leaves and comes back. This is a quote by Mary Carr. Mary Carr wrote a book of a memoir called The Liar's Club. It was very popular in the 90s. It's a really well-written book. Mary Carr says, quote, a dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.

I like the car quote because it indicates that in order to assess a family, you have to have more than one person. And if you look at the marriage of Alec and Maggie, and you see this red line I've drawn indicating conflict, A lot of times what happens in a relationship or in a family when there's marital conflict is that a third party is brought in. A third party is brought in to try to reduce the anxiety and all the emotional turmoil that goes with that conflict. And so you can see here that third party is Buster. This is a process called triangulation, by the way.

Murray Bowen, who's a well-known family therapist, developed this idea. His idea is that family triangles are the essence of family alliances, that the triangle is the basic unit of the family. And the triangle exists because oftentimes in families, a third party will be brought into a difficult relationship or even a positive relationship to try to reduce the emotional temperature. And so what you have here is you have some conflict between Maggie and Alex. and Buster then becomes, it's well known, this was in the Netflix documentary, but Buster was known to be the favorite. Morgan says this, that he was sort of the golden child of this marriage and this family, and this is how I've represented it.

So Alex and Maggie are both very close to Buster. They're both what I would say, what I would call amashed with Buster. And the reason that Buster is brought into this triangle is to attempt to reduce, the tension in the marriage. So Buster becomes the mechanism through which this marriage can survive and this marriage can function because both of them essentially will turn to Buster for emotional support rather than to each other. That's called triangulation.

So you can see here, and we know this too, by the way, that Morgan believed in the Netflix documentary that Buster kind of carried the expectations and the hopes and dreams of this family. He was going to be the next one to join the law firm, to carry on the legal tradition in the family. A lot of the hopes for this family and a lot of the family legacy was writing on Buster. So that's how I've represented it. And that, by the way, is you can see the yellow circle that I've drawn around this group, this triangle, Alec, Maggie, and Buster. Yes.

That represents an alliance. In other words, those three are aligned against Paul to some degree. So what you have here is triangulation. Buster's the favored kid and Alec and Maggie are much closer to Buster. When you look at Paul here, you'll see that Paul is surrounded by nothing but red lines. That's a bad sign. Okay. That's a bad sign.

That means that Paul is less favored than Buster, and it means that there's more emotional turmoil in the relationships between Alex and Paul and Maggie and Paul. I've drawn two lines between two green lines between Paul and Buster. That indicates that Buster and Paul are close. They're not super close. They're not super emotional and close, but I think they have some kind of an alliance. They're fairly close. If you look at this Gennogram, I think, well, let me ask you, Lauren, what do you think stands out here? I think, as you pointed out, the red that surrounds Paul, the golden child Buster. Buster was definitely the golden child. And then a lot of green around Buster and the triangulation. Right. So I think the thing that I want people to see here is not just the

conflict that exists in this family with Paul, but the fact that Paul is in many ways on the outside. That if you see Alec and Maggie and Buster as a line together and being much closer, that leaves Paul on the outs. Okay. Right. So Paul is in some sense an outcast, an outsider. In fact, Morgan in the documentary says, she says he's the black sheep of the family. So we're all saying the same thing. Right. That Paul is an outsider.

So if you look at this configuration of the Murdoch family, I think it's one way to describe what's going on with Paul. That a lot of Paul's behavior is attention seeking because he's on the outside. I think Paul wants more than anything to really have a sense. of belonging and he's not getting it in this family because there's not a lot of emotional closeness in this family anyway. So I think that a lot of his reckless behaviors and maybe some of his alcoholism, his alcoholism, I think, has a lot to do with the fact that he has a lot of pain and a lot of anxiety over the fact that he is an outsider. He's an outcast. Now, I'm not justifying his behavior, his physical abuse towards Morgan, his

reckless behaviors, his speeding, his alcoholism, his boat crash. None of that is justifiable. The death of Mallory. Right. You can see some of the dynamics that can create some of Paul's behaviors. And I talked about this last week in family therapy, this, Paul, somebody like Paul would be called the identified patient. Paul would be the person that would, or let me back up, that Alec and Maggie would bring Paul in for therapy.

and they'd say, here's my kid, fix them, he's creating all of our family problems. But you can see here that in some ways, Paul is just the unwilling recipient of a lot of family turmoil and a lot of family conflict. The solution to this family issue is between the parents, that if you can somehow get Alec and Maggie in a healthier position, and if you can improve their relationship and their marriage, and you can get them communicating more emotionally and get them to become more open, about what they're feeling and to deal with the family traumas and all the things we talked about at the beginning of this show about shame and grief and multi-generational trauma. If you can deal with those issues between Alec and Maggie, then you have a chance potentially

of reducing all the conflict in this family and bringing Paul back into the nest or the fold. I feel like one thing that he was looking for with his reckless behavior was just what you said, John, that he was looking for boundaries for someone to tell him no, to tell him stop. I think Paul wants to feel a sense of belonging, and he's not feeling that, not in the way he wants to. In fact, in the first documentary on the Murdoch family, there was some talk in that documentary about the fact that Paul never really bonded. He never really developed a close bond with his mother, Maggie. And Maggie was quite open about that, apparently. So I think, we could go from that to maybe

making the assumption that there's some type of insecure attachment between Paul and Maggie and that sets the stage for some of this too. But again, this goes back to Maggie as a parent. I don't want to blame Maggie here, but I mean, presumably there could have been some postpartum depression, which may have affected her ability to really connect with Paul.

I think that could have been in play. The general belief is that Maggie was much closer to Buster, that Buster was an easier child, that she bonded much more readily with Buster, and that Paul was more difficult. She didn't bond with him, and Paul has been a problem pretty much ever since. So that's sort of the family myth around Paul, too.

Thank you for explaining that. I don't think I quite answered your question. So what Paul wants is a sense of belonging. And by the way, one way to help a child feel that, is to set boundaries. If you let a child just roam free without any type of boundaries, a child doesn't feel safe.

Right. The stories of Paul harming and killing, torturing and killing squirrels and small animals when he was the youngest five years old. And in fact, one of the stories is that he brought a squirrel up to his mother and he was showing off the squirrel and his mother just didn't do anything. Maggie was like, okay, go have fun.

Boys will be boys. Go keep killing those squirrels. That's great. And so a child wants boundaries because it lets them feel safe and it lets them feel loved. If you let a child just go crazy and you set no boundaries on them, they're going to feel that you don't care. They're going to feel that you don't care enough to rein them in. And so I think part of this attention is seeking behavior is Paul is saying, show me something, show me some affection, show me that you care. Set a boundary.

Do something. I think that's he's screaming for this. He's screaming for attention. He's saying, somebody please stop me. How can you people let me do this? And the answer is because Alec doesn't have any boundaries. And Maggie doesn't have any boundaries. I don't know if this is true, but one source said that Maggie was the night of the boat accident in 2019.

Maggie was in the same bar at one o'clock in the morning drinking. She wasn't drinking with Paul, but she was in the bar drinking. she saw her son doing shots and she didn't stop him. Right? So there's nobody in this family has boundaries. Right. Right. Which is why I felt like,

I feel like that's one of the reason he kept going. You know, he had the DUI, the car roll over with Morgan where they could have been killed. And then he decided to do the boat. It was almost like he just kept waiting for someone to tell him no. Yeah. In fact, with, I think sometimes with a child like Paul that's completely reckless and out of control,

there's essentially three ways to stop a child like this, or in this case, I guess a young adult. There's three ways that you can stop Paul. One is to put him in prison. If he's in prison, he can't do anything. He can't hurt anyone. The other is to harm him in some way, I guess to murder him. Then you eliminate any type of reckless behavior. And the third way is to have some type of intervention.

major intervention where you address this behavior. Ideally, you address it as a family, since I think this is a family issue. But that requires really bringing the family's emotional life to the table. And it requires bringing in a lot of openness and open communication. And the Murdox, I think, just aren't willing to do that. They were still not able to do that, in my opinion. That's why Paul was killed. Right, exactly. This is a story that's probably going to end poorly. It's probably going to end. We know how it ends, obviously, but the most likely scenario here is that it ends with Paul either ending up in prison, which the Murdoch family clearly protected him from, or he ends up dead. And so we obviously know how it ends, unfortunately. I mean,

it's, by the way, it's a tragic ending because I think Paul had a lot of good qualities. And personally, I would have held out hope for Paul if he had received the right help at the right time. You know, that one of the things in these documentaries is that, like, for example, Anthony Cook says that Paul underneath it all was a good guy. He probably just needed a little bit of love. He wasn't getting that love. And speaking of which, I mentioned the harming animals, the torturing and killing squirrels bit. I want to make a reference to Dexter. I know a lot of people probably shake their heads when I talk about Dexter, but Dexter is my go-to example for psychopaths. The analogy I want to make is that in the show Dexter, in some of the earlier seasons,

Dexter's father, Harry, notices that Dexter is harming animals. He's torturing animals. And Harry sees this behavior and he talks to Dexter about it. And Dexter basically tells them, look, I'm having these aggressive impulses. I don't know what to do about it. And what Harry decides to do essentially is to promote those behaviors and to give Dexter a code which becomes Harry's code. The code is that Dexter is only going to kill bad people, essentially.

So what Harry does is he channels that aggression into what he thinks is a positive direction. Now, with Paul, when Paul brings this to the attention of his mother, his mother basically just ignores it. The point I want to make here is that for both Dexter and Paul, this is really a failure of parenting. You might say that Harry tries to work with these impulses, you know, these violent impulses in a positive manner.

But really, is that, I mean, as a father, shouldn't his job be to try to help him not have those impulses or at least to channel them in a more positive direction that I don't think as a father, Harry is doing his kid any favors here? I think this is a failure of parenting for both Harry and Maggie in the sense that they're not really doing what they should do as parents. They're not really trying to help their kids. They're looking the other way.

They can channel these impulses, I think, potentially in a much more positive direction. And that's, I believe, what a responsible parent would do. So I think the commonality here is that these are parental failures. Yes, thank you. Michelle is pointing out right. And Morgan did reach out to Maggie regarding Paul's issues, but she was disregarded. It's another example of that sort of failing.

And Gloria, yeah. But it was almost an avoidant or denial of it. Yeah. Thank you for reminding people to join Patreon for bonus episodes and additional ad-free episodes there. That's patreon.com slash hidden true crime. What else, Dr. John? We can keep digging a little deeper into this family.

I don't know where we are on time. We're a little bit over an hour. You're killing it in a good way. Maybe I shouldn't say that on a true crime channel. I have some videos to share. I will say one thing. I love where we're going. It might be interesting to play some of the conversations Buster has with his father from jail

and to talk about those a little bit. Thank you to Fitznews, too. I want to credit them. They did a FOIA request. We put out a FOIA request for these, and we have not received them. and I'll call you, you're going to be working in Hilton Head? Yeah, yeah, I'll just be remade, you know, between here and Ocotee. Okay, so you're being at Brooklyn's house or Ocotee, not at the store?

Yeah, no, I won't be at a store. 10-4. All right, I'll call you sometime, and, um, how bad did we get beat? 44 to 14. Who did the Cowboys play today? they were on by week huh

they were by week was about a week yeah and then Brady played on Thursday night no Brady played

today today at 4 uh the Bears did they win yeah they did uh huh 10 4

uh how's your Braves are going to the World Series. Yeah, so I saw where they were winning two to one, and then they, you know, I watched it until about the 8th, and I saw where it was like they were winning, and I knew they were going up 3-1. So the Braves beat the Dodgers.

What about the Red Sox and the Eschers? Asher is one. You kidding. Some of you were probably saying, why would you play that? The reason that I wanted to play that is, because there's been a lot of talk about these jailhouse conversations between Alec and Buster. It's interesting in listening to these conversations because I think they tell us a lot about family dynamics. In listening to what other people have said about these conversations,

I've heard a lot of talk about how manipulative Alex is and how it shows that he's potentially a psychopath. I've heard everything about what these conversations mean. Is there some manipulation going on in those conversations? Yes, absolutely. I think, but what I've heard nobody talk about is the fact that these conversations are so dull and they're so bland and they're so unemotional. I think what's missing from these conversations is exactly what they're not talking about. I agree. They're not talking about things that matter.

So if you want to understand this family dynamic, listen to these conversations and what you're going to hear is talk about fishing and how big the fish they caught were and football and sports and brave scores, you're going to hear a lot of small talk that has absolutely no meaning. Now, I don't want to discredit small talk, by the way, because I engage in a lot of small talk myself. The difference between my small talk and the small talk between Alec and Buster is that they have about 15 or 20 minutes once or twice a week to engage in these conversations where I has much more free time to do so. And they're costing money and it's collect. And I don't know if anybody's ever had to communicate with someone in prison or jail before I have.

And it is a very anxious thing. And you're thinking, how do I fit in everything that I want to say? And vice versa. This is a reflection of the family system. This is a reflection of the fact that this family, they don't talk about anything of any substance. There's no open communication. There's no emotional expression here. there's very little transparency.

It's just, it's amazing how shallow these conversations are and how they talk, they have absolutely no meaning or substance, at least to me. I mean, obviously talking about sports means something to them, but it seems to me that there's many other things to talk about when you only have 15 or 20 minutes to talk to someone you love and you have limited time and they don't. They talk about fishing and sports. I see this very much as a reflection of what's real, if you want to, if you want to look behind

the screen with this family, this is a good way to do it because I presume this is what they're talking about at the dinner table every night all the time. You know, John said to me, I was the one that gathered a lot of information and he said, Lauren, I just want you to get something that explains how kind of mundane and lacking substance or conversations are. And I'll be honest, everything. It was between football and fishing and airline seats. And I do want to say something a little bit personal.

I have talked with a family member who has been incarcerated before. And it really is unusual to me that those are their choices of conversations. Let's move on to the next conversation about law school. Speaking of solid conversations with substance, let's move on. Okay, here we go. Here we go. You know this stuff's recorded, right? I do.

Have you reached out to the law school? Will you think about doing that? I mean, I'm going to do it. It's just, you know, I got a lot of stuff going on. I know. I just don't want you to wait till... It's not as effective if you wait till right up till, you know, a couple of weeks before school starts.

No, I mean, my goal, you know, at the very least, I was, my goal is to do it in November. I understand. I think that would be a good plan. Hey, um, Buster, did you reschedule with law school? Um, no, I needed to, I needed to reach back out and I got sidetracked, but I'm going to touch with them and I'm going up there to talk to them at some point. Well, try to do it sooner rather than later, okay? Hey. Hey.

What's you doing? Nothing and just gotten to bed and not to get asleep. All right. I won't bother you. Buster, I just thought about it. And I hope you didn't think I was being short with you today. I mean, I basically just saying I'm asking you to make that appointment at law school or I just don't want to bug you if you don't want to do it is all I was trying to say. No, I mean, that's fine.

I mean, I'm going to do it. I just, it just hasn't worked out. Probably with the holiday come out, probably won't. I mean, I can definitely call Blanca. By the way, that whole video, again, Fitz News was the source of that video that you can find. And that was a 29-minute call discussing law school or several calls discussing law school. But we just listened to a bit of it. I think that the reason this call is so interesting, so fascinating and so important is because, again, of what's not said,

that what Alec wants more than anything is for Buster to go to law school to carry on the family legacy. Now, keep in mind that Paul and Maggie have both been murdered and that Buster no longer has a mother and a brother and his father's in prison. His father is pressing him incessantly about going back to law school. Why? Because he wants to perpetuate the family legacy. because it's only concern, and this gets demotive, we talked about this last week,

the motive here is to protect the family legacy and to protect the family myth. And I'll get more into detail in a second on this. But I think it's absolutely extraordinary the way he's showing no empathy towards Buster. In fact, I'm trying to picture, if this was my son, I'm trying to picture how I would handle it. I would imagine myself saying something like, I know you've been through a lot.

I know that the family has put a lot of expectations on you to go back to law school. But, you know, I want you to know that it's your choice. You don't have to do it. I know this might be really hard for you. I know that this is probably putting a lot of stress on you. You've been through so much, Buster. I really understand what you've been through. I empathize with what you've been through.

and just don't, if you don't want to go to law school, that's fine. I really feel for you, right? Wouldn't that be a normal, healthy conversation? But that's not what we get. It would be healthy. I don't know how normal it is. I think a lot of parents do have expectations for their kids, sadly. Well, I don't dispute that, but I think the issue here is that those expectations are across five generations

and that it's so critical for Alec to see his kid get back into law school, to join the family firm, to perpetuate the legacy, that he doesn't care about Buster's emotions, he doesn't care about his grief, he doesn't care about anything he's going through. He only cares about what his needs are.

And that's why that's a fascinating conversation, because Buster doesn't mean anything. You could replace Buster with anyone, as long as that person can go to law school, and represent Alec and be an extension of Alex's ego, Alec is going to be happy. And that really, so that issue gets us to motive in this murder, in these murders. And actually, that's related to the clip by Marion Proctor, if you want to play that.

This is Marion Proctor in court testifying earlier this week about her experience after the death of her sister, Maggie, and her nephew, Paul. In the days and weeks following Maggie and Paul's murder, did Alica ever say anything about the boat case? We would talk about the boat case, and he was very intent on clearing Paul's name. What did he say? He said that his number one goal was clearing Paul's name.

And I thought that was so strange because my number one goal was to find out who killed my sister and Paul. But that wasn't Alex's concern, main concern? I know he, I know he must have wanted that too, but it just, I don't know how he could have thought. about anything else. He talked about the boat case. Scared or afraid that the real killers were out there somewhere or anything like that? Or was he concerned with the boat case? We were afraid.

We didn't know what was going on. My family was scared. I was scared for Ellicumbuster. I felt like they needed protection. I think everybody was afraid. and Alec didn't seem to be afraid. So here again, right,

this is similar that he doesn't care if Buster wants to go to law school. He only wants him to go to law school for himself, for his family legacy. And after the murders of Paul and Maggie and after the boat crash, he doesn't care, he doesn't express any empathy. He doesn't care about clearing Paul's name

to protect the family myth, to protect the family legacy. It's the same thing. We see this over and over. And now, and that brings me to a really terrible, awful, horrible truth about this family. Can you go back to the genogram really quickly, please? I have the yellow circle around Alec, Maggie, and Buster. I've talked about Paul being an outsider, Paul kind of being outside of that triangle

that defines the rest of the family, how Paul is not as close. Paul wants to feel a sense of belonging. And so this brings me to a deeply difficult discussion. But I think it brings us to maybe a kernel of truth, maybe the kernel of truth in this case. And that is that I think the reality is that Alec Murdoch sees Paul, as being expendable. Paul is really outside of this family system. Alec clearly sees Paul as being a nuisance and irritant to the family legacy. I really believe that Paul sees his son, even though he's not

portraying this in court. But if you look at the genogram and you look at this family system and you look at all the red lines and the conflict and the fact that Paul's a bit of an outsider, I really believe that Alex sees Paul as being expendable. And God forbid, I hate to say this, but I think Handsome sees it that way too. That it's easier to get rid of Paul because he's not really quite a part of this family in the way that he should be.

He's an outcast. He's embarrassing us. He's upsetting the family legacy. And we need to eliminate him. He's expendable. And yes, thanks Diane, that Maggie's expendable to because she's really never been a major contributor to this family. She's really never gotten along that well with Alec except maybe in the beginning of their marriage.

And she's also starting to investigate or understand the depth of Alex's financial fraud. That's the cold hard reality. When you look at the genogram, when you look at this history of the family, when you look at the multi-generational shame, I think you get to the point where you see that Paul is an outsider, and I really think that Alec Murdoch and his father see Paul as being expendable. It starts with Paul and then extends to Maggie. It took us a while to get there.

It took us like an hour and a half to get there. But I think that that's where we land with this case. After you look at the history, you look at the transmission to shame through the generations, you look at the inability to discuss difficult things, the avoidance of shame, the trauma, the family system, all the conflict and turmoil, the boat accident, that's where you land, and that's the reality of why Paul and Maggie were murdered.

Thank you for bringing us there. Thank you, Stephanie B. for reminding people to please like and subscribe and share our channel. That's so kind. Thank you to all our moderators tonight. Can we talk a little bit about Alec now in court? What you're going to play is about the way Alec handles shame. I think it is relevant to this idea that Paul is expendable

because Alec sees Paul as being someone who's causing a great deal of shame for this family. Yes. So again, I'm going to play something in court. This happened Thursday. Day 23. It was right when the prosecution started with Alex's testimony and the prosecution was cross-examining. This is Creighton Waters. He was attempting to get Alec to answer a question for probably 20 minutes. I mean, he mentions it as being 10 minutes, but I've now watched this three times and it was at least 20 minutes, if not longer. I went over 30 plus minutes of watching this, him asking,

him the same question over and over again that Alec would not directly answer. And so here's a bit of that. Nothing in you causes you to remember that? To specifically remember. I'm not sure that I did sit down with Dionne Martin. But I certainly, Mr. Waters, I misled Dionne Martin. I lied to Dionne Martin. I took Dionne Martin's money when I shouldn't have.

Well, let me ask you this. Of all the people on here, all these exhibits, do you have any independent recollection of the time where you sat down and looked that person in the eye, and you were lying to them and convincing them that everything was okay while you stole their money? Do you remember even one of them? I'm sure I did.

Okay, well, tell us about one. I mean, you have to show me, you have to give me... I'm asking you if you remember one time where you're sitting there in your heart, looking somebody in the eye, knowing you're stealing from them, and you remember it. I remember stealing from people, I remember lying to people, and I remember misleading people.

For me to tell you that I sat down with each one of these people. I'm asking you to tell me about just one conversation, one time where you recall looking somebody to the eye and convincing them with your lies that nothing was amiss. One conversation. There were plenty of conversations where I looked people in the eye and I lied to them. There were plenty of times where I took money that I shouldn't have taken. There were plenty of times where I stole money for me to sit and tell you a specific time that I sat down with a specific document. And what exactly was said, if you ask me questions, but I can't remember sitting down with Dion. They certainly remember it, don't they, Mr. Murdoch?

I don't know if they do or not, but I would assume so. But you can't tell us one time where it just sticks out of your memory where you're like, I'm pulling a fast man right now. Oh no. Or anything. Whatever reaction you had. Oh, no. Remember a single one?

No, sir. That's not correct. I can remember a lot of times where I lied to my clients, I misled my clients, tell us one conversation you have with any of these people when you look them in the eye and convinced them that you were doing them right, that you were telling the truth. That's not true, Mr. Waters. I remember. of those conversations. I remember a lot of them. Okay. All right. You just testified, you remember a lot of them. I've been asking you now for the past 10 minutes to tell me about one of them where it's stuck in your heart.

There are a lot of, there are a lot of conversations I had where I misled my clients and I stole their money where they trusted me. And I remember them. Okay. But you can again, can you tell me one, tell me how it was. went down, what you said, how you convinced them, how you looked them in the eye, how you made them believe, how you use your skills as a trial lawyer to convince them. Can you just tell me about one of those? What was going through your head when you did it? Your Honor, objection under Rule 4 of 3. We've been going over and over and over this. Injection was overruled. All right. What's your question, Mr. Waters?

Can you tell me about one of the conversations you had with all of these people, just one I can tell you what was going through your head and how it went down when you sat there and looked them in the eye and convinced them that you were doing them right while you were lying to them and stealing their money. Yes, sir. I had a lot of conversations with a lot of my clients that I cared about. And so I will tell you that I had conversations with them where I misled them and I lied to them and I took their money. That was a number of times. Okay. But you're asking me.

Just one specific one, Mr. Murdoch? Every single one of these clients I would have had conversations with at some point. It's fine. It's fine. But this particular, like Mr. Waters, that disbursement sheet, I didn't have, there was never a sit-down with Ms. Mallory about to disperse in the money. You don't recall talking to her about the status of her case and telling her lies and convincing her that you were on her side. You don't remember that. No, I definitely remember that, but that's not what you asked me.

I had numerous conversations with Ms. Mallory, you know, about this case. But the fact is, is you were asking me about me sitting down with this disbursement sheet, looking her in the eye and convincing her, and I'm telling you that that didn't happen in this case. Now, I had a lot of conversations with her. Where I misled her, Mr. Waters, where I lied to her. Tell me about one. About. Tell me how it went down.

Where. I'm going to recess for the day. It was so frustrating listening to that for me multiple times. Just it's so clear what he's asking of Alec and he just will not share one example. I mentioned yesterday that I've done groups for violent offenders. sex offenders for many years. And this reminds me exactly of moments in group therapy when I will turn to an offender. And the offender typically part of treatment involves that they have to describe their crimes and they have to describe what they did in some detail. They can't just

avoid it and pretend it didn't happen. And so I'll turn to some of the offenders and I'll say, please tell the group how you harmed your victim. Please tell us about your crime. And this is exactly how they sound. And the reason they sound that way is because they're just, they're in denial, they're not willing to acknowledge that they've hurt someone and they're not willing to experience the shame

of the crimes they've committed. And I think you have something very similar here. You have someone who's in denial and he's incapable of putting because he knows. Every criminal I've ever worked with, they know exactly their crime. They know exactly how they've harmed the victim. But that doesn't mean they're going to talk about it, or they're going to talk about it freely or openly. And that's what's going on here. There's definitely some avoidance of shame. There's some denial. There's a power play. He's engaging in a power struggle with the prosecutor. And so I think it's like all of those moments.

If you want to see, again, if you want to go from the train wreck in 1940 with Randolph 1 all the way down the line to Alec and see how shame has affected this family and what it looks like in the fourth generation and the inability to process it and the inability to express it, this is it right here. this is where I want to read a comment we received yesterday on our YouTube channel after last night's live from Emily. Thank you for this great comment. Thank you many of you for your great comments. One of the problems is when someone says, in quotes, I apologized a hundred times. To me, that feels like they are saying, in quotes, I followed the social construct and said I was sorry. so now everyone should forgive me and the slate is clean.

Why is everyone still hating on me? When someone is truly sorry, they say, quote, I will never be able to apologize enough. I will continue to make amends till the day I die. This to me is a man who has no remorse and is only concerned about themselves. I want to thank both of you for your insights. I want to say there is a big difference

between him repeatedly saying, I have said, I am sorry, I have admitted that I stole millions of dollars. I am not denying that. I have done this. I have done this. I've even looked people in the eye, but what he's wanting is so different. He wants them to tell one example of where he looked at one of these people in the eye, he came's mother, whatever, and lie to them. And he is incapable of doing that. And in other words, that's incapable of looking at his shame. Am I right to say that, to jump to that? Right.

It's exactly as if I'm turning to a sex offender in a group and saying, please tell me about your crime. Please tell me what you did to this victim. And they can't do it. They can't do it initially. Like some of them can, but oftentimes early treatment. They just can't do it. They can't acknowledge that they've hurt someone. They can't

acknowledge their shame. And so you get this stonewalling and you get this this dance of this little power play where you go back and forth. And he's obviously trying to push him to get there, but he's not going to. He doesn't. Listening to that was frustrating for me too. I feel like some people were frustrated with Waters thinking he was beating a dead horse, but I think that when you have somebody on the stand that's been charged with murder, you deserve to receive the answer from them that you're asking. And he wouldn't do it. And I think it shows opposition and defiance.

And so I understood why he kept going. It also paints Alec Murdoch as being disconnected. from his victims. And by the way, it's the same dynamic with his family. It shows how he's disconnected from his family. He simply cannot connect emotionally to anyone. And he knows exactly what he did with his victims. He knows exactly what he said.

He just can't, he's incapable of dealing with that emotion and dealing with that pain. Queen Jeannie says he is on trial for the murder of his family, not his financial crimes. Of course, he's a shame, but he's on trial for murder. Prove that. There's no evidence of that. You watch, hung jury.

While I agree, there might be a hung jury. I want to discuss the first part of her comment. He's on trial for murder of his family, not his financial crimes. His financial crimes are important to this because if he can lie about his financial crimes and if he can take millions of dollars from victims, what else is he capable of all of? As you point out, there are factors and things you have to weigh. I agree that being a liar or a thief doesn't mean you're a murderer. But having no empathy, taking millions of dollars from people who desperately need it

is a lack of compassion. It shows dishonesty. He lied about his alibi. I think there's many important reasons to bring up his financial crimes and past criminal activity. to question whether or not this is someone we can trust or not. It is an important point, though. I said it earlier. It's one thing to go from showing him to be a pathological liar and swindler

to showing him to be a pathological liar, swindler and murderer. That is true. But as I said before, this is someone who does have a history of violence. And I think when you throw that into the equation, and we didn't really see that in the trial, unfortunately, but when you throw that into the equation, I think you can definitely get this guy. You can portray Alec Murdoch as a murderer.

What else is he capable of? Do I believe he's capable of what he's on the stand for? Yes, I do. There's a couple of thoughts I really think are important that I want to convey. The first is, I didn't talk about this last, Friday, but I want to bring it up tonight. There's a book called Familicidal Hearts, The Emotional Styles of 211 Killers. It's by Neil Websdale. Here's the book. This is probably

the most detailed and interesting look at famililicide. Fimilocyde is when you kill a spouse and or child or children. We talked about that issue last week. Webstale's, one of Webster's most important arguments is that shame plays a massively important role. in famililicide. And so I keep returning to this issue with shame. I want to return to it once more here. I want to read a little bit from the Webstale book, and then I'm going to end with a quote from Prince of Tites.

Websdale says, this is on page 226, he says, many of the familicidal hearts, meaning familicide killers, many of the familalicidal hearts experience deep shame and humiliation. I deduced that the vast majority, of familicide murderers revealed perpetrator shame and amiliation as a primary reason for the mass interpersonal killing. Many perpetrators killed to relieve their unbearable feelings of shame and humiliation. Many of our perpetrators failed to acknowledge their sense of shame,

bypassing, repressing, or sublimating it, thereby often allowing it to intensify. Webstall is saying a couple of things. Number one, of the 21 of the 211, of the 211, killers he looked at, the vast majority of them experienced a profound sense of shame, and that played a role in their killings. That's number one. Number two, he alludes to this idea, or he says that by failing to acknowledge their shame, by bypassing, repressing, or sublimating it, that allowed them to intensify it. And that's a really important point, because I think Alec Murdoch had so much anger towards Paul. And he and his family have repressed shame for so many years

that it intensified to the point where something had to give. I think Paul happened to be the catalyst, unfortunately, and Paul unfortunately was expendable. But all of that anger and all of that shame eventually took root and expressed itself in these murders. and I think Websterle would agree with that. And so we began with this notion that there's multi-generational shame in this family. And I want to end with the research by Websterile, which is fascinating,

where he basically argues that almost every single phenocidal killer was driven by shame and or the suppression of shame, which then led to a tremendous amount of anger that intensified the shame that was eventually acted out through murder. So having expressed that, I want to return to Pat Conroy, who is my favorite South Carolina. And I don't really know a lot of people from South Carolina, but we have had viewers that seem really kind. And I'm sure we would find them to be really wonderful human beings. But Pat Conroy is someone that I really have a lot of respect for, and I really appreciate his writing. And so this is a quote, also from,

of Tides. This is near the end after the character Tom Wingo has really processed his trauma, and he's done the very things that the Murdoch family seems incapable of doing. And so this is, I think this is a wonderful quote by Tom Wingo after he's dealt with a lot of shame and a lot of trauma in his family. Here's what he says, quote, I learned that I needed to love my mother and father in all their flawed, outrageous humanity and in families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.

So let me repeat that. I learned Tom Wingo from Prince of Tides. I learned that I needed to love my mother and father and all their flawed, outrageous humanity. And in families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness. So Conroy is saying that he doesn't think there's any crimes in a family that are beyond forgiveness. But, you know, in the Murdoch family, when you don't process shame, and you don't deal openly with trauma and there's a real lack of communication. Unfortunately, I think there are some crimes

that are beyond forgiveness. And apparently, I would say that Paul and the boat crash and the shame that that brought upon the family, it turns out that that was a crime beyond forgiveness because obviously Al could not forgive Paul and we saw the consequence of that. But in healthy families, and for people that can really face their trauma

and face their pain and their shame, I would agree with that. That it's really important to try to forgive our parents and the people that hurt us and our families. And hopefully this is true and healthy families. There are no crimes beyond forgiveness. I wish that was so in the Murdoch family, but I don't think it was.

John, thank you so much for your preparation and studying. leave your questions and comments in YouTube. We will try to get to those very soon because we are not done talking about the Murdoch trial or the Murdoch family. Colette, thank you for sharing about John's monthly book club. One of the Patreon perks you get if you join our Patreon account is Dr. John's book club.

You can also join a YouTube membership, Amethyst, level or above. You can be a part of the book club. We'll send you a link. It's a lot of fun to really get to meet and see some of the people because we do it on Zoom, so to actually see some of our listeners and interact with them. Patreon is a way where our hidden gems can support us, but we give back. So we do that through the book club, through bonus episodes at our dinner table,

as well as ad-free episodes from our podcast. Thank you to those that are here. If you could like this video, if you haven't already, means giving it a little thumbs up. It helps us if you could subscribe. That also helps us. Of course, only if you like what you hear. The Daybell trial, the Lori and Chad Daybell trial is coming up in April and John and I will be covering that. That is something that we have been investigating and downloading into since it broke three years ago. Thank you to all of our supporters, all of our hidden gems. You can find us again at patreon.com slash shouldn't you cry.

or you can join our YouTube membership and Amethits and above are part of the book club. Leave your questions and comments in YouTube. We do read them. Thank you, everyone, and have a great night. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Good night. Good night.

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