Hidden True Crime - MURDAUGH MOTIVES: Secrets in the Vault

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

A psychologist's take on the Murdaugh family crimes. Recorded LIVE in front of our YouTube audience: Saturday March 4, 2023 Alex Murdaugh has been convicted of killing his wife and son. Dr John Matthias takes you through their SECRETS IN THE VAULT. How could this happen? What are the motives? The killings are not what started the unraveling of the family’s tangled history. Dr Matthias uncovers how the family's 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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happiness at work from A.J. Producter. Hidden Gens. It's Lauren with Hidden a true crime podcast. As a TV reporter,

I learned the art of visual storytelling. So if you're like me, you enjoy listening, but also viewing. You can actually head to our YouTube channel, Hidden True Crime,

to watch these interviews. Hit the subscribe button for surprise lives and breaking news. And for exclusive content, become a Patreon member at patreon.com slash hidden true crime. You'll find bonus episodes, early releases, and insider info. Thank you for your endless support. Hidden, 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. guilty verdict. We're talking about Alec Murdoch here. He has now been found guilty, charged with

murdering his wife, Maggie, and his son, Paul Murdoch. Many people have also been asking why we haven't uploaded our last hidden hour onto our podcast yet. We do get behind on our podcasts. So thank you for those to understand and come over to YouTube. We do edit those and make them more concise for our podcast midweek. It's just the two of us editing and it's been a busy week with breaking news. I should make a correction that you're the only one doing the editing, not me. So you're a one-man band on that. So sometimes we do fall behind.

But Lauren is as persistent as she can be given our schedule. So thank you all for understanding that. And busy isn't good. It's been a good week. So thank you for joining us here. I think we should just start with giving some people credit. We followed this case, but we really didn't do a deep dive until fairly late. We're grateful for all the work that other people have done, and we want to acknowledge that.

I want to start with a book that is not mentioned that much on this case, but I think it's a little bit overlooked. It's by Kathleen McKenna Hewtson. The book is called Murdoch. She wrote. I would recommend it. Other people we want to credit would be Fitz News and especially Will folks. All their journalists are excellent. Their podcast.

Michael DeWitt, we've talked about Trouble with Trains. The article we use, Pretty Lies and Alibis has done an excellent. job reporting on the case. We're grateful to her. Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell and their podcast of Murdoch Murdoch is extremely useful. There's a podcast called the Murdoch Family Murders that also has given us some excellent details on family history. Of course, there's the documentaries. The first documentary to come out was called Deadly Dynasty. Second documentary to come out was called Lowcountry. That's the HBO documentary and the more recent one, which came out, I believe, last week is on Netflix. We're really grateful to the community of journalists and authors,

experts, and reporters. We always sort of ride on other people's shoulders, and that's important to acknowledge, and I want to do that here. I want to thank them for all their excellent work. We want to thank many people who helped us study, but I think you underestimated what you've done, John. You came out with a brand new motive, but you actually have said things nobody else has said. You've done some hard work. I think what I do, was I took that information and I developed what we call a theory of the case. Right, it's one thing to express an opinion or make an observation. It's another all together to talk about a theory.

By putting the pieces that we put together or that I tried to put together, I was developing a theory of the case. And I gave some examples of how some instances to kind of prove up that theory. There's a few premises in the theory. We've talked about it. In fact, why don't we revisit some of that now? Can you play the little clip from Creton Waters on his closing arguments, please? He had an opiate addiction.

The entire illusion of his life was about to be altered. He couldn't live for that. He's the kind of person for which shame is an extraordinary provocation. Shame is an extraordinary provocation. His ego couldn't stand that, and he became a family annihilated. That's part of the theory that I developed. To me, that's a remarkable moment that he's talking about shame in the closing arguments, not just the closing arguments, but the last bit of the closing argument.

So he's using a bit of a psychological explanation that we had talked about several weeks before. I mean, I have no idea if he listened to us or knows about us, but he's referencing something that was a part of the theory. And the theory, by the way, only makes sense when you put together all the pieces. There's individual pieces, but it really only comes together by looking at all the pieces. And those pieces are that in 1940, there was a train wreck that involved Randolph 1. Randolph 1. Randolph was killed in that train wreck. the family said it was an accident. And Buster, who was Randolph II, went to court very quickly after the train wreck and argued it was an accident. And he sought compensation from CSX, which was the

train company involved in the accident. However, there was an engineer who was driving the train. He was in the train. And he noticed that Randolph had stopped. And then within 40 yards, the car lurched forward and it was on the tracks. And then he was killed. My perception, my view is that that was a suicide. It seems like it has all the makings of a suicide. So it was a very traumatic event and it's an event that the family essentially disavowed or wanted to avoid talking about. And so they buried it. There's a couple issues there. One is suicide would have been very shameful for this family because even beginning of 1920, Randolph-1 was the solicitor. He had a lot of power. Even before that accident, he was considered a powerful person. He was considered a person

who had a lot of control over politics in the judicial system. So I think suicide would have been a very embarrassing moment for this family. So it makes sense that Buster or Randolph II would not want to call this a suicide. He'd want to bury that idea and refer to it as an accident. There's another component of which I talked about, which is that I think Randolph was very depressed. So the suicide isn't necessarily secret. It's just something that the family really tried to cover up or disavow.

That, of course, creates problems later. But the real secret here is that he's depressed. I think there's a lot of depression there. I mean, I don't know for sure, but he was having health problems. He lost money in the stock market. It seems as if there was some depression, which then led to the suicide. The suicide gets buried and called an accident. And from that, you get a lot of shame.

That shame and trauma then becomes something that gets passed down through the generations because it's never processed. It's never really dealt with. It's swept under the rug. and that sets the stage for intergenerational trauma or multi-generational trauma. It sets the stage for what I call a shame-bound family system. But it all begins with this train crash and how the family perceives it. And I think behind that train crash is depression.

And this is a family, like many powerful families, that when there's depression, they don't want to acknowledge that. Depression is very difficult for families that are powerful to acknowledge, I think, because power and weakness don't go hand in hand, and depression is often seen as weakness. And as I said in our last episode, I don't see it that way. I've talked openly about my own depression,

and I don't see myself as weak. I think that the secret here is that this is a family that's negating any type of depression from the founding patriarch of this family and this dynasty, and therefore they're really negating any type of weakness. They want to be seen as strong, They don't want to be seen as associated with any type of shame or depression or weakness or vulnerability. And so that's what really sets the stage for this dynasty.

The other thing that occurs from that train wreck is that the family gets a monopoly on all train accident and injury cases in the state of South Carolina, which creates tremendous wealth for them. So you could argue that the foundation of their wealth is in some sense founded on this falsehood. that if this train accident is labeled a suicide and not an accident, then the train company CSX may not pay out because it's not an accident and they're not at fault. All this wealth, we're talking millions of dollars, is founded on this falsehood that this is an accident and not suicide. And I think that too creates shame because perhaps there's a sense in this family that a lot of their wealth was ill gotten and not deserved. Those are some of the things we talked about. The theory I developed is you have this train rack, creates trauma and shame, it gets buried,

and therefore it gets passed on through the generations. I supported that theory by providing a lot of examples. What happens over time is these type of incidents become family myths. They become a part of family stories and family lore, and they become family mess. And one of the things about family miss, at least in this case, is that family miss are often based on distortions. And the distortion here is that this was an accident and not a suicide. And by the way, I think this has a lot of overtones of, I mentioned this before too. This has a lot of overtones of Willie Lohman from death of the Salzman, where Willie Loman,

who's the Salzman, is very depressed and he wants to pass on some money to his son Biff. And he does that by committing suicide so his son will get the insurance money. I think you could have a very similar scenario here where Randolph 1 is depressed. His health is poor. He sees an opportunity to really set this family up for generations, to set up this dynasty for generations of wealth if he takes his life on those train tracks. And I know that might be a bit of a reach, but there are, I think, some Willie Loman overtones there. I think it's interesting to think about that. And again, that potentially creates a little more shame, even more shame in this family, because the foundation their wealth is ill-conceived, it's ill-gotten. It occurs not only from a trauma, but from a falsehood

surrounding that trauma. The family doesn't get that well if this is a suicide because then it's intentional and not an accident. So over time, these types of events become family myths. And the family myth is extraordinarily important in this case. This is from a book called Facing Shame, Families in Recovery. The authors are Merle Fossum and Marilyn Mason. I want to quote something they say about family miss. This is page 46. Quote, all families explain the events in their history through family myths. Mists in the shamebound family system are born out of distortions and delusions and through loyalty function as the barrier reefs to family shame. Let me repeat that last part.

Mists in the shamebound family are born out of distortions and delusions and delusions and through loyalty function as the barrier reefs to family shame. So what they're saying is that these type of incidents, let's apply this to Murdoch, these types of incidents create a great deal of shame and they create distortions and delusions. So the distortion here is that this is an accident and not a suicide and that Randolph-on was not depressed,

that he was a strong guy who founded this law firm and was the first solicitor, South Carolina, all of that would go against this notion that he was depressed. So they create this delusion and distortion around the origins of this dynasty. And then this is an important part two, through loyalty function as the barrier reefs to family shame. So in other words, this family is extraordinary loyalty to each other. We'll talk about that later. But it's that loyalty that really, it's that loyalty in those distortions, which really prevent a family like this from processing their shame and from really dealing with those difficult emotions.

and those traumas that occurred early on in this case in 1940. And so all of this leads to what I would call shame avoidance. And so you can see how this entire narrative that eventually leads to murder, it begins there. And because it's not processed or dealt with or talked about or communicated openly, it continues to the generation. So it becomes multi-generational trauma. Yes. Let's get to the buster testimony.

Sometimes when I'm doing a forensic evaluation or when I'm reading discovery about a case or when I'm watching a trial and I see someone testify, sometimes there's these moments that are just jaw dropping and they help put everything together. I think with Buster, we had one of those moments because Buster really provides some tremendous insight into this family and his testimony. And, you know, as a psychologist, I guess, perhaps I see things differently. But a lot of the legal experts did not see this and they weren't talking about this. So I think it's important. Let's revisit this and then talk about why it's so critical in this case.

Okay, we're going to play a little clip from Buster. Did the family support Paul in the criminal matter? Yes, sir. And what do you mean by that? I mean that supported him in his criminal case because, you know, amongst the family, none of us thought that he was driving the back. We thought he'd been at the time of the accident. That's correct. Wow.

She doesn't just speak for himself. He speaks for everyone in the family. Right. It was a fairly concise and quick moment in his testimony. But Buster says, so let me repeat this because it's so critical. to understanding the Murdoch family. Buster says that none of his family members, including himself, believed that Paul was driving the boat where Mallory Beach was killed. It was a horrible incident. And here's Buster telling us that the family all believes that Paul wasn't driving the

boat. Now, why is that important for understanding the Murdox? Because it gives us a tremendous insight not only into the trial of Alec, but also into this family. Aside from the fact that every other living witness in that boat, Connor Cook, Anthony Cook, Morgan, every living witness in that boat pointed the finger at Paul and said he was driving. If that's not damning enough, because the Murdox denied that and because they tried to cover it up at the hospital where they were witness tampering and trying to influence Connor Cook, for example,

they were trying to pin it on him. Mark Tinsley, who is the attorney for Mallory Beach's family, he hired a biomechanical engineer. This is discussed in the Netflix documentary, if you want to get more details here. But Mark Tinsley essentially proves conclusively that there's no physical way that Paul was not driving the boat. There's no way that somebody else is driving that boat. It was conclusively Paul. What we learned from Buster's testimony is that whatever, no matter what the evidence no matter what the facts are, no matter what damning issues there are against this family,

they're going to deny those. And they're going to all stick together, and they're all going to stick together to perpetuate the family myth of power and perfection and being above the law, no matter what. And so this gets into what you just talked about, Lord. This gets into the idea of ameshment. I'm going to read a definition of a meshment because I would describe a, I would describe a measurement as essentially a family that is really fused together.

Their identities are fused together, fused together to the point where they really lose touch of each one of them individually. But I'm going to read from a definition from a textbook. This is from a book called Family Therapy. It's by Goldenberg and Goldenberg. I'm reading from the fourth edition. There's other editions. They're newer editions than this. This is an older edition.

But so they say this is page 195. Emeshment refers to when family members are over-concerned and over-involved in each other's lives. In extreme cases, the family's lack of differentiation between subsystems makes separation from the family an act of betrayal. Let me repeat that. Separation from the family is an act of betrayal. Belonging to the family dominates all experiences at the expense of each member's self-development. whatever is happening to one family member reverberates through the system.

A child sneezes, his sister runs for the tissues, his mother reaches for the thermometer, and his father becomes anxious about sickness in the family. That's a meshment. So in other words, and in mesh families, there's a tremendous premium placed on loyalty, as you can imagine, because the members are so closely aligned with one another. I love this example about a child sneezes, and then the whole family freaks out and thinks the child's going to have to go to the hospital, they get Kleenex, right? One sneeze. And so that's what a Nemesh family looks like.

The Murdoch family is very similar to this. You have all this evidence. It's indisputable evidence about Mallory Beach and the boat crash, and they're all saying, no, Paul wasn't driving. They're denying a fundamental reality. gets back to that idea of the family myth. That family myths are based on distortions and delusion. And that's true here. That the Murdoch family is, I can't think of a more, a better example than that bow crash because clearly Paul was driving. But they're going to deny that. Clearly. They're going to deny that. And why are they going to deny that? Because they're

trying to protect the larger family myth. They're trying to protect the family as a whole. you know usually in murder cases most psychologists are going to look for motives in the individual like he's a psychopath or you know he was abused as a child or and certainly a lot of those can come into play in most murder cases but i think this case is unusual in the sense that the main motive really i think has to do with the family system and that's why we've been talking about it so much because as we talked about in our last episode when we really broke down the dynamics of this family, that if you go, if you dig deep enough into this family and you look at the way this family system operates, it seems inevitable that you come to a conclusion that in some ways Paul was expendable. And I know that sounds horrible. That's a horrible truth, but there is this sacrificial component here that by getting rid of all and Maggie, somehow you can perpetuate this dynasty and you could perpetuate this family myth. And the dynasty can continue on unaffected by everything that's been going on.

Yes. Paula Marie, our wonderful listener, says, Emesh families are tragic. I am from one. I was a member of one. I carved myself out of it to free myself and cut the generational curse. Loyalty above everything else, even to the point of sacrificing one of the members. Well, in this case, multiple members.

You can go from Buster's testimony to Alex testimony, too, by the. way in the sense that it's the same dynamic. You literally have every member of that family sitting behind Alec. You have Randy, you have Lynn, you have John Marvin. John Marvin, he even takes the stand. If we had a little more time, we'd probably talk about him. But the point is that you have overwhelming evidence. As the jury knew, the jury took less than three hours to convict him. You have overwhelming evidence. just like the boat crash, and yet not a single member of this family is willing to advocate or step up for Paul or Maggie.

They're all sitting behind Alec. They're all supporting him. They're all pretending as if this is the boat crash where Paul wasn't driving. We all know he was driving. And now with this conviction, we can say that Alex, we can say that Alec is a convicted murderer. We all know that he killed them. And yet this family is rallying behind him. They're denying that he killed them in spite of all the evidence.

It's the same dynamic that we see with Buster saying that Paul was driving the boat. It's the exact same dynamic. You know, I feel a little better about this family. If one of the members stood up and said, I'm not going to that trial because I believe my brother killed his wife and son, I just don't, you know, I just can't support. I want to speak for Paul, right? If one of the family members said, I want to give Paul voice, I want to give Paul voice, I want to give Maggie a voice.

I'm not going to that trial. But what happens? Nope. They all go to the trial. They all act like they're unified. They are unified. They're all believing this myth, this distortion. And they're all telling us that the most critical component of this trial,

the most important element of this trial is that Alec get acquitted so that they can perpetuate the family myth, that they're powerful and that they're above the law and that they're perfect. And so that's why the family. myth that begins with Randolph 1 and that train crash, what I think is a suicide. That's why that's so critical because that moment reverberates through the generations. It creates an incredibly a mesh family that all rally around these falsehoods. They all rally around a convicted murderer no matter what because they're all more interested in their own interest and their own dynasty

and saving that dynasty than they are in getting to the truth and making sense of this and holding their brother accountable. Arch type reader says, the personal is not allowed to be developed. You have no right to have your own identity, which will all determine personal happiness. Tom Crossman writes, a great question. We just watched Buster.

Will Buster continue with this support? Dr. John? I don't know. That's an interesting question. My guess is, so in an extremely emmished family like this, I think my guess is that somebody like Buster is going to continue to be loyal

to the family and to say that his dad was wrongly convicted and that Paul was never driving the boat. That's the type of thing you see in convicted in really a mesh family. So do I think the buster's going to change his tune about any of that? Probably not. I don't think any of them will. I think even though arguably this is the end of the dynasty, I think they're still going to try to perpetuate the family myth. I mentioned Kay Woodcock is here and I want to share that we talk for those that are interested in the family system. We talk a lot more about the family systems in the first season of our podcast, the Daybell case. Lori Valo, Daybell is now scheduled to go to trial next month in Boise, Idaho. Kay's planning to be there. And on our playlist, look for the Daybell podcast. You can start

there. They're in order. And you can listen and learn even more about the family systems. Madeline is also pointing out it just shows how far this delusion can go. The family leaders were literally all interpreters of the law. Could they be that delusional? I think that actually creates even more delusion because they had the ability to literally make their delusions reality.

Right, with the kind of power they had, and that's the other component we didn't talk about tonight, but I talked about it on our previous podcast, is when you have absolute power in some ways you can define the way the world gets interpreted. You can define that reality, which, yes, as the more power you have, the more you, and you can see this

in any fascist government or dictatorship. The dictators will control the media and therefore they'll control, they'll try to control the narrative and the perceptions of reality to the populace. And the mesh family sounds a lot like a cult.

That's true. I think that's a whole other podcast. I agree. Let me just go to the Daybell case because Kay has a great question. Kay Woodcock. So there was breaking news in the Daybell case yesterday. Lori Valo-Dabell and Chad Daybell, their trials have been split. They were joined together until two days ago.

Lori Vallow-Daybell is going to go to court to trial at the beginning of next month in Boise, Idaho. They are both the subjects of the Netflix documentary Sins of Our Mother, which John is a part of. and Kay is asking, they are the subject of our first season of the podcast, and Kay is asking, Dr. John, do you think Chad Daybell's family is enmeshed, him and the kids? It definitely seems like they're amashed because they're rallying around their father and denying that he could possibly ever do anything wrong. So I think there's definitely some ammishment there. I don't know if that emmeshment is at the same level of the Murdoch family,

but I'm not sure there's a scale here to. compare those, but clearly there's some amassment because the children are supporting Chad, and they just can't imagine that their father could ever commit murder. So I think there are similarities. Yes. Thank you, Kay, for asking that. Julius stating at one point, most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers,

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I mean, could you get any more ability to validate your own delusions and your own myths? You own a newspaper. You make the laws in the town. If you control the only newspaper in town, you're definitely trying to push your version of the world or reality for sure. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving.

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bi-cue again. Ay, aye, aye. But Jonas just flina out the elandet. Morning traffic and little

when you tryves on job. Good for industry, school and contor. It is

Happiness at Work from A.G. Producter. What about his discussion on being a family

annihilator, John? Yeah, that was interesting too. I think, you know, we talked about this in one of our earlier

podcast. that I think he's using the term family annihilator because it's a more severe and it's a more stern and more memorable term. But most of the research in that area, it's referred to as familicide. The most common category for familicide offenders is the category called the despondent husband.

And it's almost almost always men, middle-aged men. Alec Murdoch actually fits the profile of a familalicide offender perfectly. that the main reasons that men commit the mollicide is because they're despondent about a loss of a job or a worsening financial situation or they're despondent over the loss of a relationship or problems in a relationship. And arguably those both fit Alex. But I think he's doing it. I think Creighton Waters is doing that more for dramatic effect in the sense that, you know, when you call someone a family annihilator, you're really, you're really, you're really, you're really. using a strong term to make your point.

If he's saying it's finilicide, it's not going to have the same dramatic effect. Instead of saying, did you murder your wife and kids? If you say, are you a family annihilator, you're really, really driving home that point. So I think that's why he did it. We did talk about that, but the more preferred term, I think,

for that type of thing is finelicide. I appreciated the fact that he, again, he's bringing in some of psychological research And I certainly appreciate the fact that he did that and that he was really emphasizing his point by using that term. Blooming Rose is also pointing out that they buried Maggie and Paul

and their graves are still basically unmarked. Every one of them cried with Alex, but nobody cried for Maggie and Paul. But I think that's very symbolic. It's true. There are no headstones on Maggie and Paul's graves. What do you make? of that? It's exactly my point that in some ways both of them were expendable. I mean,

they weren't taken that seriously, right? If they were valued, I think one of the siblings would have, you know, made a public statement about how I think my brother did this. The evidence seems overwhelming and they wouldn't have showed up at court, but they did. They showed up at court, pretend that everything was fine, that, you know, killing your child is perfectly fine, right? It's consistent with how this family, it's consistent with what this family values. Do they value the individual members? Do they value Paul, even though he's acting out? Do they value Maggie?

No, they value the family myth. They value the dynasty and the empire. Jean-Marie is asking, is an enmeshed family always unhealthy? Not necessarily, as long as there's open communication and you're allowing individual members to develop their own identities. But in some ways, that's not the definition of a meshment. But I mean, I guess there's degree, think of it as a continuum. There's, on one extreme end of the continuum, you have a meshment, which is where no family member has any identity outside of the family itself.

On the other extreme, you have something what we call a disengaged family. A disengaged family is essentially a family that's the opposite where the members barely interact. They don't really care about one another. They're completely distant and detached from one another. They go about their own business. They don't communicate with each other very often. But if you think of it as a continuum, I guess if it's a bell curve and you meet somewhere in the middle,

that it's some combination of disengaged where you're developing your own identity and a meshed, where you're a part of the family. It's that balance. It's somewhere in the middle, I think, that would lead to a more appropriate solution or to something that would be more of a healthier family. Do you think Alec Murdoch will ever admit to these crimes? Let me make it a two-part question. Admit to himself and or publicly, which I think are two different things.

Does he acknowledge inside, but he did this? Does he know? He has to know. He has to know. That's going to be one of the most vivid memories he could ever have. My guess is during the whole trial, he was playing that memory over and over. He just can't publicly acknowledge it. It would be much too shameful for him.

He won't public. He's politically acknowledge it because he doesn't want to shame the family either. He doesn't want to embarrass the family. That's a big part of this. Again, this is a family story and a family saga, I think, more than anything else, which makes it really unusual. The motive here is much more family-based than many, many other crimes, which, you know, when we talk about other crimes like Brian Colberger, we're talking more about his individual pathology than we are about the family dynamics. But here we're talking about the family dynamics because that's really. what's prominent. That's really the salient issue with the Murdoch family. And it's a fascinating one. And it goes back generations. So I think that's why there's such fascination with this case, because there's so many elements. Yes, Alex obviously has individual pathology. But again, I think that the main motive in these murders transcends that individual pathology and really has to do with the family myth. What do you think, you know, I mean, of course, a lot of people suspect Buster may or may not have been part of another crime. But let's set that aside for a second, because that's the whole other

thing. Let's say there were no other possibilities or speculation on crimes and Buster. What would you tell Buster right now? How would you tell Buster to move forward from this? What are your hopes for Buster? I think Buster knows a lot of secrets. And I think some of those secrets wouldn't necessarily benefit him. So I think what I would tell him as a psychologist and what a lawyer would tell him would be completely different. I can develop

a scenario here where every single member of this family is a murderer. I don't know if that's true. That would be pure speculation, but I can argue that according to the Netflix documentary and the HBO documentary, some of the initial speculation and some of the initial

sources that were talking to police were implicating Buster in the of Stephen Smith. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. Nobody's ever pulled Buster in for an interview as far as I know. Nobody's ever sat him down in an interrogation room, but that probably needs to happen. So, but let's just say hypothetically that Buster was involved in the murder of Stephen Smith. Alec is now a convicted murderer of Maggie and Paul. Paul, we know, was involved in the murder, if we call it manslaughter. I don't know what that would be, what the charge would end up being in the end because it didn't get that far, but Paul had something to do with the

murder of Mallory Beach. And some people have speculated and argued that Maggie may have been the one that pushed Gloria Satterfield down or up the stairs, depending on who you listen to. But crazy, right? I mean, you can make an argument. It may not be true, but you can make an argument that all four members of this family could potentially be implicated in murder. So think about that for a moment as a dysfunctional family system. So what would I say to Buster? You know, I As a psychologist, what I would say to anyone is that honesty and transparency and directness and open communication are always better than not, you know, than secrecy and being closed and all the things that the Murdoch family is. If Buster's involved in the murder of Stephen

Smith, then, you know, I don't know. I guess I would tell him, you know, confess because in the end, it's from a mental house standpoint, it's going to help you deal with those twinges of conscience if he has any. As you've always said, we are as sane or as sick as a secret. We can't keep. Thank you for reminding everyone that if you want additional bonus episodes and some more intimate conversations with John, as well as Dr. John's book club, you can join us over on Patreon, patreon.com slash into crime and lost pirate ship states. He said in the cop car, they did him so bad.

He admits he set it up. Is that what you heard? Because I heard I did them so bad. I heard I heard I. I took that to be a confession, by the way. I know that the prosecution played that. I don't know if that came into closing arguments, but to me that was an extraordinary moment

because, yes, I think that there was a confession of sorts here. Some of you have written to us and said that that was a Freudian slip. I don't think it was a Freudian slip. I think it was him confessing. It may have been a mistake, but I don't think it was a Freudian slip in the sense that I think he really meant what he said, and so I think it was pretty direct.

Just kind of not thinking about what it sounds like. When I do forensic evaluations, I'll spend hours interviewing people. And the reason I want to spend so much time with, especially with really violent, severe crimes and criminals, the reason I do that is because over time, as I develop more rapport and trust, people will become more honest and they'll make mistakes.

And they often make those types of mistakes. And I love those moments because they're so telling and they're so indicative of what's really going on. And oftentimes in my evaluations, they help me put everything together into a really coherent picture. So that's one of those moments. I'm a little surprised at the prosecution, and I'm not being critical here because I think they did a great job.

And I said that before the verdict. So, but I think that's one of those moments that wasn't a slip. I think that was actually a straight up confession. And again, we want to state this is like gold dress, blue dress. John and I know what we heard, but we're not pointing to anyone else and say, no, you're wrong. We know. We're just stating from what we heard.

People are also mentioning John Marvin, believing he's a fixer, knowing so much more. What I would say about John Marvin is when the most interesting moment to me is when the defense actually asked him if he felt like the Murdoch family was special or received special treatment. And he said, no, we're like any other family. Except not every other family tries to cover up a boat crash where somebody was killed. Not every other family tries to cover up. This is about Morgan from the Netflix documentary. They try to cover up a crash where guns and alcohol were pouring out of the truck. John Marvin showed up with a trailer to pull that truck away.

Not every other family has this kind of power. Not other family would unanimously sit behind a convicted murderer and pretend like the murders didn't happen. I could go on and on. Is he believable? No. The reason he isn't is because what you say on the stand and your behaviors are quite different. And if you're going to put credence over one or if you're going to give credence to one over the other, you're going to give it to behaviors.

So look at what John Marvin does, not what he says. He may think or say that his family is like every other family, but look at what he does. He's pulling guns out of the house two days after the crime. Look at what he's doing. Does he think that his family's special? Absolutely he does. Just look at his behaviors.

Of course, he's not going to tell us that. People are pointing out some solid facts. Imagine Mallory Beach's own mother had to stand behind the caution tape And then she watched Maggie and everyone else get welcomed by the police. Mallory Beach, a young woman with her future ahead of her, was killed. Pretty clear Paul was driving. And he was reckless and he was drunk and he refused to give anyone else the wheel. And Mallory Beach's life was lost.

Mallory Beach's own mother could not cross the police tape. And then she watched as Maggie Murdoch walked right up and was able to assess the crime scene. I just can't imagine. You're right. If you want to know if this family had power or things they're special, then, yeah, look at the boat crash. John Marvin brings a trailer in that night to pull the board out of there so they can, I don't know if they're going to try to cover up evidence, but they can certainly contaminate the evidence. And all the Murdoch family members are able to go behind the police tape, but not the other family members. Yeah, clearly this is not a normal family, no matter what John Marvin says. There's a few other things I just want to cover.

Could you... Let me play this last very brief clip. But there were some things he couldn't control. And we brought those to you. A couple things that the defendant said that I agree with. He said, whoever did this had anger in his heart. Whoever did this planned it for a long time. That was during closing arguments.

Right. Again, in the last hour, closing arguments. I love that because Craydon summarizes, it, but summarizes it, but Alex says that he had, whoever did this had a lot of anger. And you can see that in the way that both Paggy and Ma, Paul and Maggie were killed, especially Paul. But let's talk about that for a minute. Why was Alex so angry? Why does Paul's murder and body at the crime scene express that anger so much? Because all of these family secrets that were kept in the vault, let's call it the vault,

That'll make sense towards the end. All these family secrets kept in the vault were starting to leak out. The secrets were being exposed. They started dripping out at first, but then they started pouring out. They were out of control. And I think Alec and the rest of this family was becoming really, really angry. And I think that some of those secrets were sparking or creating a lot of shame. And this is shame that this family has tried to buried for generations, right?

now here it is. These secrets are starting to provoke or elicit this shame that they buried for generations, and it's creating a lot of anger. And so I think that if we look at motivations here, I think we have to look at all the family secrets too. Not just the shame behind those secrets. That might be, the shame might be the foundation of the secrets, but the secrets themselves are also a big motive. Because that's really what he's after. He's really trying to bury those secrets again. Just to mention some of the family secrets, there's so many of them, you know, there's Randolph one's depression, there's drug addiction that they've tried to hide, there's alcoholism. Paul clearly has problems with alcoholism. Maggie presumably does too. There's a history of alcoholism in

this family. There's corruption, there's witness tampering, there's witness intimidation, There's fraud. There's financial crimes. There's violence. There's now murder. There's potentially other murders out there with Stephen Smith and Gloria Satterfield. Those are secrets that we don't know yet or that haven't been unraveled or pursued. There's illegal activities, including bootlegging in addition to the financial crimes. There's a history of infidelity. There's compulsive sexual behaviors. There's compulsive spending. There's gambling. Buster and John Marvin actually went to Vegas to Las Vegas. too long after the arrest of Alec for murder. And that's a peculiar thing, by the way, but there's so many secrets. And all these secrets are obviously unraveling. They start to unravel after the boat crash. And I think that the family, in many ways, feels out of control. And so they try to rally around, you know, they try to support each other. And they're trying to put these secrets back in the vault. And the reason I mentioned the vault is because that is one of Edgar Allen Post's favorite metaphors. For those who follow us and know that I love literature,

sure. You probably know that I'm going to have to bring Poe into this. So Poe, although maybe not considered a Southern writer, he did spend most of his childhood in Virginia, which isn't too far from South Carolina. So a lot of his work is Southern Gothic writing. So I think Poe's a good way to end this segment of our show. Let's talk about one specific poe tale, which is the fall of the House of Usher. That's a story of also a Southern dynasty that eventually falls and comes to an end because of incest and some other things. In that particular story, Madeline is put in the vault beneath the home by the lake. She's put in the vault and the conclusion to the story. I hope this isn't a spoiler alert because this story is now a couple hundred years old.

But it turns out that they buried Madeline alive. She burst out of the vault. Her brother, her twin brother Roderick, embraces her. They both die in each other's arm. and then the whole mansion collapses into the lake. The story is really about a massive family secret and secrets. Madeline becomes the metaphor for all those family secrets. She's in the vault. She comes out of the vault. She returns from the grave.

She takes down the house of usher. When I think of that story, I've been thinking about that story a lot and it's implications for Murdoch, the Murdoch case. And I think that in many ways, Paul is like Madeline, that he reaches out from the grave and he haunts this case perpetually because of his cell phone.

It wasn't something intentional, but Paul, in some ways, comes out of that vault. He reaches out to his father, and he pulls him down into the grave. I talked about the anger a little bit. I want to read a quote. This is from D.H. Lawrence. He's a well-known British author.

Many of you probably know him. This is one of his essays on Edgar Allan Poe. The Murdoch's story to me is a sordid and gripping tale. I might even call it a horror story. Let's listen to D.H. Lawrence. Here's what he says about Edgar Allan Poe, specifically the House of Usher. He says, quote, the best tales all have the same burden. Hate is as inordinate as love and is slowly consuming as secret, as underground, as subtle.

All this underground vault business and pole only symbolizes that which takes place beneath the consciousness. On top, all is fair spoken. Beneath, there is awful murderous extremity of bearer. Let me repeat the last two lines. On top, all is first spoken. Beneath, there is awful murderous extremity of burying alive. I love this quote because in many ways the Murdoch secrets have been buried alive for generations, and now they're coming to light.

That's what does this family in. On top, all is first spoken, this family wants to maintain a facade. There's a certain level of decorum in the South, obviously. They want to maintain the same level of the same level of it. decorum and fair spokenness as the ushers do in Poe's tale. But what they can't hide are the secrets and the secrets are growing. As Craton Waters said, the secrets are like a gathering storm that can't be stopped. And in that storm, because these secrets are buried alive, in that storm, there's a murderous extremity, which turns out to be the murders of Paul and Maggie, unfortunately.

I think it's really hard to bury secrets alive without them eventually working their way out of the vault. In some ways, I think that those secrets lead to full calls it the fall of the House of Usher, but I would now call this the fall of the House of Murdoch. There will be more secrets in Raville soon. Yeah, I agree. There's so many secrets out there. You know, Buster knows a lot of those secrets. Alec knows a lot of those secrets. There's a huge number of secrets swirling around Stephen Smith, probably regarding Gloria. Absolutely. There's secrets, some amount of secrets that are still in that vault. Maybe if we're lucky,

some of the journalists that we talked about at the beginning of this podcast can continue to dig deep into some of those secrets and bring down the entire house of Usher, the entire house of Murdoch. Did Alec kill Maggie because she resisted the family myth?

My take is that his motive was to kill Paul and Maggie because they interfered with the family myth. Maggie may have resisted. I know Maggie was exploring, or looking into some of the financials, and so she was getting close to some of the truth about what a mess their finances were.

I'm sure Alec didn't like that. Paul was really starting to expose a lot of the family secrets. Little bit of the tech. He was starting to really expose a lot of the family secrets I just mentioned. And so I think he had tremendous anger at Paul. He saw Paul as being expendable. I think that's why Paul was murdered. I think Maggie was also perhaps resisting

the family myth to some degree. But I think there's another motive there. And I think that is Alec blamed Maggie for not being a better mother in the sense that he thought that a good mother should control her kids better than Maggie did. Paul was out of control. So I think Paul needed to be eliminated. He was embarrassing the family in Alex's mind. But I think he also blamed Maggie for being a poor mother and for her inability to rein in this son. He didn't see this is his job, I'm sure, his job was to steal money, but I think he blamed Maggie for being an inadequate mother and for her failure to really rein in Paul, even though obviously Alex, as his father, Alec had a lot of responsibility for his son as well, and he could have participated in reining

him as well. But I don't think that's how he saw it. I think that there was some blame there that she couldn't control Paul. Was she wanting to divorce? Was she not let's say, there was even the remote possibility on the table that would have opened the complete book on finances. And I don't think this was also someone who was willing to give away half of his, whatever it was he was stealing. If it was even the slightest possibility that would also frighten him. Right. That's true. I think that was part of it. Ultimately, though, I think... We are hidden a true crime podcast where John delves into the hit emotives. I'm talking date line style motives, you know, like the basics. Right, right, right. Divorce would have been

an issue. A surface motive here for sure is greed. John has discussed this and I think we can go over it again. What do you think triggered Paul's anger and alcoholism? I want to point out too, who doesn't have anger? Let me just respond to that who doesn't have anger question. This is a different kind of anger. This is what I would call mission-based anger in the sense that like anger that he's going to take down 100 years of the family dynasty. This is an anger geared towards, and this is similar to Daibel, like Chad Dayball. This is anger that's directed towards protecting the family, and therefore it's more mission-based. It's a different kind of anger.

It's one thing to be angry because, you know, your Uber driver's 10 minutes late. It's another to be angry because your son is going to expose generations of secrets and potentially ruin an entire dynasty. You've been quoting Po. I'd like to quickly quote Daniel Tiger. It's okay to be angry, but it's okay to be angry. it's not not okay to hurt someone. There's my contribution to the quote.

Maybe more profound than Poe in D.H. Lawrence. Back to Deb, what do you think triggered Paul's anger and alcoholism at such a young age, right? It's one thing to have an alcoholic, another to have a child alcoholic. I mean, he wasn't a child when he died. He was an adult. But we heard on the documentaries he was drinking at a young age and underage and as a teenager a lot. So that's what I refer to when I say that. I think a lot of the anger

stem from the fact that he felt rejected in this family. I think he felt like he didn't belong. And I think he was acting out to get attention because of that feeling of not belonging. He actually I would argue that he wanted the family to set limits so that he could feel loved. A lot of children, some people find

this counterintuitive, but a lot of children actually like limits and boundaries because it makes them feel as if their parents care enough to rein them in. I think he was looking for those type of limits and he never found them because his parents never set limits with them. In the Murdoch family, the party line in the Murdoch family always was, we're the Murdox.

You can do whatever you want. You'll get away with it. And so they never set limits. There were no boundaries in this family. That's another part of the meshment is that a family like this really struggles to rein people in and to set boundaries and to be firm. There's more factors, I'm sure, with Paul. There's some what I would call intra-psychic factors there.

but that's from a family system standpoint, I believe it's the fact that he did not feel any sense of belonging in his family. Boundaries help children feel safe and loved. This is somebody who just killed a woman and calls his grandpa Hansen to come. Change the entire narrative. So he laid low a little bit after the boating accident, but then he continued to drink. He continued to go boating.

And when he was drinking, he was picking up citations for, speeding. He was picking up violations for boating. This is a kid who you'd think that someone would get the message and lay low, but no, he was still out there breaking the law. Paul was someone who was going to push the limits as far as he could until somebody stopped him. I think he probably didn't expect his father to stop him. That probably never crossed his mind, but sadly and tragically, that's what happened. Thoughts on how the roadside incident really went down. Cousin Eddie was meant to be the fall guy. I think Cousin Eddie smelled a rat. and got the hell out of there as quickly as he can

so they didn't get his brains blown out. But yeah, I think Alec called him over there to set him up and to take the fall for all the murders. But I think Cousinetti was a little too intuitive or smart to know what was, he knew what was coming. And then when it started to turn south very quickly, he jumped into his other story. Could Hansen have felt Alec was also expendable?

And that's why he told him to take care of Paul? That's a really interesting question. I think if Hansen was in a little better house, and a little younger, who knows what would have happened. From what I understand, Randolph 2 or Buster 1 was probably the most nonsense of all the Murdoch men who eventually became solicitors. My understanding is that Buster 1 didn't take a lot of prisoners,

and I think Hansen probably learned that from him too. So I think that's entirely... It would have been a really interesting scenario because Alec, in the same way that Paul was, was creating a lot of problems for this family. So what would Hansom have done if he was a little younger and in better health? I don't know.

Killing a son, no matter what your relationship with that son is like is, it's unimaginable. I just want to say thank you again for your support. We are a homegrown family podcast. It means so much as we want to do this full time and watch this grow with each of you. Thank you to those that are Patreon members. For those asking about Patreon, Patreon, Patreon is a way that you can support us through memberships, monthly memberships, and we give back. We have a book club with Dr. John.

We do ad-free episodes, and we bring you bonus content as well. Thank you. I think the Murdoch murder case is a real cautionary tale in the sense that when there's too many family secrets that are put in the vault and they're buried alive, eventually they're going to come back and haunt you. As a mental health professional, my advice is always try as much as we can to face our secrets courageously and to be open about them and to face our pain courageously. in our shame and that can push us towards mental health and not towards these types of violent

behaviors. We love your comments and questions. We love it when people agree or disagree. We love to continue the conversation in the comments of this video. So please leave them here and we will see you next week. Thanks guys. Thanks for joining us. Good night. Good night. end up on the laparer. Morning pendling. Little enclare when you on the job. Good inreding for

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