Law&Crime Sidebar - Murdaugh Murders and Boat Crash That Killed Mallory Beach — Everything We Know

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

In February 2019, Paul Murdaugh and friends took his family boat out for a night of drinking and partying that turned deadly when the group crashed into a bridge, resulting in the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach. The then 19-year-old Murdaugh would later be indicted on three felony charges related to the death of Beach. While awaiting trial, Paul and his mother, Maggie, were murdered at their South Carolina home in June 2021. This has led to questions about whether the drunken boating accident influenced the brutal murders which Paul’s father, Alex Murdaugh, was indicted for in July 2022. The Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy breaks down everything we know with Eric Bland, an attorney for Murdaugh’s former housekeeper’s family.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. If Elic is the victim of a vigilante, nobody's going to hold him accountable. Was the lawsuit over the boat crash that killed Mallory Beach and in which Paul Murdoch faced criminal charges. Part of the motive in the murder of Paul and his mother Maggie, prosecutors say yes. We take a look at what we know about that case. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy and welcome to Law and Crimes Sidebar podcast. At the time that Paul Murdoch and his mother Maggie were murdered on June 7, 2021, Mallory Beach's family was suing

Alec Murdoch and Buster Murdoch and Paul was facing criminal charges. The Murdoch family's boat crashed on February 24th, 2019, in Beaufort County, killing Mallory Beach, who was a passenger. Earlier in the evening, surveillance video showed Paul Murdoch pulling into Parker's convenience store in his white pickup truck, towing the boat. Paul can be seen walking into Parker's, and Sled said he used the ID of his older brother Buster to buy beer. Paul was only 19 years old at the time. He walked out of Parker's moments later, triumphantly holding the beer above his head as he walked back to his truck. Hours later, Paul and his friends stopped at Luther's, a bar where they did some shots.

The group of friends is in Luther's for about 23 minutes. Then they left and they walk back to the boat. Paul appears to be talking and Mallory Beach and her boyfriend, Anthony Cook, are seen talking and laughing, just like a boyfriend and a girlfriend would walking back to the boat. It just looks like a bunch of kids out having fun, then a short time later. What bridge is this? 9-1-1, where's your emergency? Please fire any of us. Hello?

We're in a boat crash on Archer Street. Whereabouts on Archer Street? In Archer Street. The only bridge on Archer Street. Dashcam video shows Anthony Cook absolutely distraught, calling his parents. He and Mallory were thrown from the boat, and he can't find her. You all know Helleck Murdoch? I know the name.

That's his son. That's so good luck. Mallory's body was found about a week later. In the end, the Murdoch name couldn't stop the wheels of justice from turning. Paul Murdoch was indicted for several counts of boating under the influence, one resulting in the death of Mallory Beach. If convicted, he faced the possibility of 25 years in prison. The testimony in the murder trial has stated that Alec Murdoch was at his office on June 7th, working on some things for the boat case. That was a Monday, and a status conference was scheduled

three days later on June 10th. That same day, June 7th, the law firm's CFO said she confronted Alec Murdoch about $792,000 in missing fees. That night, several hours later, Paul and Maggie Murdoch were murdered. I got a phone call sometime in the middle of the night, 1130, I'm my recollection. That was on June 7th, 2021. That's right. And did June 8th, 2021? I think I heard it's still June 7th when I hear about it. On June 8th, 2021, did you have any conversations with any of the lawyers involved in the boat case or any communications? I believe so. I think that it was more of – there wasn't a whole lot of consideration to be given to the fact that the hearing wasn't going to go forward. It was a sort of shock and horror of what had happened and nobody really knew what to do in the moment.

Of course, that hearing's not going forward after that. It did not. The attorney for the Beach family, Mark Tinsley, testified that he had previously told Alec Murdoch that he could settle this lawsuit for $10 million. That was money that Alec Murdoch didn't have. But with Paul and Maggie's murders, that was unlikely to happen, even the $10 million payout. Nice people get good verdicts. You really have to motivate a jury to want to help somebody in a civil case. And so if you compare, say, Attila the Hun with some sweet grandmother, who gets a better result?

It's the sweet grandmother. If Ehrlich is the victim of a vigilante, nobody's going to hold him accountable. It doesn't make any difference to what he did or how clearly what he did contributed. The case would be over against Ehrlich. And so initially, it was, it was. could have been over. It appeared that it was going to be over against Alec because I had other defendants. I had Parker's convenience store that clearly violated its rules. Maggie Murdoch's sister, Marion Proctor, testified about the boat case and what Alec Murdoch said to her about it

after the murders. He said that this 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. Alec Murdoch's attorneys also questioned Marion Proctor about the boat case. And you knew that Maggie felt very strongly that Paul was not driving the boat when the beautiful, tragic, beautiful Mallory Beach came to a tragic death, right? Correct. And Maggie was adamant. She was on a mission to clear Paul's name.

Was she not? Sort of. Sort of. And she was, and you're not critical of Alex for warning to clear Paul's name after he was murdered. Are you? I'm not critical about that at all. I think that was his way of honoring Paul after he was gone. I just thought his priority should have been focusing on finding out who killed Maggie and Paul.

Recently, Mallory Beach's family settled the lawsuit against Buster Murdoch and Maggie Murdoch's estate. But the case is not over yet. joining me to talk about the boat crash. And the impact it may have had on the Murdoch family is Eric Bland. He represents Gloria Satterfield's children and her estate. Gloria Satterfield, of course, was the former housekeeper and nanny for the Murdoch family. She died after slipping and falling at the family's property back in 2018. And really, she was more than a housekeeper and a nanny. She was considered to be a member of the family. So Eric, welcome back to Sidebar. Thanks for coming on. for having me, Jeanette. The motive in this case, according to the prosecution, is all this financial pressure that Alec Murdoch was under, whether he was scared that his, afraid his financial crimes were going to come to light. Also, though, there's been discussion about the boat case and how that really put a lot of stress on Alec Murdoch and his family. So talk to me a little bit about from your perspective, as somebody who's been kind of involved in this whole saga from

another aspect of it. How much havoc, the boat crash in that case, wreaked on the Murdoch family? An immense amount of pressure. You know, I've been talking about Mark Tensley because he's such a close friend of mine and a colleague way before the trial. And I said that he's a human terrorist. You let him in your house, he'll blow it up. And I think the world saw how tenacious Mark Tinsley is and was to Alex, just in the pre-jury testimony. Not so much in the jury testimony because Phil Barber exercised some seriously good judgment by only giving them one question on cross-examination. Alex knows Mark's skills. Mark is a highly accomplished lawyer, highly accomplished with eight-figure jury verdicts and multiple settlements. And he knew having him set his teeth in Alex.

his hide, so to speak, was a major problem. The boat case not only financially on what it was going to do for him, think of the pressure that it put internally in the family. His son Paul, who he loved, and I don't doubt that he loved this son, Paul, whether he killed him or not, I do believe that there was genuine love there, was being charged with felony DUI homicide, which was going to be a 20 to 30 year sentence. There was going to be an example made to him because there was out calling Bob and the mothers against drunk drivers and similarly boating accident. There was so much public scrutiny, he was going to get a very long sentence. And that was weighing heavily on Alex because he knew that a kid like Paul, a smaller kid,

I think he was five feet eight, would have a pretty difficult time in an adult prison with some pretty big guys. Buster was also being sued. Alex was being sued. Maggie was threatening to be sued for failure to supervise. So you have all of the internal pressures of sitting in a dinner table looking at your children and your wife and realizing, my gosh, they're embroiled in criminal and civil litigation. Let's keep in mind, Eric, that Alec Murdoch had a huge name down there in that area and his family had a huge name. And they've been around for 100 years. So everybody knows who they are.

Yes. Yes, and no. Yes, a tremendous name recognition in the 14th judicial circuit, the five county area. down there. Not so much statewide. The firm had a tremendous reputation statewide, and that was from Johnny Parker and Ronnie Crosby, because they did try cases outside of the 14th judicial circuit, whether it be a products liability case or a CSX railroad case that Johnny Parker specialized in where there were railroad accidents or a derailment situation. And we had a trained derailment in Granville, South Carolina, where a lot of chemicals got really. similar to what's happening in East Palestine, Ohio, where you live in the Ohio area there. So, yes, Johnny and Ronnie Crosby did, but not so much Alex.

Alex stayed in that area, but staying in that area, you go up against the same attorneys. You're with the Mark Tinsley's Gooding and Gooding firm. You're with Corey Fleming. You're with Moss and Coon. Corey Fleming's old firm. So you are right in some aspect, but Alex, really didn't have a statewide reputation. His defense, Alec Murdoch's defense is likely going to argue that, yes, the boat case was

horrible. They were being sued. But it sounds like they're going to say that maybe it wasn't that big of a deal for Alec, that he had other stuff that was more pressing or more concerning than the boat case. I mean, he's accused of stealing between $8 and $10 million. That's, you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, they're not going to concede anything that he was under any kind of pressure at all. But if you look at the financial pressure, certainly the law firm was up close and personal to him because Jeannie Secondger confronted him on the morning of the murder.

And he knew the situation with Chris Wilson that it taken $792,000. I think he was also very concerned about the Satterfield matter, hence why he started texting Tony two months before the boating accident. and saying to him, hey, I'm working on your case. We should know something soon. Give me a call. I'll give you the status. And we all know that that case was resolved two years before he stole the money and the case had actually been dismissed in October of 2020.

The reason he's going to say, the defense is going to say that the Tinsley case didn't matter, the Bowding case. It wasn't even on a trial roster. It wasn't going to trial. And that they're saying that it was a normal discovery motion that was supposed to be heard on June 10th. and the judge, if he ordered the production of financial information, that would have taken place at a later time. And they're going to argue that to get the kind of financial information for

punitive damages, you actually have to get an actual damages verdict first. And all they would have to produce under our case law is a net worth statement, which is two pages. Mark Tinsley said, no, no, we were well beyond that stage. And that John Tiller, Alex's attorney before he died, had agreed that he was going to produce much more than just a network statement. You're friends with Mark Tinsley. He is still under subpoena for the murder trial. He could possibly be called in the state's rebuttal case. The Mallory Beach portion of this case just recently settled. Yeah, it did. And it and funny that Johnny Parker objected to that settlement because he tried to say that he had preference due to the $500,000 loan that he made to Alex Murdole.

It was a fair settlement looking at the situation and gives a clear shot that Mark wants at Parker convenience store. Parker is fighting tooth and nail against this. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but he's got eight sets of lawyers. He's gone to the legislature to try to get the legislature to amend the joint contribution statute. So right now, if you sue eight people, you could collect from one person. And then that person, if he was only 20% liable, would have to go try to collect from everybody else. Mr. Parker convenience store wants the legislature to change the law that if I'm only 10% responsible for this incident that the jury determines, then I should only pay 10%. I shouldn't pay any more.

So Parker has taken this on as a crusade. And you say, why? Well, he's self-insured. So any verdict that Mark Tinsley gets is going to actually come out of the pocket of Mr. Parker and not, you know, Zurich insurance company or travel, so it's hot and heavy. I think the Beach family was very magnanimous in letting Buster get $500,000 from that settlement. The remainder goes to some creditors, the receivers get paid. The victims will have a little pot from what was set aside. victims of the theft will have a little pot of money

but don't let the defense cry Alex poor and the reason is because his father died and left a $16 million trust for the four children each of the four children Alex

John Marvin Randolph and Lynn inherited $4 million that's untouchable untouchable under South Carolina Carolina law. So Alex is sitting on $4 million after his dad died in June of 2021. I don't know if you knew that or not. I knew there was something. I didn't know that it was $4 million. Yeah. He liquidated

out. He liquidated the IRA to settle. And there's a 50% penalty, you know, that he had to pay. He had $1.8 million in his IRA. And he liquidated that out. And Dick Harpoonly got $600,000 of that for his legal fees and Jim's legal fees for all the cases, Ann Jeanette. Can you imagine? Now, we know what he's spending on expert witnesses. It's a huge amount of money. I'm just telling you. Each expert charges about $5,000 to $7,500 a day just to sit around. Some do 10. Then you deal with the fact that he's renting out a $20,000 a week compound for his trial. The wedding venue. You start adding those numbers up and you feel like the fornicating you're getting isn't worth the fornicating you're getting for your legal fee. You say, you know what? I think Dick did a deal with the

devil. It, you know, yes, it's the trial of century. No question. Oh, in South Carolina. And the notoriety's great. And Dick always believed that even bad press is good press. But I'm not sure Jim Griffin, if I think you're seeing a metamorphosis in Jim as this trial's going on, he he's getting a little shorter in his temper he's getting a little bit more frustrated in his cross-examinations because he's a young guy he's 57 58 years old he's got a long career ahead of dick carpootly he could tap out he's got more money than god his wife's an ambassador in sylvania he's the third phone call from joe biden if he wants to go up and be an attorney general or something joe biden will give him any position in the administration any ambassador

shit. So his career is essentially done. I think you're seeing a lot of those people at the defense table. Maggie Fox is a very good friend of mine and a very accomplished lawyer. And she should be doing some of the lifting in that case. She is very good. And she's just sitting there. And I think it's noticeable that she's sitting there. And it's not right because she is not just window candy. She is a good looking woman just like you are. And she's accomplished just like you are. And she can do the job. And I think they're making a fundamental mistake in not having more diversity in their defense team. You could be very right about that because, and it doesn't look good when the jury is sitting there. And there are two women there just sitting there handing cell phones back and

forth, but still. Yeah, two are paralegals, the Holly that sits behind Dick and Jim Griffin. But Maggie Fox is a real lawyer. And she can really lawyer. And she should be. You know, one of the criticisms I have in the state cases, the lack of diversity in the state prosecution team. Savannah is the only female lawyer. There's no lawyers of color. We want, it should look like the jury. And I'm seeing a lot of white old men. Well, Eric Bland, as always, thanks so much for your time. We appreciate you coming on. I'm happy to always appear with you. You too. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. You can listen to and download Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcast, and of course,

you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. I'm Ann Janette Levy, and we will see you next time. Podcasts or Spotify.