Law&Crime Sidebar - Mysterious Death of Alex Murdaugh’s Housekeeper Gloria Satterfield — Everything We Know

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Alex Murdaugh’s housekeeper Gloria Satterfield died after allegedly falling at the disgraced lawyer’s South Carolina home in 2018. Although the death was ruled an accident, law enforcement reopened the investigation into Satterfield’s mysterious death in September 2021, following the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh. Investigators announced their intentions to exhume the body of Satterfield in June 2022, one month before Murdaugh was indicted for the murders of his wife and son. Are the Murdaugh murders connected to the death of Satterfield? The Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy discusses everything we know so far with Eric Bland, an attorney for the Satterfield 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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

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. What's going on out there? My housekeeper has fallen and her head is bleeding. I cannot get her up. Gloria Satterfield slips and falls at the Murdoch family's home and later dies. Questions surround the circumstances of her death after a massive insurance fraud. I'm Anjanette Levy and welcome to Law and Crime Sidebar podcast coming to you from the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina. This is where Alec Murdoch's murder trial is well underway. Gloria Satterfield was more than an employee to the Murdoch family. She was a friend and really

a second mom to Buster and Paul. One day, In February of 2018, Maggie Murdoch called 911, reporting that Gloria had slipped and fell. What's going on out there? My housekeeper has fallen and her head is bleeding. I cannot get her up. Okay. You said she's fallen? She's bleeding from the head?

Yes. Okay. How old is she? I'm not sure, like 58 maybe. You know if she's off him standing or not? No. No. Where she fall from?

From the, she fell going up the steps, up the brick steps. Okay, so is she outside or inside? Outside. Okay. How many steps is there? Eight. Okay, is she on the ground or is she up near the top? She's on the ground, she's on the ground.

She's on the ground? She conjured? No, not really. Now, Maggie Murdoch wasn't the only one. wasn't the only Murdoch family member to speak to 911 that day. Also, Paul got on the line and talked about what he was seeing. Ma'am, she can't talk. Okay, do you know?

She's cracked their head and there's blood on the concrete and she's breathed out of her left ear. Okay, she's bleeding out of her ear? And out of her head, she's sent in the skull. Okay. All right, the other lady said she had tried to stand up this all down again? No, I was holding her up. Okay. She told me to turn her loose and she was trying to use her on, but then she fell back over.

Okay, do you guys know who she is? Yes, she works for it. Okay, do you know she's ever had a stroke or anything before? Ma'am, can you stop asking her expectations? I already have them on the way. Me asking questions does not slow them down in any way. These are relevant questions that I have to ask for the ambulance. One of my questions is, has she ever had a stroke?

I don't believe she's ever had a stroke now, but I know that. Gloria Satterfield was in the hospital for several weeks. She regained consciousness a few times, but we're told she would only say things like, I love you. She really couldn't say what had happened to her. She fell on February 2nd of 2018 and died about three weeks later. The Murdox weren't the only people who knew Gloria Satterfield. Also, the law partner of Alec Murdoch spoke about her at the trial.

Do you know a person by the name of Gloria Satterfield? Or do you know love a person by the name of Gloria Satterfield? No, I knew Gloria. I knew her for a lot of years. And did she have any employment relationship with the defendant to your knowledge? Yes, she did. And when my children were first born, she helped my wife out a little bit with some laundry and stuff. What, your understanding, happened to her, if anything?

My understanding was that she was tripped by some of Ellick and Maggie's dogs and hit her head and approximately three weeks later she died. I don't think she ever came out of the hospital. Did you ever talk to the defendant about that a bit? I recall having a brief conversation, it really wasn't a conversation. it was more him saying that the dogs knocked it down and that the kids were going to sue him for Gloria's death. Which kids are you talking about? Glorious, glorious two boys, I believe she has.

When you say the kids were going to sue him, did he say it in the fashion of that was going to be an aggressive suit or did he say in the way that he was going to help out? Oh, I understood exactly that it was going to be a friendly insurance claim, so to speak, so that, hey, this happened in hopes that the insurance company would probably pay them some amount of money. I took it to help him out. Did you ever have any other conversations with him about that case? that one? Never had another conversation. Well, no, I've never had another conversation with him

about it. Gloria's son, Tony Satterfield, said that Alec Murdoch approached him with that offer to sue him. Tony Satterfield and his brother and other family members had gotten to know Alec Murdoch over time since Gloria had worked for the family for 20 years. What was that conversation you had with the defendant at the funeral or thereabouts? If I remember correctly, I'm going to kind of take care you boys and kind of you know

he's going to do what? I'm sorry? Take care of you boys. Did he say how he was going to do that? Partially, yes. Then what did he say? He was going to file a claim against his insurance company. He's going to what? File a claim against his insurance

company. His insurance company? Yes. Did he say how much coverage there was? Like $505,000, I believe. $505,000? Yes. And did he say anything about how much money you may receive? The goal was to get me and my brother, Brian,

at least $100,000 apiece. And did any other bills need to be taken care of? The medical bills. For who? My mom. When he told you that, Do you agree to do that? Yes.

That happened in 2018. Tony Satterfield said that he would occasionally call Alec Murdoch to check in on the status of the case, even sending him hospital bills because he needed help. Tell the jury quickly what this is about. Can you see it on the screen? I can bring it back to you if you need. Okay. So this is a cover sheet that I attached to the documents that I sent Alex.

And what kind of documents? Do you remember what kind of they were? was the hospital bill and one was from the trailer company, I believe. I don't recall exactly what it was. The trailer company for who? My mom. For your mom? And the hospital bill for who? Yes, my mom.

Your mom? And you sent these to him because they were relevant to the case? Yes. At any point in time, did you, as this case was developing, did you go and meet with the defendant at his office? Yes. Did he have any paperwork for you? Yes.

And did you get you to sign some paperwork? Yes. Did you become the personal representative of your mom's estate? I did. And who gave you the paperwork to sign for that? Alex. When you signed that paperwork, were you aware that there had already been a meeting? Okay.

I'll rephrase. At some point in time, did. Alex say he wanted to involve another lawyer? Yes. And who was that? Corey Fleming. And what did he tell you about that? If I understood it correctly, I'm going to send you to Corey Fleming, my friend, because I can't do it yet, you know, due to claim against him, because it would be a conflict of interest. That's how I understood it.

And did you ultimately meet with Corey Fleming? Yes. How many times did you meet with it? If I recall correctly, maybe once or twice. Corey Fleming is a lawyer who is a friend of Alec Murdox. By this time, Alec Murdoch had recovered about $500,000 in insurance money and possibly more. Did he ever tell you about a $5,000 settlement that already had occurred? No.

Did the defendant ever tell you that he also had a $5 million umbrella policy? No. Did he ever tell you that there had been a recovery against that? No. Did he ever tell you that there had been a recovery for $3.8 million against that? No. Did he ever pay you one penny of $3.8 million? No.

Just to clear this up, how often would you talk to the defendant? Three to four times a year or something I believe I can't recall every few months. Would you talk by phone or would you talk about text or both? Both. And when you would talk to him, would you ask about the status of your case? Yes. And each time you talked to him, what did he say? It was making progress.

Making progress. Did he say it was a hard case or not? Yes. Did he ever tell you about how much money he might be able to get for you? The goal was to get $100,000 apiece for me and my brother. At any time, over the years, did he ever tell you that there had already been a recovery in the case? No. At any time over the years did he mention anything about having a $5 million umbrella policy?

No. At any time did he ever pay you one penny? No. The umbrella policy that Alec Murdoch had also came up in testimony about the boat case, where Paul Murdoch was criminally charged with boating while intoxicated and causing Mallory Beach's death. The attorney for Mallory's family in the civil lawsuit talked about what he found out about that policy. Did you ever find out if the defendant had an umbrella policy or the status of that policy? There was no coverage for this boat crash other than with Progressive on the boat.

Did the defendant have an umbrella policy at one time to your review? He had coverage. He had the coverage with Roids of London and Nautilus immediately before, which was the coverage that was in effect when Gloria Satterfield fell at his house. and he had an umbrella policy there. All right. And what happened to that policy, that coverage? The policy came up for renewal. Normally there a year, it comes up for renewal and this claim still open.

And so when it came up for renewal, the insurance company wouldn't renew the policy and they canceled it, which is why he then went and bought this hunting club operation or hunting for hire operation, whatever that policy was, but didn't really cover anything. Because he didn't have that kind of business. have that kind of business. In your assessment and judgment, would that Philadelphia hunting lodge policy provide any coverage for the boating action? It did not, I told Danny Henderson in November of 2019, that it did not.

Philadelphia filed something called a declaratory judgment action where they go and ask the court to declare their rights, meaning we don't have any coverage. It's clear the policy doesn't apply. judge tell in this case the plaintiff because they sued us the Beach family and they sued Alex Murdoch and to for a declaration there was no coverage I refused to participate I said I would just be bound by whatever the result was because I knew what the result was going to be of course nobody knows what happened to that money from the umbrella policy the 4.2 million dollars that Alec Murdoch got for Gloria Satterfield's death we

do know that he no longer had that umbrella policy at the time of the boat crash, so it was going to be difficult to meet the demands of the attorney for the Beach family. Mark Tinsley had told Alec Murdoch he could settle the suit for $10 million. This is what a forensic accountant testified to regarding Murdoch's finances at the time of the murders of Maggie and Paul. Of course, of your analysis, you had a, did you have an opportunity to look at Mr. Murdoch's balances on or about June 7th, 2021? I did. And did you look at his balances on all of his deposit accounts? I did. And did you look at his balances on all of his outstanding loans and lines of

credit? Yes. All that I've identified, I reviewed them. Yes. In your opinion, Mr. Bernie, on June 7th, 2021, across Mr. Murdoch's deposit accounts and demand lines of credit, Did Richard Alexander Murdoch have $792,000 available to return to Chris Wilson? He did not. On that same date, June 7, 2021, across his deposit accounts and his demand lines of credit, did Richard Alexander Murdoch have $500,000 available to give to the sons of Gloria Satterfield? He did not. On June 7, 2021, did Richard Alexander Murdoch have, across his...

deposit accounts and his lines of credit. Did he have $10 million available to meet the settlement demands of Mark Gensley? He did not have $10 million. After the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdoch, the coroner asked that the investigation into Gloria Satterfield's death be opened. So Slead opened an investigation since her death was ruled natural and not an accident. There have been plans to exhume Gloria Satterfield's body, but to date, that hasn't happened. It's important to note that the Satterfield family does not believe that their mother was murdered. Joining me to discuss Gloria Satterfield's case is Eric Bland. He's an attorney and co-founder of the law firm Bland Richter, and he represents the family, the sons of Gloria Satterfield. So Eric, welcome back to Sidebar.

Thanks for coming back. Good afternoon, Anjanet. Thanks for having me on. Tell us a little bit about, first of all, a very sad anniversary. We just marked the anniversary of Gloria's passing after the slip and fall accident when she had been in the hospital for several weeks. Yeah, the fifth anniversary. It was a, you know, a bittersweet day for the family yesterday. Each anniversary of the death is tough on them. But they feel like over the past year that so much has been accomplished with the establishment of the foundation. In Gloria's name and with Alex coming to justice, they feel like the sweetness of it is seeing Tony take over the mantle of the family and testifying on Gloria's behalf in front of the entire world, which was not the easiest thing in the world to do.

So from that standpoint, there's so much good that has come from her death that she just didn't die in vain. There's been some growth. So the family, you know, it's very religious. And so they think it was by divine hand that this happened. We already recalled earlier in the podcast, you know, we heard from Tony. We played some of the clips from his testimony and really told the story. But how painful was this for Tony and his brother and, you know, his aunts and uncles when they're sitting there thinking this money is coming and they're just waiting and they're waiting?

And Tony and his brother, his brother gets evicted from the mobile home. Talk to me about the pain of that for this family when they then discovered they had been betrayed. I think the pain was more from the siblings of Gloria and Ginger and Eric and Tony. I think Brian and Tony, Scott, I'm saying, the siblings of Gloria. Tony and Brian, I don't think really thought so much of the lawsuit. They, you know, they struggle with everyday life of trying to make a living. and that, you know, they had no idea about the legal process on how long it would take. So for them, it really wasn't something that they were thinking about.

But the siblings, Scott, Eric, and Ginger thought about it a lot. And it really was distressing for them last Thursday and Friday when Alex was testifying. He never apologized to the Satterfields properly in that trial. He didn't apologize to any of his victims. He never used the word, apologize. He said, I did him wrong, and I lied from them, and I stole from some of them, some I stole from, but didn't directly lie, which, you know, when you steal, you lie, I mean, it's overt, it's covert. He used a lot of choice words, I think, that were intentionally chosen by him. but they there was a little point in that cross-examination where I felt the family

thought that Creighton should have gone a little bit deeper with Gloria in terms of she was a part of your family it's one thing these other clients that you stole from yes they're your clients but this was a family member that you stole 3.5 million dollars from he could have I think Mr. Woters could have personalized it a little bit more on Gloria's case, as opposed to grouping her in with just other clients. I was surprised how he kind of glossed over Gloria. It was a couple of minutes. And there was no discussion about that. Also, there's been a lot of rumors that maybe Gloria had found some pills at one point and told Paul, the little detective. Do you know that to be true at all? I do not. I learned about it when I watched a Netflix series that I was in.

And surprisingly, I heard that Paul had found some pills or not Paul or maybe Gloria found some pills that belong to Alex. I just don't think that there would be any possibility that Paul would have murdered Gloria. He loved that woman. I know that. The family knows that. He expressed that love, not only to Tony and Brian and to Gloria herself, but you heard it from the boat victims themselves. Some of his friends who were in the boat victim, they said he loved her dearly. So I don't believe at all that Paul could have ever done anything to harm her. Yeah, and she was like a second mom.

It sounded like to Paul at least, probably to Buster too, but Paul it sounded like really loved her. And I want to touch on that because SLED reopened the investigation into her death after all of this started. And, you know, what's the status of that? Because there's been discussion about exhuming her body. We know that they've just said they're investigating. Truthfully, Angina, I don't think there's any investigation. I think that the announcing of opening an investigation in the glorious death, as well as the announcement and opening in the Stephen Smith's death,

was a way to bring more pressure on Alex to let him know that the world's possibly is closing in on him. But SLED has been laser-like focused on this murder case for the better part of the last eight months. And certainly, I think regardless of what this jury verdict is going to be, they're going to start setting these trials for the financial crimes in sequence, like every month, based on him admitting under oath that he stole. the money from Badger, that he stole it from Gloria, that he stole it from Officer Moore, that he

stole it from the picnys. I think they're going to just load him up and load Dick Harputtly and Jim Griffin up with trials. Unless he's willing to plead straight up, I don't see a big deal coming his way. Now, there could be a deal if he's found guilty. They may, at that point, because he's going to get 32 life by Judge Newman, and I would think he would get life for a double murder, given that he forced the state to go to trial on these cases. But let's say there's a hung jury. I think they're going to make a decision that they're going to stay the retrial of the murder case until they get the convictions of the financial crimes, and then they'll

reassess. Usually when there's a hung jury on a case, the prosecutor walks right out of the trial, goes to the court house to absence, says to the media like you, we're going to set this for trial in 60 days. and we're going to come back and do it all over again to put that pressure on the defense. Remember, Harputin only has a finite amount of money for legal fees and experts. And the state knows if you have to go retry it, he's not doing this for free. And oftentimes we see, Ann Jeanette, and you know that.

If there is a retrial on a hung jury case, it could be a whole new defense team. You find that all new lawyers come in. So I think what's going to happen is there's going to be a loading up on him of the financial crimes. And then the state will take stock on do they retry the murder case. And for me, I think a hung jury is almost a victory. Look, the state took on a citadel here in the Murdoz. And they took them the task and they bruised this family significantly. They'll never be under the seat of power again.

now an not guilty verdict would be deadly for the state it would be devastating for the state but after hearing the myrtle witnesses testify so much damage has been done to our state law enforcement agency sled that i think it's going to be felt for many many years to come it not only was damaged in this case but i think it did some damage on cases that'll come down the Pike. I thought there was some unnecessary cuts at SLED because SLED didn't take over this investigation until essentially August of 2021. It was possessed by the 14th Circuit Solicitor's Office where Mr. Murdole, Randy Murdole, was a solicitor and his father and his father. And Duffy Stone held on to this investigation for three months. So if you want

to criticize what was or wasn't done, then go lay it at Duffy Stone's doorstep. Don't lay it a slit. Well, Eric Bland, any final thoughts on Gloria Satterfield and, you know, her legacy? Come in full circle. I think that she died for a purpose. And that purpose was to out Alex Murdoch and all of his financial thefts. I'm not going to, you notice, I'm not using the word, you know, I did them wrong. He stole from them. He lied to them. He wasn't mistaken. He He lied and he stole. And he did it to not only Gloria, but clients that trusted him.

And Angenetti did so much damage to our legal profession, a profession that I love. Again, that's going to be another scoring that takes place in our state. Well, Eric Bland, thanks so much. Attorney for the family of Gloria Satterfield and co-founder of Bland Richter. We appreciate it. Thank you, and I'll see you this week. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar Podcast. 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 Janette Levy, and we will see you next time. or Spotify.