Law&Crime Sidebar - Top 5 Losses for Alex Murdaugh's Defense Team in Family Murders Trial

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

Prosecutors are close to resting their case in Alex Murdaugh's family murders trial. The state alleges numerous pieces of evidence connect the disgraced lawyer to the brutal killings of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, at their South Carolina home in June 2021. The Law&Crime Network's Jesse Weber breaks down the top five losses for Murdaugh's defense team so far.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo 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. We get into the top five setbacks for the defense so far in the Alec Murdoch Double Murder Trial. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Do you recognize any voices on that video? I recognize three. Can you tell the jury what voices you recognize? I recognize Paul Murdoch.

I recognize Maggie Murdoch, and I recognize Ellic Murdoch. And when you say Alec Murdoch, do you see him in the courtroom here today? I do. Can you point him out for the jury, please? Yes, sir. He's wearing a blue blazer and has his glasses on his head. And how sure are you? 100%.

The back and forth in the Alec Merck. Murdoch case is like a tug of war. There are some moments that are great for the prosecution. There are others that are great for the defense. Honestly, it is very hard at this point, in my opinion, to know which way the jury is going to go when they are ultimately handed the case. And what a case it is for the jury to consider. I mean, the question of whether or not Alec Murdoch, the former renowned South Carolina attorney murdered his wife, Maggie and son Paul, by shooting them to death on their family property back on June 7, 2021. That is not an easy question to answer.

So as we reflect on this trial, we thought, let's revisit the top five major setbacks for the defense. Now, I'll add a caveat at the time of this recording, we don't know what's going to come out next. So at the time of this recording, let's go over them. And these are the things that are right now not so great for the defense's case. First up, let's start. You know where I'm going to go. The very big one, the kennel video. My opinion, strongest piece of evidence we've seen so far.

Now, remember Alex Alibi, okay? So he says that after having dinner with Maggie and Paul on the night of the murders, they went down to the dog kennels while he stayed inside, took a nap, and then went to visit his sick mother. He then returns back to the property around 10 p.m. finds their bodies, calls 911 at around 10.06 p.m. So again, he says he didn't go down to the kennels until he found the bodies. But ah, what happened? Well, Paul took a video on his phone. It was a video that was recorded at 8.44 p.m. This is about five or six minutes before when prosecutors say Maggie and Paul were killed. They are basing that off of the fact that the two cell phones basically locked and there was no more phone activity. We'll listen carefully to this video. Quit, Cash. Come.

Quit. That's okay. Come here. Come back. Come here, Cash. Come here. Cache. Hey, he's got a bird in his mouth.

Baba. Hang, Baba. That's a guinea. This is a chicken. Come in, Baba. Come here, Baba. Come here, Baba. Cache.

Quit. Come here, Baba. Come here, Baba. Did you hear Alec Murdoch on that? Because I'll tell you, multiple people who know him well and know his voice well said they are sure it is him. You recognize your dog? I do. You recognize Paul's voice?

Yes, sir. Do you recognize Maggie's voice? Yes, sir. You recognize Alex's voice? Yes, sir. 100%. Yes, sir. Can you point out Alec Murdoch, the person whose voice you recognize in this video

in this courtroom, please? Sitting right in a great jacket. Please let the record reflect he's identified the defendant. Did you recognize any voices on that video? The three voices on that video are the voices of Paul Murdoch, Maggie Murdoch, and Alec Murdoch. and how sure are you how sure are you i'm 100% sure that's who's voices or phone that the audio there so that's huge right in my opinion still the strongest piece of evidence it places him at the scene well put it this way if the jury believes that's alec murdoch on the tape then they may conclude

that alec murdock didn't tell investigators the truth and that he was right there at the crime scene minutes before the killings. Now, that is an if, if they accept the prosecutor's timeline, because what we've heard from the defense so far is not so much saying that that isn't Alex voice on there, but maybe Maggie and Paul weren't killed when prosecutors say they were. Speaking of the timeline, another big blow to the defense's case came from the testimony of Michelle Shelley Smith. This was the caretaker of Alec Sick Mother. Now, remember again the alibi. He says he went to visit his mother the night of the killings. She says it was a was unusual for him to show up that late and that he was fidgety, although then again,

that's kind of what he was always like, according to her. But really where it gets important is where she talks about how long was he at the house. How long did he stay in the room with y'all? I say, y'all, with the record, you and Ms. Libya, I apologize. About 15 to 20 minutes, 20 minutes. And according to Ms. Smith, Alec told her that if anyone asks her about how long he was, is there, well, say this. He was telling to you or saying to you that he was at the house?

When? The night of the murders. The night of the murders? Yes. What was he telling you about that he was at the house the night of the murders? That he'd been in 30 to 40 minutes. And allegedly, he decided to bring up the issue of money with her. And what did he say about your marriage, your upcoming potential marriage?

I heard you was getting married. I said, yes. He said, if I could, um, you just let me know because the wedding's going to be expensive. Well, thank you. The wedding's going to be expensive. He's a wedding's going to be expensive. That's one, thank you. Did he offer to help?

Yes, he offered, he offered. That's the type of person, a good person. And have you ever mentioned the wedding to you before? No. Mm-mm. Did you mention that to him before? No. Uh-huh.

So what does this look like? This testimony would give the impression that he was buying her off to cover for him, right? I'll help you out. Because according to her, he wanted her to say he would, at the house longer than when she says he was actually there. Now, if that's true, that is incredibly shady. Don't just take her word for it because we heard from an FBI electronics engineer who extracted data from Murdoch's Chevy Suburban that he drove the night of the murders.

And based on what the car was in and out of parking mode, it seems that the car was at Murdoch's mother's house at a time frame that lines up with Shelly Smith's testimony. Not to put you on a spot, we'll go back up and look real quick. So that's at 9.4305 p.m., correct? Correct. Let's go back and look at the previous vehicle parked at 922.45 p.m., and that's the line 1904. That's when the vehicle had been placed in the park, correct? That's correct.

All right, and let's just do some rough math. Do you have a pen and you can write it down if you need to? 922.45, the vehicle's in park. 920 or excuse me, 943.05, the vehicle is now back out of park, correct? That's correct. Roughly how much time passes between those two events? Approximately 21 minutes. Cars put into park at 922.

It comes out at 943, 21 minutes. And that is when it is believed he was at the mother's house, not 30, 40 minutes. Now, speaking of Alec Murdoch allegedly trying to cover up his tracks, that brings us to another piece of bad evidence, the testimony of the Murdoch family housekeeper Blanca Simpson. So she provided a few big wins for the prosecution. She testified that it was Alec, who was the one who summoned Paul and Maggie back to the house on the night of the murders, which if you're thinking he planned to kill them,

that is not great. She also testified that after the killings, Murdoch told her to clean the house. again, interesting. She said when she walked in, she noticed odd things like the placement of Maggie's pajamas or the pots of food in the fridge, which the family never would do. She also notices a puddle of water by the shower or wet towel in the closet, possibly the khaki pants that Murdoch had been wearing earlier in the day by the shower. So was he cleaning up?

Was he doing this possibly after the killings? Again, not sure that even makes sense, given the limited timeline of when the prosecutors say this happened. But it's just odd, just weird. And I will tell you, she said there were no blood on the pants. But remember, remember, he changed his clothes at some point that day, right? Because he was wearing something very different in his interview with detectives. He was wearing a white shirt, white t-shirt and shorts, different than the polo shirt and the khakis that we see him wearing earlier on in a Snapchat video.

And again, because he's wearing this blue seafone polo shirt, that shirt, by the way, has never been found. So keep that in mind. Now, keep all of this in mind when Simpson recounts a very important conversation she had with Alec Murdoch. He said, B, I need to talk to you. And he said, come here, sit down. So I went in the living room. I sat down. And he was pacing back and forth in the living room.

And he said, I got a bad feeling. He said, I got a bad feeling. He said, something's not right. And then he said, well, you know. there's a video that was a video that was out I hadn't seen a video and he said you remember the shirt I was wearing that Vinnie Vine's shirt those were that's what he said to me and in my mind I was saying I don't remember Vinnie Vine's shirt it was the polo shirt but I didn't mention he said well you know what I was wearing that shirt he said you know in the that day and still I was just I didn't say anything but I was kind of thrown back because I don't remember that I don't remember him wearing that shirt that day I know what he was wearing the day he left the house and I was basically confused I didn't really

know whether he was trying to get me to say that that shirt If I was to be asked, that if that was a shirt he was wearing. So if true, he was very worried about what he was wearing in that Snapchat video. And he was trying to get her to say he was wearing something else. Yeah, that's not good. That's not good. Again, another alleged example of him trying to cover his tracks. All right.

Another huge, huge, huge blow to the defense came from the judge's decision to allow the jury, to hear about financial crimes evidence. This was very controversial. You see, the motive put forward by the prosecution is that at the time of the killings, Murdoch was about to be exposed for financial misdeeds. There were inquiries into his finances. It was going to be revealed that he had been stealing money from his law firm and his clients. And we have to remember that at the time he was facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit stemming from a 2019 boat crash that resulted in the death of teenager Mallory Beach. His son Paul was allegedly drunk and operating the boat that night. So think about all that pressure that was on Alec Murdoch. And despite the defense saying that there's no way

this is connected to the killings, that allowing in this evidence is going to prejudice the jury, Judge Clifton Newman disagreed and said that the alleged financial crimes could be used to show the malice of the killings. In other words, the evil intent. And, you know, the idea that he killed his family to buy himself time. He killed his family to gain sympathy. He killed his family to stop the inquiries into what was into his life. And boy, oh boy. Listen to what we heard. I looked at him and I said, Elit, and I'm sure I said F or H or something, I said, what the, you know, what is going on? I need to know what's going on.

Because I know about this thing that Lee's called me about, and I need to know if there's something else you've done that involves me that I don't know about. That's a problem for me. What is he going on? What does he say? He didn't say anything. He broke down crying. He said he had a drug addiction, and then he admitted he had been stealing money. You know, from his law firm and from clients.

And by the way, the jury is not supposed to consider this in the form of propensity evidence. They're not permitted to say, well, if Alec Murdoch was stealing and cheating and lying, he's a bad guy and guys like that would kill their families. No, no, no, no, no. They're only allowing it in for the sole purpose to show motive and mouths, to show that his world was crumbling. He was under the pressure. He killed his family. And if that doesn't sound logical, listen to the CFO of Alec Murdoch's former law firm. who confronted him on the day of the killings hours before Maggie and Paul were killed about that missing money.

I said, I told him, I said, I have reason to believe that you received the fairest money directly to you, and you need to prove to me that you did not. And he assured me again that the money was in there. I told him I still needed to see the ledgers or proof that it was. After the murders happened, was anybody at all concerned about getting the proof? for those missing fees after those murders happened at that point in time? We weren't because we were concerned about ELEC. He wasn't working a whole lot.

He was erratic. We knew he was taking pills. We were just worried about him sanity, so we weren't going to go in there and harass him about money when we were worried about his mental state and the fact that his family had been killed. killed. Or there's Mark Tinsley, the civil lawyer that was representing the Beach family in the boating crash lawsuit. He was pursuing a wrongful death lawsuit against Alec Murdoch. Listen again to the

timing. Did that have any effect, that tragedy of their deaths, did that have any effect on your assessment of the boat case and how everything fit together if things were how they initially appeared? It would have affected. I mean, yes, it did. And it was. It did. And it It would have ended the case. It would have ended the case against two. Against Alec Murdoch. 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. Everyone was looking into Alec Murdoch. And what happened when Paul and Maggie died? The inquiries stopped. The lawsuit was put on hold. So if you believe the prosecution's motive that he killed his family to buy himself time to stop all of this, it worked in a little bit. Did it not? Well, let's close this out with the testimony of Marion Proctor, Maggie's only sister.

She would testify about odd comments that Alec allegedly made, like how a few days after the murder is, she asked him if Maggie had suffered. And he assured her she did not. He also said to her that whoever did this thought about it for a really real. long time. Question, of course, being, why is he saying things like that? What makes him say that? Now, on the other hand, if he really is the victim of this, of course, someone who theorizes and speculates as strange things. I mean, think about being in that dramatic situation. But then she testified to this. And had Maggie expressed to you concern over time about the defendant's pill usage? Yes. And did that concern continue up?

Until recent times, as we moved to their Maggie and Paul's murder? Yes. If there were pills in the house that his dad was taking that he wasn't supposed to, Paul was determined that he would find him. And did that happen on occasions? I think so, yes. We were headed to a football game, and my husband Bart received a phone call from a friend saying,

He was so sorry to hear about what had happened to my brother-in-law, and we had no idea what he was talking about, and he said, well, we've heard, you know, he told us he had been shot. What specifically changed your perception of the roadside shooting after your initial concern? The story that was initially told about what happened came to not be true. The story told by who? Um, Alec. Alec? Yes. Yes.

Now, I will say the judge ultimately chose not to allow in more evidence or testimony about this failed suicide plot because it's alleged that, Murdoch hired someone to kill him so his son Buster could get the proceeds of a life insurance policy. It's not great either way. I mean, testifying about Murdoch's drug issues, testifying about that his story about how the shooting unfolded is not exactly what it seemed. The judge may have decided to not let that evidence in, but the jury already heard that comment. That's not good. It looks again like he's hiding something and he's up to shady business. Now again, as I said, this is just some of the damaging testimony that we've seen so far at the time of this recording.

let's wait and see what comes out next and that's all we have for you here on sidebar everybody thank you so much for joining us please subscribe on apple podcast spotify youtube wherever you get your podcast i'm jesse weber i'll speak to you next time you can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on wondery plus Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.