Murdaugh Murders Podcast - Bad Blood & Bad Dudes - Accusations Fly In Double Homicide Hearing (S01E72)

Starting point is 00:00:00 I don't know why the state attorney general's office hasn't come out stronger against Dick and Jim's accusations about the spatter allegedly found on Ellick's shirt, but I do have to give the prosecution credit for finally confirming so many of the things we have been saying all along about Ellick Murdock, the Murdock family, and what allegedly led to Maggie and Paul's death. My name is Mandy Matney. I have been investigating the Murdock family for almost four years now. This is the Murdock Murders podcast written with Liz Farrell and produced by my husband, David Moses. Okay, this has been a big week for us at Luna Shark with the official launch of our MMP premium membership platform tomorrow, December 15th. That is a big deal for us and hopefully for the future

Starting point is 00:01:19 of journalism, which we so badly want to change. Over the past year and a half, I've received hundreds of messages from our fans asking what they can do to support the kind of journalism that we do at MMP. So many of you have said that you want to see more of it in different cases across the country and MMP premium powered by Supercast is the answer that we have finally come up with that will give you our supporters more access, more engagement, more information, and more opportunities while giving us the financial support to properly fund journalists across the country to expose the truth wherever it leads to give a voice to the voiceless and to get the story straight. If you go to mmp.supercast.com right now, you can reserve your spot in this inspiring community that we are starting for either

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Starting point is 00:04:08 able to expose, cases we could be able to solve, and lives that we could change in the next year. I am motivated and feel obligated to change journalism for the better and hire an army of brilliant journalists, pay them what they're worth, and show so many other news agencies how all of this is possible when you focus on doing the right thing instead of allowing those at the top to be selfish and greedy. So please, we have gifted you this free podcast, and if you want to give back, go to MNP.supercast.com. Thank you. Okay, so let's get into all of the most recent happenings with the double homicide case against Alec Murdoch. In the last few weeks, we have learned a lot about both the evidence,

Starting point is 00:05:05 particularly the blood spatter, and the motive in the double homicide through various motions in Friday's hearing. So today, we are going to go over everything new we have learned in both Creighton's motion and the hearing when it comes to Alec Murdoch's alleged motive. And then, we're going to talk about the dirty details of the blood spatter evidence that has managed to confuse pretty much everyone so far. So let's start with the motive, because this is big. Essentially, in response to Dick and Jim's latest filings asking for a motive, Creighton Waters in both his motion and at the hearing Friday said, look, you asked for the motive, let's talk about the motive then. And then he laid out

Starting point is 00:05:53 a beautifully detailed summary as to why the state believes Alec Murdoch killed his wife and son and why they believe motive is such an important part of the case. And the reason for that is, Your Honor, is that in this particular case where you have a man who was accused and indicted for the murder of his own life and son, the motive might be the most important fact that any jury who wants to know. It's not an element of the defense, but it is the most important fact that any jury is going to want to know this case. And for a jury to understand that, for them to really understand what the motive is in this particular case, they're going to have to understand that there was a huge difference between who Alec Murdoch professed to be to the outside world

Starting point is 00:06:48 and how important that was to him as a central figure in this prominent family and who he really was, that only he knew, that no one else knew. Over and over again, I've interviewed witnesses or put witnesses on the stand and who thought that they knew this man and they over and over again said, I didn't know. I didn't know who this man was. And so for a jury to understand that, they're going to have to understand not only that distinction between who he professed to be and who he was and how important that was to him, but also how that allowed him to avoid accountability for the frauding victims of almost $9 million since 2001 that we've been able to detect. I think when this case started, a lot of people assumed

Starting point is 00:07:40 that this was a murder case and then a few months later, there was some white collar from in there. But the reality is, is we have done this extensive investigation, state grand jury investigation. We've realized that this is a white collar case that culminated with two murders. Chilling, right? I'm not going to say that I told you so, but I do have to say that hearing Creighton say this, after all of the hell Liz and I and others have dealt with in the last four years, we've been in this perpetual cycle of finding out something shocking, eventually working up the bravery to report it and put our names behind it, receiving tons of hate and backlash for reporting

Starting point is 00:08:32 what we did. And then months or years later, the very thing that we were scared to report appears in an official document. Hearing Creighton say these words and seeing them in a public document, that was maybe the most vindicating thing for me so far in this case. It felt better than any journalism award I could possibly get and it made me thankful for all of our sources who continue to stick their necks out behind the scenes too. There are so many people in this state working to do the right thing and it has all led to this. As Creighton said, this is a white collar case that culminated into two murders. In both his motion and at the hearing, Creighton almost poetically laid out just how that happened and he told us some new information about how

Starting point is 00:09:27 Alex's financial crisis started with some bad land deals around 2008 when the market was crashing. And don't worry, we've been looking into this for a while and we will talk more about that in a future episode. What I think the important point to realize is that this is an unbroken chain of constant lies and misappropriations and thefts that has been going on for so long. A hamster wheel on which this man has been on constantly having to borrow, to earn, to steal millions of dollars just to keep kicking the can down the road and staying above water and exhausting hamster. A slow burn that was heating up and heating up until June the 7th, 2021. And then I'll start it with some land deals in 2007-2008. There were session hits

Starting point is 00:10:26 and he really ended up upside down on those land deals and it materially changed his financial picture. The reason why we know that, Your Honor, is that in early part of this past decade, in 2011, he had some big cases. He had the Pinkney case. He had the Thomas case. He had the Badger case. And these cases, the people around him thought, they knew he had some issues and had some problems, but they thought that those recoveries and those really high fees that he had obtained, six figures or more, had fixed the financial problems that Eleanor.cat, but they weren't enough. And not only did he have huge fees from those particular cases, but he also stole money from clients as well. Your Honor, if I look at the unbroken chain

Starting point is 00:11:26 that I'm talking about here, of these thefts that went on, they start in 2011, and every single year from 2011 to 2021, he stole money from clients. It is an unbroken chain because even though he was making six and sometimes seven figures of legitimate income, his law practice, it was not enough to sustain the lifestyle that he had in the debt state. Even though he was borrowing millions of dollars from a common estate bank, from his buddy Russell Lafitte, borrowing close to a million dollars from his law firm, borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his father, borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Russell Lafitte's father, having Russell Lafitte loan him close to a million dollars

Starting point is 00:12:21 from the plumber money for which he had had Russell a point of concern. It still wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to keep out Murdoch's head above the water, and he couldn't stop. He couldn't stop. I've detailed in the filing, and Your Honor is generally familiar with the state-run jury evidence of the four manners in which he was stealing money, including from his own family and his law firm. And he'd been doing that for a long time, but one thing happened that caused the slow burn of the fire in the heat up. And that was the boat crash in February of 2019. As we've said all along, the boat crash case was the beginning of the end of the Murdoch dynasty. It's the event that changed everything for Alec Murdoch. It is the ground zero of this case.

Starting point is 00:13:14 Now, in the motion and at the hearing, Creighton had explained how Alec was facing four major problems at the time of the murders. There was the missing Chris Wilson fee, the multiple subpoenas in the boat crash obstruction case, and at least one of those subpoenas was for bank records, according to one of our sources. There was the looming deadline in which Alec would be forced to disclose his finances to the boat crash victims, and then there was also Randolph Murdoch's grim prognosis in April. In some way or another, all of these are related to the boat crash case. So the first and perhaps the most immediate problem Alec was facing at the time is that PMPED was demanding answers about the missing fee from a case that Alec and Chris Wilson had

Starting point is 00:13:55 worked on together. Chris Wilson plays a critical role in the events that led to Alec Murdoch allegedly murdering his wife and son. Specifically, in the spring of 2021, Alec had what Creighton called one possible saving grace for his mounting financial problems, and that was a settlement in two cases that he had worked on with Chris Wilson, who was a longtime friend of his. Now, this isn't the first time Wilson's name has come up officially in all of this. Remember, Wilson was the third attorney on that infamous private plane that Corey Fleming and Alec had taken to the College World Series in 2012. Corey's client Pamela Pinkney unknowingly paid for that flight. Wilson's name came up again in Alec's December 2021 Bond hearing.

Starting point is 00:14:38 When Alec made it a point to try and publicly absolve Wilson and Fleming, his two closest friends from his shenanigans, in court Murdoch said Wilson was quote one of his oldest and dearest friends who quote didn't know anything and didn't do anything wrong. Chris Wilson is apparently also a part of Alec's ever-changing alibi. He was one of the many people Alec called on the night of June 7th, and according to testimony during the Russell the Feet trial, Chris had helped Alec keep PMPED's suspicions at bay by backing up Alec's alleged lies about where the fee was. But it seems like Wilson's most important role in all of this is what he did with the $792,000 in fees on those two cases he had shared with Alec Murdoch in 2021.

Starting point is 00:15:25 And there's $792,000 in fees for Mr. Murdoch, but what he does is he convinces his co-counselor on that case to write those fees directly to him instead of writing it to the firm. And why is that? So that he can get that money right away bypass the firm where it's supposed to go. And so he does that three quarters of a million dollars and it's gone within very very short period of time. According to previous indictments, Alec basically told Chris that he was trying to hide money from Mallory Beach's family as he had a big lawsuit looming, and one of his insurance providers had already said they wouldn't be covering him. What he was asking Chris to do is highly unethical,

Starting point is 00:16:14 and Chris Wilson should have absolutely known better than to believe Alec. But Chris, like so many other men who have managed to have prestigious jobs that require logical thinking, also claims that he was duped by Alec Murdoch, the super-duper, and he was just like, okay buddy, I'll write you a check. And so those pesky PMPD folks won't see a thing. I honestly wonder if Maggie and Paul would have been murdered if Chris Wilson had done the right thing in the spring of 2021 and told Alec that's against the rules that could get me and you in trouble, absolutely not. And then he should have told the solicitor's office and PMPD what Alec, their employee, was trying to do. And honestly, I cannot believe that the ODC

Starting point is 00:17:10 is still allowing Chris Wilson to be a lawyer right now, considering that this unethical behavior in 2021, whether or not it was a simple lapse in judgment, led to so much destruction. I feel like a lot of lawyers have been suspended for actions that have much less serious consequences. Also, I have to mention Wilson is represented by Bakari Sellers, one of the state's most famous attorneys and politicians who was close with Dick Harputlian. Sellers is also a Murdoch family friend who also said that the Murdoch family is the salt of the earth in People magazine last year and called Alec Murdoch a kind and gentle soul, which is, hmm. Anyways, instead of Chris Wilson doing the right thing, he apparently wrote the check to Alec, which led to PMPD

Starting point is 00:18:05 confronting Alec on the day of the murders, which leads us to big problem. Number two, the state grand jury, subpoenas related to the Bowcrash criminal case. They were apparently also threatening to reveal Alec's big and very illegal financial disaster. We have reported on those subpoenas in the past, but Creighton's motion was the first time they were mentioned on the record. I want to have David read this part. On top of this, in March, April, and May of 2021, state grand jury subpoenas about the Bowcrash case were issued for testimony or documents to various witnesses and institutions with a connection or presence in Hampton and the 14th Circuit. And we'll be right back.

Starting point is 00:19:02 So we've been reading Creighton's writing for over a year now, and we're noticing he seems to drop a lot of subtle hints or vague statements that don't make sense until later or that come into much sharper focus the more we put together the pieces. He's sort of like the creator of the white lotus who dropped major clues throughout season two and drove us all crazy trying to figure it out. Let's hope this ending is much less tragic than that one was, though. It's very interesting that Creighton mentioned Alec's co-workers in the 14th Circuit possibly knowing about the subpoenas at the time and adding to the pressure that Alec was feeling. This suddenly hints at the possibility of corruption in the 14th Circuit solicitor's office, and I'm wondering

Starting point is 00:19:44 if Creighton is intentionally including this to say, hey, you guys are definitely not in the clear when it comes to the Murdochs. At the hearing, Jim said that Alec didn't know about the subpoenas, but we all know Jim and Alec's track records on accurately stating reality at this point. And if your honor knows that, there's no doomsday reckoning in that regard on the civil case. The other issue that he raises, oh, the state grandeur is issuing subpoenas for public corruption or something in connection with the voting acts in the case. There's no evidence Alec Murdoch knew those subpoenas. No evidence. I don't even know if we've been provided those subpoenas, your honor. Hmm. Creighton did not say those subpoenas were about public corruption. I wonder why Jim

Starting point is 00:20:34 said that and what he really knows about those subpoenas. So the third big problem that Alec was facing on June 7th was the upcoming hearing in the Boat Crash case on June 10th, which we have been telling you all about for 18 months now. We always knew that date where a judge would likely order Alec to reveal all of the dirty details of his finances to the Beach family, had something to do with the murders in some way. It was just too weird. The recent motion in hearing revealed that there is evidence of Alec being concerned about this June 10th hearing. On June 7th, the day of the murders, Alec was apparently in his office working on disclosures in the Boat Crash case and preparing for the financial hearing on June 10th. At Friday's hearing,

Starting point is 00:21:30 Jim Griffin added a very interesting tidbit to this. And the extent of what would have been ordered in a practical and most every case is a financial statement. And in fact, the evidence is that Mr. Murlock had handwritten out a financial statement for purposes of that hearing. All he had to do was produce a financial statement, a statement of network. Whoa, okay. So Maggie and Paul were murdered on the same day Alec was taking a look at his finances and apparently had decided to make some sort of wacky handwritten document, which by the way, only someone as privileged as Alec Murdock would ever think of doing such a thing, turning in a bunch of scribbles about his bank accounts as an official record of his finances. Think about it,

Starting point is 00:22:18 though. He was sitting there at that desk, likely realizing that everything in his life was about to hit the fan if the court forced him to reveal his financial records. Also on this day, the day he was coming face to face with his finances and the world finding out what he had been doing, he was also confronted by PMPED about the missing $792,000 fee. That is a lot of pressure in the hours before Maggie and Paul were killed. Finally, the fourth big stressor facing Alec Murdock. His father was dying and while he was getting confronted by PMPED, he allegedly got a phone call telling him that his father had taken a turn for the worst. As you guys know, Randolph was the longtime solicitor of the 14th Circuit and he was a legend in law enforcement and in the legal

Starting point is 00:23:05 community in this region. He is the guy who pulled all the strings for Alec and Alec's sons. He is the guy who worked all of the magic and held most of the power in that family across the state. He was dying of cancer. Creighton was sure to include in his latest motion that Randolph had previously loaned Alec money or had co-signed loans for him. So Randolph dying was a big problem for Alec Murdock because his savior was about to leave him all alone in this world. We hope to find out more about what was going on with Randolph at the time because while we know he was dying of cancer that week we still have a lot of questions about that timeline and we hope those questions get answered at trial. All of this is finally coming to a head. That morning, a BNVD staffer comes in the

Starting point is 00:23:55 office of the direction of the partner and says, Alec, I need an answer today. Where is that money? I need an answer today. And Alec is in his office looking on the vote case because that hearing is scheduled for June 10th and Judge Hall has made it very clear there's going to be no more contingencies and that's going to expose everything as well. And the only thing that stops the conversation about I need an answer right now is that Alec unfortunately gets a call that Mr. Randolph had gone to the hospital with very poor prognosis. His father, who repeatedly had loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars from he needed it. All of those are happening on this very day. It's a day of reckoning for him. The very day

Starting point is 00:24:54 that Maggie and Paul were murdered. And what happens in the wake of that? What happens is the exact opposite happens. Everybody immediately rallies to his aid. Immediately that hearing is canceled. It's not even rescheduled. Big time soon. The BNVD people would be that the last thing you're worried about is where these fees are. They don't care about that anymore. They're all rallying to his aid. All of the things that were about to happen stop. Now that sounds familiar, right? And think about it. How are Dick and Jim going to be able to convince a jury that the superstorm swirling around Alec Murdoch and his financial crimes reaching a pinnacle for pressure on the day of the double homicide was a complete coincidence. Creighton said this so clearly in his

Starting point is 00:25:50 motion. Quote Murdoch was the only individual with a true motive to kill his wife and son. It is going to be wild to see Dick and Jim try to convince a jury otherwise. So the state wants to use evidence of Alec's alleged crimes to help show the extent of Alec's motive in his frame of mind at the time of the murders. During Friday's hearing, Dick and Jim argued that all of that financial stuff and that boat crash stuff is just character evidence that should be thrown out. Jim used the term bad dude several times when referring to what the state is proving his client to be. The accused should be given the benefit of the doubt and the evidence should be rejected. The state be loud. And so your honor, in their response to our motion to build particulars,

Starting point is 00:26:46 they said, we've known all of those men available since January 2022 that he's been charged an 18 indictment over 90 separate counts and we've been given discovery on that. And all of that is true. And we have all that. And it's a universal information and he gave a great opening, closing, whatever, and he wants to give to the jury to point and paint Mr. Murdoch as a bad guy. But what another, the most important part of our motion for bill of particulars was to identify of that universal balance you intend to offer at trial and how is it relevant? What is this? How does it mean the asset test of logical relevancy to the particular exception? Well, Judge Newman won't rule on that quite yet. I do want to talk to you guys about a case called

Starting point is 00:27:40 State v. Lyle real quick. The State Attorney General's office is using this case in an effort to get its evidence of motive entered into the record for the Murdoch trial. Lyle created precedent that allows prosecutors to bring in evidence showing what's called a common scheme. They're particularly able to argue this in cases of rape or child sex abuse. The common scheme is basically evidence that shows that the crime the defendant is being accused of now fits into a larger pattern of behavior or habit from what's called prior bad acts that they've been accused of before. And they don't have to have been found guilty of those prior bad acts either. But the evidence of a common scheme can't be prejudicial, meaning it can't only speak to the defendant's character, the test,

Starting point is 00:28:26 or as they were calling it at the hearing, the asset test is whether or not the scheme is related to the current crime. So in this case, the common scheme is Alec allegedly trying to cover up his financial misgivings because of the boat crash. And in the hearing, Creighton was like, oh, it's related. And Alec made it relevant. And here's how he did that. When we talk about the asset test of life, and what that really refers to is that logical connection. And I think I heard Mr. Griffin even say, okay, he's identified the connection. But let's talk about that logical connection. Within 30 seconds of the first deputy who arrived on the scene on the night of June 7th, 2021, Alec Murdoch said, my son's been involved in this boat case. I know that's what it is.

Starting point is 00:29:18 He, within 30 seconds of deputy arriving, starts talking about the boat case. He made it immediately relevant. Whoa. So I want to pause and repeat what he is saying here. We have been hearing for 18 months that the Murdoch camp was trying to convince the public that the boat crash victims were somehow to blame for the double homicide due to some kind of act of revenge. We saw some evidence of this when Alec's brothers Randy and John Marvin cried on Good Morning America last June. And they planted those seeds insinuating that Paul had gotten threats about the boat crash and that they should have taken them more seriously. Mainstream media really took this theory and ran with it.

Starting point is 00:30:13 Headlines about Paul Murdoch being threatened because of the boat crash were landing in big papers across the country. And this actually was a main motivator for us to start this podcast. It seemed like I was one of the only ones covering this story who knew that the murders could not have been an act of revenge for the boat crash and knew if anyone had the power to pin this on the wrong people it would be the Murdochs. And here we are now knowing that Alec was planting those seeds and pointing the finger at the boat crash victims right out of the gates in the double homicide investigation. And Creighton said in the hearing that Alec himself making that connection is a big deal and makes all of the boat crash evidence and financial evidence fair game.

Starting point is 00:31:12 And then if you start to walk that logical connection back how do you explain what that means what is the boat case without explaining what the boat case is and then how do you explain how that can matter to him so much if you don't start walking back what all that means to his status and his finances and more importantly to uncovering or protecting from being that however who he really was. He says in my motion that I just want to show that he's a bad guy and that's not the case and the case law is very clear about that if it's evidence of motive the fact that it also shows the existence of another crime does not make it an invisible if it is valid evidence of motive. He tries to distinguish the cases that we've cited talking

Starting point is 00:32:02 about long-standing financial crimes as being the motive for murder and said well in those cases they were trying he was trying to kill the victims of those financial crimes before they just outed the defendant. What's the same thing here your honor it's just this case is different this case is unique this case is more complex. He's still trying to prevent who he really is from being outed but unlike those cases where he had a specific victim who had been victimized he was going to testify a court and he could just kill them he can't kill everybody he can't kill 11 years worth of victims he can't do that but what he does do what he does do is kill his wife and son who were liabilities in the book case and immediately it stops everything immediately

Starting point is 00:32:55 it stops that they've reckoned immediately he no longer has to answer that question about those fees that if they'll be answered was going to lead the firm to do exactly what they end up doing treatment slavery and uncovering it all. He can't kill them all. Wow this was perhaps the most powerful statement Creighton has made so far in this case he is saying here that Elik is capable of anything and if Elik could have killed all of his financial victims to get out of this mess he would have but there was just too many how horrific is that thought that is the kind of portrait the state is painting of Elik Murdoch in his motive a man who would stop at nothing to get what he wants. In this is important I've seen some people in our discord channel and online

Starting point is 00:33:58 talking about how they think the state's motive is weak and doesn't make any sense that Elik was just buying time and not actually fixing any of the problems coming at him but think about this think about all of the things that Elik is accused of doing that we have talked about on this podcast stealing from the poor the disabled the vulnerable taking money from children framing another kid for the boat crash continuing to scheme after his wife and son were murdered partying in Key West weeks after the double homicide and then staging a suicide for hire situation so his only surviving son could get an insurance payout none of that is rational but the important part that we need to understand about the state's theory and that Creighton said several times on Friday this kind

Starting point is 00:35:02 of madness worked for Elik for his entire life and even after the double homicide and momentarily it worked after the Labor Day incident and speaking of that very odd Labor Day shooting Creighton told us something on Friday that we hadn't heard before he said right before that shooting happened Elik met up with Chris Wilson to finally talk about those missing fees September 4th his best friend who he had convinced to send back those fees to be immediately but to cover $192,000 with his own money that Elik couldn't borrow enough to pay is trying to hold up and finally gets to meet with them on the doorstep on the front porch with Elik's mother stops and Elik confesses to him

Starting point is 00:35:59 there's been these bills and they've been stealing and he doesn't have $192,000 all that accountability is starting to crash down on Elik again and what happens within a couple hours of that conversation with this best friend in front of about $192,000 Elik is the victim on the side of the road and instantly everybody rallies to his aid again accountability is coming on him and suddenly there's a gunshot and he's a victim again and everybody rushes to his aid again except this time doesn't take long for people to figure out it's not right we'll be right back

Starting point is 00:36:56 okay so that was the big crate and energy portion of the hearing he ended it strongly we'll give him that but the hearing started off much more problematically with an issue that we hope sled and the attorney general's office are able to explain soon because until then we're left with the headlines that dick and jim want meaning headlines that call into question the viability of the spatter evidence which up until Friday were 100% based on dick and jim's claims alone now in part because of little crate and energy the state has added some legitimacy to dick and jim's assertions about the spatter and obviously that could be troubling so like we've said before the defense's motions and arguments in court seem mostly designed for the headlines and for dick

Starting point is 00:37:44 and jim to educate the judge in their own way as such dick and jim are only telling the court the parts of the story that they think help their argument but without a full view or understanding of the investigation it is hard to piece together what they say happened here especially during such a fast-paced hearing but we're going to do it so the shirt let's talk about that now on the night of the murders elik was apparently wearing a white t-shirt with a pocket on the chest with the words black sheep hampton south carolina written on it now black sheep is the name of his brother john marvin's boat and his charter fishing company shortly after the murders this shirt was referred to by someone with knowledge of the case as an undershirt we don't know if this

Starting point is 00:38:36 person called it an undershirt because it kind of looks like one or if elik was wearing the shirt under an unbuttoned button up or light jacket of some sort we also don't know whether investigators believe he had changed clothes at any point before police got there we do know that at least one person who was at the scene later commented that elik appeared to be remarkably untouched by the blood even for a man who had come home to find bodies according to the photo that dick and gym included with their motions the shirt did not appear to have that many stains on it as far as stains that are immediately identifiable as blood go in fact it just looks like a radial t-shirt with a few non-specific stains on it like one your grandpa might wear when doing your work along the

Starting point is 00:39:21 hemline of the shirt are a few small spots that could be blood and there's a spot by the chest but that's really all you can see from the photo dick and gym included literally elik could have gone to track your supply in that shirt that night and no one would have guessed that he was at the scene of a double murder earlier elik says any blood stains on his shirt are from when he checked maggie and paul for signs of life we have not seen photos of the shorts that he was wearing so we don't know just how covered in blood those were but if we're going by just the shirt either maggie and paul were not bleeding all that much and we know they must have been or elik didn't touch their bodies to any great extent again elik says maggie and paul were already

Starting point is 00:40:11 dead when he got home he does not appear to have tried cpr on either one and this is important because if he had it might have accounted for some of the spatter on his shirt okay two days after the murders sled had tested a part of the shirt with with a chemical that turns the area where there's blood a bright pink according to the shirt motion sled then tested that area for dna which later came back as maggies in july 2021 sled then tested the shirt using another chemical that tests for the presence of blood on items this chemical turned the areas with blood a bright blue or purple color so now the shirt looked a lot different according to the photos included in the shirt motion first there were a lot more stains on the shirt the bottom third of the shirt

Starting point is 00:41:13 had significant streak type staining in the bottom center along the hem and there was what looked like a collection of very tiny dots on the top two thirds of the shirt along with some larger polka dots now according to the experts letter to sled about his findings elik was apparently captured on body cam footage wiping his face with the bottom of a shirt the expert noted that quote the front bottom of the t-shirt has transferred type blood stains consistent with wiping a sweaty face that has blood on the face the expert also noted that the spatter stains at the top of the shirt were unaffected by elik wiping his face with the hem of his shirt transfer blood stains look a lot different from the high impact velocity spatter that the state says is on

Starting point is 00:42:09 the shirt now in testing for blood and spatter and dna the shirt was photographed tested photographed caught up photographed tested again photographed and now it's completely purple from the testing chemicals dick and jim say this prevents them from having their own experts test the shirt and that even the blood stain expert hired by sled had to rely on photographs for his conclusions so let's talk about that like we've said before dick and jim want this shirt excluded from evidence for good reason the state says the shirt contains the markings of high impact velocity spatter containing according to our sources brain matter from maggie that could only have come from standing above her in proximity when she was shot in the head to get this shirt excluded they need to do so in an

Starting point is 00:43:00 evidentiary hearing and they need to show the judge that a hearing is necessary so to do this they say they need materials that the state has not provided them with namely a powerpoint presentation notes and emails related to the spatter and the blood stain expert and the native files of photos of the shirt which dick and jim say were photoshopped to highlight areas of the spatter judge newman was thrilled to hear this by the way he was like oh cool so we're having a hearing to see if we need a hearing love that for us dick and jim need that hearing so that they can show that investigators destroyed the shirt in bad faith in other words they need to show that there are shenanigans going on here and to do that they want to bring in the blood stain expert and sled

Starting point is 00:43:45 agents to testify so they can hear their explanations for discrepancies that dick and jim say exists so a few things here one is the blood stain expert's final conclusions he found that there were eight areas of the shirt that had tested positive for blood there were more than 40 instances of missing size blood and there were more than a hundred stains on the front of the shirt that were consistent with spatter dick and jim definitely don't want the jury to hear all that so they're trying to set up this scenario for the judge and the public in which sled investigators at some point determined that there was no quote human blood on the areas of the shirt where the alleged spatter was here's dick at the hearing number two the test run by sled which we did not get until

Starting point is 00:44:32 a couple three weeks ago um indicated no presence of blood of human blood which which if you're going to have someone testify that there's blood spatter um i think part of that is there needs to be some water so dick and jim say that the blood spatter expert did not find any spatter on the shirt until sled agents visited him earlier this year they say he then changed his mind after the visit in truth the expert offered a draft of his preliminary findings and then issued a final report again we don't know what evidence the expert was provided with initially we don't know anything about the circumstances that led to the preliminary conclusions differing so much from the final conclusions the experts reports that are attached to the motion are mostly redacted and speaking of

Starting point is 00:45:35 another thing dick and jim want the judge and the public to believe is that sled in the ag buried evidence of those discrepancies in the 1.2 million pages of documents they were provided apparently dick and jim only found this information because dicks office had catalogued every bit of evidence into a database and according to dick this is not something most defense attorneys can do so elick is apparently getting what he's paying for there anyway on friday judge newman granted dick and jim's motion to compel meaning that the state has to provide anything related to the spatter analysis that they haven't already provided the state says that dick and jim have everything there is to have so it will be interesting to see how this order gets written and whether

Starting point is 00:46:29 creighton raises any objections to it all right now let's talk more about what happened at the hearing at best there's confusion and dick and jim are talking about one thing and sled and the ag's office are referring to another but at worst there is a problem here and if there is not a problem then creighton waters did nothing to clear that up in fact he created more room for dick and jim to maneuver in at one point when creighton was talking jim looked like he was barely trying to suppress the glee he apparently was feeling so first i want to make this clear we have never reported that elick had paul's blood on his clothes or that the state was claiming that there was spray on elick from paul's shooting but during friday's hearing dick seemed under that

Starting point is 00:47:33 impression in his arguments repeatedly mentioned that the testing did not support the information that was supposedly leaked to the press he mentioned this point in graphic detail your honor this is then it was leaked to the press a year ago that out murdoch had paul murdoch's blood spatter was the shooter because he had blood spatter that first of all swed will testify there's no fly so i don't have blood spatter number two the dna spot would exclude paul exclusive and number three now this is gross but dick raises a good point if it's true and we don't know that it is because like we've told you before the evidence provided by dick and jim with the shirt motion is limited esoteric and heavily redacted how is it that elick allegedly doesn't have spatter on him from the

Starting point is 00:48:42 shotgun blast that killed paul there could be a few explanations but we don't know for sure one possible explanation is where the gunman might have been standing in relation to paul another is were there any physical elements blocking the gunman from paul like a door or a wall another is simply physics yes paul's head was in bad shape but he wasn't shot in the head directly as dick suggests according to our sources the shot went in through his arm or shoulder and then to his head so we're not experts and we haven't seen the evidence so we'll end the speculation on that you know who is an expert though tom bevel of bevel gardener and associates in oklahoma according to a report in the new york times in 2018 bevel is one of the most sought after

Starting point is 00:49:30 bloodstained experts in the nation and he's the expert sled consulted on the spatter dick and jim obviously want to make this guy out to be a stone-cold idiot and a charlatan here's how dick described him on friday so this is critical because this this blood spatter this guy's not a scientist he looks at something and gives it sort of a rush act test he originally looked at it and said nah no blood spatter then he photoshopped it and said yeah blood spatter we don't understand why he changed his mind and we'd like to we hopefully we need this evidence to get into position we're gonna assume that he's gonna go forward with him now bloodstain analysis has a complicated history and there have been instances in which men who have been convicted in part because

Starting point is 00:50:23 of bloodstain evidence have been exonerated unfortunately for cretin and sled bevel has been tied to at least one of those cases dick made a mention of this during trial in fact he spelled out the name of the case likely for the media but dick being dick made it sound like bevel's testimony alone put an innocent man in prison but we did some digging and unsurprisingly dick is being selective about the facts he's sharing so the case dick brought up was the david cam case cam was a former state trooper in indiana who in september 2000 came home to find his wife and two children shot to death in their garage and driveway area he was arrested a few days later and held without bond for two years while awaiting trial during his initial

Starting point is 00:51:21 interview with authorities he denied killing his family more than 70 times any chance he could get in fact cam proclaimed his innocence and his grief his attorneys tried to get him out of jail several times his family supported him openly and loudly his wife's family said they were withholding judgment until they saw the evidence in the meantime his wife's family had a court freeze the wife's asset so cam couldn't spend them prior to his resignation from the state police department cam had been under investigation for beating a citizen during an arrest he was exonerated but he left the department because he felt like they didn't have his back on that one during the trial which was held in 2002 it came out that cam had had at least 15 extra marital

Starting point is 00:52:04 affairs in the years leading up to his family's murders 15 including one when his wife was pregnant with their second child at least two of those women testified against him saying that he had lied to them and that he had had violent outbursts including one involving a handgun i should also mention that the state had established a strong financial incentive for cam to kill his family showing that shortly before the murders cam had allegedly broken the law to secure out-of-state insurance policies with larger payouts for his wife's and kids deaths also cam allegedly had blood spatter on his shirt from his five-year-old daughter according to his own account he had never touched his daughter's body he had however given his son cpr which could have

Starting point is 00:52:47 resulted in that type of spray but there was no further explanation for that discrepancy meanwhile there was an errant sweatshirt not belonging to anyone in the cam household that was found in the garage the sweatshirt tested positive for unidentified dna from a male and a female cam insisted the sweatshirt belonged to the real killer also and this is the kicker there were 11 witnesses who say they saw cam playing basketball at the church at the time cam's family was killed anyway the jury ended up finding david cam guilty and he was sentenced to in 195 years in prison dick blames tom bevel for this but tom bevel was one of five blood spatter experts who testified for the state during the trial more than two years later the verdict was overturned

Starting point is 00:53:33 not because of the blood spatter testimony but because it was determined that the judge should not have allowed the jury to hear about cam's 15 affairs after the verdict was overturned the dna on the sweatshirt finally came back with a hit it belonged to a man who had recently been released from prison and guess what turns out it was him who had killed cam's wife and kids not cam talk about david cam being the unluckiest man in the world the cam case is one that gets rolled out whenever tom bevel is on the scene dick wants the court and the public to believe that bevel is some yokel cop from oklahoma who uses tarot cards to explain blood stains but in truth he has a lot of credibility i would read through his credentials but it would take too long now here's

Starting point is 00:54:24 the thing if dick and jim won the court to believe that bevel's conclusion of spatter is hot nonsense on the basis that he initially concluded there was no spatter well then that too would be hot nonsense right dick and jim cannot have it both ways so that brings us to creighton and his response to all of this we think this is something creighton could have exploited this expert is giving us mixed messages fine let's talk to some others then because look despite what dick and jim say it is entirely normal for experts to use photographs to draw their conclusions the shirt was cut up into strips the testing was done in phases there are a number of explanations for changing the reports if the state truly believes that there's significant spatter evidence on elec shirt and

Starting point is 00:55:25 that it can only have come from one thing then they need to maintain that position instead this is where creighton went with it we're in the process of assessing uh the viability of some of the information that's been gathered and how that affects this report and ultimately whether or not it is anything the state intends to offer what we've found out unfortunately is that that november uh report uh with the heating trace uh was not provided to our office through the normal discovery and in fact i did not receive that report uh until uh last uh wednesday november 30th when i literally was at sled um attempting to figure out our response to the motions uh after it had been filed of course the day before thanks given i set up a meeting

Starting point is 00:56:15 we went out there and literally was out there going what report are we talking about and that's when the report actually uh first really came to my attention what report are you referring to there's a november report november 21 report your honor uh in which uh sled had tested various cuttings from the shirt uh with human traits which tests for human blood and and they did not identify human blood on this particular samples and so just to back up a little bit obviously the attorney general's office was not involved in this case for the first three months i did not get involved until september of 2021 the case of the times with the 14th circuit uh in july of 2021 uh sled um forensics uh were um looking at various things they could do to test the shirt

Starting point is 00:57:03 and they applied a substance which is very common and commonly used called lcv2 shirt which reacts which can't react with blood and that's what they keep talking about is being destroyed it's not destroyed the shirt is still there it's just that a consequence of that testing on the shirt is that it then becomes discolored so it's kind of purple that's actually when it does you can see the alleged blood on there during the the course of that testing after they did that uh they then um i think subsequent to that and um they were in your i guess in this uh in september they then reached out to mr bevel again this was sled going this reached out to mr bevel uh to get him to ultimately review the case and then that

Starting point is 00:57:51 process went forward the attorney general's office we had no involvement in any of the interaction with bevel the only involvement that i did actually happened in the process of dealing mr bevel was when they actually called me and said hey mr bevel says that we can mail the shirt and i said no you ain't mail on their shirt this case is too important i wanted always in the custody uh direct custody of a law enforcement officer so that was what i said at that time that it was more about just the importance of this case and ensuring and make a piece of evidence i didn't get lost in the mail uh or something else happened that would uh that would affect chain of custody in a second so that's great right his initial response was we didn't do it it

Starting point is 00:58:32 was sled also what the eegee's office wasn't involved for the first three months of this investigation who was oh right alex co-workers 14th circuit solicitor duffy stone and his goons go out of investigators a couple of things to note here one is that dick and jim have been trying to make a big deal about sled hand carrying the shirt that dick and jim claim was destroyed to oklahoma to the bloodstain expert we now know that creighton is the reason for that he didn't trust that the chain of custody would remain intact otherwise another thing is this we can't tell if creighton is trying to downplay the importance of the shirt spatter because this is ultimately a case based on a totality of evidence meaning the spatter is just one element of the

Starting point is 00:59:19 case but why oh why didn't he come out strong against the accusations of shenanigans and why oh why didn't he outright tell the judge once again that the evidence is strong and that they're confident that these alleged discrepancies are the result of confusion judge newman asked creighton whether he plans to call mr bevel to the stand and instead of yes or no creighton answered this way well and so ultimately when this report has come to light the first thing that i did of course was talk to the sled experts and talk to mr bub and i said how do we assess this is this uh you know how does this affect the report is it going to undermine at least that aspect of the report is it going to uh the conclusions are still there but maybe not as strong or is it something

Starting point is 01:00:08 that uh that we need to not uh pursue and obviously i mean if they started that ass sled to begin that process of determining the effect of that evidence and that process is ongoing so that is what we're left with creighton says he needs more time to talk to everyone involved to find out what happened here why is there a report in which sled says there's no blood on the shirt or no blood on certain parts of the shirt again we don't know what they're saying in the report exactly creighton also needs more time to understand why the bloodstain expert said no spatter and what evidence he was analyzing at that point if it turns out there's no good explanation it sounds like the state is willing to reconsider the value of that evidence

Starting point is 01:00:59 and if that's the case well totality of evidence or not juries like to see physical evidence obviously we will be keeping a close eye on the developments here we don't know what it all means right now but if it turns out that the evidence is unusable we will be calling out anyone who is responsible for that in one last thing we want to mention is about the death penalty we've gotten a lot of questions over the past week about whether ellic murdoch could end up on death row as a result of this case and the answer is yes the state has until 30 days prior to the start of trial to tell the defense whether they plan to pursue this as a death penalty case or a life without parole case that means ellic murdoch should

Starting point is 01:01:53 know some time around christmas we expect for this case to ramp up a lot in the next 60 days check out mmp.supercast.com so you won't miss a thing stay tuned and stay in the sunlight the murdoch murders podcast is created and hosted by me mani matinee produced by my husband david moses and liz ferrell is our executive editor from luna shark productions

Murdaugh Murders Podcast - Bad Blood & Bad Dudes - Accusations Fly In Double Homicide Hearing (S01E72)

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