Murdaugh Murders Podcast - Cup of Justice Bonus 3: Motives and Motivations - What's Up Next For Alex Murdaugh?

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

As we reported in MMP this week, the Judge Hall reversed his earlier order that basically split the "boat crash" case in two and allowed the Murdaughs to indefinitely postpone that trial so Alex could prepare for his speedy murder trial. The Attorney General’s Office told us the murder case still hasn’t been scheduled.  While we wait for those crucial announcements, Mandy Matney, Liz Farrell and Eric Bland want to share some conversations about what might be happening behind the scenes. In other BIG NEWS! since publishing this episode, Cup of Justice launched on its own feed and hit #1 on Apple on the first day!!! Please consider giving our newly launched Cup of Justice a 5 star review on Apple & Spotify to help us in our mission to expose the truth wherever it leads!! COJ on Apple: https://apple.co/3HHT9av COJ on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3WMKkAI We all want to drink from the same Cup Of Justice — and it starts with learning about our legal system. What questions do y’all have for us? Email [e-mail] and we'll do our best to answer your questions in these bonus episodes. Consider joining our MMP Premium Membership community to help us SHINE THE SUNLIGHT! CLICK HERE to learn more: https://bit.ly/3BdUtOE What questions do y’all have for us? Email [e-mail] and we'll do our best to answer your questions in these bonus episodes. SUNscribe to our free email list to get alerts on bonus episodes, calls to action, new shows and updates. AND by sharing your email, we'll send details on exclusive content only available from our SUNScription email list - CLICK HERE to learn more: https://bit.ly/3KBMJcP And a special thank you to our sponsors: Microdose.com, VOURI, and others. Use promo code "MANDY" for a special offer! Find us on social media: https://www.facebook.com/MurdaughPod/ https://www.instagram.com/murdaughmurderspod/ Twitter.com/mandymatney YouTube Support Our Podcast at: https://murdaughmurderspodcast.com/support-the-show Please consider sharing your support by leaving a review on Apple at the following link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murdaugh-murders-podcast/id1573560247 *The views expressed on the Cup of Justice bonus episodes do not constitute legal advice. Listeners desiring legal advice for any particular legal matter are urged to consult an attorney of their choosing who can provide legal advice based upon a full understanding of the facts and circumstances of their claim. The views expressed on the Cup of Justice episodes also do not express the views or opinions of Bland Richter, LLP, or its attorneys. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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who are in Florida suffering from the storm. As we reported in M&P this week, the judge in the Mallory Beach boat crash case reversed his earlier order that basically split the case into and allowed the Murdox to indefinitely postpone that trial so that Elyke could prepare for his speedy murder trial. With that decision reversal though, the judge also announced that the Beach case is now, is now on the docket for January 9th, 2023. So we don't know what that means yet for Eleg's murder trial. As far as we're hearing, Dick and Jim are still insisting it will happen that same month. On Thursday, we reached out to South Carolina's Attorney General's office,

and they told us that the murder case still has not been scheduled. In the meantime, I wanted to share with you all some conversations I recently had with Liz Farrell and Eric Bland about Ehrlich and his murder trial. And we also talked about something else that's on Eric's mind. So, Mandy, in all of your interviews that you've done, you know, on the rest of, record or off the record talking to your sources, you obviously learned a lot of the inside facts about the Murdof family. I mean, what have you learned that somebody could say good about Alex or something that could be good about the family in general? Because when you read everything,

there's nothing. Nobody's coming forward and saying that they're charitable, you know, they're benevolent, they give their time to the church. Nothing. It's just nothing. It's all about that they're arrogant money entitled people who locked the system up for years? I think something that we've heard for years is that they were nice to certain people and certain circumstances. And they were nice to everyone's faces for the most part. Like the Siderfields. Like the Siderfields.

I think Alex was really good at being a warm presence around certain people. You had a lot of energy. He had a lot of energy. People said he was really like life of the party sometimes. And I think he was able to kind of play a father figure role to people like the Satterfields and was able to look them in the eye and say, I got you boy. But that's a part of what a sociopath slash narcissist is. Like they have two sides.

And because nobody, Alex would not have been able to do the things. got away with doing if he wasn't able to convince some people that he was decent. Yeah. And he had all the power. I was going to say. I think a lot of it, too, like we can't forget that he was an employee of the formal. He was a volunteer at the 14th Circuit Solicitor's Office. So he had some considerable power when it came to helping people when they got into trouble.

So that's certainly, you know, when you're talking about being charitable, I don't know that that's it. I don't think it is because, you know, I'm sure he didn't do that stuff for free. I mean, maybe he did. I don't know, but I have no knowledge of what he did. But I'm saying that, you know, that kind of power with the legal system, with the justice system is what they could trade on, right? So you get into a car accident or you were drunk driving or something like that, then

Alex's going to help you out. And I think this is a point that I think needs to be made. When plaintiffs' attorneys tell potential clients that I'm going to handle this pro bono, and I've heard this from a couple of people in here. County about how Ehrlich would handle their cases, quote-unquote, pro bono. That's not pro bono, right, Eric. What is that? Pro bono is, you know, you give your time to people that are poor that need advice, whether it's military spouses, a military person's gone away, getting called to duty, how do you deal with, you know, getting abatement of mortgage and things like that, dealing with indigent people,

representing people that are, you know, can't afford a law. So you wouldn't take a fee for it. You won't take a fee. But he was taking fees for his. Right. Yeah. His pro bono. That's not propone. When you tell, so I think that there's a misconception.

So it's funny because Hampton County is such a legal community, right? Right. That's where, that's, it's industry, chief industry. There's. Yeah. So you have people that are, you know, maybe just not, there's like the legal literacy, not understanding that these lawyers actually are taking your case on a contingency basis, which means that there's a fee agreement, supposed to be.

And as part of that, they're going to take a certain percentage of your case, anywhere between 25 and 40 perhaps. And I would guess, venture to guess with Alic. It was probably almost always 40%, right? Sure. Plus the tip he gave himself apparently. He gets a tip. Yeah, the bonus he gave himself. Yeah, he's on the bonus plan.

Oh! Yeah. Now, you just used a great term that we're going to use throughout our podcast as we go forward. Legal Literacy, that's what we're going to do for our listeners. we're going to give them legal literacy. Right. So nobody ever can spin or throw something around their heads. Yeah.

And speaking of spinning, there, so what you asked is, in all of the reporting, has anybody said on the record that they're good people? And from what I've seen, the only thing, pretty much, I mean, the only politician, which is interesting because we know how embedded the Murdox were with South Carolina politics. We know that they were movers and shakers, especially within the Democratic Party. But Bacari Sellers was the only one, and I watched Twitter very closely after the murders, because I was wondering what was going on.

And my phone was blowing up with people that I've known throughout South Carolina who knew the Murdoch family in different capacities, whether those through the trial lawyers, whether those from USC law, And what a majority of people were saying is, I know that guy, I don't really like him. He's a jerk. But I don't know if he killed his family. Right. I get a lot of that on the golf course.

A lot of people that I've gotf with were his fraternity brothers or played football with him. And they said, you know, he was a fun guy, but, you know, you didn't turn your back. You watched him with both eyes, you know. One guy described him. He's a guy that could, Alex reminded me of a guy that could look through a keyhole with both eyes at the same time. What does that mean? You know, a guy that's really, you can't trust. It's a schemer, you know, a guy that's looking like that, you know, a real schemer.

You know, one thing I wanted to add that you just talked about is they hired Nexon-Pruez's marketing company. Right. What are they doing? What is it that they're actually doing? I mean, can't they muster up one family that Alex represented who would come forward and say, he was the most amazing attorney? I just want to tell you that he was calling us. He kept us informed.

He was there for us in the hospital. He recovered money for us. He gave money to our charity. He went to my kid's wedding. He's the godfather. or couldn't, what are they doing? You can't, of all his representation. I mean, I, I can go to a lot of clients that if I needed them and my back was up against

the wall. They, they do testimonials. I have, he can't come up with anything like that, Mandy? Yeah. And the other thing is the, I mean, I just want to make this very clear. The writing was on the wall about Alex Murdoch not being a great person way before the double homicide of 2021. For sure.

And before the boat crash. Like, when the boat crash happened, but I think that's a misconception because people say to me, Mandy, well, because of your reporting, we now know all these things about Alex and it's like, ask eight people in Hampton County about Alex Murdoch before 2021. And I guarantee you they wouldn't have said he's a kind, gentle soul and his family's from the salt of the earth. So when you look at the Murdox as an institution, kind of the same way you would, maybe the Catholic Church or something like that, you have a culture of silence, you have

a culture of, you can all say, yeah, we thought father so-and-so is rather creepy, but who's going to be the first one to say it? And what cover do they have in saying it? Obviously, the more people that come. And what are the repercussions if you do say? What are the repercussions? So if you look at a closed circuit like Hampton County. So you're talking about, we live in the 14th Circuit. There's five counties, right? Well, Hampton County is, so that's already insular. The 14th Circuit already has its border and we do things a lot differently and uniquely, which is a nice way of saying, like, really messed up and what have you. But Hampton County is an even smaller, you know, country within that country. So it is like the

Vatican maybe to a certain extent. So it's like a closed circuit. To come forward as one person is suicide, basically, right? What are you going to do? Law enforcement's not going to listen to me. Who do you go to? First of all, who are you reporting them to, the air? Because where do you go to reporter Murdoch. They don't trust it. Yeah. There's no one to tell. Where was this all going to go? So without Maori Beach, how long would he have kept this up? If there's somebody that would have told on him or he got caught, would he have been able to buy his way out? Would this have just continued on or were, look, Russ wasn't going to do it anymore? Yeah, the answer is yes. And we'll be right back. So Mandy, do you want to talk about the, um,

this has sort of bothered you from the beginning. Why are they going with the murderer trial first? Why not trial the financial crimes first when it comes to Alec Murdoch? Do you want to sort of introduce people to that and what the issue is? Yeah, and I mean, the big thing I think to get across is that we don't know if it's all up to Newman, correct? Judge Newman? Yeah, it's also up to Creighton. Creighton. He controls the doctor.

The prosecution. Does the judge have to agree? Dick Harputtlyan sent a letter to the Supreme Court to Chief Justice Beatty right around the time that he sent, like maybe the day before the motion, like it was in conjunction with that motion to compel. So he's asking the Chief Justice to put the murder trial on the docket. Why is that? Why is he asking the Chief Justice to do that? Dick is asking for things that normal lawyers don't get to ask for. And I apologize. It wasn't to the Chief Justice. It was to, I believe there's somebody in that office that handles the docket. scheduling to that person. Right.

So why? Because he wants to force the hand to get Alex's murder case tried first. For some reason, again, he's got a strategy that no one really understands. I don't know whether Dick is just winging it, but he's got Jim Griffin, who is a really bright lawyer. I can't wait to hear what their strategy is. What do you think? So what do you think the strategy is?

Why is Dick pushing so hard for this to get on the docket? Because he can win. He can win. Dick Harputtlyan can win this case. Again, it's a circumstantial evidence case. He only has to flip one juror. This is being tried in Alex's backyard. The Murdole tentacles, the Murdole reach goes long and long and long.

And he only has to flip one juror. And it's starting to sound like, according to Dick's going to say, they're overloading Alex with charges, 900 years on the finish. Dick can't win the financial crimes. I'm telling you, there isn't any way that I could close my eyes and see how a jury of 12 could let him steal the Satterfield's money. So can Dick defend the financial crime? So given that he's admitted on the record that's-

No. Drug addiction is not a defense to stealing money. It's a mitigation when you're being sentenced after convicted. Somebody gets to say, look, I had a developmental disorder. When I was a child, my dad beat me, whatever. You say anything. I was a drug addict. I wasn't whatever.

But it's not a defense to mens rea, the criminal intent. So he stole money. That's it. End of story. Sometimes as a lawyer, you can't win. Facts are facts. And so I don't understand the theory behind Creighton not coming right out and saying, we're back to back to backing these financial crimes.

You chose to charge them first. You chose to bring financial crimes before the grand jury before a murder charge. Why did you do that? That comes back to me asking, why haven't we heard from Alan Wilson? When is Alan Wilson going to get in front of the camera and say, this is why we've done what we've done? We wanted to get all the financial crimes charge first. Then we wanted to bring the murder charge. This is why we're going to try acts first.

We elected him as the Attorney General of South Carolina. Whether you voted for him or not, he is our attorney general. He works for us. He needs to tell us why they're spending our dollars in a certain way. Yeah, absolutely. And it's been very disappointing that we haven't seen. We've heard from him. We just need leadership.

So is one reason that the financial crimes that they started getting charged first could just be the practical matter of Mandy and you made it difficult for them not to. So it, you know, basically, I mean, you called them out, Mandy, saying, like, where are the charges in the Satterfield case? Because, and this was like in September. No, I did in the state paper. She did on the podcast. I did in the state paper. And I said, where is sled?

Yeah. It's a disgrace. And then I got a phone call from Chief Keel who said, can you stop beat me up in the newspaper? And I said, well, do your job. Bring the charges. They're right there. Right. It's the easiest thing in the world.

So it's also a way to keep. Elek in not just jail, but under some sort of bond situation where he's being tracked. That's a good point, too. So while you're sealing up the murder charges, you now have an excuse to put a tracker on him, whatever that, you know, they thought that might look like. So that could be one reason. But so they filed those, I guess what I'm saying is I'm accounting for why would they have filed those charges first?

Well, why did they bring, no, the first charge. Not to. No, the first charge was the Labor Day shooting. Yeah, the first charge. So what are they doing with that? He didn't stay in jail. I mean, he got... And also the...

What are they doing with that, though, Mandy? Sitting on it because they have to... It's not insurance fraud? Yeah, it's not insurance fraud. So they're going to have to come to the reckoning that. They may have to drop that. Yeah, I mean, yeah, because, I mean, if you look back at the warrants, so much of it is based off of Alex's word, and that's it.

And the other thing is insurance fraud... That's not worth anything. Insurance fraud is actually filing a document and signing. and submitting it to an insurance company to try to get money. He never did that. That was an intent to do it. It's called an inchoate crime, I-N-C-H-O-A-T-E. Incomplete.

It was started but never completed. It's like a thought crime. I mean... Thought crime. Perfect. Yeah. And you can't be arresting people for what they intended to do and then didn't. That doesn't make any sense.

There's a lot of discussion about it. But it seems like with that entire thing, it seems like Dick and Jim sat down with sled and you're like, here you can't. You can't say I want to, I wish, you know, I really want to kill the president of the United States. That's a thought crime that could get you done. But in normal circumstances. Mandy, why don't you talk a little bit about why you think, like, why does it bother you necessarily? Like, I guess I'm jumping into conclusion here, but if it bothers you why that the murders are, you know, being tried first, like, why would you like to see the financial crimes come first?

Well, Eric has talked a lot about momentum and how big momentum is for attorneys. And the more that I've thought about it, the riskier it is to go. And the bottom line with the murder charges is we don't know their cards. Who's there, who? The state. Yeah. We don't know the prosecution and how we've been told that there's a lot of evidence. But until we know more, it's going to be hard to determine how risky the cases.

Dick is a master at derailment. and the murder case it put up, there's so many different times during a murder trial, it could get derailed. Something can happen. There's less that can happen in these financial crime cases because they're more direct. It's not based on what was his intent or whatever. Here's the checks. So I think the thing that we need to clarify here, so when we're talking about them trying the murder case first versus the financial crimes first, are we saying that we think one of the will be erased? Are we saying that if you try the murder charges first, then there's no chance of getting convictions in the financial crimes if he's found not guilty? Like is there, does one

depend on other? No, no, it's the OJ case. He's going to, listen, he's going away for the rest of his life. Right. He's either going away for murder. He's either going away for financial crime. So if he's found guilty of murder, is there a chance do you think that Creighton or the state, you know, whoever the prosecutor is, will not try the financial cases. Now they'll try one of them. Okay. And why is that? Just to load them up.

With more years. Because the murder case could get reversed on appeal. Okay. You're never going to put all your eggs in one conviction. Strange things happen on appeal. Judge lets too much in. He excludes evidence that can get reversed on appeal and it has to be retried. You belt and suspender this case.

you duct tape it, you cement it. Okay. Every which way you can because appellate courts reverse trials all the time. If it's a death penalty, they get reversed all the time. So, no, I have an absolute belief that they are going to go through all current charges. And once they get done with those, if it fails on the state level, they'll load them up on the federal level. But they don't want to do the federal level because Dickle, march him down the next day and say, we plead guilty to that, go throw the book at us and let me go

in a federal prison. But the other thing that I think we have to mention is that what we've seen so far from the defense is a big part, it seems like, of their strategy, is that the state is after me and the government is after me. Right. There's this big conspiracy. Here's what surprises. Wait, just to stop, because what you're saying is that the state is based, so Dick and Jim can benefit off of holding off on the financial crimes because then they can always say, like, look, this stack of charges that it's part of the defense in the murder case is what you're saying. And I think it would be a lot better off going into the murder case of he was tried and convicted by a jury in X, Y, and all these other charges versus those charges haven't been, haven't gone

to trial yet. And they're just out there. So it looks like he's just accused of everything. Right. And then, God forbid, something happens in the murder trial. and then you lose momentum. So it benefits Dick and Jim more to do it the way they want to do it, which is to have the murder charges first, because then they can just point to that stack of charges. No, Dick doesn't want to lose. Dick is not a loser.

And he is in this to the end. He can't bow out. Why? Why do you think that he's so stuck in this? Because he's been on national TV. There's no way he can walk away and say, oh, I'm going to be a witness or I'm in conflict. He'll look like he's high-tailed running it and taking his toys and running home after he shot his mouth off.

He's not doing that. But, yeah, I mean, like you're saying that for Dick Harpoonian, the spotlight is way too tempting for him. He can't get out now, even if he wanted to. And a lot of people have told him you had a chance to bail. You should, whatever. But he's all in. And if he walked now, it looked like a coward run at home. So if we know, though, that he's so Elyke Murdoch, it's sort of a foregone conclusion, I guess,

that he will be facing sometime in the state penitentiary. So does it matter then what is charged first? Like what is the, so let's just say like, what's the goal here? Is it just because I think we should probably talk about the aspect that is the victims because that's I think where we're coming from, right, which is the victims and the financial crimes, why are they less important than the unidentified? I hate to say that about the murder case, but the identified victims because we really haven't heard an outcry from the people that we would assume normally are the victims.

You don't hear the Murdof family screaming. We want this trial to go forward. Right. They're victims. Randolph is the PR for Paul. John Marvin is the PR for Maggie. Right. They should be screaming at the top of their lungs. Try this case. Because they're not screaming, maybe they think that Alex is not the right defendant. And we'll be right back. Now there's going to be tons of motions in liminey.

So Dick will make motions in limine, motions to limit, motions to exclude, it means, to not let the state talk about all these other crimes that he's done. Dick's going to say limit this only to a murder, not, you know. But then I think the Mallory Beach trial comes in because that's, even though they don't have to show motive, They can say, aren't you sued with Paul in the Maori Beach case? And aren't you pissed that you got sued in the Maori Beach case and that you were mad at Paul for that? Go back to what you just said. They don't have to show motive.

They don't. It's not an element to show in murder. They just have to show that you had one second of premeditation of thought that you wanted to kill somebody. So why then, when they were talking about the potential for a gag order, was one of the things that I believe it was the prosecutor. what they brought up was that because the motive is tied to all the financial, you know, the other cases that are pending, that's why they were, you know, arguing for the, they don't have to prove motive, but they are going to talk about motive. They're not going to just, that's not going to be the 800-pound elephant in the room.

They're going to talk about motive. They're going to talk about, yeah, all these different things, the financial pressure. Right. Maggie, you know, had enough, whether she saw a divorce lawyer, whether Maggie said, look, you know, I want my money separated from yours. We don't know anything about their relationship. What if Maggie said, I don't long, no longer want to have a joint account with you. I want my money separate. Right, right. They know a lot more than we know. So going back to the victims part of this, Mandy, with, you know, the financial crimes, is that what, is so do you think that that's maybe

like the driving factor of why you think the financial crimes should be tried first, not just the strategy. Yeah, that's a big part of it. I mean, besides the risk involved, but like, I mean, Eric, you work closer than the victims in this case than I do. I'm sure they're all ready to just get this past them. Yeah, they want justice. Yeah, they want justice.

When we start ranking who's the bigger victim, who's the worst victim, then that's not fair because the Satterfields, they lost their mother and their sister. The plylers lost their mother and their brother. And as a result of those deaths, they've been exploited. So they feel like their death is worse than Maggie and Paul's. Maggie and Paul have lived this incredibly privileged, rich life. And it's tragic that they were killed. And if they were killed for a reason and a purpose,

somebody needs to find out. but these other clients, you thought enough to bring them before a grand jury. Now are you just saying, well, you're not really important. Nobody's communicating with them. I would love somebody to call the Satterfields on the phone from the AG's office or call the Plyler's and say, listen, here's why. If they do decide to try the murder case first, somebody better be calling these victims and tell them,

why is your case put off till 2025? The Murdoch Murdoers podcast is created by me, Mandy Matney, and my fiance, David Moses. Our executive editor is Liz Farrell. Produced by Luna Shark Productions.