Murdaugh Murders Podcast - Drug Smuggling And Operation Jackpot - What Happened To The Money? Part Two (S01E31)

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

Some of the biggest questions in this case revolve around the money — what happened to it? Why was Alex Murdaugh (allegedly) stealing it in the first place?  Does it have anything to do with the murders? To understand Alex Murdaugh’s ties to drug trafficking and find answers to the money questions— we need to look at a man who was a good friend of the family. A man named Barrett T. Boulware.  In this episode, you’ll hear about the Murdaugh family’s ties to alleged drug smugglers and look at how this plays into the big picture.  Check out a video explanation of the Murdaugh / Boulware properties we discuss in this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StHXgB0oSoQ Research in this podcast was provided by Will Folks And Jenn Wood.  See more videos on the Murdaugh Murders here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPC7aLBzSFHqIz_jDachzQA We want to learn more about you - please click here to fill out our Listener Survey for a chance to win an amazon gift card. And a special thank you to our sponsors: Cerebral, Hunt-A-Killer, Bannon Law Group, Nature's Highway CBD, Embark Vet, VOURI, Hello Fresh and others. The Murdaugh Murders Podcast is created by Mandy Matney and produced by Luna Shark Productions. Our Executive Writer is Liz Farrell. Advertising is curated by the talented team at AdLarge Media. Find us on social media: https://www.facebook.com/MurdaughPod/ https://www.instagram.com/murdaughmurderspod/ For current and accurate updates: Twitter.com/mandymatney 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I don't know what happened to the millions of dollars Elec allegedly stole from his clients or why he stole the money in the first place. But a team of us at fitsnews.com have uncovered a series of connections tying Elec Murdoch to an alleged drug smuggler and while we're proceeding down this road with caution we believe it's very important to this case. My name is Mandy Matney.

I've been investigating the Murdoch family for almost three years now. This is the Murdoch Murders podcast with David Moses and Liz Farrell. Now that Elec is accused of stealing at least 8.4 million dollars from over a dozen clients in a decade some of the biggest questions in this case are about all of this money. Why was he stealing so much when he was already making plenty as an attorney? Where was all this money really going? Where is it now?

What was Elec into all of these years and just how bad was it? We need to go back in time to start the process of unpacking the answers To understand Elec Murdoch's ties to drug trafficking we need to look at a man who was a good friend of the family a man named Barrett T. Bowler And just to clear the air Bowler is spelled like bowl where but from what the locals tell me

it is apparently pronounced Bowler at least with the older generations like the Murdoch name and Elec's name I don't make these rules up about pronunciation When several locals tell me how a name is pronounced I believe them and I go with it Now my boss Will and I started looking into the bowlers back in June We both were getting a slew of tips that told us the same thing

You need to start digging into Barrett Bowler the dude who Elec bought Moselle from and his connections to drug trafficking These tipsters would say something like I don't know how it's connected but it's definitely a piece of this puzzle So back in September things started to really spiral in this case There was news breaking almost every day about Elec's alleged thievery

the glorious Satterfield case and Elec's alleged suicide gone wrong debacle My boss Will Folkes and I divvied up these subjects in the best way we could at fitsnews.com and Will ended up taking the drug angles of the story And just for background Will started fitsnews in 2007 as a political blog and was immediately deemed the bad boy of South Carolina journalism for his unflinching takes

Since 2013, his one-man publication has grown steadily in both readership and relevance across the state of South Carolina Earning its place among legacy publications Will's mission as a publisher and a journalist in our mission at fitsnews.com is to lead an honest, intelligent and compelling conversation on the individual's institutions and ideas we cover seeking the truth wherever it leads

So I thought it would be best to bring Will on the show to explain his reporting and all that he has uncovered in the Murdoch's connections to the bowlers Well they go back a ways The bowlers and again, all these southern names, it's funny trying to get them right I always call the Hampton people say, how do you say this? How do you guys say this down there?

And so they, whatever they say back is what I end up calling them So the bowlers, the bowlers it is, but it's spelled like bowlware It looks like bowlware, I think most people would spell it that way but obviously Barrett T. Bullware, he's a guy who died in September of 2018 a commercial fisherman, he was very close to Alec Murdoch They were business partners, they owned properties together Alec was his lawyer and in fact when Buller was dying in 2018 he signed over his power of attorney to Alec

and it was one of the more exhaustive, expansive empowering powers of attorney I've ever seen I mean literally just signed his life over everything he owned to Alec right before he died So they go way back, but his father who actually died six years earlier back in 2012 was tied with Alec's dad with Randolph Murdoch, the third, so the families go back So who are the bowlers?

There are three things to know about Barrett T. Bullware Barrett T. Bullware was an alleged drug smuggler charged in Operation Jackpot in the 1980s which we will explain in this podcast He was the former owner of the now infamous Moselle property and he was Alec Murdoch's business partner Also important to note, he died in 2018 shortly after being diagnosed with cancer

The Murdochs and the bowlers' connections stretch back to the World War II era when Randolph Murdoch Jr aka the original Buster Murdoch tried a few cases with Barrett Bullware's grandfather I should also say here, Alec Murdoch is definitely not the first Murdoch to be accused of a crime What I'm about to tell you is a little bit of history taken from news reports at the time

As you'll see, the names are not the only generationally repetitive thing here So are the shenanigans After a five year federal investigation in the 1950s that centered on the hellhole swamp area of Berkeley and Colleton counties which was the location of major illicit liquor activities during prohibition

Buster Murdoch was one of 30 people including a couple of magistrates, a sheriff, constables and at least one sheriff's deputy who were indicted as being part of a criminal network of moonshiners Buster, who people here say was mean as a snake was accused of obstructing a Colleton County grand jury investigation into moonshiners

He was also accused of telling a Hampton County moonshiner to move his distillery to Colleton County to avoid law enforcement See, in Colleton County Buster was apparently helping to keep low-country moonshiners in business by instructing the sheriff there at the time who was also indicted

to make quote-unquote friendly raids on known violators of internal revenue laws These moonshiners would get a warning that one of the friendly raids was coming and they would be assured that quote-unquote friendly prosecution would follow The moonshiners said that they paid for this protection

Basically, Buster was accused of creating a scenario in which he and others in law enforcement would look like they were handling the problems with the illegal liquor and the honky-tonks while also secretly profiting off of them It was also around this time that the South Carolina legislature passed a new law that allowed the governor to suspend

or remove state and local officials from office if they were indicted After the indictments, the governor at the time suspended the Colleton County Sheriff a guy named Haskell Thompson but Buster was allowed to stay in office It wasn't until after Haskell's suspension was upheld by the state's Supreme Court

shortly before the trial was due to start in September 1956 that Buster resigned as solicitor This wasn't a huge sacrifice for him though because 1956 was an election year Buster's name remained on the ballot for November and no one was running against him, obviously

So all he had to do is somehow survive the trial and he'd be back in office which is exactly what happened In August 1956, one month before the trial Buster had tried to get the charges against him dropped Ironically, he accused the federal government of promising light sentences to his co-defendants to induce testimony against him

He referred to the charges against him as merely surplusage, which is a word I had to look up It means excessive or non-essential and I'm very surprised Dick Harpoolian hasn't found a way to use it yet So by this time, some of the 30 co-defendants had played it guilty, had their charges dismissed or in one instance went missing

So Buster was one of 20 guys who would face trial together He asked for a separate trial because of what he called the danger of guilt by transference He didn't want their stink to get on him The federal judge did not grant him those motions So Buster went to Charleston and stood trial The trial took two weeks and two days They were in session on Saturdays and at night

The trial featured testimony from a witness who said he paid money to be able to carry a constable's badge which they wanted so they could hijack a distillery for their own use The jury also heard from witnesses who said that after they'd get busted they would pay hundreds of dollars to law enforcement officers and to magistrates to avoid jail

One of the witnesses was a defendant in the Colleton County case that Buster was accused of obstructing He went to prison in 1951 to allegedly quote-unquote, protect Murdoch Reporters at the time noted the seething sarcasm coming from the defense on cross-examination and they wrote about how Murdoch's attorneys talked to the witnesses by saying they could have

written better indictments against them than the government had written about their client Somehow, and I'll tell you how in a second The jury found everyone except Murdoch guilty His co-defendants were sentenced to a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida Former sheriff Haskell Thompson got the longest sentence of seven years

When the jury acquitted Murdoch a reporter noted that an unidentified man ran from the courtroom to tell Mrs. Murdoch the news In response, she wept After reading the verdicts, the judge, who was from Norfolk, Virginia decided to offer his opinion that quote no solicitor or assistant solicitor or anyone in the solicitor's office

should be allowed to represent any party in any court in a matter arising from a criminal case The law permitting this should be changed He also said that quote the practice of having special sheriff's deputies without compensation leads to corruption I should pause to fast-forward and remind you that for many years and until a few months ago

Murdoch was an unpaid, badge-carrying member of 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffy Stone's office Back to 1956 So about a week after old Gladys Murdoch had her celebratory cry in the federal courthouse someone got arrested This someone's name was Alex G. Murdoch of Orangeburg, South Carolina

Alex G. was charged with tampering with the jury that had just acquitted his first cousin Buster Shortly before the trial began a man named Alfred R. Goodwin of Florence, South Carolina said he had received a call from Alex G. who said he wanted to meet up with him The two met at a restaurant where Alex G. told Goodwin that Buster was only charged because of political reasons

Turns out Goodwin was about to become the foreman of the jury that acquitted Buster Alex G. was indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with attempting to influence a juror and Buster was re-elected for yet another term And we'll be right back So at the end of Buster's 48 year reign as solicitor Barrett T. Bowler had his first of at least

three run-ins with law enforcement In all of the records that Will and our researcher Jen Wood have found while looking at the Bowler family the first incident showing their alleged involvement with drug trafficking occurred on January 24th, 1980 off of the St. Helena Sound For those of you unfamiliar with the South Carolina Low Country the St. Helena Sound is north of Hilton Head Island

and south of Charleston It's about an hour and 15 minutes southeast of the Moselle property It happened on January the 24th, 1980 This was again very early in the relationship between these families A U.S. Coast Guard cutter called Cape Knox was actually patrolling St. Helena Sound off the coast of South Carolina that evening And again, this is according to reports filed at the time

According to the Associated Press, this Coast Guard cutter spotted a pair of 65 foot fishing boats One called the Miss Kathy and the other called the Waterworld This was during what they termed a routine patrol of the Sound One of the boats was apparently in distress was taking on water, was sinking And when the Coast Guard boat pulled up

they come up to Bowler's boat, the Waterworld and they find 11 undocumented, if you will men who were alleged to have been from Miami Basically, they were on his boat because the original boat that they were on allegedly sank That boat was called the Island City And so at the time, you know, you get this Coast Guard

Warrant Officer who filed a report who said it was unclear what caused the sinking and that the ownership of the vessel that sank had not been immediately established But the Waterworld, the boat that these men were discovered on belonged to Bowler And so one of the other boats that's interesting the Coast Guard had tied to some drug enforcement agency actions

And so, you know, everyone just assumed, okay well they came up on these boats they saw the Coast Guard coming and so they put all the product on one boat and sank it That was generally what most people thought happened And so what was interesting was that none of these 11 men on board the Waterworld that no one was arrested Nobody was questioned

And as far as we know, these guys were just sent back to Miami You know, and everybody just went about their business But you know, it's kind of odd, you know, you say Okay, so you've got Barrett Bowler's boat out there You've got two other boats One of them has been tied to smuggling in the past One of them sinks as soon as the Coast Guard boat comes up It's like, hmm, you know, okay, start putting these things together

It's like, you know, what are they up to out there? I mean, do we really have to speculate too hard About what was going on out there But again, they questioned all these men But no one was arrested And again, as far as I can tell, everybody just got sent back to where they came from This makes me wonder if there was possibly some interference From someone powerful and influential

Who could have intervened with the Coast Guard's investigation And allowed Bowler to escape charges The operator of the other boat, by the way Was caught six years later during a drug bust Called Operation Cancer in Florida I wanted to mention that one of the boats that was involved in that Was later implicated in a separate incident So again, we go back to that 1980 incident

What were they doing out there? Well, I think we all know what they were doing out there When you talk about drug smuggling in the 1980s in South Carolina You will hear the term Operation Jackpot mentioned often At the beginning of Reagan's war on drugs A 33-year-old U.S. attorney named Henry McMaster Led one of the first federal drug task forces Using new federal civil forfeiture laws

To combat drug smugglers By seizing assets like homes, cars, money and boats In his critically acclaimed nonfiction deep dive Into the gentlemen smugglers of the 1970s and 80s Jason Ryan describes, quote, A cadre of freewheeling southern pot smugglers Who lived at the crossroads of Miami Vice And a Jimmy Buffett song

The interagency operation included agents from the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Customs, FBI and the DEA While smugglers and kingpins evaded arrest for years The subsequent manhunts across the world Concluded with captures in Antigua, Australia, Miami, New York and San Diego The surviving gentlemen smugglers still gather Occasionally at an event they call the felons ball

Operation Jackpot really cranked up in the After Ronald Reagan was elected And took office in January of 1981 That's when these seizure operations Really started ramping up and again It was more than just seizure operations during Jackpot Because one of the things about Jackpot that was Interesting is that it gave the federal law

Enforcement agencies and their partners Expanded access to go after the property And holdings of anyone that they connected To these various operations And so what you had was all of a sudden Instead of just stopping at the specific Drug conspiracy or alleged conspiracy What they could do was go into other properties

Owned by the people that were involved in these operations And start investigating them and seeing what turned up there And so it represented a major expansion in the war On drugs and at the very tip of that spear In South Carolina was current governor At the time he was the U.S. Attorney Henry McMaster So he played a starring role in this new operation Which again was focused on a lot of the offshore

Alleged offshore drug traffic off the coast of South Carolina So why was South Carolina the perfect place For smuggling drugs? One of the most attractive things About South Carolina at the time was the coast Was largely undeveloped unlike Florida And it features hundreds of tiny barrier islands Perfect hiding spots to hang out until the coast is clear And there's also a lot of places to stash illicit goods

South Carolina law enforcement was not only Ill-equipped to handle any extensive patrol of the coast Some, as you learned earlier Were easily paid to look the other way It's a part of the coast that there's not a lot of development It's a part of the coast that there's not a lot of light It's a part of the coast where there's a lot of easy access From the water to roads

And I think that's one of the things that as this conversation continues We'll probably get into that when we start looking at some of these properties That Alec Murdoch and Barrett Bollware are connected to But yeah, it's just the perfect place to move product To get it quickly off boats, onto vehicles And then up the interstate and to your distribution networks So that brings us to February of 1983 When Barrett T. Bollware and his father were first hit

With federal charges related to drug smuggling According to an article in the Tallahassee Democrat U.S. Customs seized 17 tons of weed And $33,000 from Bollware's stripping boat Yeah, this incident in February of 1983 We start to see, okay, this isn't just speculation You know, after the 1980 incident You could obviously make a case, oh well maybe they were really fishing

Maybe they were doing this, but we get to 1983 In this incident you've got another U.S. Coast Guard cutter called the Ute Encounters a boat called the Janine Ann Which is another shrimping boat that was owned by Bollware And they found on that boat a total of 854 bales of marijuana Now authorities let this boat, the Janine Ann They allowed it to proceed to its destination Which was Buford, South Carolina

Again, right near the St. Helena Sound Once the boat gets there, obviously numerous arrests are made And Bollware was arrested, his father was arrested And both of them were facing charges in connection With that incident in February of 1983 So again, we're not speculating anymore There were warrants actually issued for their arrest Based on probable cause, based on alleged smuggling activity at this point

But something extremely suspicious Happened to the captain of Bollware's boat Who was a star witness in the case against the Bollers The case against the Bollers is proceeding And there's a star witness, his name is Franklin C Branch And again, those of us who follow the Murdoch lore Who have been working at exposing this family, its connections This guy's name has become sort of iconic

We all talk about getting branched If we expose too much or find out too much This is a guy who was scheduled to testify against both the Bollers Father and son But in April of 1983, according to the Tallahassee Democrat This guy's on his way to a bar in St. Joe Beach And he, quote, walked into the path of an oncoming vehicle And to the credit of the local paper down there in Florida

They did say, hey, this wasn't, you know, this didn't happen in a vacuum This guy was one of nine people who was arrested back in February In a marijuana seizure and that he was scheduled to testify in a drug trial So again, to its credit, the Tallahassee Democrat did provide some of that context That's so often missing in mainstream media coverage today But they did talk about it and they did reference that But, you know, bottom line with Branch dead And without his testimony, the feds had to abandon the case that they were pursuing against the Bollers

And in fact, in June of 1983 The federal government dropped all charges against both Bollers These were all federal charges This is one of those stories that's really jaw-dropping when you think about it And it's amazing that the Tallahassee Democrat picked up on this at a time when you couldn't just Google a name It makes me think that the reporter was given a tip that something more was going on here What a coincidence that the guy who was apparently essential to the case against the Bollers Was killed in what seems like a strange incident as he's about to testify in a major drug smuggling case

Hit by an oncoming vehicle The initial reports don't lead to any questions about whether or not that was suspicious Again, this is 1983 It's an era where you could kind of run people over and disappear without there being quite the same level of digital surveillance We didn't have cameras on every street corner then We didn't have GPS and cars back then We didn't have cell phones tracking people from this tower to that tower We didn't have all the same information about who people were when you actually had someone either in custody or being questioned

So again, it was just a different era And again, I'm not necessarily saying that this was foul play or that Branch was murdered But again, a month or two before he's supposed to testify in court on some major charges Two people who are part of a significant smuggling operation Yeah, it's a bit suspicious It's also odd that the loss of one witness would apparently submarine the entire case against the bowlers This again makes us question if there was some sort of powerful intervention happening that saved the bowlers from facing prison time And while we have no proof that Henry McMaster had anything to do with the charges getting dropped

It's not lost on us that he was a U.S. attorney in South Carolina at the time And was the leader of this massive investigation In Henry McMaster, the current governor of South Carolina, still to this day, has a lot of connections to the Murdoch family McMaster, along with the majority of politicians in South Carolina, has stayed mostly quiet in regards to the Murdoch murders and the other crimes attached to it He hasn't once done anything to publicly call out the corruption that has been uncovered Nor has he done anything to put pressure on authorities to solve these crimes In one interview with the state newspaper in September, McMaster called the Murdoch murders one of the saddest stories he's ever heard And that's all he said

Well, I mean, there's a lot of connections as far as that they supported him politically They've supported him financially Obviously, he honored Randolph with the Order of the Palmetto Not long ago, as a matter of fact, that was right before the boat crash, I believe There's some definite connections there And again, the Murdochs also very closely intertwined with that trial lawyer community Obviously, Henry McMaster spent eight years as attorney general in South Carolina, so he's very close with those folks as well It's part of that South Carolina judicial community that they watch out for each other, you know, they try to protect each other

And I think the question that we're having to grapple with as we look into the Operation Jackpot connections to the Murdochs You know, the question we have to ask ourselves is, you know, were they watching out for each other in a way that potentially could have gone much deeper than we know There's been a lot of speculation in recent weeks, well, was U.S. Attorney McMaster targeting certain rivals to the Murdochs Or business associates of the Murdochs And again, haven't seen anything that would support that To some degree, I think you have to look at the 1983 case involving the Bowlers And you want to hope that McMaster and the Feds were really pursuing them And were genuinely trying to get justice in that case

And that they just caught a bad break when Franklin Branch died But again, I think one thing that all of us covering this family have learned Over the last couple years and certainly the last few months is There aren't a lot of coincidences when it comes to these people If you're looking for an innocent explanation, you know, you can be looking a long time Because there's just not a lot of innocence related to anything that these guys have been involved in And we'll be right back So after all of this, after drug trafficking charges against both Bowlers were dropped

The younger of the two was charged again just a few years later, this time in Georgia In the late 1980s, sometime before November 1988 Barrett and his wife were sitting in the back seat of a car she had rented For a trip from North Carolina to Miami and back They were stopped for speeding right near the Georgia and South Carolina line in Chatham County Which is where Savannah is This is not too far from where we live in Beaver County And not too far from Hampton County and Allendale County, where the Bowlers lived at the time

The trooper grew suspicious and asked for permission to search the car The driver said he had no objection to a search And the front seat passenger opened the glove compartment and pressed the button to pop the trunk Where there was 7 pounds of marijuana and 28 grams of cocaine The Bowlers were convicted He was convicted of trafficking cocaine and possession of marijuana And she was convicted of possession of marijuana They tried to appeal the decision on the grounds that only Mrs. Bowler could have granted permission for the search

Since she was the one who had rented the car Their appeal was denied. We're not sure what happened next though We don't know whether the Bowlers served any time for their crimes Or whether they were given one of those quote friendly sentences we talked about earlier So Barrett Bowler and Ellick Murdoch became business partners in the late 1990s The first record our researcher Jen uncovered is from 1998 It shows that a company called Murdoch Holdings and Barrett Bowler purchased a stretch of remote waterfront property From the St. Helena Sound for $115,000

Ellick and Barrett again purchased several more remote waterfront properties Around St. Helena Island in 2003 and 2004 And we will get into those properties in a minute But Ellick also represented Barrett Bowler in a civil case in 2006 against Salcahatchee closings But the Bowlers and the Murdochs weren't just business partners And the other thing that's interesting, we were talking just a moment ago about their business connections Their property connections, their connections as Ellick acting as Barrett Bowler's attorney But they were also very friendly socially

They would go to basketball games together, parties together The couples were often seen together out on the town So it wasn't just a work relationship, they were friends A lot of the old money in Hampton would always look at the Murdochs and the Bowlers together And would wonder, okay, what's going on there? Because pretty much everyone knew what Bowler did for a living Everybody knew what his line of work was down in Hampton So they were kind of surprised to see Ellick publicly associated with him

According to sources close to these families, in private, the Murdochs and the Bowlers were very casual About the family's history with smuggling drugs These sources say that on the wall, a Bowler's living room right above their fish tank Was a photo showing Cuban men on a shrimping boat holding up bags of cocaine Quote They talk about drug smuggling like it was a casual conversation One source close to the family told me, they were proud of it The Murdochs were around for these conversations, according to my sources

And would laugh along with the Bowlers as they chat about their drug smuggling days Keep in mind, this is when Ellick Murdoch was carrying a badge for the 14th Circuit Solicitor, Duffy Stone's office And ostensibly had been sworn to uphold the law The Murdochs and the Bowlers were close like family, they spent holidays together In 2013, the Murdochs purchased Moselle from the Bowlers We have heard that Ellick helped get the Bowlers out of legal trouble And the Murdochs were given Moselle as a thank you gift But we haven't found any legal records to support those rumors

Either way, the Moselle property exchange was interesting It was purchased by, I think, Ellick Murdoch paid Bowlers wife $5 for the property And again, that was an interesting transaction because everyone's kind of like, well, wait a minute, $5? What's the deal with that? But if you look at the actual deed, it talks about the $5 but also the exchange of like-kind replacement property And the total value of that replacement property was $730,000 These sorts of exchanges, they're actually very common And they're entered into by people who want to avoid paying capital gains taxes

And they can do that if they sell a property and then take the proceeds and then buy other properties with it So basically what you do is if you want to sell your property and you don't want to pay taxes on it You just take the proceeds and buy more property with it And a lot of property investors do that So there is a legitimate use for it But again, as we've seen with the Murdochs, legitimate processes can be turned to illegitimate means I mean, these folks are experts at gaming the system and trying to find holes in the system that they can exploit And there's something else about Moselle that we should talk about

The property had a landing strip I have seen video of a small plane landing at Moselle in 2018 According to my sources, the Murdochs would casually talk about how the landing strip used to be used for smuggling drugs Very close to where Paul and Maggie Murdoch's bodies were found last June There's a large shed next to the dog cages The shed has monstrous doors that were big enough to fit a plane in Our researcher at Fitznews found that Barathee Bollware obtained his pilot's license in 1997 He purchased Moselle in 2000 and apparently owned a plane up until he sold Moselle to the Murdochs in 2013

As we're finding out more about these criminal ties to the Murdoch family And as we're looking into one of the biggest questions in this case Which is not only where the money went, but why Eleg Murdoch allegedly stole it We're reminded of these passages in Jason Ryan's book, Jackpot People heavily involved in the drug trade, particularly on the importation side Have a lot of overhead expenses Purchase of boats, airplanes, paying vessel captains and offloaders Purchase and rental of stash houses, attorney's fees, etc

Even so, if they are even mildly successful smugglers They stand to make a lot of money Critical to every operation was finding an isolated spot to unload the drugs The best sites featured a dock close to the ocean, the absence of neighbors, and proximity to major highways I think the big question of all this, of all these stories that we're covering is to what end We talk about that with regard to the money, where's the money going We talk about that with the motivations for these crimes, like why were Maggie and Paul killed We talk about it with the death of Randolph Murdoch

The timing there, right after the Moselle homicides, I mean, it all just... Nothing adds up. Nothing adds up And another thing that just doesn't add up Like we said, Eleg and Barrett were business partners But usually, businesses try to make money Businesses that invest in property usually try to sell them at a profit Barrett and Eleg bought a lot of properties together, but they sat on them Even through major real estate booms in Beaver County

In an upcoming episode, we'll take you through the land that they purchased together And why each one raises even more questions about what Eleg Murdoch was up to before his wife and son were murdered We will also talk about something that even shocked me And I rarely get shocked anymore The jellyfish gambit But when you start looking at how close these two families were, again, it's just hard to avoid the connection there And once you start looking into Bowler's past and his family's past And you start looking at the sort of operations that they were clearly mixed up in

You know, it just raises so many more questions about what were the Murdochs up to Did those other activities, again, whatever they were, I don't know, were they running drugs, were they laundering money? Again, we don't know at this point, but they were clearly into something And the question is, was that something they were into, did it play a part in some of these crimes that we're all covering right now? If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments below Before we go, I want to take a moment and thank all of you who completed our recent survey There is still time to go to murdochmurderspodcast.com For a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card

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