Murdaugh Murders Podcast - MMP Remastered #70 - More Lies and Alibis: What We’re Learning Before The Double Homicide Trial

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey y'all, it's Mandy Matney, and this is another remastered episode of the Murdoch Murdoch's podcast, episode 70. More Lies and Alibis, what we are learning before the double homicide trial. I remember the frustration of watching Ehrlich Murdoch's defense team manipulate the media narrative in real time. When those early stories appeared in outlets like the Wall Street Journal in Good Morning America, presenting Elyke's quote-unquote iron-clad alibi. I felt this sinking feeling in my stomach. These were respected national publications and they were essentially amplifying

Starting point is 00:00:43 what seemed to be like carefully crafted misinformation from the Murdoch camp. What struck me most was how the alibi kept shifting like sand. First, Elyke was at the hospital with his dying father. Then he was taking a nap at Moselle. Each version seemed designed to stay one step ahead of what investigators were discovering. And Dick Arputlian and Jim Griffin knew exactly what they were doing. Releasing complex, confusing motions right before the holidays when newsrooms were understaffed,

Starting point is 00:01:15 ensuring minimal scrutiny of their claims. Did their media campaign work? Absolutely. At least initially. Social media exploded with theories about groundskeepers and boat crash revenge. People were confused about the evidence, which was exactly the point. Seeds of doubt were being planted everywhere. But here is what we know now.

Starting point is 00:01:38 After the trial and Elex conviction, those shifting alibis, those carefully timed media leaks, those accusations about destroyed evidence, they were all a part of a desperate defense strategy that ultimately failed. The jury saw through it. The evidence was overwhelming. and no amount of media manipulation could change that. This episode taught me something crucial about covering high-profile cases. Context and credibility matter more than speed. We had to be patient, dig deeper than the headlines,

Starting point is 00:02:12 and trust that the truth would eventually emerge. And it did. I don't know how many times Dick and Jim, Jim are going to trick the media before trial. But I know that Ellick Murdoch's two defense attorneys have been working hard to plant seeds of doubt in the public for the last month. However, the more we look at the totality of evidence, the more convinced we are that our sources have been right all along. My name is Mandy Matney. I have been covering the Murdoch case for nearly four years now. This is the Murdoch murders podcast produced by my husband, David Moses, and written

Starting point is 00:03:03 with Liz Farrell. trial coverage is over, and we are back to regular programming this week. We really appreciate all of your encouragement and patience these last few weeks. At the end of this episode, stay tuned to a special fan shoutout. I wanted to do something weekly to show our appreciation for the fans who engage with us on social media and show y'all how much we appreciate you. So while most of the media was focused on Lafitte coverage in the last few weeks, And that very big moment of one of Ehrlich Murdoch's accomplices being convicted,

Starting point is 00:04:03 Dick and Jim have been very busy on their distraction game, leading up to Elyke Murdoch's January trial date, which is going to be here in no time, by the way. So aside from the revelations we heard a trial for the first time, two big things have happened in the murder case in the last week that we need to talk about today. Number 1. A few weeks ago, Dick and Jim filed a notice of alibi defense, basically stating that ELEC wasn't at Moselle when the murders were committed.

Starting point is 00:04:38 And then they gave a few more details of what Ehrlich was up to that night. In the second big thing. Two days after that motion, on the eve of Thanksgiving, actually, as the rest of the world was stuffing their turkeys and not worried about Elyke Murdoch in his second beef stick holiday in jail. Dick and Jim filed a whopper of a motion. Ninety-six pages asking the court to, quote, exclude false testimony about evidence destroyed by the state, end quote. That's what they alleged in the title. A few days after that, Dick and Jim filed another motion, clarifying what they meant by destroyed, which is likely not at all what the public's idea of what destroyed was. And they further accused sled of photoshopping evidence

Starting point is 00:05:30 related to blood spatter. And before you have a heart attack about the things I just said, take a deep breath and remember that A, Dick and Jim both lost their credibility in this case a long time ago. And B, nothing in this case is simple. So buckle up and let's get into it. Let's start with this alibi. So, on the Thursday before Thanksgiving, while Elyke Murdoch's co-conspirator, Russell Lafitte, was living his last few days as a presumed innocent man, at least federally, Dick and Jim finally filed their formal notice of what Ehrlich was up to during the window in which Crayton Waters says the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdoch occurred.

Starting point is 00:06:19 This was a big deal, especially considering how many different versions of this alibi, we have heard from Dick and Jim and other members of the Murdoch camp over the past year and half. And also because of how hard Dick and Jim fought the state on having to provide an alibi in the first place. This means that they cannot change this story again. And that's probably going to be really hard for them because Dick and Jim really seem to love a shifting narrative. As evidenced by their Thanksgiving Eve motion, which we'll get to obviously. But first, we want to revisit the history of this alibi. so you can see just how thin the ice is that Ehrlich is standing on.

Starting point is 00:07:00 In September, the state asked Ehrlich to provide his alibi for the time of the murderers. That is, if Ehrlich was planning to use an alibi defense in his case, which, as it turns out, he apparently is. A quick note about an alibi defense. The burden of proof is still on the state, meaning they have to prove to the jury that Ehrlich did this beyond a reasonable doubt. ELEC doesn't have to prove his alibi is true, but the state is allowed by the rules of criminal procedure to require the defense to tell them that they will be raising an alibi defense during trial. This gives the prosecution the ability to fact-check that alibi and tell the jury about any holes they found in it. So let's think about that for a second.

Starting point is 00:07:45 Elek Murdoch, the man who got to the point he was at in life before the murders, in large part by being able to say something is true and just have everyone around him make. that thing be true for his benefit and his protection is going to rely on something that can be fact-checked to exonerate him okay six weeks after the state asked for notice of an alibi defense not 10 days after the request as required by the rules of criminal procedure Dick and Jim filed a motion asking Judge Newman to strike the state's request because get this the state didn't tell Dick and Jim when and where these so-called murders

Starting point is 00:08:24 heard. There are literally listeners of this podcast in Australia, in Ireland, and Canada, who could have told them this information in their sleep. As a reminder, here's Dick Harputtlyan arguing that motion on October 20th. One of those things is, what's your alibi? Now, I've been doing this four decades, probably three decades under Rule 5, and when a prosecutor, I did the job for 12 years, serves that reciprocal discovery, they say, alibi, for such and such a date and such and such a time. The states, we've asked them for that. They continue to not give that to us.

Starting point is 00:09:09 And in their response, they filed last night, they said, well, you know, if you look at the discovery, if the defense attorneys look at the discovery, they'll know it's between X and Y. well two things one we're supposed to look for that that single straw in the terabyte of data that tells us what what time they say these homicides these homicides were committed the coroner in his his death certificate says 9 o'clock are they relying on that are they are they is it broader than that is it plus or minus five or 10 minutes we don't know so at the minimum they're playing a game here where they're refusing to do what the, and I can read the rule to

Starting point is 00:09:56 your honor, but you know what it says. It says, must give us a time and a date. They've not done that and still in their motion yesterday, they refused to do that. That's one issue. And here is Creighton Waters' epic response to that. But that information is available to the defense. The indictments themselves specify that Alec Murdoch killed his wife and son on June 7th, 2021 in Colleton County. It's extremely well-known, maybe one of the most well-known facts in the state that that occurred at the property at Moselle. I've had conversations with Mr. Griffin in which I note that there is a video that shows Alec present at the scene, despite his denials, with Maggie and Paul at 8.44 p.m. not long before their phone ceasing meaningful activity, and it's about 9.06 p.m. when his car fires up and he drives over to Almeda.

Starting point is 00:10:51 So we've made that clear to the defense. And they, of course, know the 911 call turned occurred at 10.06 p.m. They know this. This is a manufactured issue to try to act like that they don't have this information without they do. So what is the deal here? Are Dick and Jim so by the book that they felt obligated to call out a technical legal flaw in the paperwork? There's no way they could have thought that Judge Newman was going to. be like, you're right. Forget about that pesky request from the Attorney General's office.

Starting point is 00:11:23 As we all know, Judge Newman was predictably, like, just tell them the time of the murders Creighton in the same tired way parents are like, just give your brother his ball back, please. Maybe the issue was that Dick and Jim needed to stall for some extra time to really polish up Alex's official story of how he didn't murder his family that night. Let's go through that version now. Here is David reading from Alex's notice of an alibi defense. Defendant Richard Alexander, Alex Murdoch was not present at the time of the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son Paul. Because he was not present, Murdoch does not know the time the murders were committed. Murdoch was on the Moselle property from sometime prior to 8.30 p.m. on June 7th, 2021, until a few minutes after 9 p.m., when he left to visit his mother at 1115 Almeida Place, Varnville, South Carolina.

Starting point is 00:12:27 Maggie and Paul were still alive the last time he saw them before leaving for Almeida. Real quick, people have pointed out how Dick and Jim misspelled Moselle in their filing because they used a Z instead of an S. I know this is going to be hard for people to believe, but Moselle is sometimes spelled both ways. People go back and forth between an S and a Z, even in the official real estate records. And if you can't tell, by the way,

Starting point is 00:12:57 everyone pronounces ELEC, things really aren't as they appear down here. Other people have pointed out that 115 Almeda place in Varnville, also called Almeida, is not even on the map. Almeida is a section of Varnville. Elyke's parents, Randolph and Libby Murdoch, lived right at the junction of U.S. 278 and Yemisee Highway. Their house was often referred to simply as Almeida. Remember in August when Sled had divers searching for something in the creek in Varnville?

Starting point is 00:13:30 That is very close to where they lived. But the biggest thing with the notice of alibi defense is that Elyke Murdoch is now officially saying he was at Moselle that evening. And according to Creighton during that October hearing, Elyke originally told investigators that he was not at Moselle and he had not seen Maggie and Paul that night until he arrived home to find them dead. Think of that original story as a giant lump of clay. Over the next 17 months, pieces of that clay have gotten removed and reshaped as the facts have rolled in from law enforcement. Dick and Jim have now formed that lump of clay into a tiny statue of a faceless killer that is not Ellic Murdoch.

Starting point is 00:14:21 The first major reshaping of that clay came three months after the murders. And we'll be right back. news reports of Ellick's whereabouts at the time of the murders referred to an unknown source who called Ellick's alibi Ironclad. The story that emerged was Ehrlich had been at the hospital in Savannah with his father who was dying. And then 10 days after the murders, Good Morning America interviewed Randy and John Marvin Murdoch and reported that Ehrlich had taken their father to the hospital the day of the

Starting point is 00:15:06 killings in that he had checked in on his mother before returning to Moselle, where he found Paul and Maggie. But by September 2021, a slightly updated alibi made its way into a report from the Wall Street Journal. Here is David, again reading from that story. Alec Murdoch was with his father at the hospital. According to a person close to the family, he came back to Moselle, took a nap, and when he awoke, he left to check on his mother who suffers from dementia. He didn't see Maggie and Paul before he left, according to the person. So now Ehrlich is going from the hospital, to Moselle for a little snooze, to Almeda to check on his mom, to Moselle again where he discovered the bodies. This story has met a number of challenging

Starting point is 00:15:59 facts over the past year. First, we reported in April 22 that Maggie had texted her sister and a few other people to say that Elyke was insisting that she'd drive to Moselle that evening so they both could drive together to Savannah to visit Randolph. This reportedly seems suspicious to Maggie, possibly because driving to Moselle and then driving to Savannah made it a longer drive for her all around. Also, she reportedly got her nails done that evening on the way to Moselle. That's a strange thing for a person to do on the way to see an imminently dying family member, but okay, benefit of the doubt. The issue is that a man can't be in two places at once, right?

Starting point is 00:16:39 That is the core purpose of an alibi. If Ehrlich had told investigators he was never at Moselle before the murders, well, Maggie's text messages would now be contradicting that notion. Of course, it's not inconceivable that Ehrlich could have been at the hospital and then driven home to get Maggie to bring her back with him, maybe in one final display of marital bliss for the benefit of his father. And though it would have been pretty late to have been driving back to Savannah, time and distance might not have been factors for him as his father lay dying. The bigger problem for Ehrlich was always this, though.

Starting point is 00:17:14 The hospital alibi would have left a digital footprint, right? Not only on the hospital security footage, but on Ehrlich's phone and the GPS of his suburban. If he had been at the hospital with his father before finding their bodies, then technology would easily support that alibi. Now, to be clear, the state is only asking for what Ellick was doing between 8.30 p.m. and 10.06 p.m. on June 7th, 2021, meaning the hospital part of the alibi wouldn't have been included in their notice. But, as it turns out, the hospital part of the alibi, dropped off altogether sometime between the Wall Street Journal article in September 2021. And whenever Jim Griffin filmed an interview with Fox Carolina, which aired in October 2021, ELEC went from being at the hospital to visit his dad to now calling the hospital to talk to his dad. Here's a clip from that interview with reporter Cody Alcorn. I can assure you that we have Alex whereabouts and accounted for completely during that period of time. That night, he's sitting on the bedside of his mother at her house when the coroner says these murders have.

Starting point is 00:18:31 She has dementia. There's a house sitter, a caregiver, round-the-clock care, and they're watching a game show television. On the way over, he spoke to his friends and communicated about business. And he called his dad who was in the hospital. He didn't do it. Click note. Jim sure did seem to know when the murders occurred during this interview, huh? I guess he'd forgotten about that between October 2021 when this aired and this aired and when Crayton Waters wanted ELEC's official alibi in September of this past year. And Dick and Jim were indignantly like, how can we provide that to you when we have no idea when the murders happened?

Starting point is 00:19:12 One thing Jim was consistent about after this interview, though, was the elimination of the hospital alibi, which we saw again in the HBO Max documentary. Before I get into that, I have to note, technology can take time to tell its story. Law enforcement in South Carolina routinely has had problems with getting Savannah hospitals to cooperate with them on providing evidence that might violate HIPAA in some way.

Starting point is 00:19:37 For instance, if SLED subpoenaed for the security footage and received it, it would not have been out of the question for that to have taken weeks, maybe even months. So, could this be why a Moselle nap was introduced to the story by September? This is just pure speculation. We obviously won't know until the trial when Ehrlich might have told SLED about the alleged nap,

Starting point is 00:19:58 but it's still a question worth asking. Before the Wall Street Journal piece, the public was under the impression that Ehrlich had a quote-unquote iron-clad alibi. And iron-clad alibis are usually the kind that has some sort of indisputable evidence to accompany them, like video footage. Let's say he was at the hospital. Did the video show him leaving earlier and now he needed to explain that? Or was it his phone that showed him going from Savannah to Moselle? Or, back to that HBO Max documentary, was Ehrlich ever at the hospital that day in the first? first place. Like I said, it's not clear when Jim recorded his segment for HBO Max's

Starting point is 00:20:36 low country, the Murdoch Dynasty, but it's a doozy. It completely eliminated the hospital trip from the alibi and replaced it with, quote-unquote, work. So, according to our sources, it was around April 22 when Paul Murdoch's phone was finally cracked by investigators. On Paul's phone, they found a video that had been taken at 8.44 p.m., the night of the murders, by the dog, that not only showed that Ehrlich had been at Moselle that night, he had seen Paul and Maggie right before they were killed. And I mean, mere minutes before. In this HBO interview, Jim said that Ehrlich had come home from work around 6.30 p.m. June 7th and met up with Paul. So again, no longer is Elyke coming to Moselle from the hospital in Savannah. He's coming from work,

Starting point is 00:21:21 which is interesting because just three weeks ago, a brand new fact emerged about what June 7th, 2021 was like for Ehrlich Murdoch before the murders. During Russell Lafitte's federal trial, we learned that PMPED's chief financial officer had confronted Ehrlich earlier on the day of June 7th, reportedly sometime that morning, about nearly $1 million missing from the firm, and in the middle of that confrontation, Ehrlich had taken a phone call and told the CFO that his father had been put on hospice and that he had to leave right then. So, obviously, this now calls into question whether Ehrlich was coming home from work at 6.30 p.m. that day, given that it doesn't seem like he was there past the confrontation. In the HBO Max interview, Griffin went on to say that

Starting point is 00:22:07 Paul and Ehrlich rode around the field at Moselle to inspect the property, then met Maggie and had dinner. It's not clear who cooked this meal. But also, earlier reports from sources close to the investigation had Paul eating dinner at his uncle's house after working at his uncle's equipment rental business an hour away outside Bluffton. So maybe there were two dinners, I don't know. After dinner, Griffin said, Maggie left the house to go run the dogs, and Paul left the house because, quote, Paul never stayed inside. Now, Paul loved the outdoors.

Starting point is 00:22:40 That is one of the first things people who loved him will tell you about him, but what an odd thing to say. Also, Paul was allegedly at Moselle that night to check on his friend's dog who was at the kennels recovering from an injury. Why wasn't Paul running the dogs? Anyway, it was at this point that Griffin said Ehrlich laid down to watch TV and allegedly fell asleep on the couch, again, something that was reported in the Wall Street Journal in September 2021 by an unnamed source.

Starting point is 00:23:07 Next, Griffin said. Ehrlich woke up at 9 p.m. and decided he wanted to go check on his mother. He texted Paul and Maggie, but neither answered him. Now, Griffin noted in this HBO interview that he had all of the family's phone records, so there's no reason to doubt that this happened, that Elyleck. had texted Maggie and Paul at 9 p.m. But again, this interview was definitely filmed before October 2022 when Craton Waters told Judge Newman that all meaningful activity on Maggie's and Paul's phones had stopped at 9 p.m. Meaning, at the time of this interview, Griffin might not

Starting point is 00:23:43 have realized that the state believes it has proof that Maggie and Paul were dead by the time Ehrlich had texted them to say he was going to his mother's house and would be right back. Would someone who killed people text those same people after killing them to demonstrate he thought they were alive at the time? I'm sure it happens all the time. Doesn't mean it happened here, but the fact that he might have texted them at that time is meaningless. Okay. Next, Griffin told HBO Max that Ehrlich was on his phone starting at 9.03 p.m. as he drove the 16 minutes to Almeda.

Starting point is 00:24:19 At 9.21 p.m., Elyke called his mother's house phone to ask the nursing e. aide to let him in the house. Ehrlich then sat on his mother's bed, showing no signs of stress, according to Griffin, and stayed there for 20 minutes. When he left the house, Ehrlich got back on the phone and was, quote, chatting it up with his friends.

Starting point is 00:24:38 Then, according to Griffin, Ehrlich got back to Moselle a little after 10 p.m., saw that the house was still locked up, and then went down to the kennels where he found Maggie and Paul dead. This, Griffin said, could have been the act of some, quote, delusional vigilante. That's how he pronounced it. This means that whenever this interview was filmed,

Starting point is 00:25:00 the Murdoch team was still insinuating the murders were an act of revenge, which was the Murdoch party line in the minutes and days after the murders, when they were liberally telling people this had something to do with the boat crash. Now, let's talk about those phone calls that Alec made to and from Almeda. Here's David again with the rest of the notice of alibi that Jim and Dick filed the week before Thanksgiving. During the drive to Almeida, Murdoch had cell phone conversations with his son Buster, his brother John Marvin Murdoch, his sister-in-law, Liz Murdoch, Chris Wilson, and C.B. Rowe. Murdoch arrived at Al-Mada at approximately 9.20 p.m.

Starting point is 00:25:41 He visited with his mother, Elizabeth, Libby Murdoch, and a nurse's aide, Michelle Shelley Smith. Marduk stayed with his mother until approximately 9.45 p.m. and then returned to Moselle, arriving at approximately 10 p.m. On the return trip to Moselle, Murdoch spoke with Chris Wilson via cell phone. Marduk discovered Maggie and Paul's bodies at approximately 10.05 p.m. First, I want to note that everything in this alibi is likely provable, meaning that when Craton Waters goes to check phone records and asks Shelley Smith, When she saw Ehrlich that night, he will likely find that all of that checks out. But here is the problem for Ehrlich.

Starting point is 00:26:26 When Dick and Jim fought the state on its effort to get a notice of alibi earlier this fall, like we said, Judge Newman ordered Creighton to give Dick and Jim a time frame for the murders. And Creighton did that. He said the murders occurred sometime between 8.30 and 10.06 p.m. Alex's alibi says he was at Moselle from 8.30 until a little after 9 p.m. It doesn't say that he called anyone during that time. It also doesn't say that anyone witnessed him being there. It just says he was there, which we already knew he was,

Starting point is 00:27:04 because the video showed him at the kennels at 8.44 p.m. We also know that Maggie and Paul stopped using their phones in any way, at 9 p.m. when Elick was, by his own admission, still at Moselle. So let's rewind for a bit before getting into the calls. First, let's revisit that Fox Carolina interview with Jim in October 21. Remember this part? On the way over, he spoke to his friends and communicated about business, and he called his dad who was in the hospital. And here is David again, reciting the official alibi notice, again, which was filed in November 22, more than a year after that Fox Carolina interview. During the drive to Almeida, Murdoch had cell phone

Starting point is 00:27:58 conversations with his son Buster, his brother John Marvin Murdoch, his sister-in-law, Liz Murdoch, Chris Wilson, and C.B. Roe. On the return trip to Mosel, Murdoch spoke with Chris Wilson via cell phone. Marduk discovered Maggie and Paul's bodies at approximately 10.05 p.m. No Randolph, no call to the hospital. Now, starting with the morning after the murders, right away, two stories emerged apparently from the Murdoch camp. One of those stories was that these murders were acts of vengeance by someone connected to either the Boch Crash or Stephen Smith's murder. It should be noted that none of our sources, nor anyone we knew in Hampton, bought into that theory at all. The second theory that appeared to be coming from the Murdoch camp is that there was a disgruntled groundskeeper out there,

Starting point is 00:28:57 someone at whom Paul had apparently yelled at for how he had incorrectly seated the daffodils or daisies at Moselle. This is a dove hunting thing, apparently. And that is something we heard at the time. Now that groundskeeper we were told at the time was a man named C.B. Rowe, who was a former teacher at Paul's private high school in Ridgeland, South Carolina. Rowe has a checkered criminal history of his own that I won't get into right now. Now a few things. The first of which is Ehrlich apparently called C.B. Rowe the Night of the Murders, which certainly raises many red flags. If Ehrlich did indeed kill Maggie and Paul, like the state says he did,

Starting point is 00:29:45 why was Roe on his call list that night? What was Elyke's move there? The second is this. Remember the motions Dick and Jim filed this past fall about the polygraph that Curtis Eddie Smith took? Remember the story that Eddie had given to Sled about Maggie and C.B. Rowe? Here is David, reading from Eddie Smith's polygraph transcript. I heard that Maggie had a thing going on with the groundskeeper, which I never met him, I don't know his name.

Starting point is 00:30:18 And Paul went down into one of the barns and caught him and got upset. And he went and got his rifle, and he was hollering and screaming, his mama was running, and she fell down and she got up. He shot her in the ass. And the bullet come out the top of her head. And then he turned to the groundskeeper guy. But the groundskeeper already went to his truck and got a shot. As Crayton Waters pointed out in his response to this motion, Dick and Jim knew this story wasn't completely true, but they included it anyways just to get it in the headlines.

Starting point is 00:30:54 So this groundskeeper that Eddie was talking about is presumably C.B. Rowe, the guy we now know that Ellick called or tried to call on that drive to his mother's house the night of the murders. But here is what's interesting. A few months ago, before Ehrlich was charged with murder, a source close to the Murdox told me an interesting story. The source said that Ehrlich was telling people close to him that he was worried about a groundskeeper, likely C.B. Rowe, having issues and that Paul and the worker were fighting

Starting point is 00:31:30 and that Paul had crossed a line with this guy, and the situation was escalating. Now, I have only heard this story from one source, who seems to be reliable and whose credentials do check out, but typically, with a story like this one, I want to hear it from multiple people before reporting it. This story, which to be clear, is something that I've heard but have not confirmed for the record, has stuck with me for a long time, because it made me wonder if ELEC was planning this for a while and planning this enough to feel the need to plant a false suspect in other people's minds. We also know now that PMPED was on to Ehrlich's financial schemes weeks before the murders and the walls were really closing in on him.

Starting point is 00:32:21 So this raises a lot of questions. The main one is this. When Ehrlich called C.B. Rowe that night was he trying to put a question. call on the record to fit a future narrative surrounding the circumstances of the murders. Was the call to C. B. Rowe a placeholder? Obviously, we don't want to speculate too much there, but it's a question worth asking as these pieces of the puzzle are falling together. C. B. Rowe also appeared in the most recent motion from Dick and Jim, which we will talk about. As you can see, though, ELEC made a lot of phone calls in that small window of time.

Starting point is 00:33:01 Two of those calls were to Chris Wilson, also known as the attorney from Bamberg County. Chris is who flew with Ehrlich and Corey Fleming on a private plane to the College World Series in 2012, which Corey apparently paid for using money they allegedly stole from Pamela Pinkney. Ellick, Corey, and Chris were all close friends in law school and remained close friends up until 2021. And for the record, Wilson says he didn't know that flight was being paid for with stolen money, if that matters. Anyways, Chris is also the lawyer that at ELEC's direction, directly paid ELEC $792,000 in split fees that were supposed to have gone to PMPED. And that is apparently what started PMPED's investigation into ELEC.

Starting point is 00:33:55 In Russell Lafitte's federal trial, we not only learned that PMPED confronted ELEC about the missing fee from Chris Wilson on the day of the murders, we learned that PMPED had given ELEC an ultimatum of sorts. In May, when the law firm first discovered the apparent theft, they had trouble getting in touch with Chris to verify what his office had told. whole PMPED, which is that the money had been given to ELEC instead of the firm because ELEC was trying to hide assets from the Beach family. When the firm had asked ELEC about this money, he said that ELEC was holding it in an escrow

Starting point is 00:34:36 account and that he had not been paid that money, which apparently was a lie. But according to the CFO's testimony, Chris had verbally backed ELEC's story. By the day of the murders, though, it sounds like PMPED was over it. The PMPED wanted actual proof that that money was being held in escrow, like Ehrlich and Chris were saying. So the question is, what did Chris and Ehrlich talk about that night? Multiple times. We keep hearing that nothing seemed wrong during these phone calls, that Elyke was being

Starting point is 00:35:16 easy-brazy Elyke making a list of phone calls. on his cheery way to visit his mother. Hard to imagine Elick having an easy, breezy chat with the man who was serving as his alibi, which seemed to be a major pickle for him, right? And we will be right back. Now let's talk about this Thanksgiving Eve motion, the one that was sent

Starting point is 00:35:49 not even 24 hours after Russell Lafitte was found guilty on all six federal counts against him. And the newest motion, which was filed Monday afternoon, Dick and Jim have been busy. Let's start by saying something I think we all can agree on. This was not a good Thanksgiving for Ehrlich and his buddies. Russell's verdict sent a very strong message from the federal justice system. to the good old boys in Ellick Murdoch's orbit. That message was we are not playing around here. Something tells us that Russell's verdict was also very inspirational for the state's

Starting point is 00:36:33 Attorney General's office. That verdict gives a lot of much-needed forward momentum in the state's cases against Ehrlich and everyone else going into next year. And Dick and Jim obviously want to put a break on that momentum as much. much as possible. What better way to do that than to accuse the state of lying and destroying evidence and insinuating that they actually photoshopped evidence. Like we said, these motions, much like Eddie Smith's polygraph motion in October, seem like they were designed purely to mislead the public through headlines. And like we said, it worked, at least in part. And here is why.

Starting point is 00:37:18 Dick Harputlian is a seasoned old-school media guy. Sending reporters a 96-page motion on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving when they know the already sparsely staffed newsrooms are even more bare bones is a very obvious strategy. They wanted the least amount of critical thought being applied to that report. Dick and Jim, the same two guys who wanted Judge Newman, to issue a gag order this past summer, are full on using the media to plant seeds of doubt in the mind of their potential jury before January.

Starting point is 00:38:00 The second motion, which is accusing the state of altering photos of Ellick's bloodstained shirt and demanding they provide them with Photoshop files, also seems to contradict the first motion in a few ways, which we will get into. This is all to say. We think we're going to be seeing a lot of this back and forth over the next few months. As former print journalist, we know that most people consume their media through social media. And the way they consume news is largely through the headline only and through other people sharing that story and commenting on it. Meaning a lot of people aren't reading the full story. Never mind the actual motion, especially not a 96-page motion.

Starting point is 00:38:52 Here's David reading some of the headlines that emerge from the release of that motion, conveniently at a time where people could discuss this around the Thanksgiving table last week. From the New York Post, shirt Alex Murdoch wore the night his wife and son were murdered destroyed, colon, defense. From Fox News, Alex Murdoch's shirt worn on night of white. wife's son's murders was destroyed by state, defense says. From ABC News, Murdoch murders, colon, Alec Murdoch's attorneys say investigators manipulated, comma, destroyed evidence.

Starting point is 00:39:30 From the Charleston Post and Courier, Murdoch murder case attorneys, colon, sled manipulated expert on spatter evidence. All the headlines were a variation of that. that. Dick and Jim wanted to put up a message that Elek was being set up by SLED from the beginning. And they sure did get that message out there, but we took a closer look at that motion, and, as you might expect, we have some problems with it. But also, we both think that public defenders everywhere need to sit up and take notice. They could literally lift entire passages from these motions and apply them in their own cases. We've identified five major elements that Dick and Jim typically rely on in an Alec Murdoch murder motion. The first is careful phrasing. They're really good at

Starting point is 00:40:23 producing sentences that are technically true in and of themselves, but that are completely absent of the inconvenient context, context that when it's there could change the truthfulness of what they're saying or its favorability toward ELEC. An example of that is the phrase destroy evidence. They know that when people hear that phrase, they're picturing sled agents having a big old burn party with evidence that could allegedly exonerate Ehrlich. But what they mean is this. They want to analyze Elyke's shirt themselves with their own experts. They don't want to analyze the photos of the microscopic spatter pattern or rely on the reports that Sled and their experts put together. They want the actual shirt. But here's the problem. This was a double homicide in which the

Starting point is 00:41:09 husband, the man who found the bodies, was the initial person of interest. His shirt could tell investigators the story of what did or did not happen in his presence. So SLED first tested the shirt for the presence of blood and human tissue, including the smallest of stains, the kind you can't necessarily see with the naked eye. Those tests caused the shirt to change color. Then the shirt got cut up into fragments for DNA and other analysis. The strips of fabric were also analyzed for the shape of stains that were on them. That is how Sled, quote unquote, destroyed evidence. Dick and Jim used the word destroyed. Investigators might use the word consumed, as in the stained parts of the short were consumed by the forensic testing. In their second motion, Dick and Jim then make an

Starting point is 00:41:54 argument that forces them to acknowledge this hyperbole, which we'll explain it in the second. Remember in August and October when Dick and Jim filed motions to compel, claiming the state was withholding evidence from them? And remember how Crankton was like, you literally just asked for this yesterday. We're not required to give it to you, but we're gathering up the information now, so what are you doing here? Again, Judge Newman has been like, just give your brother the ball, Creighton. The state has never been sanctioned for withholding evidence. There's never been an indication that they've actually been withholding evidence. Dick and Jim raised the ruckus, and the judge is always like, sounds like they're giving it to you, so we're good here. But that

Starting point is 00:42:34 hasn't stopped Dick and Jim from recasting those hearings as, quote, the times we had to go to court and fight you to get our evidence. Technically true, but also very much absent of context. The second element of an Alec Murdoch murder motion is omission. What they're not telling us is equally as important as what they are telling us. Unfortunately for them, but unfortunately for us, we don't know what they're not telling us yet. We don't always know what they're leaving out, but we are sure. Creighton Waters will have a response to these motions sometime soon, and if his past responses are any indication, he will be giving them a nice, healthy dose of reality. For an example of how Dick and Jim use omission, let's go back to that Eddie Smith story about the murders and the groundskeeper.

Starting point is 00:43:36 Yes, it's true that Eddie told Sled that Maggie might have been having an affair with a groundskeeper. But the part that Dick and Jim left out was where Sled found Eddie's account of Maggie and Paul's murders to be completely untrue. Recounting this story and the motion didn't make the story true, but it sure did get people on social media wondering if Maggie was having an affair before the murders. And it sure did get people spreading unfounded speculation in a reckless way. And that was the point. Another way that they omit information is by using the tried and true method of redaction. They redacted the heck out of a lot of the bloodstains expert reports, leaving only small slivers of information that they wanted out there,

Starting point is 00:44:30 such as the stains on the white t-shirt are consistent with transfers and not back spatter from a bullet wound. Their claim in this motion is that the bloodstains expert's initial draft said that there was no indication of back spatter and that in the expert's final report, the experts said that he and five other experts have agreed that there were over a hundred areas of spatter that could not have come from anything other than being near a person getting wounded in a high-velocity impact situation. this shows that SLED pressured the expert to change his opinion by lying to the expert. That's right, they're accusing SLED, and they're accusing a man in Oklahoma whose income relies on providing sound expert advice and murder trials of changing his opinion on a whim.

Starting point is 00:45:29 Also, they insinuated that because SLED had destroyed the shirt, the bloodstained expert came to his conclusions solely based on photographs. But here's what that motion doesn't say. The sled agents physically took the shirt to Oklahoma for the bloodstained expert to look at. But never fear Dick and Jim are here to twist that inconvenient fact up into a knot. In their second motion, Dick and Jim take issue

Starting point is 00:46:01 with the fact that two sled agents flew to Oklahoma with the shirt to ensure the sanctity of the chain of custody instead of putting it in the U.S. mail. We assume that Sled flew to Oklahoma because they knew had they had mailed the stained shirt, Dick and Jim would have likely used that fact to help sowed out in the mind of jurors, even though it would have been perfectly acceptable for them to mail it. Also, not mention in these motions, When the bloodstained expert, quote-unquote, changed his mind, was he talking about the same strips of fabric,

Starting point is 00:46:40 or two different strips of fabric? We don't know because of redaction. The third element you'll find in an Ellic murder motion is this. Absolute chaos. Dick and Jim's Thanksgiving Eve motion is basically a game of telephone, combined with shoots and ladders, but played on a twister mat. it's full of dates and highly technical, fully esoteric information. Their second motion is more like hopscotch and that it's a series of conclusions that they have

Starting point is 00:47:09 jumped to. They've arrived at the theory that SLED destroyed evidence and lied to the expert through a compilation of discordant facts like so-and-so met on such-and-such date and there was a PowerPoint presentation, juxtaposed next to surprise endings like, and then the blood expert changed his opinion. In the second motion, they are literally using the fact that the two Slicelless agents traveled to Oklahoma as evidence that they must of course the expert while there. They want people to get twisted up in the difficult to understand details and become so confused by the data that they walk away not knowing what happened but are readily able to

Starting point is 00:47:45 misstate the facts in a way that helps Ehrlich. Now, the fourth element of an Alex Murdoch murder motion is to bombard us with exhibits. They love a good out-of-context photo, such as the one of cousin Eddie sitting for his polygraph and the zoomed-in photo of the polygrapher's laptop that Dick and Jim just decided to call the moment Eddie lied about the murders. The exhibits of the Thanksgiving Eve motion included several photographs of the t-shirt and about 40 pages of DNA analysis complete with hypotheses the analyst tested. Meaning, there is literally a section of analysis that hypothesized a mix of DNA as belonging to Maggie and CB Row together. And one hypothesis that Connor Cook was a contributor, which doesn't mean anything. Besides,

Starting point is 00:48:48 the fact that it's interesting, those were the theories SLED was testing last June. When an average person sees this report, they might think, hmm, there really must be something with that groundskeeper theory or the boat crash theory, or else SLED wouldn't have taken the time to test them out. But the truth is that those reports can confuse anyone, investigators too. Also, we have to add that we know that a majority of the people listed in the DNA analysis, specifically the boat crash victims and their family members, submitted their DNA voluntarily. They were never suspects. I couldn't help but notice how the defense had no problem putting these people's names out there in this motion, while they also managed to black out

Starting point is 00:49:41 several pages of information in the same motion. These are the seeds of doubt that we are talking about. If some amateur sleuth knew nothing about DNA reports, I could see how they could look at the 96 pages as a gold mine for information. I could see them saying, look, the boat crash victims got their DNA taken. Maybe there is something to that theory. Which, by the way, there are way too many people online trying to be ultimate. alternate theory masters, and Dick and Jim know this.

Starting point is 00:50:14 They want to use it to their advantage to sway the jury. That's why it's important to hear straight from the analyst and experts and get their interpretation of the data and all of the context entailed, which, by the way, if anyone out there is listening has experience in DNA analysis, please email info at Murdochmurterspodcast.com. But for the defense, looking to confuse the public at large, these pages of DNA analysis serves Elyke Murdoch much better to have weird photos of cut-up t-shirts and 40 pages of hypothetical DNA analysis out there.

Starting point is 00:50:56 Because it's confusing and that's what they want. And finally, the fifth element is constant contradiction. Beyond the contradictions we've already noted, between the first and second motions, there were others. In the first motion, Dick and Jim note that Ellick couldn't have killed Paul because his shirt had none of Paul's blood on it. In the second motion, they repeatedly say that the expert and investigators had determined Paul's blood spatter was on Ellick's shirt.

Starting point is 00:51:24 So, which is it? The contradictions likely don't bother Dick and Jim too much because they're not counting on anyone digging into the facts and comparing them. Okay, so that said, we don't know what's happening here. SLED and the AG's office took more than a year to charge ELEC in these murders. Dick and Jim say that's a sign they targeted ELEC from the beginning, got embarrassed that it was taking them so long to find probable cause to arrest him, and then apparently manufactured what they needed to make it happen.

Starting point is 00:51:53 But the truth is, Sled and the AG's office took that time because of the massive crossing of their T's and dotting of their eyes. So, while we know the five elements of an ELEC Murdoch murder motion, and we know that we, unlike the rest of media, apparently, don't have any reason to trust the sources here, meaning Dick and Jim. It concerns us that SLED and the AG's office left this one wide open for exploitation. Did the bloodstained expert, quote, change his mind? When Dick and Jim say that SLED initially found no blood on Ellick shirt, is that true? I mean, how could that be true? This is why we need a faster response from the state.

Starting point is 00:52:32 Dick and Jim filed these motions when they did, not only for the headlines, but because they knew that state employees were off for the holidays. That has now left us days without clarification. Days in which people think was sled up to no good here? Dick and Jim are asking Judge Newman to order the state to provide all the information they're now asking for, such as the Photoshop documents of the photos. And by the way, Photoshop is a program you can use to enlarge and markup photos. It doesn't automatically mean the photos were altered to manufacture evidence.

Starting point is 00:53:05 against Ehrlich. But again, that's what Dick and Jim want the headlines to insinuate. Dick and Jim also are asking the judge to rule that the shirt should not be entered into evidence, and they're demanding a pretrial hearing that would include on-stand testimony from sled agents and the bloodstain expert from Oklahoma. Dick and Jim have been dying to get some witnesses on the stand. Judge Newman already denied this one, so it will be interesting to see what he does here. Look, overall, we can't say for certain if these claims are completely BS or not because so much information is missing. What we can say is that these motions contain partial information from a source that has been unreliable since day one in this case. A source that has lied about so many things, it is hard to count at this point.

Starting point is 00:54:01 But specifically, they lost credibility when they told reporters a completely false narrative about Alex Labor Day shooting incident. This stack of, quote, evidence in this motion reminds me of the stack of medical records they gave reporters last year after the, quote, shooting. The records were confusing, heavily redacted, and intentionally misleading. Reporters should weigh the credibility of the source every time they write a story, and they should be including context about how Dick and Jim haven't been truthful in the past. This is a time where credibility really matters in journalism, and I hope that journalists remember that context is key when it comes to credibility. Just because Dick and Jim have lost their credibility doesn't mean that journalists do too.

Starting point is 00:55:02 And while these motions were full of confusing half-truths, there were a few new things that we learned that we want to tell you about. The first is a well, well, well situation. You know how we've been saying for a while that something happened in August 2021 that caused 14 solicitor Duffy Stone to recuse himself suddenly after two months of insisting that he belonged on the case and wasn't messing anything up being there. Turns out, we were right.

Starting point is 00:55:35 Thanks to Dick and Jim's motion, we learned that SLED was in fact conducting forensic tests in the murder investigation on August 10th, the same day that Duffy recused himself. Now, because this motion is full of partial information, we don't know the full results

Starting point is 00:55:54 of those tests, but it wouldn't be a stretch to think that on August 10th, something about those tests made Duffy Stone, Elyke's former boss, recuse himself from the investigation. Now a lot happened after this and very quickly. Russell Lafitte and Palmetto State Bank went into Find Out season, and Russell started cleaning up the mess he allowed Ehrlich to make there. PMPED did, well, nothing, according to them. They were too shy to interrupt Elyke's grieving to ask him again for proof that he wasn't stealing from them.

Starting point is 00:56:33 We'll cover that in a later episode. Anyway, it's no wonder that by the first weekend of September, Elyke was apparently staging a shooting on the side of the road. The situation was getting real for him in August. And that, and that keeps becoming more clear. Another big thing that we learned in the motion? According to Dick and Jim, Paul was killed in a small closet with multiple 12-gauge shotgun blast at point-blank range. And according to the case synopsis from the blood spatter experts, Alec said that he not only touched both victims

Starting point is 00:57:14 while checking for life signs, but he tried to roll Paul over and couldn't before he called 911. I think that that information is going to be very important in disputing the evidence. They'll say that the blood is all from him frantically checking for vital science. But why would he try to roll Paul's body? This is interesting because one question that we've always had is about Paul's phone. Why was Maggie's phone taken and thrown in the woods, but Paul's was apparently found with him? Is it possible that the phone was found underneath Paul's body? Why was Paul killed in a closet, assuming at the kennels and Maggie was killed outside?

Starting point is 00:58:01 What really happened in those last few horrifying moments of their lives? We also learned that apparently while Elek was being interviewed by investigators the night of the murders, The initial interview, which lasted around 34 minutes, he wore the bloody shirt and then wiped his sweaty face with it, which is apparently caught on body cam. That face wipe is probably going to end up playing a big role in his defense. But our question is how could that happen? Why wasn't he immediately treated like a crime scene himself?

Starting point is 00:58:41 And another question we have is about this mysterious blue raincoat that was apparently discovered in the second floor closet somewhere, presumably at Moselle or Randolph Murdoch's house. Investigators couldn't develop a DNA profile off of it, according to these documents. But why is it significant? If it was found at Eleg's parents' house, do investigators believe that Elyx stashed it there? And if so, what would he have been stashing? The good news is that in the next two months, each motion and each response will give

Starting point is 00:59:19 us new insight into what awaits us in January. We're all going to be able to go into this trial with an updated timeline and a whole bunch of new facts that help us get closer to the big questions we have here. If Elek did this, did someone else help him in the cover-up? Why were Maggie and Paul murdered? What was Eleg involved in? What has he been covering up? How many people helped him in this scheme?

Starting point is 00:59:52 And where did all of the money go? We have learned a lot in the last few weeks, and I imagine the heat is going to be turning up before trial. It is Christmas season, and I want to do my fair share of spreading joy. Let's face it, a lot of the things we talk about are not happy things. So I want to start really celebrating our favorite fans. This week, I want to give a shout out to Suzanne Eaton, who has been a huge supporter of MMP for a long time. On Thanksgiving, she tweeted me that her and her husband rescued a bunch of puppies and she kept one. On Twitter, she asked for help from our fans in naming her, and since she was rescued,

Starting point is 01:01:08 The same week as the Lafitte trial verdict, I voted to name her Justice, and Suzanne kindly loved it. Anyways, over the weekend, Justice was diagnosed with Parvo, and had to spend several days at the vet. I was really worried about Justice this weekend. I won't lie. I'm a sucker for a cute blue-eyed puppy. I kept checking Twitter and seeing if there are any updates. And finally, on Monday night, Suzanne tweeted that Justice was on the mend and was brought home. And Suzanne, we will be sending you an aura frame so you can put lots of cute pictures of justice on there

Starting point is 01:01:43 and celebrate the good times in your life. I'm saying this to say that I love hearing from y'all and the good things that you're doing and how the podcast changes your lives in different ways. So thank you to our amazing listeners, and I cannot wait to highlight another fan next week. So stay tuned and stay in the sunlight. The lessons from this episode remain vital for anyone following true crime or legal proceedings.

Starting point is 01:02:20 First, alibi stories that constantly evolve should raise immediate red flags. Second, motions filed strategically right before the holidays and designed to generate misleading headlines deserve extra scrutiny. Third, credibility matters. When sources repeatedly prove unreliable, their claims require independent verification. Most importantly, we learn that patience pays off in journalism. When Dick and Jim were playing a media game, investigators were methodically building their case. Murdoch Murder's podcast is created and hosted by me, Mandy Matney, produced by my husband, David Moses, and Liz Farrell is our executive editor. From Luna Shark Productions.

Murdaugh Murders Podcast - MMP Remastered #70 - More Lies and Alibis: What We’re Learning Before The Double Homicide Trial

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.