Murdaugh Murders Podcast - Overdrawn and Under The Radar - What Happened To The Money? Part Four (S01E47)

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

A motion filed last week by John T. Lay and Peter M. McCoy Jr. — the two attorneys who were appointed as co-receivers in November 2021 to tally Murdaugh’s assets — revealed even more shocking and unheard of banking practices at Palmetto State Bank. It’s yet another layer of this story that shows us how powerful institutions treated Alex Murdaugh differently and therefore, potentially played a role in his alleged crimes.  In this episode, Mandy, Liz, and fan favorite attorney Eric Bland explain the new information uncovered by the receivers and what we know about what happened to the money.  Also this week, the State newspaper published an interesting piece about Chris Wilson — the third attorney on the infamous Omaha flight. Will Wilson be a witness IF murder charges arise? *episode edited 11-30-2022 to correct error - Cory Fleming was alleged to be on the flight to Omaha, not Russell Laffitte. And a special thank you to our sponsors: Microdose.com, Priceline, Embark Vet, VOURI, Babbel, Article, and others. Use promo code "MANDY" for a special offer! The Murdaugh Murders Podcast is created by Mandy Matney and produced by Luna Shark Productions. Our Executive Editor 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 how deep the corruption in this case goes, but we now have a much clearer picture of Palmetto State Bank's involvement in Ellick Murdoch's crimes. And like everything else in this case, what we've found is heinous and further deepens the mystery of the money. My name is Mandy Matney. I have been investigating the Murdoch family for more than three years now. This is the Murdoch Murders podcast with David Moses and Liz Farrell. So today is Wednesday, June 1.

Next Tuesday will mark the one year anniversary of the double homicide of Maggie and Paul Murdoch. The wheels of justice turn slowly, but we hope to get more answers soon. We all feel like we keep finding more pieces of this crazy puzzle, and we hope that an arrest in the double homicide will reveal the full picture. Maggie and Paul are victims and they deserve justice, just like Stephen Smith, Mallory Beach, Gloria Satterfield, and Hakim Pinkney. We're frustrated by how long all of this has taken to come out, but we truly appreciate you for sticking with us through all the twists and turns in this case.

And we promise we will not stop until we get answers. In speaking of twists and turns, we have another big one. Emotion filed last week by John T. Lay and Peter M. McCoy Jr., the two attorneys who are appointed as co-receivers in November 2021 to tally all of Murdoch's assets, revealed even more shocking and unheard of begging practices at Palmetto State Bank. The court filings show us five things. 1. The bank allowed Ellic Murdoch to carry unusually large negative balances on his accounts for

years, sometimes in the six-figure range. Yet, they continued to give him large loans, which he, in turn, did not pay back on time. 2. Considering all of this strange banking activity, Ellic Murdoch's name should have come up regularly in anti-fraud reports. 3. Ellic's financial schemes, whatever they were, could not have happened without Palmetto State Bank and Russell Lafitte, the former CEO who is currently on house arrest.

4. Palmetto State Bank clearly isn't cooperating with investigators and is holding back critical information that could help the receivers further understand where Ellic's assets are and how he might have used the bank to hide them. 5. These filings show yet another layer of how the systems in place, systems that are meant to regulate the behavior of everyone else and keep people honest, treated Ellic Murdoch drastically different and basically aided him in his allegedly criminal acts.

Russell Lafitte has maintained that he is yet another victim of Ellic and that he, a person who is known Ellic Murdoch his entire life, who grew up next door to him in fact, was tricked into participating in what he now understands to be theft and crimes. From the beginning, or since he lawyered up anyway, Russell has made a lot of effort to have it known that he has been cooperating with law enforcement in the multiple ongoing investigations into Murdoch's complex network of alleged crimes. The notion that he has been cooperating was disputed by prosecutor Creighton Waters at Lafitte's bond hearing, where Waters clarified for the record that quote, providing documents

and quote, cooperating with law enforcement aren't necessarily the same thing. Obviously, I think we can safely assume that Lafitte's been helping only insofar as it helps himself. One problem though, no matter which way Russell tries to run in this maze of rats, he's always going to have to contend with the fact that nothing with Ellic's banking behavior or the bank's apparent endorsement of his behavior can be explained by the word tricked. This latest revelation is even more evidence that these men have never had to explain themselves or justify their actions in any consequential way before now.

They are terrible at it. With Russell Lafitte, Corey Fleming, Chad Westendorf, and now Chris Wilson all using the same defense that they were quote, tricked by Ellic, I'm wondering when one of them is going to switch it up and say something that all of us might actually believe, which is I was scared to say no. The latest filings are another reminder of how important the receiver's duties have become in this case. Remember, the receivership is still in place, in part because of Morgan Dowdy's affidavit

as we discussed in the previous episode. The receivership is helping ensure no stones are left unturned in finding Ellic's assets and tracing what money came in and where it went after that. The receivership is keeping people honest, especially those who have trouble with the truth right now. For a recap, Corey Howardton Fleming now stands accused of 23 felony charges, including money laundering, breach of trust, criminal conspiracy, and others in the theft of settlement money from the pinkies and the satterfields.

He faces over 200 years in prison and nearly $2 million in fines. Newly implicated Russell Lucius Lafitte faces 21 various counts of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, computer crimes, and aiding in Ellic's breach of trust charges, totaling 180 years in potential prison time and over $1 million in fines. Ellic's charges continue to grow with over 80 felony charges carrying an absurd penalty potential of over 750 years in prison and millions in fines. But let's talk about these explosive filings. According to this motion, on March 2, John T. Lay and Peter M. McCoy Jr., the CUD receivers

filed a subpoena seeking any and all documents related to accounts open for Hannah and Elena Plylar. And before we get any further into those documents, we need to tell you about the Plylar case, a case that Liz has been looking into for months. For the first time since indictments began rolling out for Murdoch and his alleged co-conspirators, Thursday's filings put the names Hannah and Elena Plylar to former clients of Ellic Murdoch on the public record. On July 16, 2005, the Plylars, who were 8 and 12 at the time, were injured in a car

wreck that killed their mother, Angela Plylar, and their 14-year-old brother, Justin. Angela Plylar was driving a 1999 Ford Explorer on Interstate 95 when the tread of her left rear tire separated and the SUV veered off the road and struck several trees. On November 16, 2006, Russell Lafitte was enlisted to serve as a conservator to the two girls and oversee the millions they received in their case. To be clear, neither Ellic nor Russell have been accused of stealing from the Plylars, but Russell appears to have used the girls' accounts as a personal reserve from which he and Ellic gave themselves generous loans according to sources with knowledge of their

case. Russell was careful to charge himself and Ellic interest. The rates were around 2.5% and 3.25%, respectively, far lower than the bank was charging clients of Peters, Murdoch, Parker, Eltsroth, and Dietrich for the quote-unquote lawyer loans that I reported on for Fitts News back in April. Ellic and Russell are accused of working together to steal money from Ellic's clients, specifically Hakeem Pinkney and Arthur Badger, whose case will tell you more about in a future episode, and using it to pay back those secret loans taken from the Plylars money.

We don't know yet whether those loans were fully paid off. The subpoena also asked the bank to produce any and all documents related to all accounts open for Arthur Badger and produce any and all documents related to any account where Russell Lafitte served as the conservator and or power of attorney. Right now we know that Russell served as conservator for Hakeem Pinkney and as a conservator for the Plylars and as personal representative for their mothers and brothers estate and personal representative for the estate of Arthur Badger's wife who was killed in a catastrophic car crash.

That arrangement resembles the one in the Satterfield case in which the plaintiff's family is convinced to sign over the PR duties to a bank employee not realizing that this removes them from the case altogether. Lastly, the subpoena asked for the bank to produce all meeting minutes from board meetings held from 2005 to present. It is not clear to us what the significance of 2005 is, but that is the year that Randolph Murdoch announced his retirement as solicitor, ending an unprecedented nearly 19 decade reign of Murdoch's over prosecution in the 14th Circuit, direct reign anyway.

We all know they had significant influence in that office up until at least September 2021. Also, in 2005, South Carolina passed the Tort Reform Act, which completely changed the face of how partners at PMPED had operated for generations. It meant that they had to pivot, which likely, given what we know now about the firm's relationship with Palmetto State Bank, meant the bank was likely affected by this reform too. As of the filing of that motion last week, Palmetto State Bank had not complied with the co-receiver subpoena.

And we'll be right back. As the receivers have been pouring through Ellic Murdoch's bank records, the motion states that, quote, questions arose regarding the bank's involvement and knowledge of Murdoch's banking activities, especially in light of the loans the bank claims it is owed and specifically the legitimacy of mortgages, the bank claims it holds a security for those loans. The motion says it appeared that, quote, at least in some instances, monies that may have been misappropriated from the bank from the other bank customer funds were used to pay down loans made to Murdoch by the bank.

The receivers listed several instances that should have been red flags for the bank. The first example was in February 2015. So 2015 is a significant year for both Ellic and Russell. In February 2015, Palmetto State Bank gave Ellic a revolving line of credit for $500,000, which he secured with all seven tracks of Moselle. By May, that line of credit was already depleted and he had a negative balance of almost $52,000. Yet the bank gave him another $500,000 later that same year. Here's some important history on this.

As you know, Ellic had acquired Moselle in two transactions, one in April 2013 when he got six of the tracks and the other in September 2014 when he got the last track. What's weird here is that two days after the 2013 transaction, so two days after Ellic took the land from suspected drug trafficker Barrett Bowler as collateral for a supposedly unpaid mortgage owed to Ellic. Palmetto State Bank gave Ellic a $1.3 million mortgage secured by the six tracks he had just acquired. So in 2015, when the bank gave him the $500,000 and then another $500,000 later that year,

while he was already in a five-digit negative balance on his Palmetto State Bank account, they were basically agreeing to give him a second mortgage for property that they already had a claim to because the collateral was already fully leveraged. You might wonder how Ellic was about making his monthly payments on these mortgages. Well he was terrible. It appears that he was allowed to make limited payments whenever he felt like it, which as all of you know is simply not the way it works for 99.99% of us. The 2013 mortgage was due and full by 2018 and the 2015 mortgage was due and full by

But according to Maggie's state, Ellic not only didn't abide by the terms of his mortgages with Palmetto State Bank, he had only paid down those loans by about $330,000. Those loans have been a source of contention among those representing the long line of creditors forming at Ellic's door. Last fall, Mark Tinsley, the attorney representing the Beach family and two of the boat crash victims, and Eric Bland, the attorney representing the Satterfield family put leans on Moselle as well as the Murdoch's Edisto Beach home. Though Eric Bland canceled his leans earlier this year, Mark Tinsley waited until April

to release the properties because he continued to question the legitimacy of the Palmetto State Bank loans. And can you blame him? When you look at this now, after seeing in black and white how permissive and easygoing Palmetto State Bank seemed to be with Ellic that entire time, it actually does call into question the legitimacy of John Marvin Murdoch's claim in February that Tinsley didn't remove the leans. The Moselle and Edisto properties would be foreclosed on and taken over by Palmetto State

Bank. Really? Wasn't the bank supposed to have done that in 2018 and again in 2020 when neither loan was paid back and their stark customer not only had no money in the bank, he was routinely in the hole for tens of thousands of dollars? How could they possibly say, time's up, give us the keys, with a straight face? This bank has taken homes from working class people for not paying their mortgages on time. I honestly don't know how the bank's board, the bank's officers, or the Lafitte family

can look at themselves in the mirror knowing that this happened on their watch. The older couple who falls behind on their mortgage, yes, let's go after them, but the supposed millionaire who doesn't pay on time or at all and seems to always have a negative balance, sometimes in the six-figure range, he's such a good customer. Give him time. He'll make good on it. 2015 is also significant for a few other reasons. The first is that the checks to cousin Eddie appear to have started a few weeks after Ellick

got the first $500,000 loan. We'll talk more about those checks in a bit. The second is that Steven Smith was murdered in July. We don't yet know how this is connected to the Murdoch family, beyond the rumors mentioned in the original case file, or what implications this might have had for Ellick financially in the months and years after. The third is in September 2015, Ellick Murdoch opened his very first forge account at Bank of America.

I hope they gave him a lollipop that day. The fourth is that Hannah Plyler was turning 18 and therefore was going to be entitled to the money that Ellick and Russell had been helping themselves to. Finally, in 2015 Palmetto State Bank was still working with the FDIC on its takeover of Allendale County Bank, which it acquired in 2014 in, I want to say a fire sale, but that's actually not funny because of what happened with this bank. Allendale County Bank was among the state's weakest banks, which makes sense given that it was a banking institution in one of the poorest counties in the state.

Hampton County is poor, Allendale is more poor. There's not a whole lot of money circulating there. In 2012, a bank teller named April Adams pleaded guilty in federal court to allegedly embezzling more than $300,000 from the bank between May and June 2011 and for trying to burn down the bank in an effort to hide her alleged thefts. I say allegedly and alleged here even though she pleaded guilty and was sentenced because as you guys are learning, nothing is ever as it seems at first glance down here. The motion also cited November 2017 when Murdoch quote had a negative checking account

balance every day for the entire month except for seven days. During that month, his account plummeted to negative $34,000. Just the next month in December 2017, Murdoch received $60,000 from two of his family members, but his bank account wasn't in the black for long. In February and March 2018, Murdoch had a negative balance for weeks at a time, hitting a low of negative $33,000. According to the motion, remember how each of the indictments against ELEC seemed to end with a line, Murdoch then used the money to make credit card payments, payback loans,

pay family members, as well as friends and associates. At least one of those credit card payments was six figures. So it seems like every financial avenue in ELEC's life was leveraged to within an inch of its life. Meanwhile, his friends and family say he seemed to be doing really well financially. This latest motion is one more piece of the puzzle, but it only creates more questions for us. What was ELEC doing with the money he earned, the money he allegedly stole, the money the

bank kept giving him, and the huge amounts of imaginary money he spent in overdrafts. And the other shocking thing that the receivers have found while investigating ELEC's finances? What they call significant cash payments to third parties with the intent to discover additional assets. Specifically, they're talking about the so-called cousin Eddy checks, which is yet another puzzling layer in the Murdoch money mystery. In total, the receivers say the Curtis Eddy Smith received more than $2.5 million from 2019 through 2021, in addition to other payments he received in previous years.

Now remember how we first found out about Curtis Eddy Smith? Eddy is accused of conspiring with Murdoch in the very strange roadside shooting over Labor Day weekend, the incident that changed everything for ELEC Murdoch. We can't forget the week that the walls seemed to fall down for ELEC, when he confessed that he wasn't actually an innocent victim who was randomly shot on the side of the road, which was the narrative pushed out by his camp and nearly every South Carolina media outlet except for Fitznews, with the strong implication that ELEC was, like Maggie and Paul, being targeted by murderers, no.

He was not an innocent victim, but instead claimed to be a drug addict in distress. I think back to those nine days after the roadside shooting often, in the avalanche of shocking information that was coming out at the time. Within a few days, ELEC Murdoch went from being a lawyer who happened to be the only person of interest in the double homicide of his wife and son, to a suspended attorney who was stealing millions of dollars from clients and who was now saying that he staged his own failed apparent suicide so that his son, Buster, could collect a $10 million insurance policy.

Anyways, the Murdoch camp was really quick to label Curtis Smith as ELEC's drug dealer that week, perhaps because maybe ELEC fessed up to the millions of dollars in checks given to Eddie and they needed to find a quick excuse that could also generate public sympathy. So they dubbed him as an opioid addict and cousin Eddie as a drug dealer. There's a moment in the jailhouse calls when ELEC tells his older brother Randy about the ringing he's been experiencing in his ears, insinuating that, you know, maybe this is a result of him doing drugs. The first time I heard the recording, I knew the second he brought it up where he was going

with it. I pictured that he had read an old magazine article that was lying around in the jail common area about Rush Limbaugh's famous hearing problems allegedly caused by his opioid addiction. And I pictured ELEC talking to other inmates like, so, you're an opioid addict. Uh, me too. Me too. Definitely.

So what kind of effects are you feeling? Like what are your symptoms? Interesting. Me too. Totally. And sure enough, in that phone call, ELEC was like, yeah, maybe I have that drug addict ear thing, but Randy was quick to be like, nah, boh, it's probably from all the shooting you do, which is literally the last thing ELEC would want anyone to be saying about

him right now. I'm surprised he wasn't like shooting me, no, I haven't shot guns in a long time. Anyway, if ELEC were an actual opioid addict of 20 years, and this is what he did to keep his habit going, then his addiction is the most successful thing he's ever done in his life. During the summer of 2020, ELEC wrote more than $150,000 in checks to Eddie Smith from both his Bank of America and his Palmetto State Bank accounts. From 2015 to February 2021, only one check that ELEC wrote to Eddie Smith was for more

than $10,000, but from the end of February 2021 through June 2021, more than half of the checks he was writing to Eddie appear to have been for $30,000, $40,000 and $50,000. This could be important because $10,000 is the threshold amount in which banks must report the transactions to the federal government, so this could mean that ELEC was getting sloppier as time went on and even more sloppy in the final four months of Maggie's and Paul's lives. Or he was getting more desperate. Was it because his secret world was about to be exposed because of the boat crash?

Was he offloading money to hide from the Beach family and the other boat victims? Is it that simple? Or did he know that investigators with the state grand jury were beginning to look into the obstruction of justice accusations in the boat crash investigation and were looking into his finances? Or is it something else altogether? And if it is, what in the heck could it be? The motion said that Murdoch's account routinely held a negative balance dipping to negative

$53,000, despite depositing significant draws from the $1 million line of credit. The motion said, quote, as could be imagined, Murdoch's loans routinely were passed due with late charges assessed. As could be imagined, we are highly surprised that late charges were assessed. People read our story in Fitznews about the loans and the huge overdrafts Ellic was allowed to keep and quickly pointed out that obviously their banks, including Palmetto State Bank, held them to different standards. One reader told us about how they got charged $35 for being $0.60 withdrawn on their account.

Another told us about how Palmetto State Bank didn't hesitate to take a house away from a relative who had fallen behind them payments. Many readers picked up on how this apparent scheme between Ellic and the bank is actually a viable money laundering technique in which the money gets paid back with illegitimate money at the bank and then cashed out legitimately with another refinancing. But this is what bank officers and regulators are for to catch this stuff. Obviously this didn't happen here. So finally, the motion filed by the receivers last week reveals some perplexing details

about Ellic Murdoch's finances around the time of the murders. It says quote inexplicably in July 2021, which is just a month after the murders, the bank provided Murdoch with a $750,000 line of credit at a time when Murdoch had a checking account balance of negative $162,000. During that same time in the summer of 2021, Eddie Smith received more than $305,000 in multiple checks from Ellic Murdoch's Palmetto State Bank checking account in amounts of over $10,000. Now the big question after reading that motion, as well as pieces of Russell Lafitte's deposition

with the receivers, is how did the bank let this happen? Or maybe the question should be why? What else was going on with some of the bank's board members? How much did Russell's father Charlie know about this? How much did Ellic's father Randolph know about this? Were these two sons carrying on an inherited arrangement? Anyone with just a touch of banking knowledge could see these numbers on Ellic's account and know that something was up.

I asked a source who has more than 40 years of banking experience to look at the numbers on Ellic's account. I asked if it was unusual for the bank to allow a customer to routinely carry significant overdrafts. She said that she has never seen an overdraft approved for anywhere near those sums. She said those types of overdrafts specifically indicate a problem with the customer's finances and warrant significant scrutiny on behalf of the bank. The question is how many people knew and didn't stop it?

And at what point did the feds decide that it is time to take over Palmetto State Bank? Why is there no receivership in place for the bank or PMPED for that matter? There is so much unorthodox stuff happening here. Why are they trusted to sort it out on their own without any oversight? So we spoke with Eric Bland about these recent revelations. Remember Eric Bland filed a lawsuit against Eddie Smith late last year on his quest to find answers to where the Satterfield money went. Eric has found out a lot about the money and where it was going and what was going on with

Eddie Smith and we're going to get into all of that in a later episode. But for starters, I asked Eric what he thought of Palmetto State Bank's involvement in the scheme. He said that there absolutely were warning signs. You know Alex telling Palmetto State Bank to deposit a trust account check for a particular client in his personal account or giving him access to those funds and then letting him repay him at a later date. I just can't imagine that the federal regulators are not going to come in and do some kind

of significant oversight on this bank, either put them on some kind of temporary watch list to see if there are going to be additional bank officers hired and new controls put in place. But you know you just can't say it's just only Russ Lafitte. You know there are tellers, there are assistants, you know unless Russ is typing up these notes himself and doing all the transferring of funds and reconciliation, somebody should have picked this up. There should be some oversight that took place.

You know the same questions that you'd ask of PMPED to say where was the oversight. Hey Alex certainly didn't type up letters, Alex certainly didn't type up checks. You know other people had to help out. You know certain people should have asked questions. It's just a tremendous failure from a corporate standpoint to protect clients and protect people's money. So Lafitte was deposed by the receivers in this case in February 2020. In the motion the receivers attached several pages of Lafitte's deposition.

What's interesting is that two names were brought up specifically in that deposition. John Solca and John Peters, two bank officers who were responsible for monitoring and reporting suspicious behavior like Alex. The important takeaway here is this. There is no way Alex's banking behavior didn't constantly send up alerts within the bank. So this raises the question of how was all of this handled. How did Palmetto State Bank report the weird transactions and liberal lending to regulators? And what was the work culture like at the bank where employees were probably best served

by a see nothing, say nothing mentality? And we'll be right back. A few episodes ago when Russell Lafitte was indicted we mentioned something that we told you we would circle back on. So in the indictment that said Corey Fleming, Elik Murdoch and another attorney who at the time we were working to find out who it was went on a luxurious trip to Omaha, Nebraska on a private plane to attend the 2012 College World Series. The problem was, according to that indictment, the trip was funded by the Pinkney family

stolen money. Well turns out the attorney was Chris Wilson. So Chris Wilson's name comes up a lot in this investigation. And as the state newspaper reported this week, he could be a key witness in this case. Who is Chris Wilson? Officially, Chris Wilson's name first came up in November 2021 when Murdoch was indicted for convincing a quote, attorney from another firm to usurp the normal process and pay him directly for his share of the legal fees in a case they had worked on together.

In March 2021, Murdoch allegedly told Wilson, who wasn't named in the indictment, that he was going to structure his fees, quote, in part because of the boat crash case in which Murdoch is a defendant. According to the indictment, Murdoch told the attorney, Wilson, that his firm, Peter's Murdoch Parker, Eltsroth and Dietrich already knew he was doing this and that he would put the fees, quote, on the books. Instead, Murdoch put the hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees into his bank account and spent it allegedly.

Murdoch's apparent scheme was found out by PMPD in July 2021, according to the indictment. After it was discovered, Murdoch allegedly called the attorney, Wilson, and told him that he had not set up the structured fee correctly and needed to send it back. Murdoch wired $600,000 to Wilson and falsely claimed, according to the indictment, that he couldn't send the remaining $192,000 because of how the structured account had been set up. Chris Wilson's got his own problems that he's going to have to deal with. Every lawyer knows that if I'm co-counsel with somebody else that's a member of a law

firm and we have a joint representation agreement on behalf of a client, if I'm the one who's distributing those settlement funds from an escrow account, I am writing those checks to that law firm that other lawyers are a member of, I'm not writing them to them individually because the law firm is going to come back to me and say, yeah, that's great, you sent those checks to Jerry, now write me my checks that I'm entitled to because I'm the one on the fee agreement, the law firm. For that guy, Wilson's name came up again in Alex's December bond hearing when he made a point to attempt to absolve both Wilson and Fleming, his two close buddies from his shenanigans.

In court, Murdoch said that Wilson and Fleming are two of his oldest and dearest friends who quote, didn't know anything and didn't do anything wrong. However, outside of the official public record, Wilson's name has been whispered as one of Murdoch's closest confidants for years, as Liz and I have been peeling back all of the Murdoch family layers since the bow crash. It could be said that Chris, Alec, and Corey have been thickest thieves since their law school days. There are not many stories we've heard about Alec's law school days that don't involve

the names Chris and Corey, neither of us know Chris, but right now I picture him to be like a chunk in Goonies, the kid who did the truffle shuffle, who got caught by the Fratellis and when they told him to talk, he immediately confessed every little thing he had done in his life, including stealing his uncle Max's toupee, getting kicked out of Fat Camp, and cheating on his history exam. That's who I picture Chris to be, but maybe he's a Fratelli, hard to tell at this point. Wilson, like Fleming, was quick to throw Alec Murdoch under the bus, the second one finger pointed at him.

Soon after the indictments, which vaguely identified him as a Bamberg County attorney dropped, Wilson basically outed himself, and he sent a statement to the media saying that he was deeply troubled, disappointed, and angry. He said that he knew Alec Murdoch for 30 years, but quote, friendship doesn't replace facts. He said Alec has to be held accountable for this situation, and seemingly others end quote. Ah, he too was duped. Since I wrote this line for Fitz News, I've gotten a lot of feedback from people who like to say it to me when I see them in public.

Did duped Fleming duped Wilson? Was Murdoch such a super duper that he could duped the duped into duping? I guess we'll find out someday. So Wilson claims he was duped by Alec Murdoch. Remember that, something else to know about Wilson, he is being represented by one of the most well-known attorneys in South Carolina, former state representative and CNN commenter Bakari Sellers. Sellers grew up close to Hampton County, and he's in the same good ol' boy club with

Dick Harputlian, Alec Murdoch, Jim Griffin, etc., etc. Sellers was quick to confirm that his client, Chris Wilson, was in fact on that plane, but also said that he had no knowledge of how that plane was paid for. He and Alec were best friends, Sellers said, quote, he was duped like everyone else. All of these super smart attorneys were duped by a guy who doesn't know what habeas corpus means. That makes sense. One of my best friends thought Egypt was in South America.

I love her, but she is the last person I'd let take me on a trip to see the Spinks, unless I'm trying to go to Argentina. The reason we use the word best in front of the word friend is to alert the rest of our circle that this person knows me really well, and I know this person really well. And we rely on each other and we trust each other based on the things we've learned about each other. Now, we also trust our best friends to the point that we don't always feel the need to vet them when they ask for a favor.

But Alec Murdoch is not like my best friend, who is a wonderful, kind and honest person who wouldn't steal a penny from the ground. Why are there so many people from Alec's law school days who saw the things he did heard the things he bragged about and determined he was a jerk who will do you dirty? But the guys he was closest to are like, I need to hire a high profile lawyer immediately. And that lawyer needs to tell all the media that I'm innocent. Okay, so now you know the background on Wilson. Let's talk about this interesting story that was published in the state newspaper on Sunday.

The state is one of several media outlets whose reporting has repeatedly favored the Murdochs and the good old boys, especially in the past year. The story was written by likely their oldest reporter, John Monk. Remember the South Carolina Ripporter of the Year, who wrote a puff piece on Harputlian and Griffin and labeled them as bulldog attorneys? I say this because it's important to know where the story came from when we're trying to figure out the why behind it. So this article told us a few key details.

First of all, Vakari Sellers was quick to say that his client, Chris Wilson, is, quote, helping the police and was, quote, completely blindsided. He had no knowledge or participation in these crimes. Second, the story emphasized that Wilson may play a role as a potential alibi if murder charges arise against Elix. Look, behind the scenes, there has been a lot of talk that the Murdochs are preparing themselves for something, that Elix attorneys are preparing themselves for that same something, that everyone is waiting for something in a way they weren't waiting before.

So first, I want to be clear that this isn't about the reporter as a person. This is about the institution, and some people out there look at our criticism of the institution and the people who are key parts of that institution as being unprofessional or petty on our part. If you think that, you are missing the point. You are missing the point, which is this. We want journalists to do their jobs. They are sorely needed, and they are important. A single inquiry from a journalist can change the course of would-be corruption.

Remember, vampires don't like sunlight. It is a journalist's job to shine sunlight wherever they think the vampires are. That's one part of our job. The other part is to not provide them darkness in which to thrive. Journal boys need chumminess and darkness. Now I'm not calling Jim Griffin a vampire, but everything Mandy is about to tell you should have warranted a follow-up question from the reporter or an explanation that accounts for Jim's contradictions of earlier statements.

Also, Mandy and I both believe that when it comes to Murdoch stories, every quote Jim is allowed to have in a publication or on TV should be accompanied by a sentence that reminds readers and viewers that his statements about Murdoch in the past were found to be inaccurate. It's called context, and it's important. Attorney Jim Griffin claimed that basically Wilson is going to be a key part of Elix Alibi, and that article really puts Wilson on the hook to be Elix Alibi. What is Elix Alibi exactly, you might ask?

As a reminder, Elix has maintained his innocence from the beginning. Justice attorneys claim that Elix has accounted for every move that night, and at the time that the coroners say Maggie and Paul were killed, Elix was at his mother's house 20 minutes away watching a game show on television. But the problem is, is this directly contradicts what sources are saying the evidence in the case points to in terms of what Elix had told investigators about his whereabouts that night. But now, Griffin is taking it a step further and saying that even more time was accounted for that evening, and supposedly Chris Wilson can account for it.

Griffin claims that Chris and Elix were talking on the phone at the time the murders allegedly happened, which really are the time the murders were guessed by a coroner, and I certainly do not trust that estimate. What's especially interesting is this, for the first time, Griffin seems to be putting it on the record that Elix was at Moselle at 9pm, which means that Elix would have seen Maggie and Paul shortly before they were killed. Griffin also says that Elix drove to his mother's house at 9 o'clock to get to her house at 9.20, stay for 20 minutes, and drove back to arrive at Moselle around 10pm.

In addition to this quick turnaround of a late night drive, Jim told the state newspaper that Elix spoke with Chris Wilson twice during his 20 minutes there, and then twice on his 20 minute ride back to Moselle. So this obviously raises questions. Who drives 40 minutes to see their elderly mother with dementia for 20 minutes at 9pm at night? How many 57 year old male attorneys call up other 57 year old male attorneys to chit chat multiple times past 9pm on a Monday?

And why are we suddenly hearing this narrative now? And then the totality of it all, the body count, the unsolved murders, the missing millions of dollars that were stolen from clients, the prominent attorneys who have been named in this case, and those unnamed, the institutions involved, the justice system, the banks, all of it is overwhelming when you take a step back and see what has been exposed since June 7th, 2021. No, it's not blowing to me. To me, I've been doing this for 34 years.

I've been suing lawyers for 28 of those 34 years. You can add up every single one of my legal malpractice cases, which almost total 200. And all of the conduct doesn't even come close to this. It's it's conduct that you can't even write about in a law school ethics class because it's so preposterous. It's just so over the top. Nobody would do it. And when I said you, well, I'm numb to it, that was the wrong thing to say.

I'm numb from it. It's made me absolutely numb. I hate what it's done to our profession. I hate what it's done to our state. And to think there are still so many questions we don't have answers to. As always in this story, there is still so much waiting for us in the shadows as we pour sunlight on it all. As the light shines, the complicit will try to stay hidden, but rest assured, our movement

grows stronger every day in its determination to correct these injustices, change the system and hold every single bad actor accountable. Stay tuned. Hey, everybody, want to interrupt the podcast just for a brief moment to share some appreciation for that special dogged reporter that started us all on this journey. Mandy's immense drive and determination led to a groundswell of support for change and is making a huge impact in our region and beyond. I don't know if you knew this, but it's her birthday this week, and if you're a fan

like I am, and I'm a little biased, I'd like to suggest some ways you can help make it extra special for her. Consider subscribing to our newly relaunched YouTube channel where we'll be posting all our episodes, share the podcast on social media, do something for your community, expose a bad actor, write to your lawmakers, file a FOIA request and tell us about it on the Murdoch Murders podcast, Facebook and Instagram, write a review on Amazon or Spotify, donate to Mal's Pals or send us a positive, uplifting email. Y'all mean the world to Mandy and each little act of kindness and encouragement goes such

a long way. We appreciate you so much and we'll see you next week. The Murdoch Murders podcast is created by me, Mandy Matney and my fiance, David Moses. Our executive editor is Liz Farrell. Produced by Luna Shark Productions.