Murdaugh Murders Podcast - The Distraction Machine: Becky Hill's Win and Gregg Roman's Supreme Court Detour, TSP #159 [Part Two]
Episode Date: August 10, 2026Part Two of Two Some good news first: Judge Richard Gergel dismissed Alex Murdaugh's federal lawsuit demanding $600,000 from former Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill, pointing to the "fatal f...law" sitting at the center of it.Investigative journalists Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell explain why agreeing with the ruling isn't the same as defending Becky Hill — and why they always believed the suit was less about money than about spectacle, subpoena power, and keeping everyone's eyes off the double homicide case.Then, Gregg Roman. The Middle East Forum executive director hired by billionaire gas station owner Greg Parker now calls himself an investigative journalist in court filings, and the South Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to take his appeal to keep his bank records away from the Beach family. Mandy and Liz walk through South Carolina's autopsy photo laws, the Dale Earnhardt and Kobe Bryant precedents, and the one question buried under all the noise: who gave Gregg Roman photos of Mallory Beach's body?Let's Dive In… 🥽 🦈share the LUNASHARK® Premium Community on Supercast and now on Patreon - Together we go further ☀️🩷🩷By Popular Demand, You Can “Help Journalist Mandy Matney Fight $one hundred seventy Six thousand five hundred dollar Contempt Order” GoFundMe 🩷🩷Lawyers & judges: email your insights or offer your expertise to legal@lunasharkmedia.com Episode Links Who is Gregg Roman? + list of blog posts 🌐SC Code of Laws ⚖️ Section 17-5-535 - Persons authorized to view photographs or videos of autopsy Section 30-4-10 - Freedom of Information Act Referenced Episodes: TSP 158 [Part Two] 🎧 Stay Tuned, Stay Pesky and Stay in the Sunlight...☀️ Learn more about LUNASHARK Premium Membership on Patreon or at lunashark.supercast.com to get bonus episodes like our Premium Dives, Wherever It Leads..., Girl Talk, and Soundbites that help you Stay Pesky and Stay in the Sunlight. Plus BTS content from Murdaugh: Death in the Family AND Mandy's book Blood On Their Hands. Support Our Show, Sponsors and Mission: https://lunasharkmedia.com/support/ Quince - Hungry Root - Bombas https://amzn.to/4cJ0eVn *** ALERT: If you ever notice audio errors in the pod, email info@lunasharkmedia.com and we'll send fun merch to the first listener that finds something that needs to be adjusted! *** For current & accurate updates: lunashark.supercast.com Instagram.com/mandy_matney | Instagram.com/elizfarrell bsky.app/profile/mandy-matney.com | bsky.app/profile/elizfarrell.com TrueSunlight.com facebook.com/TrueSunlightPodcast/ Instagram.com/TrueSunlightPod youtube.com/@LunaSharkMedia tiktok.com/@lunasharkmedia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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This is part two of episode 159 of True Sunlight, a podcast exposing crime and corruption,
previously known as the Murdoch Murders podcast.
True Sunlight is a Lin-A-Shark production, written with journalist Liz Farrell.
Okay, so let's start with some good news.
Judge Richard Gergel dismissed accused killer Elyke Murdoch's federal lawsuit against former
Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill that was filed in May.
That is a big deal, y'all. The lawsuit was filed shortly after Ehrlich Murdoch's double homicide
conviction was overturned by the South Carolina Supreme Court. In the lawsuit, Ehrlich Murdoch demanded
that Becky Hill owed him at least $600,000 for what he says he paid in legal fees for his first
trial. In summary, the court said, nah, Becky Hill doesn't owe Elyke Murdoch anything. David, will you read our
favorite paragraph of the order that pretty much sums up the whole thing.
Plaintiff's claim contains a fatal flaw, the lack of a causal connection between the funds
he expended for his defense in the first trial and the defendant's misconduct.
Defendant has no role in the initiation of criminal charges against plaintiff.
Plaintiff was indicted by a state grand jury and was prosecuted by the office of the Attorney
General of South Carolina. Plaintiff liquidated his retirement account to fund his defense,
which was necessary without regard to the misconduct of defendant.
Becky Hill was not the reason Ehrlich Murdoch was charged in the double homicide of his wife
Maggie and son Paul. Elick Murdoch was the reason why Ehrlich Murdoch was charged in the double
homicide of his wife and son. And Ehrlich Murdoch was the reason why he of his wife and son. And Ehrlich Murdoch was the reason why he
allegedly had to pay for a criminal defense for that. So is this lawsuit dismissal good news? Yes. Does that
mean we support Becky Hill? No. See how that works? Trolls on the internet? Smart people have the
ability to separate their opinions about a person when forming an opinion on how the law applied to that
person's situation because we understand the law should work in the same way for all of us. As we stated in
part two of episode 158 of True Sunlight Podcast, Becky Hill made some strong legal arguments
in her motion to dismiss. The facts and the law were on her side in this case. We just didn't
anticipate Judge Gergel, who has several personal connections to Team Murdoch to dismiss the case
so quickly. In no shade to Judge Gergel, we just understand the reality of the South
Carolina legal community now, and we are literally shocked when people are.
people in the system ever make lawful decisions.
We are jaded right now, and we know it.
This decision was likely a surprise for old Becky too.
She just added a new attorney to her team two days before Judge Gerkel's dismissal.
And not to brag or anything.
Just kidding.
Women like us need to brag when we are right, because frankly, sometimes it's the only way to get people to hear it.
But we said that this lawsuit was sketchy.
and baseless from the day it was filed.
And it never made any sense.
We never really believed that they ever wanted Becky's money,
you know, $600,000 of the money that she probably doesn't have lying around.
T. Murdoch has always operated like they've had an endless pile of money to spend on this
case without any worries.
Which is weird, right?
Because Ellie claimed that he couldn't pay his victims back because he said he was broke.
Nor did he ever have money for bail.
He was in pecunius, as Dick said, remember?
But also remember when Team Murdoch stayed in a literal wedding venue with a private chef during
the six weeks of trial?
Trust me, those good old boys never wanted Becky's non-existent money.
We always believed that this lawsuit was intended on creating a spectacle of smoke and mirrors
to distract the media from the facts of the double homicide case
and keep everybody focused on blaming Becky.
Worse, we believe that they were planning on using this lawsuit
as a vehicle for subpoena and deposition power.
And T. Murdoch was pretty obvious about this plan
in their dramatic press conference announcing the lawsuit.
That worried us as journalists who have been specifically targeted
and harassed by attorneys who use their subpoena power to come after us.
even though we had nothing to do with the alleged jury tampering at all,
even though we knew the lawsuit was deficient.
So yeah, we'll take this as an opportunity to breathe a little sigh of relief when the law actually works the way that it should like it did here.
The lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice, meaning Team Murdoch could refile it if they can figure out how to get around the flaws pointed out in this order.
But again, the order is very clear that the whole foundation,
foundation of this lawsuit was flawed. And they do, for the record, plan on appealing.
But the bigger question is, what will Team Murdoch's next spectacle be now that this one
didn't work out? I mean, we all know how they are. It's going to be something dumb, an incomplete
contradiction of Ehrlich's claim of poverty. As always, we will keep you posted.
So I know it probably seems like we bring up Greg Roman a lot, but also, given
once been happening over the past few months, I don't think we're bringing him up enough.
So we're going to fix that. Today we are going to start our ongoing coverage of the very
unusual thing happening right now in the state Supreme Court related to the Beach v. Parker,
civil conspiracy case, and connected specifically to Roman. Yes, you heard that right. There is yet
another unusual thing happening in this case. Imagine that. As you all know, Greg Roman is the
Israeli-American political commentator and operative, now claiming to be an investigative journalist
in court filings, stick a pin in that one, hired by billionaire gas station owner Greg Parker in 2020
to help Parker lessen his company's liability in the Paul Murdoch crash case.
Meaning Parker hired Roman, according to a Wall Street Journal story in 2022, to do whatever Roman
does when it comes to litigation mitigation and help minimize what Parker's Kitchen,
meaning Parker's convenience store that sold the alcohol to 19-year-old Paul Murdoch that evening,
would have to pay to the victims, including the family of Mallory Beach, who was killed in that
crash at the age of 19. We're pretty much forced to talk about this creep, Greg Roman,
because South Carolina's courts have pretty much rolled out a red carpet for him in the Beach v. Parker
civil conspiracy case.
And that would be a metaphorical carpet,
not a real one, Debbie Barbier.
Just in case you want to dishonestly accuse Mandy
in open court of, quote,
making things up for the podcast again
based on her use of expressions
to describe the tone and tenor of something.
Oh, and you too, John Monk,
you sniveling little weasel?
Get it right in your reporting this time,
or maybe you do the right thing and correct your past errors.
Metaphors, similes,
adages, aphorisms, hyperbole, jokes, insults, all fall under our First Amendment rights of
creative expression. So stop acting so aghast at Mandy's methods of expressing herself. Also,
none of that equals making things up in this podcast. And Mandy certainly did not admit to doing that
like you reported as fact. But maybe it's too late for me to give you this advice. Because
hopefully, the state newspaper has done the ethical thing and removed you from your
your crime and courts beat after your son's arrest last week, a nine federal accounts connected
to the production and distribution of child sexual abuse materials, though I doubt it.
That said, let's do a tiny little update on that. Last week, Jonathan Monk waived his detention
hearing and he remains behind bars at the Sumter County Jail while awaiting his trial, which is now
docketed for September 10th, with jury selection starting at 9.30 a.m. at the
federal courthouse in Columbia. We'll keep you all posted on that case and on what the state's
main paper of record does about its now conflicted reporter who has made both of our lives
hell with his sloppy reporting on the civil contempt hearings and what he has chosen to include
and chosen to leave out. Back to Greg Roman though. Right now, there's an appellate case in front
of the state Supreme Court filed by Roman in an effort to keep the Beach family away from his bank
records, which they believe will reflect payments he allegedly received from Greg Parker, along
with potential other payments that might be significant to the case. Remember, the core question
of this case is how did Greg Roman end up having photos of Mallory Beach's dead body? There's an answer
there, and that answer likely includes a money trail. We've talked about this before, but Roman is
claiming that he is an investigative journalist whose life is in danger because of the
the topics he covers. He says this and reporter shield laws are why he can't sit for a deposition,
not even one over Zoom. And it's why he sought a protective order against his bank providing the
records to the Beach family per Judge R. Keith Kelly's order. So in May 2025, yes, 2025,
Greg Roman filed his original motion trying to prevent his bank from complying with the subpoena from
the Beach family issued that same month. Judge Kelly didn't hold a hearing on this until November
2025. Yes, six months later, when Mandy filed her original motion to quash her subpoena to be deposed.
In February 26, Judge Kelly denied both Mandy's motion to quash and Roman's motion to quash.
Immediately, Roman filed a motion to reconsider, arguing that he was not present at the November hearing, and therefore Judge Kelly
erred in his ruling on the motion. He also claimed that he didn't know a hearing was to be held on this.
On March 16th, Judge Kelly denied Roman's motion to reconsider, noting that he came to his decision
based on the briefings in lieu of oral arguments on Roman's behalf. Roman is appealing Judge Kelly's
order. If he were to go through the appellate process, though, he'd be shot down because you can't
appeal court rulings while the lawsuit is ongoing. So, instead, he has to be a court ruling. So, instead, he has
asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to take his case directly, citing extraordinary circumstances,
and they agreed. They wonder why we're so angry. It's not even just the vast difference in how Greg
Roman, who has relevant information to this case, seems to be treated versus how Mandy, who does not
have relevant information to this case, has been treated and continues to be treated. It's that by
taking Greg Roman's case, the state Supreme Court seems to be signaling.
that it believes Greg Roman when he claims he's a journalist.
And yet, where's the journalism, Gregie? We're not seeing it anywhere.
Greg Roman is the executive director of the Middle East Forum,
a right-wing think tank that purports to help Western governments,
including us, shape policy that affects issues important to Israel.
Over the years, the Middle East Forum has been accused of spreading false information and propaganda
to stoke Islamophobia around the world.
As the executive director of the Middle East Forum,
Roman appears on news shows
and sometimes talks about Israeli-American politics,
policy issues, and the current war in Iran.
He also writes for his blog and the Middle East Forum blog,
and he's written op-ed pieces in various newspapers.
Every single one of those op-ets identifies him
by his role as executive director of the Middle East Forum.
Middle East Forum, not as a journalist.
But in his filings related to the Beach v. Parker civil conspiracy?
Oh, he's an investigative journalist who needs to protect his sources, specifically the ones
he says he's paid through bank accounts in question.
And sorry, dear South Carolina Supreme Court justices, investigative journalists do not
pay their sources, and they are not paid by special interest groups or ever paid to
come to a particular conclusion in their reporting.
That ain't journalism.
That's PR.
That's political operative stuff.
That's the stuff of coercive counter messaging.
Not journalism.
More on Greg Roman after a quick break, and we'll be right back.
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Anyway, we have a lot to talk about when it comes to the filings in Greg Roman's appeal and what they allege about Roman, Greg Parker, and Parker's team.
The outcome of this case will be important, not just to the beach case itself, but for the state of South Carolina,
because it's the state Supreme Court's chance to show judges, lawyers, and the people of South Carolina that a billionaire should not be able to purchase outcomes,
and that journalism actually means something, and it's not just something you can claim to be doing when you're up to other things.
Which reminds me, I need to create a page-a-day calendar that is just 365 pictures of Greg Roman,
and Greg Parker, smiling like the devils themselves to remind me that we need to remind the world
of this question. How high does Greg Parker's financial influence and the backdoor political
power that goes hand in hand with that go in South Carolina's judicial system? And let me just clear my
goggles. Is this what we've been seeing at play this whole time? While we naively keep believing that at some
point the truth will prevail. Parker's Kitchen, as you'll remember, engaged in a long and dirty
battle in the Bowcush case from 2019 until 2023 when they settled with the Beach family for $15 million.
The civil conspiracy case against Greg Parker is about actions he and others employed by him
are accused of taking during the litigation of that case. Again, this comes down to one question.
Who gave photos of Mallory Beach's body to Greg Roman?
So first, where the F is Greg Roman, right?
He's been subpoenaed twice now for deposition by two of Parker's co-defendants,
Max Frotti and Henry Rosado.
Max and Henry are private investigators who were hired by Parker's team, Greg Roman specifically.
To help with Parker's Bowcash defense, and twice now, Roman has failed to appear at these depositions,
claiming he was never served properly and that he now lives in Israel.
In March, Fratati and Rosado asked the court to hold him.
hold Roman in contempt for this. During the scheduling of Mandy's contempt hearings, the
investigator's attorney reminded Judge Kelly that he too had a motion in front of the court,
an older motion at that, about holding a non-party witness in contempt in connection to a deposition.
In May, the investigators' attorneys made their arguments in favor of Roman getting held in contempt,
and Roman's attorney, Taylor Smith, argued against it. And I would love to tell you how
the judge ruled on that, but he hasn't yet. To be fair, he's been busy. Super focused on Mandy's case
despite her having already sat for a deposition in April. Anyway, you might remember that Parker's
attorney Mark Moore asked me about my thoughts on Greg Parker hiring someone like Greg Roman for
litigation mitigation. In the eight-hour nonsense deposition they forced upon me in the fall of 2025,
Five, when Parker sent his very expensive team to Baltimore.
David and Grace, will you read the parts of the deposition
where Mark Moore asks me about private investigators?
You, Miss Farrell, do not have any proof that Mr. Parker did the things that he's accused of,
correct or incorrect.
What I consider proof is his admitting to using Greg Roman.
And I think in that same article, he admitted to the private investigators.
So that to me is proof.
Okay, well, Ms. Farrell, you know that people frequently hire private investigators to help them in litigation, right?
You know that, right?
I do.
That would be to gather information not to take someone's dead son's iPad and hold on to it, necessitating a warrant to get it back from them.
Okay.
So private, you know, investigators, I don't think they do what they did.
And I understand, you know, he's admitted to hiring, you know, PR companies, crisis companies, you know, whatever in the Wall Street Journal.
Again, that's a big effort.
And as a result of that big effort, these materials ended up in the public's hands, or at least in Vicki Ward.
Okay, you don't have any other direct evidence other than what you've just explained.
Is that right or not?
I do not have a video of him meeting in a dark alley handing a USB drive to anyone.
No.
In the same way that pro-Murdock attorneys wanted to paint us as not understanding how defense attorneys work during Alex's case,
or as us not understanding that everyone is entitled to the best defense team that they can afford in America,
Parker's attorneys really want to depict us as being ignorant to how defense prep works.
In Alex's case, our complaint was that lawyers should argue the facts and the law,
and not create stories for headlines that they hope will influence potential juries.
We also believe that if they're caught lying to reporters,
then this should be mentioned in every subsequent story written about them,
because context matters.
Getting caught in a lie matters.
Our argument in the Greg Parker case is that, again,
argue the facts and the law and don't create manufactured chaos
inside and outside the courtroom, especially the kind of chaos that has a very real and negative
effect on people's lives. Listen, we are journalists. Every time we have a new case or a new
person enters the chat, we do background checks, we follow the money, we look up historical
footage and public records, we fact check. It's all a part of reporting. It's all sunlight,
and it's all attached to cases of public interest.
It is absolutely in the public interest to report on a prominent gas station owner,
whose name, unfortunately, lights up the sky all over the world country,
sold alcohol to a minor who ended up in a fatal crash that same night.
And it is also in the public interest that this same gas station owner
is being accused of going to such lengths to avoid liability in that case
that includes hiring an Israeli-American political operative
and an Israeli company called Demo Man International,
known for manipulating outcomes through fake social media campaigns and other methods.
And as a result of that decision, and contrary to the law,
photos of a young woman's dead body ended up being given to the operative.
We absolutely understand why attorneys hire private investigators,
to help them gather information that might benefit their client's case.
What we don't understand or accept is defense prep that crosses the lines of decency
when it becomes harassing in nature, when it punishes people for having the audacity to seek justice,
when it punishes people in the media, us, for covering the case and offering their opinions
in appropriate forums.
And outside of this already being illegal to do, per South Carolina statute 1715, 535, and most likely South Carolina statute 3410, we don't know of any legitimate reason.
Photos of a victim's body would ever be given to a political operative tasked with helping a defendant minimize his financial liability in a lawsuit in the first place.
Can y'all think of a legitimate reason to break the law and distribute those kinds of photos to a person not legally permitted to possess them?
And speaking of the law, you know, we've always wondered why Greg Parker hired criminal defense attorneys to represent him in this case.
So let's start from the beginning.
The first law that we cited is the one that protects families in South Carolina from having photos.
of their loved ones, autopsies made public. It's a law that was passed in 2002 in connection
to the Earnhardt Family Protection Act, which was passed in Florida in 2001. That act basically
created a new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act in the wake of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt's
death when the media sued for access to photos related to his death. The law spells out
who can legally view or disseminate these photos, and while that does include parts,
involved in a civil case, it's limited to the lawyers, the attorney's staff members, and experts
enlisted for the specific purpose of analyzing the photos in connection to the case.
Greg Roman is none of those things.
The second law we cited is the Freedom of Information Act, and I'll explain that in a second.
I think it's important to reiterate this.
While it certainly makes things worse, this isn't just about the image or images of Mallory's
body appearing in the sizzle reel that was made for the Discovery ID documentary that Greg Roman
executive produced in 2021, meaning the reel included images from the investigative scene when
Mallory's body was found. Those photos were taken by law enforcement to assist the coroner in his
investigation of her cause of death. This case is about the transfer of these photos from
allegedly Greg Parker or someone acting on his behalf to Greg Roman, who then, according to an affidavit
from journalist Vicki Ward, made them available for the documentary. I'm pointing this out because
things have gotten a little lost in the chaos created by Greg Parker's attorneys and their troll buddies.
Now, there's a big reason why the state of South Carolina enacted a law to protect families from having
photos of their loved ones autopsy is shared with the public. It's horrifying. The Beach family is
specifically accusing Greg Parker and his alleged co-conspirators of having joined, quote, together,
and orchestrated a plan to launch a social media campaign against the Beach family
and to release and disseminate photographs of Mallory's dead body from and related to the performance of her autopsy,
including photographs of her body in and during its recovery from the marsh,
in addition to the confidential mediation video used in the mediation of the boat crash case.
While the law in South Carolina makes photos related to the autopsy illegal to distribute to the public,
without the explicit permission of the family, the distribution of photos taken at the crime scene work a little differently,
which brings me back to the Freedom of Information Act.
Crime scene photos depicting a victim's body are not subject to FOIA under the privacy provision.
And regardless of how an agency or a court might interpret that law,
it's clear that the great legal minds in South Carolina see crime scene,
photos showing the bodies of victims as an extension of the autopsy process. David, will you read
from a 2001 opinion issued by the South Carolina Attorney General's office on how the state
viewed the release of autopsy photos before the state passed its legislation, barring autopsy
photos from being distributed to the public? This office has consistently opined that autopsy
records, including photographs, are confidential under state law.
This opinion has rested on the premise that public access to autopsy records invades the privacy of those persons having a property interest in the dead body itself and that it would be detrimental to the public interest to permit such access.
While pictures taken by a rescue squad are not part of the autopsy records necessarily, since the rescue squad is normally the first responders to such a scene, any picture.
the squad takes might have significant evidentiary and investigative value and has the potential
to be included as part of the autopsy record. If included in the records, such pictures should remain
confidential, but even if not included as part of the autopsy records. The same rationale that
underlies the prohibition on disclosure of autopsy records to the public should apply to any
public disclosure of pictures taken by a rescue squad. Such disclosure is prohibited because it,
quote, unreasonably invades the personal privacy of relatives and next of kin.
So this has been a longstanding view in South Carolina, and the law enacted in 2012 shored that
up. It is a misdemeanor to distribute an autopsy photo to an unauthorized person in South
Carolina. In each photo counts as a single offense.
The penalty for doing so is between $5,000 and $50,000 for each photo shared.
In July, the Beach family filed an affidavit with the court and the coroner at the time of Mallory's death.
And that coroner's name was Ed Allen.
Here is what Ed Allen swore under oath about the photos taken at the scene in the recovery of Mallory's body.
Quote, the recovery photos were available to the Beaufort County Coroner's Office, if necessary.
I consider recovery photographs to be an integral part of the death investigation, the post-mortem examination, and the determination of the cause and manner of Mallory Beach's death.
It is my understanding that photographs documenting a descendant's body at recovery, such as the recovery photographs taken by the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office of Mallory Beach's body, are part of or related to the performance of an autopsy within the means.
meaning of South Carolina Code.
Now, y'all know we've been vocal about the Parker case for years, but also, not really.
When the Bowcash case settled, it became all about the civil conspiracy case, and though
we've covered major moments from it, like when one of the judges on the case was asked to
accuse himself because his new clerk had just come from working for Parker attorney Debbie
Barbier, we have not followed that case beat for beat. Not even when Parker subpoenaed me over a year
ago. I was quiet about that until after the deposition because, naive me, I thought I'd sit for the
deposition with no fight and show them how effing wrong they had it. I also wrongly figured that my
deposition would demonstrate to Parker's attorneys that deposing Mandy would be even less fruitful
for them. But no, they liked the look of it. What I understood to an extent back then but now
understand far more than I want to understand is this. It was never about the so-called information
they contend we had. It was always about creating a distraction from Greg Roman.
During the course of the past eight months, it morphed into something even more dishonest and sinister
in our opinions. Parker's attorneys, in our opinions, have used Mandy's decision to initially
fight their frivolous deposition of her. Remember, she sat for her own six-hour deposition on April 8th
at Spartanburg County Courthouse as a way to flood the court, aka Judge R. Keith Kelly,
with all things Mandy
and distract the court from Greg Roman.
Greg Parker and his team want to make Mandy's name synonymous with Mark Tinsleys.
Why? Because of Greg Parker.
And the Greg Roman math he doesn't want people to do here.
Which brings us back to South Carolina's law
prohibiting the distribution of autopsy photos
and by extension, photos related to the recovery of a body.
If it's true that Greg Parker and his team distributed those photos to Greg Roman,
Well, that might explain why Parker hired criminal defense attorneys to defend him in a civil case, right?
From where we sit, it looks like Parker is in pretty serious trouble if this is true.
I mean, sure.
He has the money to fight this, obviously, and handle it.
But no matter what, it's a terrible look.
Like, a terrible look.
In 2022, the family of comedian Bob Sagitt, who was found dead in his hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton, sued Orange County, Florida.
to seal photos from the death scene showing Sagitt's body. In granting them an injunction and sealing those
photos, the judge in the case said this. Nothing that we're going to do today obviously is going to
take away the pain of your loss. But the hope is that what we can do today by entering this
injunction is to allow you a little bit of space and privacy. Also in 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom
signed the Kobe Bryant Act, which made it illegal for first responders to publicly share
photos taking it a death scene because that's exactly what first responders did to Kobe and his
daughter, Gianna, at the scene of their 2020 helicopter crash. Vanessa Bryant, Kobe's wife and
Gianna's mother, received almost $30 million because of that in a settlement with the county.
It is widely understood that that is not okay. And what we
have dealt with, what the Beach family has dealt with, is nothing more than one big costly and
damaging and emotionally draining distraction from that one key question at hand. Who gave those
photos to Greg Roman, the man hired by Greg Parker to help him with a boat crash case? Who broke the
law? Who invaded the Beach family's privacy? Who disrupted their peace? Who caused them emotional harm?
Again, there is an answer here.
And, in our opinions, everything that we have been experiencing over the past few months is meant to keep us from getting it.
Until next time, stay tuned, stay pesky, and stay in the sunlight.
True Sunlight is a Luna Shark production created by me, Mandy Matney, co-hosted and reported by journalist Liz Pharrell.
Research support provided by Beth Braden.
Audio production support provided by Jamie Hoffman and Grace.
Hills case file management by Kate Thomas. Learn more about our mission and membership at
LunaSharkmedia.com. Interruptions provided by Luna and Joe Pesky.
