Murdaugh Murders Podcast - TSP #121 - Unhinged Deputy Finally ARRESTED, But Where are the Rest of the Charges? + JP Miller Loses AGAIN In Court (Again!)

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Investigative journalists ⁠Mandy Matney⁠ and ⁠Liz Farrell⁠ peel back the latest layers of South Carolina’s two-tier justice system — where accountability seems to stop at the badge... After a viral video showed fired Beaufort County Deputy Billy Squires holding teenagers at gunpoint in a Hilton Head neighborhood, it took an entire month — and mounting public outrage — before SLED finally charged him and his neighbor. Mandy, Liz, and producer David dissect the weak charges, the troubling omissions in the affidavits, and what this case reveals about how law enforcement protects its own.Then, the team pivots to another jaw-dropping courtroom saga (19:33): JP Miller’s latest failed appeal. Liz unpacks the judge’s scathing 10-page ruling, JP’s manipulative “Faith First Academy” contracts, and the continued fallout surrounding Mica Francis’ death.And finally, we're examining a little known financial arrangement for lawyer legislators to pay private attorneys HUGE sums of public tax money for what seems to us like little to no good reason... Looking at YOU, MARK MOORE. Leave A Review for Hulu's Original Series! “Murdaugh: Death in the Family” on IMDB ⭐ “Murdaugh: Death in the Family” on Rotten Tomatoes 🍿 Episode References Five episodes available for ⁠⁠“Murdaugh: Death in the Family Official Podcast”⁠⁠ 🎧 Liz Farrell’s Billy Squires Arrest Facebook Post - Oct 28, 2025 🌐 Premium Resources Billy Squires & Brian Stahlheber Arrest Warrants - Oct 28, 2025 📄 JP Miller’s Denied Appeal - Oct 6, 2025 📄 Sam Rickman’s Counterclaim - Jan 27, 2025 📄 Previous Episodes: COJ 152 🎧 Stay Tuned, Stay Pesky and Stay in the Sunlight...☀️ *** ALERT: If you ever notice audio errors in the pod, email [e-mail] and we'll send fun merch to the first member that finds something that needs to be adjusted! ***   For current & accurate updates: TrueSunlight.com    |    facebook.com/TrueSunlightPodcast/ Instagram.com/TrueSunlightPod  |   youtube.com/@LunaSharkMedia     |   tiktok.com/@lunasharkmedia bsky.app/profile/mandy-matney.com   |   bsky.app/profile/elizfarrell.com Instagram.com/mandy_matney   |   Instagram.com/elizfarrell  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Paramount Woose. Check out the big stars, big series, and blockbuster movies. Streaming on Paramount Plus. Cue the music. Like NCIS, Tony, and Ziva. We'd like to make up for own rules. Tulsa King. We want to take out the competition.

The substance. This balance is not working. And the naked gun. That was awesome. Now that's a mountain of entertainment. You know what's better than the one big thing? Two big things. Exactly.

The new iPhone 17 Pro on TELUS' five-year rate plan price lock. Yep, it's the most powerful iPhone ever, plus more peace of mind with your bill over five years. This is big. Get the new iPhone 17 Pro at TELUS.com slash iPhone 17 Pro on select plans. Conditions and exclusions apply. I don't know why it's. took a month to charge a deputy who terrorized children at gunpoint. But I do know what it looks like when a system protects its own. It took a full month of public outrage, viral footage,

and relentless pressure for SLED and the solicitor's office to finally act. And when they did, the charges barely scratched the surface of what we saw with our own eyes. I've said it before, Sunlight is the best disinfectant, but it is so hard to shine light when institutions keep closing the blinds. My name is Mani Matney. This is True Sunlight, a podcast exposing crime and corruption, previously known as the Murdoch Murders podcast, which was the inspiration for Hulu's original series Murdoch Death in the Family, and the Murdoch Death and the Family official podcast, now both streaming on Hulu and audio episodes wherever you listen. True Sunlight is a Luna Shark production written with journalist Liz Farrell.

Hello, hello, I cannot believe this, but it's only been two weeks since Murdoch Death and the Family premiered on Hulu, and I feel like I've lived several lives in those 15 days. And with episode 5 premiering on Wednesday, we still have been. three weeks to go, y'all. So to keep this phenomenal momentum going, we are asking our amazing pesky army to take two minutes to leave a review for either the Murdoch Death in the Family official podcast on Apple and Spotify podcasts and or review the series on IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes. Check the link in the description to do that, but to start the show off, I want to have David read a couple really kind reviews.

On IMDB, Don B says, I highly recommend this series to anyone who loves drama, true crime, and corruption stories. The story is true. I followed it since 2021, and the amount of detail they included in the show is staggering.

Capri Sun, anyone? The timeline is compressed to tell this year's long story, but it stays true to the characters, the details, and adds so much more than headlines. will ever do. You can feel Paul's inner struggle as a perpetrator and an ultimate victim, his desire to change, against his inability to change how he was raised. On Rotten Tomatoes, Alexander says, most interesting true crime TV show to come out yet, particularly because it

showcases a story that happened less than five years ago. If you don't already know the facts of the case, then you're in for a ride. Although I knew the details prior to watching, the show still had me at the edge of my seat. Thank you so much to Alexander and Don, and click the links in the description to add your reviews, and you might hear us shout out your name on our next podcast. So we have news that is both bad and good to start out the show to. today. On Tuesday, one month after Billy Squires, the unhinged, off-duty, and now fired, Beaufort County deputy, was caught on a viral video holding teenagers at gunpoint in his Hilton Head neighborhood, Sled, after a review by the prosecutorial team on the Public Integrity Unit,

finally charged Billy Squires and his weird neighbor, Brian Henry Stoluber. It took 30 days for them to be under arrest. That happened hours after we public. our explosive COJ interview with South Carolina Attorney General Candidate David Pasco, a current solicitor who is on the Public Integrity Unit, which is in charge of prosecuting the Squiresgate case. And I highly suggest y'all listen to that interview where Liz and I dared to ask the question. Are officers in South Carolina actually held to a higher standard? Because this case proves the opposite. So the good news is that Squires is facing four felony charges appointing and presenting a firearm at a person and one count of aggravated

breach of peace. Stoluber, aka green shirt man on the ATV who appeared to be the instigator of the whole terrorizing incident, was charged with aggravated breach of peace and making a false complaint to a law enforcement officer. The good news is that it is always a start and a sign of progress when any good old boy ever is charged with anything at all. I was worried over the weekend, especially after hearing several rumors on Hilton had

that Squires was considering moving out of state. The charges would never be filed, and officials would hope that pesky people like us would get distracted with the next big thing and just forget about this. So yes, Tuesday's charges can count as a win for those of us losing faith in the system, and a big win for a community that banded together

to speak out and demand accountability when it seems like those in charge of law enforcement in the area were hoping it would just go away. However, and this is a big however, upon further inspection of the charges and the investigation, we think that Sled undercharged both Squires and Stalibur. And also, what about those other neighbors involved? I worry that this month-long investigation that has resulted in just a few charges, kind of weak charges, honestly, when you consider the danger that those kids faced, I'm worried that that could send the wrong message to law enforcement officers and the public, which is that cops who apparently do illegal things are to be protected by the system as much as the system can get away with it.

And the rest of us? Well, there's a different system for the rest of us. If any of those boys had done to others what Billy and his neighbors did to them, they would have been arrested immediately, and prosecutors would be calling CVS to borrow their receipt paper to contain all of the charges these boys would now be facing. They would have thrown the book at them. And the reason they would have thrown the book at them is because prosecutors and cops know that most cases do not ever go to trial. Most of them end after a plea negotiation. If you come to the plea negotiation table with a CDS receipts full of charges, then you're likely leaving that table with enough of those charges still intact to get justice. But if you come with the charges

written on the back of a fortune cookie slip of paper, there's really no justice there. Three appointing and presenting charges get dropped and the final one is pleaded down to simple assault or something. And hang on, I feel like I should say this to be clear. We are not advocating for police to overcharge people for funsies. We are not advocating that anyone stack charges on Billy or his buffoon neighbor, but we are saying charge them with what they did wrong. Charge them with what we can see in video. And as it turns out, charge them with what they can see on the buffoon neighbor's Google glasses. Yes, he actually filmed his own alleged crimes.

The thing is, there's still time for prosecutors David Pascoe and Duffy Stone to consider adding more charges, ones that seem provable, at least from where we sit, like assault and battery and kidnapping, to name a few. So let's take a closer look at the affidavit and walk y'all through everything that we know about this investigation and why we believe that more charges should be filed. Let's have David read the first paragraph of the affidavit filed by Sled in Billy Squire's case. On September 28, 2025, in the county of Beaufort, State of South Carolina, the defendant, William Squires committed the offense of pointing and presenting a firearm. A neighbor, Brian Stallberger,

told the defendant in a brief roadway conversation that he thought a group of juveniles had a gun. The defendant, under the influence of alcohol, while off-duty, dressed as a civilian and in his undercover sheriff's office white Toyota Dundra, engaged a group of juveniles and inquired as to what they were doing in the neighborhood. This interaction was captured on a cell phone recording. Wait, so right out of the gate in the first paragraph of this affidavit, Slet accuses Billy's neighbor Brian, the buffoon in the green shirt, of instigating the altercation. Then, Slet accused Billy of a crime that they didn't even charge him with. What?

Slet accused Billy of being under the influence of alcohol while, quote, in his undercover sheriff's office, white Toyota, engaging with the teenagers. But the report didn't say what he was doing in his vehicle. Was he going somewhere? And that's a pretty big deal to gloss over. Here is a clip from one of the videos showing Billy harassing the teenagers from the front seat of his work truck. In the video, you can hear the engine of the truck. That video shows Billy Squires driving his work vehicle to harass teenagers.

This means an off-duty cop was drunkenly driving a taxpayer-owned vehicle close to children and didn't get charged for it? That feels like a serious abuse of power to just casually mention that and move on. We went back and checked the video that we just played for you, and Billy was definitely in the driver's seat and the engine was on while this encounter was going down. And he definitely admitted to being intoxicated. and he refused a breathalyzer. But wait, hold on.

What happens to literally anyone else when they are accused of drinking and driving and they refuse a breathalyzer? Well, they are immediately thrown in jail and charged with a DUI. And a lot of times they lose their driver's license. But not Billy. Because of, guess what?

His quote-unquote higher standards that are applied to police, lawyers and judges. What a joke, right? If the standards for behavior were actually higher for police, the threshold for arrest would be lower, and the prosecutorial discretion would require immediate criminal charges. But anyways, let's get back to Billy's affidavit. The juveniles told the defendant they were just passing through the neighborhood and to leave them alone. No criminal conduct was observed from the juveniles. The defendant then proceeded to go inside his residence as the group of juveniles continued to walk down the road.

Again, to all you Hilton Head Cairns on Facebook who still keep spreading rumors that there is quote unquote more to the story. There is not. No criminal behavior from the teens was observed by Squires, according to Slead. The kids were simply walking on a public road that Billy thought that he had the right to rule over wall off duty. That is it. Stop excusing the bad acts of men. It didn't even matter in the first place what happened before the video. If an aggressive man is telling you, as a woman, to get out of a neighborhood and you tell him to get lost, does that mean that it's okay for that man to come running over to? to you with a gun and point that gun in your face and grab your property? I don't think so.

Now, listen to this next part and tell me it matters. The defendant then donned his duty vest and duty weapon, and after a few minutes left his residence and approached the juveniles with his gun drawn. He failed to properly identify himself as law enforcement. Did not report the incident to dispatch before engaging and escalated the situation by drawing and pointing his duty firearm without a reasonable basis or legal justification for doing so. Literally what we saw on camera, Karen. Think about how terrifying that would be for you in that same spot. The affidavit notes that one of the victims, quote, feared Squires, was going to shoot him. And as for Billy's breach of peace charge, David?

The defendant, under the influence of alcohol, while off duty, engaged with a group of juveniles while wearing his duty vest and handgun. He failed to properly identify himself as law enforcement, did not report the incident to dispatch before engaging, and as a result, the juveniles were threatened at gunpoint, physically restrained and detained, even though no weapon was found in their possession. The defendant's actions led to a disturbance of public order involving multiple civilians who then became involved by holding down the teens on the ground and assisting the defendant, under good faith that the defendant was acting in a lawful manner.

So physically restrained and detained? Are those good old boy words for assaulted and kidnapped? Sure sounds like it. And yet, see, what Billy believed to be true at the time shouldn't matter because Billy, according to the affidavits, was under the influence and therefore made bad and dangerous choices. If Billy really thought there was an actual danger to himself and others, he would have called dispatch first. He didn't. And that's because he wanted to show that he was in the neighborhood tough guy who was to be obeyed at all times. The boys were assaulted and they were not free to go home to their mothers for no reason except two men having alcohol-fueled delusions. Any mother would call that kidnapping. As for Brian Stahlheber, the buffoon neighbor in the green shirt on the four-wheeler, let's talk about his charges. David? The defendant, under the influence of alcohol, aggressively engaged a group of juveniles in the Squiresgate neighborhood by approaching them on a four-wheeler persistently questioning and harassing them and telling neighbor William Squires that he thought the juveniles had a gun on them. This interaction was recorded from the defendant

using meta-glasses and captured on a cell phone recording from one of the juveniles. The defendant failed to contact law enforcement dispatch, and later during the second encounter with the juveniles, the defendant physically restrained one juvenile and applied choking pressure all while contributing to a volatile scene that escalated community alarm. Oh, so choking pressure, physically restrained a kid, volatile. That's assault, right? No, that's breach of peace of a high and aggravated nature, according to the affidavit. And can I just say this? Most times when people put on glasses,

it makes them look smarter, more intellectual, not with this guy. The glasses are so tight on his face that it literally looks like one of his frat brothers got him with the Sharpie while he was passed out the night before. Okay, now for the really stupid part of all this. During an initial on-scene interview with the defendant by the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office, B.C.S.O.

The defendant told a BCSO sergeant that an extended handgun magazine was reportedly observed and flashed by a juvenile at the defendant. No weapon was recovered from the juvenile and through the defendant's own admission in later interviews. He never saw a weapon or an extended magazine but only assumed they had one based on posturing of the teen. What does that even mean, finger guns? Was the teen using a finger gun out of his waistband? I would love to know which team that was that had Mr. Metaglasses freaking out so much that instead of going back to his house,

which was 400 feet from Billy Squire's house, to call police, he rolled his way over to Billy, where he struck the match that ended Billy. career. Billy is responsible for Billy. Don't get me wrong, he earned the charges against him, and actually more. So all of this was based on two grown men creating friction with humans less than half their size. Then, when those humans showed no respect for their words, they used their imaginations. And one more thing, Billy and his buddy Brian both bonded out of jail just a few hours after they were apparently allowed to turn themselves in. Neither of them had to spend a night

in jail like the thousands of other accused criminals have to do while they wait for their hearings. But again, it's not too late to fix this. Remember, Charleston County Magistrate Judge James Gosnell was arrested on one charge of distributing child sexual abuse material. He got arrested and then he got indicted by a federal grand jury on five additional charges. I hope that the powers that be are listening. I'm not a prosecutor, but it seems backwards to have affidavits that, in addition to the crime that they're outlining, mention other crimes being committed,

but with no corresponding charges for those crimes. It seems backwards, backward. If Duffy Stone and David Pasco actually want to send a strong message to police in South Carolina to prevent this situation that was close to being deadly and devastating, they need to take a better look at the evidence in front of them and maybe stop thinking that cops are held to a higher standard and start thinking, let's do our best to charge our own, just like we would everyone else. Maybe we don't want cops to be held to be held to.

a higher standard. That clearly isn't working for us in South Carolina. So maybe, just maybe, we should aim to hold cups to the same standards and laws as everybody else. Just a thought. Y'am might have seen David and me sporting some super comfy and cozy apparel on social media. Well, those incredibly soft fits are made out of alpaca fiber. from Packa in Peru. Both David and I are loving packa socks, sweaters, hoodies, tops, and bottoms. This hoodie I got is built for real life, thermo-regulating, odor-resistant, durable, and made to last. Each one is handcrafted in Peru by artisans who stitch their name into the tag, a personal signature of quality and care. If you have been thinking about leveling up your hoodie game, this is your sign to do it now.

To grab your PACA hoodie and get a free pair of alpaca crew socks, head to go.pacca apparel.com and use my code Mandy. That's go. dot p-a-a-a-a-apparel.com slash Mandy and inner code Mandy. Last week, we had a lot of catching up to do from when Mandy, David, and I were in New York, celebrating the release of Murdoch Death and the Family, which I am unable to shut up about. And there were a few updates that we didn't get to in True Sunlight. One is the latest with John Paul Miller and his inability to shut the fuck.

To be quiet, let's just put it that way. Of all the cases we have covered in our careers, the Micah Francis, aka Micah Miller case, has been the most predictable. And that's because JP, much like his father Reggie Miller slash Wayne Miller, depending on which date is, is relentless, relentless, and in the smallest and most annoying of ways, in the most galling of ways, at a level that there's almost no comparison for it.

Seriously, there's nothing. Because here's the thing. When a man makes national news headlines for his wife's suspicious death that still has yet to make sense, and his whole world comes crumbling down because of his own actions and lies, and he keeps tripping on his own ego

over and over and over again and losing and losing every pathetic little battle he engages in. You only have your own logic to apply to this situation, right? It's not relatable. JP's situation in the past 10 months has basically been this.

He's suing 22 people in magistrate court for exercising their right to protest or talk about him online because, I don't know. It seems totally worth it to him, the paperwork and the backlash that he's going to get looking like a true cycle bully

which is exactly what he's been accused of being and his marriage to a woman who died while trying to leave him. It seems worth the time, effort, and money to him and, oh, look at that. Now the defendants are countersuing him. And one of the people he sued is maybe a delivery person

and doesn't have anything to do with the protests. And he got the names and addresses wrong on some of the cases. And he was forced to drop or give up on just about every case he filed. And everyone is laughing at him, and now he owes this one defendant $3,400 after a jury decided that his countersuit against JP had merit. He lost his megachurch. He is the subject of an FBI investigation.

He got remarried to a woman whose husband also died under suspicious circumstances and while they were allegedly both having an extra marital affair while he was married to Micah. On top of that, he's also not looking to grade these days. So with all of that, at some point between August and September, J.P. asked himself, should I appeal the $3,400 verdict against me? Now, drawing on your own logic and common sense and that boundary called dignity, which I'm going to guess yours is a lot like ours. The answer to his question in that scenario should have been absolutely not. Take my mouth shut. Take my phone away from me. Lock all my doors from the outside and swallow the key because I cannot trust myself to make good decisions right now. But JP being JP, he appealed the $3,400 verdict against him in the

countersuit to his case against a former friend and church member named Sam Rickman, whose counter-complaint shed so much light on what things were like with J.P. Miller at Solid Rock Church. J.P. sued Sam Rickman because Sam dared to take part in the protest by simply being there once in mourning over his friend Micah. In court, according to those who attended the trial, J.P. insinuated that Sam, a married man with at least one kid, either had a crush on Micah or was engaged in an inappropriate relationship with her. According to Sam's countersuit, after Micah's death in the National Spotlight was on Solid Rock, which employed at least one registered sex offender, J.P. wanted Sam to remove someone who worked at the church from the church's website, and Sam pushed back. At that point, according to the suit, J.P. had been asking Sam to do strange things, such as,

dedicate the Dare to Care Mission page to his estranged wife, Micah, a few days before her death. Dare to care being the project that JP and his sidekick, Trisha Ross, had twice the keys Micah of stealing from while she was trying to leave JP. Luckily, a judge stopped the police from getting a warrant to arrest Micah, deeming her withdrawal of funds from that account as her own money that she had put into the mission's bank account, which she was the sole signatory on. This is all just to say JP made this messy, and also according to Sam's counter-complaint, he was cruel, leveraging Sam's daughter's scholarship at J.P. school and her academic standing against him when he didn't get what he wanted. So that brings us to August, when Sam was awarded $3,500 by the jury for his case

and for some bizarre reason, J.P. was awarded $100 for his, making his balance with Sam $3,400. Now, the Miller men, according to court records, don't seem to be very good for their money when it comes to accountability, Buying DeLoreans and statues of Spider-Man, sure, but making his legal obligation to pay a verdict in a battle that he started, not so much. In September, J.P. filed this appeal in Magistrate Court, which is Small Claims Court. Again, we don't know for sure, but it seems like he got some help with this filing while putting his own whining flare on it. Here's David with what J.P. says are his main grounds for appeal. The appellant's exceptions to the judgment of the magistrate are set forth as follows. The magistrate allowed recovery for claims and causes of action that were not raised in the pleadings.

The magistrate permitted evidence to be presented to the jury by counsel for defendant despite having ruled that such evidence should not be presented. The magistrate upheld a jury award for intentional infliction of emotional distress despite defendants failure to present evidence supporting such a claim as required by South Carolina law. The magistrate allowed defendant to recover an amount for playing base at the church, even though he signed a contract with the church giving defendant's daughter free tuition. And defendant did not prove that plaintiff was under any obligation to pay defendant for playing in the church's band.

And the magistrate failed to ask the jury if they looked into the case when they returned to the court the morning of the second day of trial. Y'all, the judge, the magistrate judge, came back with a 10-page ruling earlier this month. And for those of you who have been following our coverage on the Spivey case, the judge in J.P.'s case is Nate Hudson, who is not a lawyer, but rather has a background in law enforcement, which is not uncommon in South Carolina, and who is believed to be the judge that Weldon Boyd seemed to have on his side according to Weldon's phone calls. Remember that one recorded phone call

on September 9th, 2023, from the scene of Scott Spivey's death which captured Weldon talking to his co-shooter, Bradley Williams, shortly after he and Bradley killed Scott? I got people, I got a judge, I county judge, I've got, Brandon with the SWAT team.

Brandon, where are you at? Under my house? Can you come to Camp Swamp Road off of 9 like as fast as possible? Yeah, what's wrong? I had to shoot somebody. And remember this other call, Weldon had with Brandon Strickland the day after Scott's death

when Brandon brought up the name name. Brandon, being the number two guy at ORI County Police Department, the same police department that minimized and ignored Micah's repeated calls for help in dealing with JP, who she said was stalking and harassing her. Remember that? I talked to Nate last night, too. I called Nate. He was at dinner, and I discussed it all with him.

And he sat there when I talked to you to tell you, he's thinking about you, but not to worry about anything. Because they'd have to go to him if they were going to charge him for a warrant. warrant, you know what I mean? Okay. And they're not going to, so I don't even think of, I'm thinking about that. Oh, and don't forget, this call that Weldon made right after that to his mother, telling her the good news about Nate. Brandon talked to Nate, and Nate, if there's any warrants that are going to be filed to arrest me or Bradley, they got to go through Nate. And Nate told Brandon this morning that we got nothing to worry about. Just go with the routine, because they're going,

They've got to make it, they've got to do the investigation so that his family can't say they were favoritism. Right. But the decision's already made. It's going to be closed to self-defense, but they got to go through the investigation. Great, huh? But also, neither of those men on the recordings are Judge Neat Hudson. So take what they're saying with a grain of salt. Anyway, back to Judge Hudson's 10-page decision.

Let's do a little highlight reel, but first I want to start with the exhibit. that Judge Hudson attached to his decision. Here's David reading from the contract that Sam Rickman had with J.P. Miller regarding his daughter's tuition at J.P. School, Faith First Academy, because I think it is very telling. Option one. Parents pay for books and curriculum for child in the amount of $600 plus the tuition of $3,000 per year and uniforms. Payments throughout the year are acceptable. Option 2. Parents pay for the books and curriculum in the amount of $600 plus continue to be faithful tithers each and every week.

In addition, there too, parent Sam agrees to play base for solid rock at market common as needed, preferably twice a month, including Wednesday night practices for the next year. In addition, parent Lindsay agrees to volunteer one full day each week at Faith First Academy. Upon the choice of this option, Pastor John Paul and his anonymous angel donor will pay for the child's tuition for this school year. Also, that parents volunteer to participate in at least once school fundraiser during the year. The purpose of this option is for you to see where you are after one year of faithfully obeying God in the area of finances. Assuming you are obedient, God will provide the money and wisdom needed for your family to fulfill its financial destiny. P.J.P. Believes in tithing and a Christian education so strongly that he is willing to sacrifice for your family in order for you to see what the results will be.

Furthermore, if the parents choose option two, that under no circumstances shall the parents or anyone within their family share any contents of this entire agreement other than to our Faith First Academy School Board trustees, principal, head of schools, and or administration. Okay, so that was excessively gross and sad. It makes me sad. The Rickmans wanted what they thought would be best for their daughter, and in the meantime, J.P., who they trusted, was putting on a metaphorical bib because he thought he caught another one. The contract, which reads like it was written by a cartoon devil, was signed by Sam, his wife, and board member Trisha Ross, J.P.'s a right-hand woman. But curiously not by JP. There's a space for him to sign, but no signature. Now, Sam, as we've told you in the past,

also did some paid work for JP and Micah on the church's website. And the arrangement was for him to assess what future work they needed and give them a price for it. But he says JP took advantage. And according to the counterclaim, JP continued to ask Sam to do work outside the scope of their agreement and for free. It was work that made Sam uncomfortable. according to the claim. In the exhibit is a screenshot of a text message between Sam and JP from shortly after Micah's death. Sam wrote in part, I do not feel comfortable doing that.

I sent you and Trisha all the info on how to log in and do that. I would also ask this be our last message. Here's David with JP's response. I haven't done anything wrong, Sam. Show me one thing I've done wrong. You haven't even heard my side, my proof, or my truth. And we paid you to oversee the website, so feel free to send us that money back. You also broke your contract for your daughter's school.

Do you think we should ask for that money you owe us, or what? What is fair, right, legal. Since you care what is right and wrong, what should you do about that? Tuition and the money we paid you to oversee the website? your call, man. I only want to do what is right. So sad that you have not one single proof of anything I've done wrong. All you have is social media and hearsay. And even if I had done wrong, I think you would have enough love for Micah, not to add to the negative evil out there. I'm done. Sam responded, quote, again.

I'm talking about other things we know. The FBI is investigating the entire Dare to Care. I'm not about to do anything more with that site. As far as the school fees, I played out my entire time. My daughter would have been removed from school a month ago, had it not been for her wanting to finish out her year on good grades. I have fulfilled all duties and commitments. I should note that Sam Rickman said in his counter-complaint

that his daughter was on an honors track until suddenly, and without explanation, she wasn't, after Micah's death, and after Sam and his wife had approached an elder in the church to express concerns about J.P. and his behavior. Sam believed that that was J.P.'s retaliation. And can I just say, if that's true, it takes a special kind of morally bankrupt person to punish a church member's child through their child's education.

also in exhibits a text exchange with JP from April 24, 2024, three days before Micah's death. This is also just over a week after Micah filed for divorce a second time in a day before JP was served with those papers. In its four days after what seemed to be like a hastily organized church trip to Africa in what appears to have been a big FU to Micah. That evening, on April 24th, J.P. asked Sam this. Can you put as big as possible on that site, misspelled, dedicated to Micah Miller and the vision God gave her for FFA, an abbreviation for Faith First Academy, all over the world. Two and a half hours later, he texted Sam again. Let me know when it's up so I can send it to her.

Hoof, the manipulation, you guys. I know this isn't new. information about J.P. We knew that he did this, but seeing it in writing, that he wasn't just doing it passively and hoping that Micah would see it. He was doing it so he could show her that he did it, to screw with her, or possibly to scare her. Oftentimes, in dedication of, is language used to honor a person who is no longer alive, right? Most of the other exhibits to the judge's decision are screenshots that Rickman's attorney, regime. award included of benign social media post from Sam that for some reason incensed JP, some reason being that he couldn't handle it that people were calling for justice for Micah. Oh, also, JP included

two pay stubs as evidence in this August 2025 trial. One is from Solid Rock Ministries from the week before Micah's death, showing that he was making $4,000 a month before taxes. After taxes, and after his wages were garnered $1,688 for alimony and child support for his first wife, his paycheck for the month was $1,651.8. Again, that's a creative budget you have to have to afford all the toys J.P. seemed to have at his house, including a four-wheeler. But according to an idiot, him, when you, quote, obey God in the area of finances and faithfully tithe, then God will reward you so that your family can reach its financial destiny. I should note that that this paystab was three months after J.P.'s church, the one run by him and a board that did what he said,

purchased his house from him. Just two months after Micah had filed for divorce the first time. The second paystab, JP included, was from January 2025 and from his new employer, Mercy Church Ministries. The church that was supposedly started by his grandmother, but then, after we started reporting on this, the ownership of the church's state registration kept changing. In a report from that same month in the Myrtle Beach Sun News, J.P. admitted to the church being his. Sorry, that's confusing to me and I'm sure everyone. Now, that pay stub shows J.P. with a higher date of January 17th, 2025, but the pay period is for December 2024. Not sure how that works. Anyway, it is for $2,100. After taxes and after his wages were garnished for child support and alimony, his take-home pay for the month is

$251.355. To which I say sounds on the up and up. J.P. included these in the exhibits as so-called evidence that the one time Sam Rickman attended a protest calling for justice for Micah, it led to that mighty dip in pay. This would be hilarious if it weren't clear how stressful the circus probably was on the Rickman family and how much public resources J.P. has used to fight these petty little roll-arounds on the ground. All right, the judge's decision. I swear we are there now. We just had to get through all the background first so that we would all be on the same page here. Over the 10 pages, Judge Hudson wrote, he laid out the case and what happened at the trial, and it almost reads like a book. In a series of sentences, he outlines every action

relevant to J.P.'s appellate claim. Here is David with a bit of it just to give you a flavor. Mr. Miller then called himself and was sworn. He then testified and provided evidence showing his financial losses since the actions of the defendant began. Mr. Miller provided his paycheck information and tithe reports from the church that he had since the events surrounding the defendant. Mr. Miller testified that due to the defendant's actions online and his attendance at the protest, he had suffered loss of income. Mr. Miller testified that he has not been charged following him contacting the FBI and their investigation.

Pause here. Sam Rickman also might have contacted the FBI. I don't know. But let's not forget how JP got on the FBI's radar. The Robeson County Sheriff's Office contacted the U.S. Attorney's Office and FBI while investigating Micah's death regarding some concern or piece of evidence or something that came up during their time on the case. Micah, herself, herself, self is also believed to have contacted the FBI prior to her death, according to court records. Mr. Miller indicated that he had nothing to do with the school or with the grading system and that he would never have a student's grades changed. Mr. Miller concluded with stating that all he wanted was for Mr. Rickman to stop harassing him. Mr. Miller entered into evidence two

bank stubs from his payments from the church. Attorney Ward questioned Mr. Miller about the financial losses, and if he could state that the defendant's actions were the proximate cause of his alleged losses. Mr. Miller did not provide any percentage to which he believed the defendant was responsible. The judge's decision doesn't opine why J.P. did not provide a percentage, but I think we all know why. According to this outline of the trial, it doesn't seem that JP presented any evidence of harassment on Sam's part. Rather, it seems like, to us,

the harassment was coming from JP in the form of that ridiculous trial. Okay, so my favorite part of JP's appeal is when he accused the judge of making an error by not asking the jury after they had returned for their second day of deliberation, whether they had looked up coverage about JP's case online the night before. Here's David with what Judge Hudson had to say about that. The court gave the instruction to the jury at the end of the day prior to sending the jury home to not discuss the case outside of the jury room

and not to do any personal research on the case or litigants in the case. The court did not check with the jury the next morning as there was no indication that such inquiry would be. be necessary. That is the last line of Judge Hudson's decision, which I hope you could have guessed by now was basically, no, your appeal is denied. Hudson wrote, quote, the appellant has failed to articulate with particularity the specific grounds upon which his argument rests, which is polite English for you are wasting everyone's time here, jackass, which is all just said.

J.P. Miller lost again, again, again, again. And oh, how I wish there weren't a government down right now because i'd love to know where the FBI is in their investigation it's been a full year since they sent a giant team of agents to raid jp's house seizing computers and other items alas for now we can all rest assured that no one deserves this 3,400 debt more than j p miller and let's think this out jp asked the court to reward him with the maximum you can get in a magistrate case which is seven thousand five hundred dollars that is how much he sued sam rickman and all the other defendants for individually. The jury gave him $100. That is how much they believed he was affected by Sam's presence at the protests that one time and for his benign pro-micca Facebook posts. So Jave He not only lost

by the $7,400 he didn't get in that case, he lost by $3,400 more than that, in Sam's case against him. It's a beautiful thing. Real quick before we go, while we were in New York, attorney Mark Moore, who is Russell Lafitte's attorney and is also Greg Parker's attorney in the civil conspiracy case that arose out of Mallory Beach's wrongful death case in the boat crash, gave an update to the South Carolina House Ethics Committee on RJ May, the now former House member who pleaded guilty to five federal accounts of, let's do this in shorthand, being a pedophile, i.e., distributing images of children, including babies, being sexually assaulted by adults. to include women. It's yet another example of South Carolina seeming to have only five lawyers, but actually it's worse than that. Because Mark Moore is with Maydard Nixon Law Firm, known for its access to, and some would argue power over state legislators and judges. It's also known for lobbying at the statehouse on behalf of high-priced clients. We're going to talk more about all of this in a future episode because it seems like the South Carolina Statehouse

likes to use taxpayer money to heavily line the pockets of certain attorneys and firms by hiring them as outside counsel to handle what seems like to us, sham, investigations. Mark Moore and Maynard Nixon, for instance, were hired by the House Ethics Commission to investigate a complaint from Representative Davy Hyatt, a Republican from Pickens County and longtime member of the House. That complaint, it turns out, was about whether there was enough cause to remove RJ May from his elected seat to expel him. June 23, 2025, Mark Moore and his firm signed an agreement on the scope and mission of this investigation. Again, we're going to talk all about this later, but fun fact, R.J. May had already

been arrested by the feds. He was indicted on June 10th. He was arrested June 11th, and on June 12th, a federal magistrate judge denied him bond, and not in a South Carolina good old boy Bowen Turner sort of way, where everything's flexible and negotiable for a price. R.J. May wasn't going anywhere. So, nearly two weeks after RJ's indictment and 11 days after he was told he wasn't going anywhere but jail, the house decided to enter into an agreement with Mark Moore and his firm to see if there was any reason

R.J. May should be expelled. Something they could have and should have done almost a year earlier. God, this gets me so angry. In September, Mark Moore's invoice for his services was $101,564 in 10 cents and rising. As of October 14th, after RJ May has pleaded guilty to multiple charges, Mark Moore was still working on a formal report according to a state house video of the Ethics Committee meeting. Let me repeat that for every person in South Carolina, to hear, $101,000 of your hard-earned tax dollars has gone to a greedy gross attorney

to quote-unquote investigate a former house member who was already charged with horrific crimes involving pedophilia. And the entire scope of the investigation was not to see if he was criminally involved with other house members or to find out what kind of information related related to his criminal activity he was privy to while he was grossly allowed to be a state representative while under federal investigation, nor was this little investigation to find out if anyone helped cover for R.J. May. All of those inquiries might be worth $100,000 of taxpayer money. In a state, by the way, where 14% of people and 20% of all children are living below the poverty line. But no, the good old boys don't even try to hide this blatant misuse of tax dollars.

Because they don't have to. No one ever questions them for this. And what exactly were Mark Moore's conclusions of this very expensive investigation, again, funded by tax dollars? Get this. His conclusions were that RJ May should be expelled. But funny story, RJ had already resigned at that point. He resigned his seat right as one of his fellow Freedom Caucus members and friend Jordan Pace asked for the house to expel him. You know, in the middle of this six-figure investigation to expel RJ,

apparently on a day Jordan was supposed to meet with Mark Moore and his team to talk about RJ and their connections. This is infuriating, right? $100,000 to a disgusting attachment. attorney, in my opinion, for a pathetic three-month investigation where he found literally nothing beneficial to taxpayers in a state where over 260,000 homes depend on SNAP benefits. $100,000 for less than three months of shoddy work in a state where the median income is just $35,000. Like I said, we are starting to do some digging.

and this isn't the first time that we have seen this government waste in the form of legislator lawyers helping other lawyers who help legislator lawyers. And we are going to talk a lot more about that. But in the meantime, I want to leave you with Mark Moore and his version of the username that RJ May was using to talk with other pedophiles online and share child sex abuse material with. The user Joe Biden, NN69.

Yuck. More on that later. Stay tuned, stay pesky, and stay in the sunlight. Research support provided by Beth Braden. Audio production support provided by Jamie Hoffman and Grace Hills. Case file management provided by Kate Thomas. Learn more about our mission and membership at LunaSharkMedia.com. Interruptions provided by Luna and Joe Pesky. This is Alec Murdoch.

I need police and an ambulance immediately. Murdoch, Death in the Family, official podcast. is here. I'm joining Patricia Arquette, Jason Clark, and the cast to uncover all things Murdoch. Family first. To unravel the story piece by piece was really surprising because you don't want to believe it. Murdoch, Death in the Family Official Podcast, Wednesdays, and stream Murdoch, Death in the Family on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms Apply.