Murdaugh Murders Podcast - TSP #150 [Part One] - How Does a Pro-Alex Murdaugh Troll Theory End Up in The New Yorker?

Starting point is 00:00:00 The justice system can be intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. We all want a drink from the same cup of justice, and it starts with learning about our legal system. My name is Mandy Matney, and together with journalist Liz Farrell and world-renowned attorney Eric Bland, we create the perfect trifecta of legal expertise, journalistic integrity, and a fire lit to expose the truth wherever it leads. We all encounter a part of our justice systems at one point, so why not get prepared? while being entertained with tales from the newsroom and the courtroom. Cup of Justice has amazing special guests like Cheryl Crow, Vinipolitan, Emily D. Baker, and other experts to share their take on the bright side of the truth.

Starting point is 00:00:44 Luna Shark Media invites you to gain knowledge, insight, and tools to hold your own or hold public agencies accountable. Search for Cup of Justice wherever you get your podcast or visit Cup of Justicepod.com. I don't know exactly why Team Murdoch is so focused on suing Becky Hill. But in typical good old boy fashion, they told on themselves big time in the New Yorker of all publications. My name is Mandy Matney. This is True Sunlight, a podcast exposing crime and corruption, previously known as the Murdoch Murdoch's podcast. True Sunlight is a Lunar Shark production, written with journalist Liz Farrell.

Starting point is 00:01:45 Y'all, in the last three years, I feel like I've been walking in a giant flat circle. And now I'm back to 2023 in Murdoch Dystopia, where nothing is as it seems, and somehow everything is connected. The good news is that we are smarter and sharper and peskier and peppier than we were in 2023, And we are armed with seven years of experience on this story, and a combined 14, if you care about that.

Starting point is 00:02:19 Which means we have reported on this case far more than any other news outlet ever has. And yet, even as this story skyrockets into the international press, we are again finding ourselves on a lonely island. Again, we are one of only a few. few media outlets who ever dare to call Team Murdoch out for their lies. This is a special two-part episode of True Sunlight, aka the Murdoch Murdoch's podcast. And we need y'all to get your pens out, take those tinfoil hats off, you won't need them, and listen carefully. Okay, serious question for y'all.

Starting point is 00:03:05 How does a pro-Ellick Murdoch troll theory end up in a New Yorker? The New Yorker, the best literary nonfiction in a country as far as I'm concerned. How does a writer, the kind his work gets accepted by the New Yorker in the first place, a magazine that is famous for its ultra-high standards in fact-checking, and a writer, by the way, that Joyce Carol Oates described as, quote, one of our very best true crime documentaries, so easily become a pawn in what has been a three-year game of Murdoch, good old boy chess. You already know the answers to these questions.

Starting point is 00:03:42 I just said the keyword twice. Murdoch. Because Murdoch. Because Murdoch, Murdoch. This is what we've been saying since 2021. Actually, since 2019. We've probably been saying this since our past lives, too, right before we were both burned at the stake by Ehrlich Murdoch's forefathers

Starting point is 00:04:03 or pointing out their trickery. This is what Ehrlich Murdoch stories look like, y'all. There's always a scheme. There's always a twist. The villain never dies. There will be a third, fourth, and fifth resurrection. It just takes some plotting and patience and a whole lot of emphatic lying. When the emphatic lies are discovered, it's no big deal. Everyone relax. Elick will just pick another path. One of the paths already being built for him by his team in real time. So let's just get to the point here. All of this is a game because with Elek Murdoch, it is always. a game. And to him, people are nothing more than playing pieces. Once you understand that about him, every single facet of the murders falls into place, but not everyone can get there, especially if they don't want to. You can tell people there is no one out there like Elek Murdoch, and they will agree, but still, still, they will use only their baseline understanding of human behavior to assess Eleg with. I mean, Google, Google,

Starting point is 00:05:09 him, for God's sakes, there are more stories out there, more documentaries, more books, more podcasts, more social media discussion pages about Elek Murdoch than there are about any other modern-day true criminal. We are not talking about your average, messy man. That said, let's talk about the writer who, in our opinions, doesn't seem to know he's on the chess board. This week, James Lasden, author of the recently published family man, blood and betrayal in the House of Murdoch, had a piece published in the New Yorker titled how a small town clerk's miss aides upturned the murdock verdict and we really need to talk about it because to us it feels less like an account of how becky hill readily handed the defense an opportunity to exploit which boy did she ever and more like a familiar brick being

Starting point is 00:05:57 laid in yet another dishonest path being built by team murdock in real time so let's rewind just a little here. Who is James Laston? He is, um, you know, a guy. Mandy and I both spoke with him in 2022 before the trial and both came away from our conversations feeling like, huh, so that was a New Yorker writer. Because for us, New Yorker writers are on pedestals. They're the epitome of success and skill, right? But to us, he seemed scattered on the facts and mostly focused on his own bewilderment, and that is the absolute right word to convey how he sounded to us, over the crime itself. He seemed highly incredulous that a man, like Elyke, would, or even could kill his own son. Wife, yes, son, no. At the time, it was the basic, favored, pro-Ellic argument we would hear,

Starting point is 00:06:48 mostly for men. Like, sure, we kill our wives all the time, but not our sons, our heirs, our extensions of ourselves. That makes no sense to us, non-sun killers. As if we were talking about the average man here, and not Elyke Murdoch, who we have been covering for years at that point, and yet were routinely given no credibility for that by that particular subset of Murdoch watchers. Mandy and Liz say they believe he was capable of this, but they're just biased. They want him to have done this. Uh, no, we're good observers and listeners. We spent years talking to people who knew Eleg and knew what motivates him,

Starting point is 00:07:24 people who tolerated him with careful smiles and side eyes, people who thought the world of him but also knew not to take a favor from him. People who had drunken nights of never-ending laughter and storytelling with him, but still understood who they were dealing with. Eleg Murdoch was chaotic and charming and over the top and had no respect for anyone's boundaries, not even his own. We knew about Eleg's alleged exploits with women who weren't Maggie. We knew about his temper and his showmanship,

Starting point is 00:07:51 and we knew about his family history with law enforcement. Whatever they get into they can get out of, right? But Lassden, who was from the UK and lives in the United States, didn't have the benefit of this insight. He only knows that Ehrlich that existed from June 2021 forward. Ehrlich, the widower. Ehrlich, the man who lost a son. The after Ehrlich, which is not a judgment from us, by the way. It's merely a fact.

Starting point is 00:08:14 To know about Ehrlich absent the murders is to know that he was, again, in our opinions, capable of it. In our calls with Lastin, we also talked about his skepticism of the state's theory of motive, that Ehrlich was running out of places to hide, that a gathering storm was coming for him, that he had killed Maggie and Paul to rid himself of an existential problem, two people getting in the way of his drug addiction, and two people who had the power to inadvertently expose what he was really up to. Ehrlich could have deeply loved Maggie and Paul, to whatever degree he is capable of loving,

Starting point is 00:08:50 and also have seen them as pawns, as not people, in the grander scheme of where his life seemed to be headed. He gets to remember them as loving him and not as the people he disappointed. And again, we don't know what's so hard to understand there. Yes, it's complex, and yes, it's not how you would solve his problems, but that's the point. For a dozen or more years,

Starting point is 00:09:16 Ehrlich, part of the Murdoch family, in a multiple badge-carrying member of the 14th Circuit Solacellors, solicitor's office had slickly hidden his side hustle. Lawyer by day, thief by nature. He had stolen millions from vulnerable clients who not only trusted him, but actually liked him. Everyone really loved him. And he relied on that fuel.

Starting point is 00:09:42 Elyke Murdoch Big Red helped people. Big Red did favors and hooked people with jobs and deals and fun. He had so much fun on the boats. and on the hunt. He would fish and drink and do drugs and, uh, climb trees. His life was like a really bad Luke Bryan song. But flip that image over and you would find the compounding problem happening in Elyke's life. He was finally in over his head with the thefts and the money shuffling. His son was facing two felony counts of boating under the influence, causing bodily harm, and one felony count of BUI causing death. And the state was not budging. The charges were already a sign that he had

Starting point is 00:10:29 lost that classic Murdoch touch. He and his other son were defendants in the wrongful death lawsuit that sprung from the boat crash and the lawyer representing the Beach family. Mark Tensley was not playing good old boy games. He was not playing by the Murdoch rules. Add to all of this, the man who helped keep that big ginger head above water, Elyke's father, Randolph Murdoch III, while he was on borrowed time. And though he had been critically ill for years, it was clear that he didn't have much longer to live.

Starting point is 00:11:05 In April, Randolph made calls to his old friends to tell him he loved them and that the end was near for him. No more treatment, no more pain, no more hope, but he had a good run. Oh, and Elyke was starting to lose the implicit trust he had in his family's law firm. There was a lot of money missing, and Elyke was lying about where it was. They weren't dropping that. It must have been real exhausting to be Ehrlich Murdoch in June 2021. But still, even after Ehrlich was found guilty in what now will be known as his first murder trial, James Lassden continued to be bewildered. Here's David with an excerpt

Starting point is 00:11:49 From a March 7th, 2023 piece he wrote in the New Yorker, title The Lingering Mystery of the Ellick Murdoch murder trial. For some observers, myself included, the alleged motive behind the crime strained belief. Would a functional, albeit opioid-addicted, middle-aged man, blast his 22-year-old son in the chest and head with a shotgun, and then gunned down his wife of three decades with five bullets from a semi-automatic 300 blackout. Within a few minutes of chattering with them about Bubba and the chicken,

Starting point is 00:12:34 just in the hope of warding off an approaching storm of legal troubles, justice may have been served, but the human element of the story didn't seem to add up. Um, it actually does add up, James. You're just using the wrong formula. Again, Ellick is not a template. He is a highly unique person who is a part of a highly unique family tree. And please, sir, check your privilege as a baseline, safe white male. You can't picture a man going from Bubba to carrying out a cold-blooded double murder? Well, lucky you, try being a woman telling a man. Not all men, but always a man.

Starting point is 00:13:24 No, I promise you, men, not all men, but always a man, are capable of going from one extreme to murderous. Okay, so James Lasden wrote a book about Illick called Family Man. In this book, he actually referenced me in a complimentary way. I want to point this out to people online who say that I only go after journalists who aren't nice to me. This man, in his book at least, gave me major props. Do I appreciate those props? Yeah. But do I think that a journalist who dares to actually tell the truth about what actually went down in the Murdoch case, instead of writing around certain people's involvement,

Starting point is 00:14:12 do I think that they should be rewarded or at least protected from our criticism? Absolutely not. Here is David with that passage. Alex may have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for Mandy Matney. Preparing a story about lawsuits arising from the boat crash, Matney stumbled on a court document relating to an earlier wrongful death claim against Alex. settled by Lloyd's for $505,000. The presence of Corey Fleming's firm as lawyers for the plaintiffs caught her attention,

Starting point is 00:14:54 as did the name of the judge who'd approved the settlement. Perry Buckner, another friend of the Murdox. The payout seemed low for a wrongful death suit and Mandy suspected there may have been shenanigans by Alex Friends on his behalf. Her article didn't actually mention the Saturday. The focus is on Fleming, but with its appearance in November 2019, news of the settlement was effectively out. You would think Alec would have been rattled enough to abort his scheme and call Tony with

Starting point is 00:15:29 some excuse for the year-long delay in paying him. The fact that he plunged on regardless tells you something about his sense of invincibility. Yes, James, yes. You were so close to getting it. But let's connect that dot for you. Ehrlich thinks he's invincible because he is. Look at what's happening now. And look at how many people excuse what Ehrlich did to his clients

Starting point is 00:15:56 as if it's a separate Ehrlich from the Ehrlich who allegedly killed Maggie and Paul. Look at how the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned his conviction based on the relentless narrative washing coming from Team Murdoch. Because when we break down the Becky, hill of it all, it's still and will always come down to the credibility of Jersey for us, the woman who took three affidavits to say what Team Murdoch needed her to say. Okay, back to the most recent story in The New Worker, because this one has us fired up. And it's not because of James Laston's personal struggle with understanding Eleg's motive

Starting point is 00:16:29 to allegedly murder his wife and son. It's because James seems to have lost his footing on earth. Leading up to the publication of the story on Tuesday, we had heard some rumblings behind the scenes that the New Yorker was fact-checking a story about Becky Hill that included old lies, perpetuated by a cluster of trolls and trolley creators about the so-called, quote-unquote, anonymous person tied to Mark Tinsley and Lunashark, who contacted Judge Clifton Newman toward the end of the first murder trial to tell him that her co-worker said their landlord, a juror who worked at a monkey farm, had been talking about the case outside of court and talking about how she believed Elyke to be innocent.

Starting point is 00:17:10 Now, I say so-called anonymous person because she was not, in fact, anonymous to Judge Newman. She was anonymous to the public because she did not want her name out there in fear of retaliation. But the trolls, no matter how many times this woman who has given us permission to use her name, it's Christine Avery,

Starting point is 00:17:28 has corrected them online, and it's been a lot, have continued to perpetuate that a mystery person associated with Lunashark had dropped a dime on juror 785, who would soon become known as the Egg Lady juror. The lies about the so-called anonymous emailer include the following, that she had delivered pizzas to the jury shortly before emailing Judge Newman, that she and Becky were close friends, that she was part of a greater conspiracy to get the egg lady removed from the jury, that someone else wrote the email she sent to Judge Newman

Starting point is 00:17:59 and since then, and because of Greg Parker's attorneys, it has morphed into an even bigger law. including that Christine Avery has known Martinsley since 2020 when he conducted two focus groups in the beach boat crash case. Oh, and that Martinsley and she and us and Becky conspired to get the egg lady thrown off the jury. Because, see, that original misperception that Judge Newman didn't know the identity of the woman who sent the email, fueled the wicked imaginations of the pro-Ellic and incidentally the anti-Mandy and me trolls, for lack of a better word to describe them and their behaviors, which are textbook trolley.

Starting point is 00:18:38 Their speculations about what happened then got the support of Team Murdoch, and for the past three years, we have had to live with the constant side-eye referencing of some greater conspiracy that will soon be revealed. Whether James Lasden understood it or not, he and the New Yorker were being used, and in our opinions, he rolled right over

Starting point is 00:18:59 and let them tickle his belly. Again, seems like Team Murdo. and their troll wagon of conspiracy theorists believe that we, Luna Shark, conspired with Mark Tinsley and Becky Hill and Christine Avery to get the egg lady removed so that Ehrlich would be found guilty. And the side-eye referencing of it started picking up right before the Supreme Court made their ruling on Ehrlich's conviction. Now, James Alaston's piece does not reference a conspiracy directly, nor does it accuse Mark Tinsley of knowing Christine Avery before or during the trial. But according to Mark Tinsley, it did until fact-checked

Starting point is 00:19:33 from the New Yorker called and texted him. According to Mark, most of what was written about this theory, and even calling it a theory, feels too meaty, too validating, was taken out of the story. But the fact checkers left a few parts in. So stick a pin in that. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for supporting our mission

Starting point is 00:19:57 to get voiced to victims by watching Hulu's Murdoch death in the family. We have been hard at work for weeks curating Soak Up the Sun Premium content to go with each of the eight episodes. We are so excited to share the behind-the-scenes photos from the show, maps, more audio, timelines, case files, and the original source material that inspired the writers and directors for Hulu's original series, all for our Soak Up the Sun members on Luna Shark Premium. Use your Supercast login to get access to the full experience. That means ad-free, plus extended episodes, bonus drops, exclusive case files,

Starting point is 00:20:34 Live streams, access to our exclusive members-only shows like Girl Talk, Corruption Watch List, premium dives, and more. Plus, curated behind-the-scenes coverage of the Hulu series. Join our mission and become a member today at lunashark.supercast or click the link in the description. So, this theory is what seems to underlie every chess move right now. We could hear it in everything in the civil lawsuit that Eleg filed against Bellows. Becky in federal court in Dick and Jim's big man talk about subpoena power and discovery, the egg lady, Myra Crosby, and her constant squawking about Becky and asking the court

Starting point is 00:21:30 to unseal the sled investigation into Becky's alleged jury tampering, or tinkering, they keep calling it, which is weird. The references to other parties and schemes and Becky having potential co-conspirators. I'm telling you, it has been years of snide comments and outright defamatory speculation being made by the same old trolly trolls. They came real close to saying the thing, the accusation that Mark Tinsley and Luna Shark conspired to get Egg Lady removed, but they didn't fully say it because they know that they can't. They know it is not true, no matter how much they want it to be true. They know,

Starting point is 00:22:17 And again, get your pens out. We have a lot more to say about that too. But inner James Lasden from the New Yorker. We don't know exactly what Lasden's story looked like before the fact-checking process happened last week. But again, we were told that it included, as Mark Tensley put it to us, not just lies, but damn lies. And again, we know one of those lies is that Christine Avery was a part of Mark's focus group in the spring of 2020.

Starting point is 00:22:54 But before we talk about that, though, let's talk about what's been happening as a whole. You know, what we've been going through with the attorneys for the billionaire gas station chain owner Greg Parker, whose Parker's Kitchen Convenience Store sold alcohol to an underage Paul Murdoch the night Paul killed Mallory Beach in February 2019. We need to summarize this so you all can understand how it all fits together, so bear with me. In April 2020, when Liz was working for Beaufort County and not in journalism, Mark Tensley contacted her and asked her if she knew of any smart people in Beaufort County, that's key, who might want to take part in a focus group to assess the case that he was building against Parker's Kitchen in Ellick and Buster Murdoch.

Starting point is 00:23:46 One of the reasons Beaufort County is key is because lawyers for Parker's Kitchen wanted the venue changed from Hampton County to Beaufort, where they thought a jury would be less generous. Stick a pin in the other reason. It was a moment in time. Liz describes it like being asked for recommendations on a good plumber or a babysitter. Mark just needed some names, and because Liz had worked for the local paper for almost 18 years before that, he figured she would have access to a wide circle of people, which she did. Liz took 10 minutes and reached out to people she had in her contacts and on Facebook.

Starting point is 00:24:26 And that was it. Liz being Liz, though, she also asked Mark if she could observe the process. The focus groups, there were two of them, were held over Zoom because of COVID. She watched them with Mark at his law office. After that, in July 2020, the Beach family put together a rough draft of a video they wanted to use in mediation. The video was filmed documentary style and was meant to show the defendants how the Beach family might come across to a jury. In the video, they spoke about the tremendous hole left in their lives and how they struggled as they learned to exist without Mallory. Needless to say, the video did not include any images of Mallory's body.

Starting point is 00:25:07 The video was never meant for public consumption at large. Before Mark introduced the video as evidence in the mediation process, he sought feedback on its impact. He asked me to give it a watch and share any impressions that I had, which I did. And again, that was that, mostly. As a lot of you know, Mandy continued to work in journalism after I left the packet. And in 2020, she continued to write about the latest filings in the boat crash case. It's around then when she was beginning to notice that every time she wrote about the case, specifically Parker's Kitchen's filings, she would get attacked online by bots.

Starting point is 00:25:43 This is something that is continued through and beyond the murders of Maggie and Paul. In July 2020, around the time that I watched the rough draft of the premeditation video, Mandy asked Mark for a quote from Mallory's mother Renee for one of her stories. He didn't want to bother Renee and ask Mandy to instead ask me to pull a specific quote from Renee's interview in the video draft that I had watched, which I still had the live link to at that time. Here's David with a quote from Renee Beach that I gave to Mandy. Parker's is not training them properly, so that's why kids are coming in with fake IDs or using their brother's ID, and they're not trained, so they don't know what to look for. And if they would start training them properly, it would help save someone else's life.

Starting point is 00:26:28 And that is it. I was given a quote from that video for a story, the end. And this was, I would say, the most substantial part of my eight-hour deposition, by the way. What we just said, that I had Liz give me a quote from Renee Beach. That could have been an email, right? But no, they wanted to trap me in a room with all their hot air and interrogate me on things like how I store my text messages and how the Hulu project came about. This is why I fought for the court to protect me on this. The court could and should protect journalists from this sort of blatant and obvious abuse of subpoena power

Starting point is 00:27:13 aimed, in my opinion, just to harass and fish for any dirt that they can use in the media and outside of this case. In November 2021, right after I returned to journalism, I got a tip from a media source that there was a documentary being shopped. that contained photos of Mallory Beach's dead body. I knew that those photos, which I have never seen, and neither has Mandy, were not part of the case file that the Department of Natural Resources had released to the public months earlier. So I contacted Mark Tinsley. Mark watched the video and recognized other parts of the documentary trailer

Starting point is 00:27:49 as being clips from the video that the Beach family had made. That video is owned by the Beach family, meaning this documentary did not have the rights to use it. But more than that, the final draft of it had become part of the confidential mediation process that happened later that summer in 2020. That is when the Beach family sued Greg Parker and others for civil conspiracy for allegedly leaking the case file with the photos along with the mediation video to a documentary filmmaker named Vicki Ward. What no one knew at the time, though, is that Vicky had gotten the video

Starting point is 00:28:22 and photos of Mallory's dead body from a man named Greg Rowman, a political operative we've talked about a lot on the show who has been accused multiple times of manufacturing anti-Muslim propaganda to stoke fears in the U.S. and abroad. Vicki has sworn this in an affidavit, and Greg Roman, according to the Wall Street Journal, was employed by Greg Parker for litigation mitigation, meaning to help Parker's kitchen lessen their liability in the boat crash case. Greg Parker and his team deny that Roman worked for them at the time these materials were leaked. They also deny leaking them. So what does all that have to do with the Murdoch murder case and the New Yorker story, right? In 2025, both Mandy and I were subpoenaed by Greg Parker's attorneys based on troll theories that dovetail with the Murdoch case.

Starting point is 00:29:12 Now, again, Parker's two main attorneys are Debbie Barbier, who is or was Chloe Fleming's attorney in his criminal case, and Mark Moore, who is or was Russell Lafitte's attorney in his appeal and criminal. criminal case. So there's that. And during both of our depositions, we were asked strange questions that seemed like, I don't know, more about the Murdoch case than the Parker's case, and a lot of questions about how we access our reporting information. Like they had anticipated a subpoena in the future and wanted us to tell them where they should go fishing. Again, based on no evidence, no facts, no witness accounts, based only on troll theories. And when it came to the Parker's case, we were both very clear with Parker's attorneys before the depositions. That we considered the depositions to be nothing more than harassment, because they seem to be basing their need to depose us on,

Starting point is 00:30:05 again, you got it, troll theories. Lies. Troll lies. Let's talk about those troll lies. The troll creators and their troll cheerleaders have positive for years that my involvement in getting Mark participants for his focus group and Mandy's use of Renee Beech's quote from the draft of the mediation video somehow means we are working for Mark and being paid by Mark to help with his cases. We can't say this enough. That is not and has never been true, not even a little bit. We have not been paid by anyone or any enterprise to cover any case. Every word we speak is our own and no evidence can possibly exist to the contrary.

Starting point is 00:30:46 What's frustrating about this lie is that it continues to be perpetuated by trolley creators who are motivated by, I'm really not sure, but I will say this. Their creations don't have the same level of success as ours do, and they themselves don't garner the same respect for Mark Tinsley as we do. And maybe all of that angers them. And by the way, we don't take that respect lightly. Mark is a person of high integrity. He is one of the good guys, which is why he's a target.

Starting point is 00:31:16 So all that said again, What does this have to do with the Murdoch case? Nothing and everything. The theory that's been percolating for years in the pro-Ellic anti-Mandy and Liz community of trolls is that Mark Tensley and the two of us conspired with Christine Avery and Becky to get the egg lady removed. That is a lie that Team Murdoch now seems to be fully committed to. And it does not matter.

Starting point is 00:31:49 How many times they are told that they are wrong. They continue to forge ahead. I mean, y'all, the Egg Lady's book was a seemingly never-ending rant about her beliefs, that the Luna Shark team, including Eric Bland, along with Mark Tensley, to quote Elyke Murdoch, did her dirty. But we'll get into those details in part two of this episode. And we hate to even again mention the felon, with his so very important. called news website in all of this mess. But he helped write the Egg Ladies' book, along

Starting point is 00:32:26 with another trolley creator named The Critical K, whose real name is Karen Yaks. We have reported on her before. In 2023, a federal judge ordered her to pay a half a million dollars to the mother of Christian Andriaccio, a young Mississippi man who died of a drug overdose under questionable circumstances in 2014. Critical K covered the case in 2021, and she allegedly accused Christian's mother of, quote, intimidation, bullying, outright lies, bribery, getting people drunk, and getting young people drunk. And allegedly suggesting this man's mother, a nurse, was somehow responsible for the overdose of another man, allegedly comparing that case to Christians, in a way that portrayed that grieving mother as a murderer.

Starting point is 00:33:22 I digress, but also this is important context. Both Greg Parker's attorneys, who again represented Murdoch's co-conspirators, and T. Murdoch, Dick Harputlian, and Jim Griffin, at all, and The Trolly trolls, who, in our book, include the felon, along with some of our former co-workers, an old man reporter who licks the boots of the good old boys and a podcaster whose entire identity seems to be, I'm not Mandy, so I'm so great, see? They all have the same problem. Is that Mark Tensley is a highly credible person. Eric Bland is a highly credible person. And we are highly credible reporters, with years of experience, education, and the truth on our side.

Starting point is 00:34:18 And not for nothing, but all of us together have a total sum of zero felonies. And we have a big audience of people who turn to us for our takes on the cases that we cover and just for our opinions in general, which, thank you, we love you. You make it possible to do this work every week, and it is beginning. because of you that the good old boys have been breaking a sweat since 2021. It is no coincidence that our Cup of Justice co-host Eric Bland was recently hauled in front of the Office for Disciplinary Council, meaning his law license is on the line. After years of the ODC sitting on, in our opinions, retaliatory complaints from both Dick Harpoolian and Parker's attorneys,

Starting point is 00:35:05 along with more than a dozen complaints sent in by the felon who has a news site. It is no coincidence that the rhetoric about Becky Hill and others has picked up. It is no coincidence that Team Murdoch is suing Becky Hill and trumpeting about their ability to subpoena people. It is no coincidence that the egg lady juror is again asking the courts to unseal the investigation into Becky's alleged jury tampering, which please do. It is no coincidence that the lies about Martinsley, Christine Avery, and Becky Hill ended up in an unpublished article for The New Yorker. This is all part of the game, the concerted effort to free Alec Murdoch from the burden of being held accountable for the deaths of Maggie and Paul. Speaking of concerted efforts, let's talk about James Lazzin's story and what did get published, starting with this coded little passage. This was juror number 785, whose name is Myra Crosby, and in the last hours of the six-week trial, she became the target of a concert.

Starting point is 00:36:10 and successful attempt to remove her from the final jury panel. Uh, a concerted and successful attempt to remove Egg Lady from the final jury panel, you say. All put forth by Becky? The lady who had never been on an airplane before 2023? That Becky? Here's how this supposedly went down, according to Lasden, who wrote that Becky, quote, apparently, was able to commit jury tampering in plain sight and, quote, talked openly about wanting a guilty verdict to sell more copies of her book. But he said that without offering

Starting point is 00:36:53 attribution to the source to back that up, which were supposed to do in journalism. Who said that Becky wanted a guilty verdict to sell more book copies? Oh yeah, that clerk, Rhonda McElven, That same clerk of court who testified that she did not report Becky to Judge Newman after hearing that Becky had been doing some nonsense. We get that the Supreme Court considers what Becky did, and that speaking to the jury in reference to Ehrlich Murdoch taking the stand, could be an infringement on Ehrlich Murdoch's right to a fair jury. But jury tampering is a crime,

Starting point is 00:37:35 a crime that Becky has not been charged with. According to James, there were two jurors who appeared to openly sympathize with Elek toward the end of the trial. But according to the jurors themselves, there were more than that. This is important and we'll talk more about this in part two. But James says that on Monday, February 27, 23, Becky had, quote, laid the groundwork for Myrake's removal. by bringing a Facebook post to Judge Newman's attention.

Starting point is 00:38:10 And y'all, Becky truly did stick her nose where it didn't belong with that stupid Facebook post. Again, we'll get to the receipts on that in part two. But according to Becky, on the evening of February 24th, she had seen a post on the Walterboro Word of Mouth page on Facebook purportedly from a juror's ex-husband who said he had been drinking with his assesophore. and she had talked all about the case in violation of court orders. Now, why didn't Becky screenshot that and reported to Judge Newman immediately? We'll never know.

Starting point is 00:38:49 What she did instead was tell Judge Newman on February 27, 2023, after she learned about the monkey juror potentially violating Judge Newman's order not to speak about the case, she jumped to the conclusion that this same jury, her's ex-husband posted something to that effect. But what she reported wasn't true. The man on the word of mouth page wasn't Myra's ex-husband, who she says that she has no contact with, to the point of having restraining orders.

Starting point is 00:39:22 And when Becky was asked to show proof of this, all she had was some weird apology post, not on the Walterboro word of mouth, but on a page of a man whose name was that of Myra Crosby's ex-husband. He was apologizing for speaking out of turn for something else. And turns out that man was not Myra's ex-husband. It was some random dude with the same name. So that happened, and we'll tell you more about that in part two of this episode. But according to James Lasden, later that same day, February 27, 23, the judge just happened to receive an anonymous email, claiming that Egg Lady juror, aka Monkey Juror at the time, was talking about the trial to her tenants, and that was in conjunction with the report about Facebook. And that statement is factually incorrect.

Starting point is 00:40:19 Judge Newman, who appears to have been told about Monkey Juror on February 27th, 2023 did not receive that email until the next day. Stick a big old pen in that one because I am so ready to reveal all of the receipts to show you why this absurd theory that Becky was somehow laying groundwork for this is false. I'll have David read what James Lazzden said happened next. Later that day, Judge Newman questioned Crosby in his chambers about the Facebook posts and the anonymous email. Crosby denied discussing the case with anybody. The judge then asked her if she had made up her mind about the case. Quote, I haven't, Crosby replied.

Starting point is 00:41:11 Quote, I was trying to wait on closing arguments because those are usually pretty good. End quote. It was the proper answer to give. but it may have spurred on those seeking her removal. As soon as she left the courtroom, the lead prosecutor, Craton Waters, brought up the anonymous email, informing the judge that he now had a name for one of the tenants mentioned in it. With Becky Hill's Facebook strategy falling apart,

Starting point is 00:41:42 it appears that the email had become effectively a plan B. First, the email wasn't a plan B. Second, there's no evidence whatsoever, and there can be no evidence whatsoever because it's a lie that this email was plan B. But it sure does make a more interesting story in The New Yorker, yeah? James Laston then wildly exaggerated what happened next by taking Egg lady's word, you know,

Starting point is 00:42:11 the lady who chose to work with Jim Seidel, the felon, and apparently doing no further research on it. James said that Crosby's tenants were woken that, night by SLED agents when in reality they were visited at their home at 9 p.m. According to records that James keeps whining about being sealed, but really a lot of this information has already been filed publicly. It seems like he's just not looking hard enough. He wrote that Crosby claimed that both the tenants vehemently denied the allegations and signed affidavits without reading them when Sled reports say differently.

Starting point is 00:42:46 Stick another pin in that. I know, so many pins, but I promise it'll all come together. Right after this quick commercial break. Next, to make things even more absurd, James Lasden of the New Yorker decided to insert a pizza conspiracy theory in his piece. David, will you read that? These affidavits and police interviews remain under seal, but Crosby herself maintains that she and her tenants discussed nothing more controversial

Starting point is 00:43:30 than a recent delivery of pizzas to the courthouse. If this is true, the anonymous emailer who worked at Domino's with the female tenant had inflated a report of some harmless chit-chat between Crosby and her tenants into an actionable violation of jurors' instructions not to discuss the case. Webb and Dandridge couldn't be reached for comment. Okay, so we're going to talk more about what these two tenants said in part two of this episode, but there is no mention of pizza from either of them in Sled's memorandum of interviews. But even if there were, that paragraph is doing Olympic level stretching and leaping.

Starting point is 00:44:14 Christine Avery, let's just call her the Egg Lady whistleblower, did work at Domino's with the female tenant of the Egg Lady. But why would James Lazin believe that the Egg Lady, who Judge Newman had determined was not being honest, so excused her from the jury, when she says that her conversation with the tenants only related to the Murdoch case insofar as she had only mentioned pizzas that were delivered to the jury. It doesn't even feel like a New Yorker line. If this is true, the anonymous emailer, again, she was only anonymous to the public, had lied about harmless chit-chat. So right there, LASD invalidates Myra Crosby as a credible source

Starting point is 00:44:52 as to what she did and did not say to the tenants. But doesn't cite what the tenants told Sled, nor does he mention the person who inadvertently validated Christine Avery's claim that Myra appeared to be talking about the case outside of the courtroom in violation of the judge's daily orders. And we'll talk more about that in part two. But wait, where have I heard this pizza thing before? David?

Starting point is 00:45:16 From Myra Crosby's book. Also, as a jury, we ate Domino's Pizza for lunch on February 17th, 2023. I believe these dates are the genesis of the false anonymous letter to Judge Newman from Domino's pizza worker Christine Avery. Oh boy, it's a leap in a big stretch for Mr. Lassden to suggest that Christine Avery was lying about harmless chit-chat when evidence, a.k.a. court records and publicly available investigatory. records show otherwise. I'll have David read this next part from James Lasden's article that appears to be laying the groundwork on behalf of Team Murdoch's Trolls Theory slash lie. The anonymous emailer later outed herself in a comment on the discord of Mandy Matney's Luna Shark Media Company. Matney was one of the first reporters to look into the Murdoch family. Her name

Starting point is 00:46:31 is Christine Avery, and she ended her message with a mention of someone named Mark Tinsley for, quote, guiding me. And again, in part two of this episode, hang on real tight, because David needs to read one more inflammatory and defamatory paragraph from this garbage piece of propaganda, cosplaying as journalism. Tinsley said he didn't encounter Christine Avery until long after, when she hired. hired him following a visit from Dick Harputlian, one of the lead attorneys on the Murdoch defense team in which she felt harassed. Quote, my involvement with Christine Avery was limited to writing Dick Harputlian and saying, quote, stop harassing this lady, end quote, Tinsley said.

Starting point is 00:47:22 Harputlian told me he remembers it a little differently. According to him, Avery had been in touch with Tinsley before this visit. it. Harputlian also claimed that he had, quote, credible information that Hill and Avery had been in communication shortly before Avery sent her anonymous email. Avery denies this and told the New Yorker that she had only met Hill once when Hill came into Dominoes long before the trial started. Harputlian wouldn't share the quote credible information, citing a need for secrecy regarding future litigation. New York, come get your Yankee.

Starting point is 00:48:10 He is giving equal weight of credibility to Dick Harpoolian and Mark Tinsley, which is like saying the fire fest guy is just as credible as Taylor Swift. It's a hard no. You can't tell from this excerpt, but the reference to when Mark encountered Christine Avery is important because, again, it's part of the pro-Ellic troll theory, which Greg Parker's attorneys are helping. Stoke that believes Christine Avery was part of the focus groups and therefore has known Mark since 2020, ignoring the fact that these were Beaufort County focus groups composed of

Starting point is 00:48:44 Beaufort County residents. And Christine Avery, not only just factually was not a part of them, isn't from Beaufort County. And again, according to Mark, this is what survived the fact-checking process. From what he gleaned from the fact-checker, the story was stating the lie that Christine was part of the focus groups as fact. It's all about trying to harm reputation and credibility so that in round two, our voices, Eric's voice, and Mark's voice don't mean a thing. But stating that Harpoolian remembers it a little differently and they're not saying how is chicken shit because, one, it's not a little differently, James. It's substantially differently. And it's not a memory. It's a lie. Which is not new. It is beyond us how a reporter can look at

Starting point is 00:49:27 Martinsley's record and Dick Harputlian's record in the media and not think, huh, well, one of them hasn't flat out lied to the press dozens of times. Shouldn't you have mentioned that part, Mr. New Yorker? That's a lot of oxy, huh, Dick? Dick, I heard you are so close to finding the real killers. Dick, where's the money? Oh, yeah, Dick, Elyke was shot on the side of the road by a rando while changing a tire. Some of us are old enough to remember the long list of Dick Lies, but not James Laston, apparently. who seems to have gobbled up every bit of Dick's narrative and validated it by using the reputation of the New Yorker to back it up

Starting point is 00:50:03 who never asked Luna Shark or any of us about what was happening here despite mentioning Mandy and Luna Shark and Christine Avery's post on the Premium Discord channel. It's a shame because we would have provided receipts, which again, we'll lay out for everyone in part two. Besides pushing all sorts of Murdoch propaganda, in our opinions, James Ladsden's piece failed to do what New Yorker stories are famous for doing, answering the real question of what in the hell is actually going on here.

Starting point is 00:50:34 Why would Eleg Murdoch be suing Becky Hill, whose total bank account is probably equal to the amount Dick Harputy and spend at Hall's Chop House last year? Why would Team Murdoch bother pushing this Egg Lady theory when it is nothing to do with a new trial? He's got so little to gain from that because he got his new trial, y'all. And like we said, Egg Lady wasn't his make or break vote. She screwed up and got booted off the jury. But there were still two not-guilties and one undecided that got flipped during deliberation. We went back and re-listened to the press conference from May 18, 2026, when Team Murdoch announced the lawsuit against Becky Hill.

Starting point is 00:51:13 And we noticed, as we've been saying, that Dick, Jim and Phil Barber, sorry, Phil, we are not on a first-name basis yet, all mention the phrase subpoena power. and their responses as to why they are doing this lawsuit, as if it were some kind of threat. Well, we have, where did you go for? I'm right here. Okay. We have received a number of pieces of information post-trial. Some of them came just to us. Some of that came just to us. Some of that went to swed, too. And we don't know what they did with it. You know, once the trial was over, we don't have the power to subpoena. We don't have the power to really investigate it all. All we did was after the trial was look into the jury misconduct.

Starting point is 00:51:56 And we went around, rode around Carlton County for a couple months through the swamp on the dirt roads to find these jurors and ask them questions. But once a judge is appointed, and I think we got an order on Friday that the chief justice has said, once the remittator is issued, which means right now the Supreme Court has the case, they got to remit it to a trial court. and he'll do that, we think, in the next couple weeks. So at that point, then we will have subpoena power. Then we will have the ability to investigate. Why on earth would they waste investigation time and attention on Becky Hill? When they still have to defend their client in another double homicide trial,

Starting point is 00:52:46 Why wouldn't they be spending all of those resources on finding the real killers of Maggie and Paul? You know, experts to prove Elyke's so-called innocence? Why waste so much time and energy and resources on this whole Becky Egg Lady juror, Luna Shark, Mark Tensley theory? Well, Myra Crosby, aka Egg Lady, who wrote a book with Jim Seidel, The Founder. who was convicted of lying to federal investigators, she is being represented by Joe McCullough, a man who is closely dialed into Dick and Team Murdoch. Myra recently refiled her motion to intervene in unsealed records in the Murdoch case

Starting point is 00:53:35 related to jury tampering. This story was pushed all over Al Gore's internet last week, like the state is hiding some secret stash of evidence that proves that she was wrongfully removed from her jury position, when we have a pile of evidence showing that she had every right to be removed, which we'll get to in part two. This does not seem to be about Becky's money, unless maybe she has some insurance policy that could kick in.

Starting point is 00:54:11 It seems like it's more about targeting the people whose credible reputation, are a threat to Ehrlich Murdoch's next big play. And why did they file this lawsuit in federal court? They really want those records, they say, which, hmm, what do they think will be released in those records exactly? We already know that the records show that Will Folks from Fitz News took photos of Maggie and Paul's bodies because Becky had a last and possibly other reporters into the courthouse that night to look at sealed evidence.

Starting point is 00:54:53 And check out TSP 139 for that mind-blowing development in this crazy story. But like, why doesn't Will ever seem to upset Team Murdoch? Why aren't they big mad that Becky allowed him to take photos of Elyx's loved ones' bodies? And why aren't they mad that a member of the press showed the photo of the bodies to some random person in Florida while talking about brains. Again, listen to Dick greet Will at his press conference. He has excitement in his voice like he just saw a little puppy. I thought I saw Woolfoges.

Starting point is 00:55:36 Will. Hey, do you, buddy. Um, is that how you talk to a member of the press who blatantly violated a court order and admitted to conspiring, with the disgrace clerk you are suing to get sealed evidence in your case released? No, no it's not. Because again, they are so unsurious to sue Becky for what would be purely about the damages. To sue Fitz News for distributing the photos would be to cross one of their go-to media partners, and they can't do that.

Starting point is 00:56:12 But to sue Becky, for her role as it comes to Myra Crosby's removal, gives them the ability to create a big old spectacle of smoke and lies to distract the judge and the public in the media. In her book, Myra Crosby, aka Monkey Jur, aka Egg Lady, tells on herself. She says, quote, maybe Sled will get Christine Avery's and all of Luna Shark's cell records internet usage, and emails, and possibly prove what some already think. And, um, she thinks that's in there? Well, I don't know exactly what's in that file, but I do have receipts for days to tell you exactly what happened with that anonymous emailer, and Mark Tensley and Lunashark,

Starting point is 00:57:05 and I promise, it is going to be wildly disappointing to those of y'all who have been hoping that we were involved in so-called jury tinkering. I want to leave you with a text that Mark Tinsley says that he sent James Lasden when he found out from the fact checker what was in the original story. You are a naive fool to adopt lies that are demonstrably false. I could tell you had an agenda. Please understand that the lies you have adopted and are stating are patently and provably false.

Starting point is 00:57:44 I have provided the screenshots of the focus group juries to the fact checker showing Christine Avery was not on either jury. I will sue you if you repeat these lies. He also shared what he sent the fact checker, including this message. It's very disappointing James adopted these lies. that are so patently and provably false. Also, Joe McCullough was involved in conducting the focus groups because he had a client in the boat crash case.

Starting point is 00:58:21 Joe knows and always has known that no one from Colleton County was included or involved in the mock juries, much less Christine Avery. Who, strong words. Reporter Beth Braden called James Lasden on Wednesday morning to get his take on all of this. We'll have more on that, and again, so many more receipts in the next episode. Stay tuned for part two out this Friday on both the Lunas Shark premium feed and the public feed.

Starting point is 00:58:55 Until next time, stay tuned, stay pesky, and stay in the sunlight. True Sunlight is a Lunar Shark production created by me, Mandy Matney, co-hosted and reported by journalist Liz Farrell. 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.

Starting point is 00:59:39 You know me, I dig until I find the truth. And it turns out that same instinct that drives my investigative journalism, it makes for a different but pretty amazing new kind of travel show. Wherever it leads is Luna Sharks brand new podcast. And it's nothing like the travel content that you've heard before. We go deeper. We talk to locals, reporters, and people who actually live where you want to visit, not just the ones who want your tourist dollars.

Starting point is 01:00:14 We cover the food and landmarks, sure, but we also ask the harder questions. What is the real history here? The often sad and traumatic history. What new challenge is this place facing? and how can you show up as a visitor who actually makes things better? My co-host, David Moses and I, along with a team of journalists, are hitting destinations around the world to expose the truth, give voice to victims throughout history, and get the story straight,

Starting point is 01:00:42 with new destinations and episodes every other week. Wherever It Leads from Lunashark. Find it wherever you listen to your podcast, or visit Wherever It Leedspod.com.

Murdaugh Murders Podcast - TSP #150 [Part One] - How Does a Pro-Alex Murdaugh Troll Theory End Up in The New Yorker?

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