Murdaugh Murders Podcast - TSP #153 [Part One] — Horry County Police Interviews that Brandon Strickland and His Lawyer Bert Likely Don’t Want You to Hear

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 how long it will take for anyone to be held accountable in the Spivey case. But as the sled investigation heats up, we need to shed more light on what happened when Ory County PD investigated itself in this case and what former Deputy Chief Brandon Strickland had to say about his chummy phone calls with one of the men who killed Scott Spivey. Weldon Boyd is Mandy Matney. This is True Sunlight, a podcast exposing crime and corruption, previously

Starting point is 00:01:42 known as the Murdoch Murders podcast. True Sunlight is a Luna Shark production, written with journalist Liz Farrell. Well, it's been another week kind of wasted in the House of True Sunlight preparing for yet another hearing, where I have to defend myself for prioritizing my safety in the Parker's deposition. I'll be honest with you all. I'm still a a little stunned about how unfair all of this is, knowing how many people involved in this case are accused of much, much, much more serious court violations. But I'm going to bite my tongue, hold my head high, and pray that justice will avail in this case and that this nightmare will end soon so I can move on with my life. Hopefully, this is the last time ever I have to ask

Starting point is 00:02:36 you all to show up for me in court. So please join us at 9 a.m. on June 22nd at the Spartanburg County courthouse in Judge Kelly's courtroom. 6D. Wear your professional pink and hold your heads high because this isn't over and we will be ready to fight for what is right. So as y'all know, there's a long and growing list of South Carolina attorneys who we do not believe should be practicing law because of their unbecoming conduct. That list gets longer as the Office of Disciplinary Council apparently isn't doing much, in our opinions, to discipline at all these days when it comes to matters that are actually concerning, instead they appear to be focusing a lot more of their time on manufactured troll

Starting point is 00:03:24 complaints against good attorneys like Eric Bland. Since the ODC can't be trusted to hold attorneys in this state accountable, in our opinions, We are still entitled to have opinions about this, Mr. Odic's, without our friends and colleagues getting punished for it. We feel like we have to step up to do their jobs and expose the atrocious, unprofessional, and even unethical behaviors we are seeing in South Carolina lawyers because the public deserves to know what is going on. One of the many lawyers who we've exposed on the show is Bert von Herman.

Starting point is 00:04:03 He was the Ory County lawyer who called me a hippo non-journalist piece of shit on Facebook last month. Why did he do that? Because my podcast has been making it harder for him to use the typical good old boy defense of my client's not guilty because I say so. It's easier for Burt to go out there and publicly claim that I am out to ruin Brandon Strickland's career and men's careers. When he knows the truth, he has to know the truth. otherwise, I don't think he'd be doing this. His client was a longtime public employee in a position of trust that he appears to have exploited to help a friend escape potential murder charges. This

Starting point is 00:04:47 is a case of public interest and it says something about how a major well-funded police agency conducts itself. It's part of a larger pattern that we are covering. But of course, Bert had to turn it into something nefarious that it wasn't. Like I'm doing something wrong by reporting on allegations of public misconduct. And not just that. He has turned it into personal beef between him and me. And not just personal beef, professional beef, all the beef. This is journalism, Bert. Hmm. What's the word for when a man is scared of a powerful woman telling the truth So he does the thing he thinks will be most insulting to her, because what's more insulting to a woman than having a man body shame her, right?

Starting point is 00:05:36 What is that word? Hmm, I can't think of it right now. So I'm just going to start calling it birting. What you're doing, Bert is birting. And my God, it is pathetic. And since Bert seems to want us to keep talking about Bert, given all the Bert beef he's creating, let's do that. So right after we started reporting on the Scott Spivey Shooting case in March 2025,

Starting point is 00:06:04 Bert von Herman started aggressively commenting out of nowhere on our Facebook posts about the case. Bert is not only the attorney for former Orgy County Police Deputy Chief Brandon Strickland, he is also the husband of Weldon Boyd's family court attorney, Heather von Herman. His posts were pretty insulting and gas lady. predictably so. There's a pattern with these bloviating good old boys when they decide to come for us. Usually they start by attacking our professional credentials, but it's the delusional denials that really expose them for who they are. David, will you read one of Bert's comments on my Facebook page from April 2025 right after we began publishing episodes about the Spivey case?

Starting point is 00:06:50 Well, it's glad. Yes, he said glad. Well, it's glad to see neutral journalism. I mean, you already admit you haven't looked at all the evidence, but you think somehow this could be corruption all the way to the top? It's actually really funny listening to this, knowing what we all know now, because, yes, Bert, we think somehow that this corruption could be all the way to the top. Also, it's hard to look at, quote, all the evidence when Oregon County police hides so much of it from the public.

Starting point is 00:07:25 At least we're transparent about how we formed our opinions. Anyway, at that point, Bert's client, Brandon Strickland, had recently resigned from ORI County Police in connection with the spivey case and allegations of corruption within the investigation. And last time I checked, Strickland was a deputy chief of police over the criminal investigations division, which means, by definition, he was at the top. Sorry, keep reading Burt's comment, David. Seems like you said all these same things about the Murdoch case, and clearly you have chosen not to question the motive of the attorneys that have brought the civil suit against

Starting point is 00:08:06 Weldon Boyd, who is just a business owner in Cherry Grove? Cherry Grove is the name of the neighborhood where Weldon's restaurant, Buoy's on the boulevard is, and Weldon Boyd is not just a business owner in Cherry Grove. He's a man who, in our opinions made a very conscious decision to escalate a road rage incident into a needless killing. And you're right, Bert. The motive of the attorneys in the civil suit against Weldon is well-established. They're suing Weldon and Bradley on behalf of Scott's family to hold them accountable, since no one else has been willing to do that other than Judge Bubba Griffith this past February, who denied their stand-your-ground immunity. Go ahead, David.

Starting point is 00:08:49 Gee, a reporter from the Wall Street Journal and a podcaster that loves these cute little nicknames for an attorney like Zero Dark Something or another or some type of cat conjured up. The jealousy coming off that comment, by the way. He obviously is referring to Mark Tensley, who is sometimes called Zero Dark Tensley. We didn't come up with that brilliant nickname. That was a fan of Tensley's online who made it during the murder. trial. We also didn't come up with Mark the Tiger Tensley. I think that was prosecutor John Meadors, again, during the Murdoch case. Okay, one more sentence from Bert's ranting and raving just to get the full flavor of the gaslighting. You have not exposed one piece of corruption,

Starting point is 00:09:38 and in this case, you're not going to. I have like 20 more screenshots of Bert's comments from my Facebook page, just like that. Y'all are wrong. bad at your jobs and not doing journalism as if I, Bert von Herman, would know anything about that. And Brandon, my client, and Weldon, who's not my client, but is my friend, didn't do anything wrong. There's no corruption here, no cover-up, look away. So, here's a funny story. We actually had already assigned Luna Shark reporter Beth Braden to call Bert for comment right before he began commenting on our post last year. So she gave him a call to get him on the record about this case and his client.

Starting point is 00:10:19 I want you to hear some of what he told her. And real quick, when Bert refers to investigation, he appears to be talking about both the internal investigation at Ori County, Sled, and a possible federal investigation into the alleged corruption. Here's Bert from that call in April 2025. If there were a title for this interview, it would be poor Brandon Strickland.

Starting point is 00:10:44 We're really not even sure what the hell they're investigating. because it is gone from we're investigating internal affairs investigation and how you have a press conference and I know having to do doing what you do you know these press conferences

Starting point is 00:11:05 you don't call them in a day so clearly they had some ulterior motive that they were going to call this press conference before Brandon ever got called in and they pretty much forced him out they didn't there was no offer of anything they pretty much intimidated to believe that you know that they that they had concluded that there was internal investigation that was ongoing

Starting point is 00:11:31 I'm not going to tell you what it is but there's one going on which of course he's like but I didn't do anything wrong I haven't been involved in any of this and it's been what 16 months So you can actually and literally call a press conference in the spur of the moment, Bert. So there's absolutely no red flags about that for a conspiracy there. Anyway, as you can see, Bert was very much living in everything's going to be okay land back then. He was doing the thing those Ori County good old boys do. Deny, deny, deny, then deny some more. Frankly, it's not a stupid move for a good old boy.

Starting point is 00:12:10 History has told them repeatedly that all they have to do is say they didn't do. it in a loud voice and then just wait it out. Wait for the pesky people to lose interest. Wait for them to go away after you insult them for having the audacity to shine light in the dark corners of their good old boy hideaways. And boy, does he seem bothered because here we are 16 months after that phone call and we still haven't gone away. Even though, my God, South Carolina shady lawyers keep trying to make that happen. Also, his client is presumably one of the police officers being investigated by the state grand jury. So things have just gotten worse for him and his choice to create a public social media beef with us. And Bert isn't just bothered, y'all. He is all-caps

Starting point is 00:12:56 bothered. How do we know he's all-caps bothered? Well, like we said, in May, Bert von Herman shared a photo of Mandy on the stand in a York County courtroom with a comment that started with this hippo-non journalist containing some of the most unprofessional behavior for an attorney vis-a-vis the extreme body shaming of Mandy and ended by calling her a piece of shit. Classy, right? Oh, and there's more. After being called out for this on social media, old Bert offered a non-apology apology, got called out again for that on Facebook, and then his brother, his brother, called a listener of the show a bitch for simply asking whether Bert had offered this non-apology apology directly to Mandy. He hadn't, but I'm sure you could have guessed that. And also, as a result of this, Bert, who seemed to realize he was up to his

Starting point is 00:13:46 man bra in disciplinary doo-do because, hello, there are rules of professional conduct, and you do identify yourself as an attorney on your Facebook page temporarily erased his public-facing existence from social media. He ran for the good old boy holler, where the boys all boo-hoo to each other about the mean podcaster, blog, or non-journalist, journalists that they chose to engage. Can I just say how hilarious it is for me to see men like Bert act so tough on Facebook until the second they receive a small fraction of the online hate that I've gotten in the past few years and then they scurry and hide from the internet like weeping little babies. Like, oh really, you had to delete your Facebook and email account for weeks

Starting point is 00:14:35 just because too many people said that you should be ashamed of yourself for calling a journalist fat and shitty. It should be noted that I read hundreds of comments and emails sent to Burt, and despite what Burt is apparently claiming to tell the true crime felon that our listeners sent him threats, not one of them that I saw contained threatening messages. While good old boy Burt was quoted on the felon's crime website claiming he had received 25 threats, either encouraging him to kill himself or threatening to kill him, we haven't seen a shred of evidence to back up that claim. In fact, Beth called Conway PD and they confirmed they have zero recent reports naming Bert, his wife, or his law firm. Zero. Did Bert fool the felon there, too?

Starting point is 00:15:27 Also, I would never encourage anyone to threaten anyone with physical harm. Never mind, Big Bert. He made those unprofessional comments publicly because he presumably wanted the public to see them. Well, he got his wish. The public saw his despicable post about me and he is being held to account for it. That's all I want for men like Bert to be shown that cheap misogynistic bullying is a tactic they need to think twice about in the year of 26. Anyway, Bert is bothered and he has stayed bothered. And we know that because last week, he apparently shared Brandon Strickland's very silly polygraph report with the true crime felon, who stupidly shared it on his website.

Starting point is 00:16:15 We already talked about this report a little in part two of last week's episode, but y'all, it is so absurd and meaningless. Brandon Strickland was asked four questions about the Scotsby investigation. Did you manipulate the homicide investigation? Did you use your position to tamper with the investigation in any way? Did you strive to influence the outcome of the spivey investigation? And did you attempt to alter the course of the spivey investigation? He said, nope, to all four questions, and the examiner, Ray Nash from the Institute of Police Polygraphy concluded in his testing

Starting point is 00:16:53 that his answers scored an extremely high probability that he was being truthful. But that means literally nothing to anyone who knows anything about the spivey case and the massive amount of evidence disputing Brandon's claim. Please, Bert, tell me more about a good old boy believing his own cover story. That's like Mike Corgi, Joe Pesky, passing a lie detector test, claiming that he has long legs and is bigger than his husky coonhound sister Luna. He can believe it all he wants, and he can probably convince himself of that lie, enough to pass a silly little test,

Starting point is 00:17:32 but we can all see those stubby little legs holding up his tiny, roly-poly body, and we all know he ain't bigger than his 80-pound sister, Luna. And we know that because we have eyes. In this case, we have ears. We all heard former deputy chief Brandon Strickland in the phone calls

Starting point is 00:17:53 with Weldon Boyd, specifically telling him what he did to help him. Yeah, country guy Yeah, good old boy Well, that's who I sent out there And I called the captain over investigation He told me that you were And my next call was to Jimmy Richardson

Starting point is 00:18:09 Because we always call him out on stuff like that And I told him, I said, look, here's the deal And he's like, okay, let me send We call him, he sent somebody from his office He said, uh, all right, he said, let me work on something And he's the one that sent George Dubusk there last night who was a solicitor. I don't know if you saw him or not. Yeah, we spoke.

Starting point is 00:18:31 And if that didn't make Brandon Strickland's involvement clear enough, he even said this on a recorded phone call. They don't do the autopsy either today or tomorrow. I don't know. But I was up through it last night talking. I was working. I was into shadows last night. I weren't there, but I was in shadows. He was up to it.

Starting point is 00:18:56 And while he wasn't there in person or on paper, he was working in the shadows. He literally says that. The thing is, we know what happened after Weldon called Branton. On the scene, Officer Damon Viscoby somehow felt obligated to interfere with the investigation. So he wrote, a note telling Weldon act like a victim, camera, witnesses weren't separated, evidence went missing. Mysterious pills just showed up in Scott's backseat that even before testing were determined to be steroids to help with the narrative of Scott was a raging loiter.

Starting point is 00:19:31 Body cameras were shut down early. Footage was mislabeled. Some has just gone. Scott's body was towed in his truck in the most disrespectful and non-protocol manner. And just about everything in the entire investigation was wonky. I could go on and on about all the anomalies in this investigation that happened after that call from Weldon to Brandon. And I will. believe me, I will.

Starting point is 00:19:56 But the most important thing to know right now is no one was charged in the investigation. Why do we think so many things went wrong in this investigation? Are we supposed to believe that it's a mere coincidence that so many investigation mishaps just so happened to go in Weldon Boyd in Bradley Williams' favor and that this had absolutely nothing to do with Weldon Boyd's cozy and quaint relationship with the number one guy in charge of the police department's criminal investigation division at that time? Are we supposed to just believe that Brandon Strickland all but said he was manipulating the investigation to help Walden and Bradley? And the investigation was manipulated with and that that had nothing to do with Brandon Strickland.

Starting point is 00:20:40 Because he passed a privately paid for polygraph. Please. The thing is, that old Burt should be worried for his client, Brandon Strickland. Not only has he done a terrible job representing him in this case by making Strickland, look worse because of those terrible social media rants, Burt can't seem to stop himself from making. But according to the Oregon County Police Department's internal affairs investigation, Strickland is in trouble, or you should be.

Starting point is 00:21:07 More on what we found in that investigation and what Burt definitely doesn't want us to reveal to the public in a minute. Staples Preferred Business Membership, built for busy business owners, because you've got bigger things to think about. With Staples Preferred, get free delivery. No minimums. Staples Preferred unlocks up to 3% back.

Starting point is 00:21:36 Plus 10% savings on print and exclusive wireless offers. One less thing on your plate. Actually, a lot less. Visit staples.ca slash preferred. That was easy. Twizzlers keep the fun going. Yeah, I know. I just stopped whatever you were listening to

Starting point is 00:21:55 to tell you that Twizzlers keep the fun going. Well, irony isn't my forte, Okay, but twisty, chewy, yummy Twizzlers sure is. So think of Twizzlers as a little palette cleanser for whatever's queued up, which, by the way, should be coming very soon. Like any second now. Okay, Twizzlers, time to keep the fun going. Now, this Internal Affairs investigation was clearly oversimplified, carefully controlled,

Starting point is 00:22:28 structured to protect the agency and minimize the corruption that occurred. In the 370-page report that found six ORI County police officers had violated policy in the spivey investigation, only one of those police officers was accused of unlawful conduct that was referred to SLED to investigate, which, by the way, does not mean that SLED is not investigating all of them, just that ORI County PD's Shoddy IA only referred one of them to SLED. And the one of them was Burt's boy, Brandon Strickland. Brandon Strickland, the first to go, was forced to resign in March 2025, right after Scott's sister, Jennifer Spivey Foley, brought the recorded calls with Weldon to Ory County's attention. O'Rey County, who had the same calls and apparently hadn't listened to them.

Starting point is 00:23:22 But let's be real here, after reading the massive report and listening to the interviews of this internal investigation, This really wasn't an investigation to find out who actually was involved in the corruption in the misconduct in the Spivey case. It was not an investigation to find out which officers manipulated the scene to favor Weldon and Bradley. It also was not an investigation to find out who in charge knew about the corruption and just let it happen. Nope. It appeared to be an, oh shit, investigation and reaction to Mark Tinsley and Jennifer Spivey

Starting point is 00:23:58 Foley and the media. After listening to hours of investigation interviews, it is clear that the ORI County IA investigators were not out for the truth, but rather just out for an explanation. What they wanted, it seemed, was a nice and tidy answer to give the public about why the red flags are not red, despite what your eyes can see. They did this in a variety of ways, like asking. these kinds of questions. Here, an IA investigator questioning Alan Jones lead detective in the Scott Spivey case about why he brought Weldon Boyd and Bradley Williams to the North Precinct, which is not set up for suspect interviews instead of the ML Brown Building, which is. The decision to have the interviews at the North Precinct versus ML Brown Bunny, was that a decision

Starting point is 00:24:56 made on convenience or... Yeah, that was just convenience. Oh, so the answer to the IA. investigator's question is exactly what the IA investigator provided to Alan Jones. The question was a legitimate one. Seasoned Ory County police officers say the decision to bring Weldon and Bradley

Starting point is 00:25:18 to the North precinct, where they were interviewed with a body camera placed on a desk in an administrative common area, was odd. One of the many odd things that occurred in this investigation that taken as a whole point to say it with us, Bertie Boy. Corruption that goes to the top. So we have a lot, like a lot, a lot, a lot to share with y'all from this IA investigation into how Scott Spivey investigation was conducted. Because Bert has been so vocal about our hippo non-journalist piece of shitness, we'll start with his client, Brandon Strickland.

Starting point is 00:25:51 As a lot of you know, it took a long time for Jennifer Spivey Foley and her attorneys to, to get the case file from Ory County. When she finally gets some of it, because to this day, she still hasn't received all of it, she spent the weekend of the Super Bowl in February 2025 reading and listening to every bit of what she was given. When she got to the recorded phone calls between Weldon Boyd and Brandon Strickland, she knew this needed to be brought to Ory County Police's attention, which her attorneys did. On March 7th, according to the investigation, Chief Chris Lelyanhart shared the 10 calls between Weldon and Brandon with his IA team, and on March 11th, Brandon Strickland was considering resigning.

Starting point is 00:26:32 But first, he wanted to hear these phone calls that were in the case file this whole time. Brandon was brought into a room with the chief, members of the IA division, and members of command staff. He sat alone on one side of a long table and listened as they played the calls on a laptop. There's a video of this in the IA file, and we're going to post it to our staff. social media, so stay tuned for that. And in the video, Strickland looks like he was going through the full stages of grief over his career. If you know any body language experts, I think they will enjoy watching this video. But Strickland, in all his stages of grief over his career, got stuck in denial. After the calls were played for him, Brandon said this.

Starting point is 00:27:16 Here's the statement that I'd like to provide. Okay. Right, we all down. All right. So I understand the optics of this. Man, these guys are so worried about controlling how they look, but not at all worried about actually doing the things that would naturally make them look good. Because this isn't about optics and never should have been. This is about dozens and dozens of weird things that occurred in conjunction with making

Starting point is 00:27:46 sure that Weldon Boyd and Bradley Williams did not get charged. I completely understand this, right? But I can tell you this, any comments or anything that I made to him about measure, I was kind of put his mind to ease. I didn't interfere in any way with the investigation. I talked to Alan Jones that next day when he, because I was burning up to give my statement, because I was going to go ahead and give him this statement. giving him a statement. So you haven't, why it was fresh on my mind, because I didn't want anything to happen. I was burning to give my statement is probably the truest thing Brandon Strickland said in this meeting,

Starting point is 00:28:34 and I'll tell you why. In his call with Weldon on the evening of the shooting, he immediately recognized that he had to be careful. Remember that call? I got people. I got a judge. I county judge. I've got Brandon with the swan. team. What's up, man? Brennan, where are you at? Under my house? Can you come to Camp Swamp Road off of 9

Starting point is 00:29:00 like as fast as possible? Yeah, what's wrong? I had to shoot somebody. What? He held a gun at us. He ran us off the road. We stopped to try and get the stuff on the trailer because we were hauling a couch.

Starting point is 00:29:16 He got out, pulled a gun, started shooting at us, and we had to shoot back. All right. You call 911. Yeah, they're all here. I just, and I've got witness. that watched him run me off the road, that watched him hold the gun out the window. We have a picture of him holding the gun out the window, and then he pulled, he got,

Starting point is 00:29:32 when he was in front of us, he got out the car, aimed, racked the slide, aimed it at us, and started shooting, and we shot back. And then when he got back in the car, we quit shooting, and then he started shooting again, and we started having to shoot again. Is he busy? Yes. I got to be real careful with that because in my jurisdiction, we're an investigating agency, so I've got to be careful that I'm not showing any...

Starting point is 00:29:59 I know that. It's self-defense. And we got witnesses that are all saying is self-defense. I just... I'm a fucking nervous wreck, dude. I'll slide out there, but I've got to be real careful. You know what I'm saying? Okay.

Starting point is 00:30:12 All right. All right. Thanks. Just be calm. Okay. Brandon was articulating from the start that the optics, thank you for telling on yourself, sir. We're of the utmost importance.

Starting point is 00:30:25 Hence the In the Shadow's comment. So that night, he wanted to create an official record of his involvement in the case of this phone call that would serve as a benchmark for later, right? No matter what happened after Brandon made this official record of sorts, he could point to this historical artifact of a recorded conversation with the lead detective and say, see, I knew it would look back. So I made sure to get it on the record that Weldon called me and I told him to do the right thing. that was the end of it, which is exactly how he's used this record, by the way. And again, that record was not put in the case file at first. It wasn't the end of it either. Back to Brandon's pre-resignation March 11th statement. Any comment I made to him about, hey man, you're going to be all right. I'm here. I was trying to give him a feeling of comfort as a friend, but I haven't

Starting point is 00:31:22 access not a single document I haven't looked at any evidence I don't I haven't done anything like that yeah if I'm you know if I'm old for saying like hey man I'm just trying to you know I try to put his mind at ease as I would do with any y'all sitting in this room if you were involved in something I'd go hey man you know because I consider you all friends everyone of you. Reminder. Him saying,

Starting point is 00:31:56 you guys are my friends. You guys are on my side, right? I do the same for you. And this, y'all, is what is wrong with cops investigating cops. I hate the situation's going

Starting point is 00:32:09 on. And, but I understand, Chief, I understand the optics of it. 100%. There's, it looks bad, but I can tell you, it may look bad.

Starting point is 00:32:22 on the surface but there is nothing there. I have not done anything to, I mean, I even come in when we got back from Gatlin Earth and I sat down what you feel in that often. And we talked about it and he said, hey man, have you talked to, well and I'm like, yeah, I've talked to him. He's doing okay man. I'm trying to keep put his mind at ease because wellin's young. I say young. I mean, he's 10, 11 years younger than I am, had a lot going on. And if you take, from my perspective at the time and the moment, if you take the shooting and the cloud around the shooting away, if you pulled that away from him,

Starting point is 00:33:14 from my perspective of what I see, now I don't know what he does in his personal life. I've never, I've been around him, I think, one time outside of eating at the restaurant. I think I've been around him one time and that's why I stopped by a seat of piece of property was going to buy that. Oh, what?

Starting point is 00:33:32 Sorry, I mean, what, what? You only saw Weldon one time outside of eating at his restaurants, which, for free, by the way. And that was to stop by and see properties. Sounds kind of businessy to me. And yet we have a photo of you

Starting point is 00:33:51 going alligator hunting with wildest. and a photo of Weldon presenting you with safety belts for your special ops team. And that's just the optics stuff we can see, right? What was Brandon saying when I so rudely interrupted to fact-check him? Oh, right. If you take away the criminal investigation part that I was in charge of, then this is all cool. You take away the shooting and the cloud and all the stuff away from that and you look at the core of what my visibility was and what I saw in him, I saw him.

Starting point is 00:34:22 I saw a guy who was pro public safety, pro community, and a genuinely good guy, right? And, you know, we struck it off when we met and, you know, talked back and forth in different things like that. And my only, I had nothing to gain by telling him that stuff. I've gained nothing from it. I was trying to put the boys mind at ease to give him. because I felt like with what he told me to happen with the shooting that I'm like, you know, we've all been doing this job

Starting point is 00:35:01 for a long time and I hear the facts that he's given to me this is a justifiable, this is going to be a justifiable homicide based on what I know, but you heard me tell him I can't get involved. And yes, I gave him a false. It's probably not a false sensitivity, but tried to make my words, I'm trying to get my word dry, but I tried to make him feel the thing.

Starting point is 00:35:22 about his situation because I know he's a military veteran. I know how much he cared about his own self-image, everything like that. I'm trying to work his mind at ease. Again, self-image, optics. How will this look to people? As opposed to, let's do the right thing and let the right path take us to the right truthful answers in this investigation. Now, a mediocre lawyer would argue that those two things

Starting point is 00:35:52 aren't mutually exclusive, which no freaking duh. That's what we're saying. You can have a salad for lunch with a side order of fries. You can care about how things look while also doing the right thing. But caring about how things look should not keep you off the right path to the right truthful answer in a criminal investigation. If you were doing the right thing, you wouldn't need the dozens and dozens of anomalies in the investigation, the kind that come through explicit and implied professional chain of command type pressures and in-denial interferences to arrive at your predetermined outcome. Also, you're not Weldon's therapist. And do other non-white, non-business-owning, non-free dinner-giving citizens of Ory County? Get this level of professional

Starting point is 00:36:47 reassurance from the number two guy in charge, please. Back to Brandon. And like I said, I understand perception is reality and I understand that it looks bad when I'm me talking to him, but I don't care who you interview. I'm telling you, I have not, I have not done anything to throw my career away or be looked at as a dirty. cop for like a better way to put it. Right. So I, uh. Well, I can tell you these were brought to my attention Friday the 7th.

Starting point is 00:37:30 Yes. You were notified of the investigation on the 10th and here we are on the 11th. So, and that was over a weekend. So I hadn't, I haven't looked at any of the stuff on Axon to see or P1 to see if any of that stuff's been accessed. So I don't have any questions for you at this time. Um, but I do appreciate it. I just wanted to be up front of you and show you. No, no, I appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:37:52 That's been a year and a half ago. And, you know, I can't remember every phone conversation and stuff I had with people. And I think you can tell by most of those phone calls, that's him calling me. You know, I called it once or twice. And, you know, we've all been policing for a long time, and we all know people when something happens to them bad in their life,

Starting point is 00:38:12 who do they call? The cop that they know. They want advice. That makes sense. And, you know, I never told him that you don't need to talk to the police. I told him, hey, the police are there. You need to talk to them. Yeah, you know, the perception is bad.

Starting point is 00:38:27 I'm just trying to make boy feel better. But, you know, I appreciate I'm sorry. You're having to deal with this. But I can tell you this. I have not interfered with any investigation, done anything to drive anything. I can't tell you. What I know about that case is what I saw on the news.

Starting point is 00:38:48 and what he told me. Right. I stayed out of it. I don't know if I told you. When I met with Chief Hill and he was asking, we made the decision in that office that day that Mickey would go, Mickey and Gray would go straight to the chief

Starting point is 00:39:03 and cut me completely out of it. Okay. So I was not involved in any decision making at all. And sat at zero of meetings, any roundtables. I dissent myself. I tried to make. maintain a friendship with a guy because based on what I knew at the time, it sounded like everything he did was justified. And I wasn't going to throw him down for like a better way to put it, you know, when he's going through a hard time in his life.

Starting point is 00:39:35 Based on what I knew at the time, you mean before an investigation was done? Based on Weldon's word on the phone? Before the witness statements were compared with the evidence, before you listened to the 911 call and realized that Weldon was chasing Scott and made a decision to follow him down a side road he didn't need to be on. Before you understood that one of your sergeants instructed Weldon to act like a victim for the cameras, before you knew that Weldon and Bradley spent an hour talking with two people who did not witness the shooting, but were seen as backing up Weldon's story. Before you learn that Blaze Ward's car was never actually shot at by Scott and that she

Starting point is 00:40:15 was hearing the glass being double blasted out of Weldon's windshield. How many other cases have you jumped to wrong conclusions so quickly? It is wild that Brandon Strickland seems to think that I cared about the boy's mind was a legitimate reason to say the things he did to Welton. Welton, a middle-aged adult man suing his pregnant ex-fiancee for custody of their unborn baby at the time. Think about that. Think about the stress and discomfort of being pregnant.

Starting point is 00:40:43 The worries about having a healthy baby and healthy delivery. The worries about how you'll make ends meet when the baby. is here. And then add to that, an angry, militant, wealthy, and obsessive ex-Punante who is already trying to sentence you to a life of not having your future child 50% or more of the time. Brandon Strickland stuck his neck out for a man that saw nothing wrong with doing that to his son's mother while she was pregnant with him. And in fact, in our opinions, this whole thing could have been avoided if Weldon weren't so unhealthily fixated on his ex-fiancee as a at the time.

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Starting point is 00:41:46 Plus that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg Okay, so back to the most important part of Brandon's statement. Actually, let's play that again. I don't care who you interview. I'm telling you, I have not done anything to throw my career away or be looked at as a dirty cop for like a bad way to put it. Oh, and this part. Sorry, you're having to deal with this, but I,

Starting point is 00:42:35 I can tell you this, I have not interfered with any investigation, done anything, drive anything. I can't tell you. What I know about that case is what I saw on the news and what he told me. Right. I stayed out of it. See, that's where the good old burts of the world want us to close our pesky eyes and cover our pesky ears and call it a day. See, he didn't do anything wrong. He just said it.

Starting point is 00:43:10 He didn't do anything wrong. He doesn't care who they interview. They can ask anyone. Our pesky ears and eyes are open. And now, yours will be too. Let's listen to some more interviews. Here is Lori Dudley, the evidence supervisor at Ory County Police, who was interviewed July 1st of last year.

Starting point is 00:43:32 During this case, have you been contacted by Brandon Strickland to ask you to do anything you thought was out of the way of the case? No, not directly. Okay. Now you say not directly. So I just remember conversations about property with Brandon Strickland and different members of the department staff about regarding returning property. property. So not directly. He didn't speak to me directly about it. Do you think the IA guys asked for more clarification about that? No, they did not.

Starting point is 00:44:16 But the issue Lori is referring to is Weldon and Bradley having the expectation of getting their weapons back and the pressure the evidence team felt to expedite that. Oh, and add to that, the fact that the guns were never tested, which is outside typical protocol, according to other interviews in the file. Let's listen in on another interview, shall we? Here's Merrill Hawkins, the evidence technician on the Scott Spivey case. So now, once it got sent off, it was eventually, I guess, determined that there wasn't going to be any charges. Correct. So the weapons were returned. Right. We received an email from Detective Jones, Alan Jones, saying that the case had been determined that they weren't going to prosecute by the Attorney General's office and that all of

Starting point is 00:45:09 the property could be returned. And I believe I, in response, emailed him back and said, some of it's at SLED. Do you want it to come back on tested? And ultimately, I don't remember exactly why, but Sergeant Jackson was the one who responded, yes. It can all come back on tested, so then I emailed SLED and told them to send it back on tested. Let's quickly talk about this because I think to the average person with good common sense, this doesn't seem like that big of a deal. No charges were filed. Wellden and Bradley have admitted to shooting the guns so we know that they shot them. So let's get the guns back before they get tested so we can give them back to Weldon and Bradley. Let's save SLED the effort and the

Starting point is 00:45:59 backlog. What this speaks to is them closing the case without all of the evidence. Testing the guns would have likely given investigators a clearer picture of a few things. One would be, who killed Scott? Was it Weldon or Bradley? Remember this phone call between the two of them on September 12, 23, just three days after the shooting, when Weldon was really itching for all of this to be wrapped up. That the detective told Ken that is when he was killed. It's when he lifted him, he said, or he said he was killed because Ken told him, Weldon told me that at one point he lifted himself up and then that's when they finally knew where he was in the truck and they and they shot in that area. And the detective said that's when they killed him.

Starting point is 00:46:53 Here's the problem they got. We both. if we're shooting 124 grain bullets. They don't know whose bullets or whose unless they go through

Starting point is 00:47:06 and they do the barrel twist test which he told Ken will take like two more months

Starting point is 00:47:15 because they send that off. But to me it's a scientist but I mean we're both shooting exactly

Starting point is 00:47:25 to say we're going to success. Yeah, I don't know that we're really going to know who hit what, when, and where. No, fuck no. We killed a dude. That's all that. This was Ken just explaining to me because Ken felt like we wanted to know who won the prize. And he was like, look, you're not really going to get that information unless you want this case to stay open for three more months.

Starting point is 00:47:54 To expedite Weldon's and Bradley's planned exoneration, they're just. could be no testing of the weapons to get the full picture of what exactly happened. The lack of testing was just another sign that conclusions had been drawn before the evidence was thoroughly looked at. The 911 call alone from Weldon should have been enough for the Orie County police to say, yeah, this isn't lining up with how Weldon told us it went down. He told Brandon Strickland and Alan Jones and others that he only followed Scott down Camp Swamp Road to fix his couches on the trailer. But he told the 911 operator he was going to follow Scott, shouting there's about to be a shootout

Starting point is 00:48:32 at the very same time that the vehicle data from Scott's truck shows Scott continuing to speed away from Weldon. Interesting how that data never got looked at. Okay, back to Merrill Hawkins. Okay. All right. Now, during this case at all, have you had any other type of involvement with it at all? Yes, so Mr. Boyd and Mr. Williams called our office numerous times about getting their property return from the very beginning.

Starting point is 00:49:11 And I was at that time training both Grace and Dinesha, so even though they fielded most of the calls, I would be involved in helping them. And so probably between the two of them, they probably called our office 40 times. It was a lot. They would just continually call. So we had issues with, of course, making sure that the property could be returned when it could be returned. I also spoke to Detective Jones several times about the returning of the property. I know that he wanted it held until after the Attorney General made their decision, but

Starting point is 00:50:00 he also seemed anxious to get it returned and get everything done. And then just dealing with the main thing that sticks out to me about it other than how many times they called was the fact that we were concerned because some of the of the property that was in here, the tear gas canisters and things like that, I was concerned about the legality of returning those. You know, is that something that we can legally return to somebody? I had never seen that before other than one other time. And in that instance, in that other case, I was told that they can't legally be possessed

Starting point is 00:50:47 by people so we can't return them. So I asked Lori about that, and Lori, of course, went to our lieutenant, and we were told by it came down. Well, I remember Tom Shea telling me, or telling us that, I guess Captain, our Deputy Chief Strickland had assured him that they had the proper licenses for it. Now, I'm not going to lie to you. I was concerned about that because our procedure would be that we get a copy of that license. And I was told not to worry about it by my lieutenant. Again, there are dozens and dozens of anomalies like this throughout the investigation. Remember how concern Weldon was about the upper and lower and the federal permit?

Starting point is 00:51:48 Here is Weldon talking about how lucky they were. to have friends in the ORI County Police Department in that same September 12, 2003 call with Bradley. No, they, no, Ken talked to Jimmy about that, and Ken said, Jimmy, there's things in there that you need to know about. And Jimmy said, okay, and he said, there's a lower and then there's an upper and there's a suppressor. on that upper. And that's legal. He said, but if someone puts the lower

Starting point is 00:52:26 on the upper, it's not legal. And Jimmy said, Ken, I thought you were about to tell me there was some cocaine under the seat or some shit. Don't worry about that. He said,

Starting point is 00:52:37 anything that wasn't using that shooting, I will tell them today to inventory it as not involved in the incident. And it'll go in a bag and they ain't going to look at it.

Starting point is 00:52:47 Nice. Good deal. So, but when I tell, you we had a lot of my friends worked together on this for us. Yeah. We definitely did. Because had this been reversed, had we been in Brunswick County or, yeah, had we been in his county where he lives, this would have been ugly. And here's Weldon asking Bradley to lie about the upper and lower the very next day, when panics start to set in because they were going to have to turn up and

Starting point is 00:53:25 in their phones and electronics, which stick a pin in that. Hello. Hey, couple of things. Go back on Facebook and just delete our chat again between you and I and then if they asked me and you just talked through the JR, me, you and chat or we text or call each other. Second thing is the upper and lower were separated. separated and the only reason we had the lower with us was because we were going to put a different trigger in it that night.

Starting point is 00:54:03 Oh, and this part. Yeah, and then just say that we were going to put a trigger in the lower and that upper was there. We just had the can on it. I mean, just it was separated. That gun had not been assembled. Because you can have a lower and an upper. ready to go with the intention of filing for a form one and not assemble them, right?

Starting point is 00:54:32 Yeah, it's just, it's just that nitty-gritty attempt to leave the action. Yeah. That's the one, that was the issue actually. It was not, and that's beyond his configuration because it was not together. But they're right beside each other. I mean, they're in the same compartment, the same place. Yeah, we'll be able to fight that off. Okay, let's go back to Merrill.

Starting point is 00:55:00 So I had Denisea on one of these property release paperwork. You'll see where she writes returned per Lieutenant Shea. That's because we were instructed to do something out of the norm, and I told her to write that on there. Okay. That was my concern. Do they legally have the right to own these? and I was told there's some sort of license that you get through the ATF and that they had it,

Starting point is 00:55:31 but we couldn't have a copy of it. Okay. All right. Any other involvement in this that you can remember specifically? No, other than just because I feel like it's the right thing to express this, I do feel like this was handled out of the normal. And how so? There was, from day one, there was information coming down through supervision that, I don't want to say that we had to be nicer to Mr. Boyd and Mr. Williams than normal, but that was the general impression we got. Like Deputy Chief Strickland came in our office a couple times about this.

Starting point is 00:56:38 It's probably the only time in my six years that I've ever dealt with him. Tom Shea got involved in it. He never gets involved in anything we do at all. Very seldom. And if he does, it's because Lori is, he's not coming into our office and looking at things. There were other people, I can't remember specifically who, but it just seemed like there was a lot more attention. being given to the property than normal if that makes sense. Okay.

Starting point is 00:57:11 So now you say Deputy Chief Strickland came in and talked with y'all. What kind of the conversations were had there? He came in. I was only there for part of the conversation because he was talking to Lori, so she would be the better person to talk to about that. But this was during the time that we were concerned about these other items other than the guns. And I do remember him saying something to the effect of just give him back to him.

Starting point is 00:57:46 Oh, so Brandon Strickland did have conversations about the case. He said he didn't. And he came into their offices a couple of times, which was highly unusual. Again, mediocre attorneys would argue that Brandon Strickland, trying to facilitate. their return of property for a citizen cleared of a crime isn't illegal or even unethical. Sure. On its own, maybe not. And that's how they try to get you, right? Because each isolated incident can be explained away and minimized on its own. What do they call that? The banality of evil. Bad acts aren't always a giant one-event situation. They're actually more so an accumulation of tiny actions that raise eyebrows,

Starting point is 00:58:30 but not necessarily alarms. We have so much more to talk about with this investigation and Brandon Strickland's presence. Let's just call it that, his looming presence throughout it. But for today, we just have time for one more IA interview with a fellow named Sergeant Ken Marcus. Right, during this whole ordeal, the shooting, all that stuff, did you receive any calls from Brandon Strickland?

Starting point is 00:58:57 Concerning this investigation? I don't believe so. I did mention a minute ago that I had a conversation about phone dumps if when we're examining a phone, if certain things could be excluded, the preference. That was with Brandon Strickland, but that was also with, I believe, Greg Lent, Alan Jones. There was a couple of them right there at the time we had the conversation. and essentially we were wondering if, you know, a victim or a witness or, you know, a party in a particular incident who has certain items on a phone that are, you know, part of to an incident,

Starting point is 00:59:39 but not the entire phone. If there was a way to exclude, you know, items from the entire phone, you know, parts of people's personal lives, things like that. Historically, in our department, we've always downloaded everything on a phone and produced everything on a phone. and 95% of it, if not more, just is never relevant to a criminal investigation, only a small portion of it. So they were wondering if there was a way in the tools to be able to narrow out just the information that's relevant for an investigation. So I explain that you can do that.

Starting point is 01:00:13 When you go back through the phone, you still end up downloading everything from the phone. But when you go back and you parse the phone out, you create that work product, that celebrate right report is typically what we're using. You're able to as the analyst to go through and tag or select certain artifacts, as we call them, bits of information, messages, phone calls, call logs, things like that, and produce just that list or exclude that list. It's, you know, other agencies across the country, other departments that do phone work. Some of them just provide artifacts that are specific to a case and exclude everything else. Some jurisdictions require that when you do a cell phone download that you can only look

Starting point is 01:01:01 in a narrow window. Like I know a lot of the agencies on the West Coast, they only allow you to download data that's relevant to a particular time period, you know, have to exclude everything else. So I explained that these tools could do certain things like that. Yeah. But I believe that was the only conversation that I had. that I had regarding this case where Brandon Strickland was present. Were you instructed to only download a certain time frame or any of that stuff?

Starting point is 01:01:28 No. So you were pretty much able to download the entire phone data that you did it? For this particular case, yes. For the phone that I did do, I know when we had this conversation, it wasn't necessarily regarding Mr. Spivey's phone alone. It was also regarding Mr. Boyd's phone, but we hadn't taken Mr. Boyd's phone into evidence. So is this what Brandon Strickland meant by, quote, wanting to ease the boy's mind?

Starting point is 01:02:00 Is this what he meant when he said? So I was not involved in any decision making at all. And sat the zebra meetings, any roundtables? I dissent myself. Why are these guys so delusional? In what world does it count as not doing anything wrong here when you are the number one guy over the criminal investigations division? You are the leader. And you're not supposed to be involved in this investigation per you.

Starting point is 01:02:30 You put up a pretend wall for show, in our opinions, based on what we're seeing, to make it look like you're doing the right thing. But then you sit in on a meeting about evidence, potentially crucial evidence, as it turns out, in a homicide case that might be a murder case with a guy who downloads phones for your agency so that you could see if something different could be done for Weldon. Just Strickland's mere presence there was problematic and a sign of corruption all the way to the top. And Strickland knows this. But also, first fun fact about that phone situation. Scott's phone was apparently data dumped by Ken Marcus, but that data has never been

Starting point is 01:03:14 provided to Jennifer Spivey Foley for some reason. Second fun fact, Brandon Strickland sat in on a meeting about how to make life better for Weldon Boyd before Weldon's phone was taken into custody, which it should have been the night of the shooting, but instead was held supposedly at his attorney Ken Moss's office until November 23. Third, fun fact, why was it held until November? Could that possibly be because Ory County Police were looking for a solution that met the demands from Scott's family, that the phones, and even more importantly, the tablet

Starting point is 01:03:50 mounted to Weldon's dashboard with alleged video of the shooting on there, get taken in as evidence as they would in every other case. And also met Weldon's demand of special treatment. For fun fact, it was decided that the phones would go to Sled to be downloaded, instead of using their in-house guy, who was good enough to use for Scott's phone, but who would have had to go through all of Weldon's phone files to determine which, if any, files pertained to the case. Like recorded phone calls and text messages. The electronics got outsourced to a less personal, less localized, less politically relevant, in the halls of Brandon Strickland's Police Department, anyway, agency to handle. An outsourcing that provided an extra

Starting point is 01:04:43 layer between the investigators and the facts. Oh, and a third party to blame if they ever got questioned. So, like I said, we have so much more to say about how this internal investigation was apparently conducted, and we will cover all of it in as many weeks as it takes to get it all out to you. This is just the tip of the iceberg that Captain Bert and his pals say doesn't exist. So, see. you on Monday in Spartanburg y'all. 9 a.m. courtroom 6D. Wear pink. Stay tuned, stay pesky, and stay in the sunlight.

Starting point is 01:05:32 True sunlight is a Luna Shark production created by me, Mandy Matney, co-hosted and reported by journalist Liz Ferrell, research support provided by Beth Braden, audio production support provided by Jamie Hoffman and Grace Hills, case file management by Kate Thomas. Learn more about our mission and membership at lunasharkmedia.com. provided by Luna and Joe Pesky. You know me, I dig until I find the truth.

Starting point is 01:06:05 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 Shark's 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. We cover the food and landmarks, sure, but we also ask the harder questions. What is the real history here?

Starting point is 01:06:37 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 with new destinations and episodes every other week. Wherever It Leads from Luna Shark. Find it wherever you listen to your podcast or visit wherever it leadspod.com.

Murdaugh Murders Podcast - TSP #153 [Part One] — Horry County Police Interviews that Brandon Strickland and His Lawyer Bert Likely Don’t Want You to Hear

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