Murdaugh Murders Podcast - What Happened To Gloria Satterfield? Part One - (S01E10)

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

Gloria Satterfield died suspiciously in 2018 following an alleged “trip-and-fall” incident while working at one of the Murdaugh family homes. In this episode we explore the new developments brought about by attorney Eric Bland and his righteous pursuit for justice. Gloria was much more than a housekeeper for the infamous Murdaugh family - she was a mother, a friend and a member of the Hampton community. And a special thank you to: The Bannon Law Group - From sitting by the fires to setting them, the Bannon Law Group has got you covered. Lauren Taylor Law - Few events are more traumatic and stressful than a divorce - let Lauren Taylor make a plan tailor made for you. Visit Lauren Taylor dot com to learn more. Gilstrap Roofing - Leading the way in quality roofing services. Spanning four generations, the Gilstrap family holds the same values today as we did back in 1935. Maven Real Estate: - Maven Realty is a full-service real estate brokerage servicing the Charleston Sc market. No transaction is too large or too small for their talented team. Special shout out to Neil Cohen from UTA for helping us tell this story. And to Greg Finch from the full-service Georgia law firm, Bouhan-Faligant. They are diligent, determined and care about the success of their clients. For current and accurate updates: Twitter.com/mandymatney Buy us a coffee to keep us going at: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/MurdaughMurders Support Our Podcast at: https://murdaughmurderspodcast.com/support-the-show Please consider sharing your support by leaving a review on Apple at the following link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murdaugh-murders-podcast/id1573560247 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ugh, another pointless video call where nothing gets done. I think you're on mute, David. Uh, sorry. What did I miss? IT just approved Miro for the whole company. Miro? That's the... Online whiteboard. For team collaboration. We can make these long video meetings so much shorter with Miro boards. We can share ideas, feedback, and updates on them whenever.

Actually see what we're talking about? It's all online. Miro will make our flexible work set up so much easier, with one virtual space for our brainstorms, projects, presentations. Oh, that sounds kind of amazing. So I don't need to wake up for 6am calls with the London office anymore. Now you're getting it. Don't let timezones get in the way of your team working well together.

See why 99% of the Fortune 100 trust Miro to get good work done. From anywhere. Get your first 3 boards free at Miro.com. That's M-I-R-O.com. I don't know if anyone killed Gloria Satterfield, but I've learned a lot recently about what happened in the aftermath of her death. And I'm disturbed and disgusted by what I'm hearing that Ellic Murdock allegedly did to her family who deserved the money in her settlement.

My name is Mandy Matney, and I've been investigating the Murdock family for more than two and a half years now. And this is the Murdock Murders podcast. So I mean it when I say that the last few weeks have been the strangest, busiest time of my entire life. And I'm not saying that to get any sort of sympathy or whatever. I'm just being straight with you. The last few weeks have been hard.

And I say that because I know what it would be like if I was another journalist following somebody like me on this case and wondering how is she doing all these things. And what I'm doing is not healthy. What I'm doing is not sustainable. Being a breaking news reporter and an investigative reporter and a podcaster all at the same time is absolutely exhausting. And this case is extremely emotionally taxing. And it's okay to talk about these things.

I will talk about these things. Being open about what's going on with your mental health is something that I will always advocate for. I wanted to start out this episode and say thank you to everyone who has supported us in the last few weeks. To those who defended me, to the trolls on Twitter, those who gave us a five-star review and shared the podcast, those who sent flowers and messages of encouragement,

those who bought me so many mimosas on buymeacoffee.com, those who helped make this podcast the number one podcast on Apple and Amazon, which is absolutely insane by the way. These last few weeks have been tough. I won't lie. But every little bit has given me the fuel to keep going when parts of me wanted to stop. So thank you. So much has gone down in the last two weeks with the unraveling of Alec Murdoch. But we want to focus this episode on Gloria Satterfield

because she deserves the spotlight and people need to know what happened to her and her family. I first reported about the Gloria Satterfield settlement in 2019 as I was investigating the deaths of Mallory Beach and Stephen Smith. Several of my sources in Hampton County made comments along the lines of, but did you hear about the housekeeper? There were rumors that the Murdochs were involved in the death of their housekeeper.

I'll be honest, it sounded like an insane rumor that to me was just too weird to be true. Then one day I was looking through court records and found a $500,000 wrongful death settlement for Gloria Satterfield, where Alec Murdoch was listed as the only defendant. Gloria Satterfield was the Murdoch's housekeeper and nanny for more than two decades. I found that this settlement was odd for a couple of reasons. And again, this was way back in 2019.

Alec Murdoch's best friend, Cory Fleming, was the lawyer representing the Satterfield family, which would be Cory suing his best friend. Remember Cory Fleming? He's the attorney who is connected to all three of these death investigations. Gloria Satterfield, Steven Smith, and Mallory Beach. In the Steven Smith case, his client, Patrick Wilson, was suspiciously injected into the investigation.

And in the 2019 Boe Crash, Alec allegedly told Connor Cook essentially the same thing he told the Satterfield sons. That Cory Fleming would have his back, but he would be a good lawyer who could be trusted. Now, Connor Cook is suing Fleming and Alec Murdoch for essentially conspiring to frame him in the Boe Crash investigation. We will get into all of that in another episode. So the Cory Fleming part of that is weird,

but all of this gets so much weirder. Another thing was neither one of Gloria Satterfield's sons were named as personal representatives of her estate, which again, I thought was weird. The third thing, which a lot of lawyers told me, was the settlement seemed very low for somebody admitting to wrongful death on their property and only getting $500,000 seemed weird to a lot of people.

Later, I realized that Judge Perry Buckner, who was a well-known friend of the Murdoch family who also recused himself from the Boe Crash just a few months after this, approved the settlement. I wrote about the settlement when I worked for another local newspaper back in 2019. And I believe I wrote about it again in 2020

and then I wrote about it again after the double homicide. A Maggie and Paul Murdoch when I was the first reporter to connect the three mysterious deaths to the Murdoch family. Now, we'll fast forward to last week, September 14th, 2021. Attorney Eric Land first told me that he was representing Gloria Satterfield's two sons

who say they never received any settlement money. So when I wrote the story last week, the only public document associated with this case stated that Alec Murdoch's insurance provider agreed to a petition for $505,000 for personal liability and Satterfield's wrongful death. In this clip where I'm talking to Eric Land, I'm typing because, again,

I'm a journalist before I'm a podcaster and I can't help but take notes. She was the housekeeper there for almost 25 years, very close to the family, raised the kids. Any settlement that may have existed the boys maintain that they have not received any distribution from any settlement proceeds. Our goal is to get answers for them

and to make sure that people who have represented them and have produced their duties to them have done what they're supposed to do for these boys. That's our goal. Eric Land said that the family was told Satterfield tripped on the steps of the Murdoch's former home on Holly Street in Hampton, South Carolina in February 2018.

They were told that the Murdoch's dogs caused her to trip, causing a fall which resulted in her sustaining a traumatic brain injury. It is not known if any member of the Murdoch family called 911 after the incident, nor is it clear how Satterfield was transported to the hospital, where she stayed for several weeks before she died on February 26, 2018.

This woman worked for the Murdoch Castle for 25 years. She was in the hospital for three weeks after apparently the dog caused her to fall down the stairs and have a closed-head traumatic brain injury. The family's a little bit disappointed because there wasn't a lot of visitation from the family when she was in the hospital only. The mother visited, not the boys who she raised.

You know, the Murdoch's didn't pay for her funeral, which just tells me a lot about them as a family. Gloria's obituary noted that she loved Elik, Maggie, and Elik's parents Randolph and Libby Murdoch as family, although we don't know who wrote her obituary. So after I wrote that story, things started developing in this case very rapidly. And here's why.

Again, this is Eric Gland talking to me on the phone. You know, lawyers are coming clean. Different lawyers are coming clean. And, you know, because there's this intense sunlight grouping on this case, everybody's being cautious not to do lawyer's spin or out to escape. But the truth ended up being very ugly.

We immediately started receiving texts from sources that said that the Satterfield Settlement was much, much higher in the millions. It appeared that a lot of lawyers knew about that, but no one said anything until the dismantling of the good ol' boy system started to take place. The next day, September 15, 2021, Eric Gland and his law partner,

Ronald Richter filed a lawsuit alleging civil conspiracy and stolen funds and connections with the 2018 Gloria Satterfield Settlement. The lawsuit was filed against Elik Murdoch, Corey Fleming, and others involved in the settlement, including Fleming's law firm Moss Coon and Fleming, Chad Westendorf, who was the banker listed as the representative of Satterfields Estate in the

Palmetto State Bank, which is a financial institution where Westendorf worked. The lawsuit revealed further details in this alleged conspiracy to steal money from Gloria's family. Hours after the lawsuit was filed in this case, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, which is also known as SLED, the same agency investigating the double homicide of Maggie and Paul Murdoch

and the Stephen Smith case, confirmed they were opening an investigation into the death of Gloria Satterfield. That is a big deal. SLED not only opened an investigation into her death, but also possible financial crimes related to her wrongful death settlement. SLED officials said they opened the investigation based on information gathered during the course of

other investigations involving Alec Murdoch. A couple things about this that were shocking. The Hampton County Coroner said that Satterfield's death was not reported to the other Hampton County Coroner at the time, nor did officials perform an autopsy. In another thing, on Satterfield's death certificate, the manner of death said natural, which does not line up with the story that she fell.

The manner of death would be accident. Again, Gloria's family was told that she died in a tributnful incident on the front steps of the Murdoch home. A few days after the lawsuit was filed and SLED opened up their investigation into Satterfield's death, Attorney Eric Bland received shocking information in the Gloria Satterfield Settlement. I'm going to go ahead and let him explain most of this.

I am going to admit that I was negligent and responsible for your mother's death because my dog tripped her and she fell down the stairs. He's going to bring a wrongful death claim, and I'm going to turn it over to my insurance carriers, and then I'm going to tell them I'm at fault and they're going to pay money, and you guys are going to make money.

Your guys are going to get money as a result of your mother's death. But you can't tell anybody that I'm kind of organizing this because I can get in trouble. So he takes them to Corey Fleming. He doesn't tell them that Corey's the kid's, that he's Paul's godfather, that they were college roommates, best friends, and that they work together. Corey signs them up and names Tony as the PR.

So a PR is a personal representative. That is a person that is in charge of an estate. Okay, we are now in December 2018 in the Gloria Satterfield case. Here is Eric Gland. Brian renounces his right to be a PR because he's a vulnerable adult, okay? So Tony is the personal representative of the estate,

which means Corey Fleming represents the personal representative of the estate. He doesn't represent the heirs. He represents the personal representative of the estate. And so they make a claim against Alex. They didn't file a lawsuit. They made a demand. You write a demand letter and you say,

look, Alex, you caused this. He turns it over to insurance companies. And he's telling the insurance companies, I am at fault, which really puts the insurance companies in a tough spot because ordinarily, just because somebody dies at your house, doesn't mean you're automatically liable. I mean, I could beat your house, Mandy,

and trip over my feet coming down your stairs, and it's my fault if I hit my head and I die. But because he was admitting fault, admitting that he was responsible, the insurance companies knew that if Corey Fleming actually filed a lawsuit and Alex was to go into a court in Hampton County where he's loved and say, this is my fault,

the jury would liable to return a big verdict. But Corey is not telling Tony what's going on. Tony's just a normal late 20s guy that works for a hospital and like delivery. So around December, when that petition for $505,000 was filed with the court, Corey calls up Tony on like December 13th and says, you know what?

I don't think you should be the PR anymore. There's going to be a lot of business issues in this case as it progresses, and I think it's better suited that there be a bagged officer that I know to be the PR. So of course, Tony, who trusts Corey, says, okay, if that's what you think. And so they name, Tony renounces his right to be a PR

and they name Chad Westendorf in the bank, Palmetto State Bank. And by doing that now, Corey's duty is to Chad Westendorf. He no longer has to communicate and can communicate with my clients because they aren't his clients. It's the personal representative of the estate.

So basically Fleming convinced Gloria's sons that they needed to have a banker work as their personal representative of their mother's estate. He's saying here that Fleming and Murdoch did this in their scheme so that Fleming would only be legally obligated to communicate with Westendorf.

They did not have to tell Gloria's sons about what was happening with the settlement money. And so on December 18th, Westendorf was approved to be the PR. The very next day on December 19th, they filed that petition for a $505,000 settlement. My clients were never aware of that. So as soon as the Satterfield boys were no longer entitled

to communications with Corey Fleming, his petition for a $505,000 settlement was filed. Who was the judge involved in all of this? That would be South Carolina circuit judge Perry Buckner, who recused himself from the 2019 boat crash just months later because of his ties to the Murdoch family. Two months goes by. Obviously, a boating accident happened in February of 2019.

Let me be clear here. The 2019 fatal boat crash that killed Mallory Beach changed everything about the Murdoch family. They were able to do things under the table and under the radar before the boating accident, which pushed them into the media spotlight. In March, they have a mediation. And they settle with a mediator from Charleston named John Austin.

All the insurance carriers, Nautical and Lloyds of London, and they were represented by John Grantland and Scott Wellinger. And Corey's representing the estate, and obviously Alex isn't defended. And they go before the mediator and they compromise or whatever, and they agree the total claims are going to settle for $4,305,000. So are you following this? That is a big deal. The money is going to be paid to the PR, to Chad Westendorf.

It's not going to be paid to Corey Fleming, the lawyer. Jack is going to be made out to the personal representative of the estate of Gloria Satterfields. But here is where it gets weird and complicated. He requested that they change the court caption without court approval to take his name off it. The next thing you look on at that position is there's no court term number. There's no live case.

There's no 2020 CP40-0312. Oh my, yeah, I've never seen that. The next thing you look at on that petition is it's not filed. It's signed by Chad Westendorf, but it's not filed with the court. Okay, so this is really weird. I have seen hundreds of settlements and lawsuits and all sorts of court documents in South Carolina, but I've never seen this.

It appears that Alec convinced the court to take his name off of the settlement, which is a luxury that most South Carolina citizens do not have when they admit fault and a wrongful death of another human being. But what's interesting about this is that his name was taken off the books right around the time of the fatal boat crash when he was in the spotlight. So another thing about this that is so crazy is there's no docket number. I have never seen a case like this with no docket number. And also every other case in South Carolina that is processed with the court

has numbers and basically a stamp of approval running down the side. It says the county that it's processing. It says the date, et cetera, et cetera. And that's not here. So you can hear me as Eric is explaining what's going on with these documents, how shocked I am because it is absolutely shocking. And I've talked to over a dozen lawyers who've looked at this and they're all very shocked that this actually came through.

Judge Mullen cannot hear a settlement proposal unless there's a motion or petition before her. Because when she comes on the bench, the first thing she's going to say is, or if she's in chambers and there should be a court reporter there, is what is performing. And somebody's going to say, well, we have a petition for you to approve a settlement. And she's going to open up the court file and she's going to say, there's nothing filed here.

I can't hear a motion that isn't filed. Nonetheless, she goes forward and hears the motion. So around the same time that Judge Carmen Mullen signed the secret settlement, she also recused herself from the boat crash due to her longstanding relationship with the Murdoch family. So are you hearing this right? The two judges who recused themselves from one Murdoch case, which was the boat crash, appeared to be involved in this one

during the same time period. Perhaps that's because Gloria's case did not get media attention at the time. She then signs an order. That's the third document I sent you. When you look at that order, the first thing you should say to yourself is, it's a different caption. The second thing you say to yourself is, what's the court term?

How would this be filed when there's no number? The third thing you say to yourself is, it wasn't filed. The fourth thing you say to yourself is, I'm going to look at that last page, the settlement disbursement sheet. And you see it's signed by Chad Westendorf. And that was given to Judge Mullen for her to approve that order. And that disbursement sheet shows there's $4,305,000 of money coming in. It shows the attorney's fees going out of $1.45 million.

The next thing that you catch your eye is there's $105,000. Even, not $105,13, but $105,000 even of quote, prosecution expenses. Expenses. What the hell is that? Yeah. Okay, so $105,000 worth of lawyer expenses when there's not a lawsuit or a trial over a period of about a few months is absolutely shocking.

And from what I know, investigating lots and lots of expenses in the government, et cetera, et cetera, when anything ends in $0,000, it's immediately sketchy. In an expense report, if something ever ends in $0,000, then it means that you're not keeping track of your books. In this case, there wasn't a lawsuit. What expenses were there? If there was going to be a professional PR fee paid to Chad Westendorf in the bank, that's got to be set forth itemized.

What's the $105,000? Even. How was that approved? The next thing you say to yourself and you look at is $2.7 million goes to the client. That's the net. From the 4.3, if that settlement disbursement sheet was going to be followed, it should have been paid to the PR who would distribute all of it but $50,000, because that's the survival claim.

There's two claims that were brought. A wrongful death, which is the kids bring a claim for the loss and love of their mother, which goes outside of the probate court. But a survival claim is glorious claim because she survived for three weeks and they allocated $50,000 to that. That money was never paid into the court. It was never distributed through the estate. And what else they didn't never disclose to Judge Mullen was,

Gloria had $675,000 of medical bills to try it in hospital for being there in three weeks. And they crafted a settlement that only $50,000, if it was ever paid, would go to pay off the medical bills. And when you structure something like that, it's Medicaid fraud because there was enough money in the $4.3 million recovery to pay off the medical bill of $675,000. But the way they structured it and Judge Mullen signed it, only $50,000 would be available to pay medical bills because the wrongful death money that would have gone to the kids, the $2.7 million,

that's not part of the estate and they're not liable for their mother's medical bills. So what happened? The check went straight to Corey Fleming. So he asked me, okay, how did Alec end up with the money? Alec told Corey, now Alec's the defendant. We're going to do a structure. We're going to buy an annuity for these kids through a company called Forge Consultants in Atlanta. 80% of the lawyers in the state like me, when we get a big lump sum settlement for,

let's say it's a minor kid or somebody that is paralyzed and has ongoing medical needs, you don't give them the money all at once. One, because there's big tax consequences. Two, you buy an annuity so that that $2.7 million is paid over 15 years, turns out to be worth like six and a half million dollars. The only problem is Corey never got any documents from Forge and he's taking direction from the defendant who tells him, after you take your fees, write the check to Forge and send it to a PO Box in Hampton, South Carolina.

And there's not one single document with Forge's name on it. And oh, by the way, if you're going to do a structure like that, you've got to get court approval. It's got to be disclosed to the judge in the petition in order that Judge Mullen's size has to approve that there's going to be a structure and an annuity and the money is going to be paid out over time. None of that's done. So Corey takes his direction from Alex to do a check in the name of Forge, not Forge Consultants, which they know about,

because I've spoken to Michael Gunn and Spooner Phillips at Forge Consultants and they say, oh man, Corey knows exactly what we do because when you do a structure, you get tons of documents in advance of the settlement because you have to see what the annuity return is going to look like over a 10 or a 15-year period. And number two, the beneficiaries have to sign off that they're going to get their money over time instead of all at once. None of that was done. So the check is made out of Forge. Alec Murdoch gives him a PO box where it's sent to.

The check goes in the PO box. Alec Murdoch opened up a bank account at Bank of America under the name of Forge, got the check, cashed it, and walked away with the money. So what Eric Land is saying here is absolutely appalling. He's basically saying that two prominent attorneys in South Carolina were able to do the scheme to steal from a grieving, hardworking family who deserve money from their mother's death and needed it but never got a dime due to their greed. So the latest revelations in the Gloria Satterfield case leave us with so many questions about the South Carolina justice system.

Did Corey and Alec do the scheme to other people? How did our justice system allow this to happen? And how many people will go down for this? I think we're only halfway through the onion because I think that this citadel of this Murdoch, the Murdoch citadel, is going to fall. And I think at the end of this, I think the Murdoch firm will not be what it was. There will be the word Murdoch in there. I think that the solicitor's office is going to be completely different. Whether Duffy Stone stays solicitor, who knows?

I don't see, you know, I'd be shocked if Corey Fleming keeps his law license, but who knows? You know, obviously Alec will. Or should? Yeah. I think the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court is going to look at how the court system is run down there and clerks of court and probate court and how it's all run. I think there's going to be a whole host of disinfecting on that whole town because of all this. And you guys keep doing the sunlight you're doing it.

You know, nothing can get swept under the rug. Before we finish this episode, I want to talk about who Gloria was as a person. Because Gloria and her families are victims in this and we need to talk about them. So I spoke with Kim Brant, who is a former Hampton resident who knew Gloria Satterfield. So she was not living the life of someone who worked as hard as she worked. She didn't, you know, she probably entered the workforce right out of high school. Or maybe I don't know if she had a high school degree, but she worked hard. She was honest and kind.

She had a good heart. She would help a stranger when she probably needed to be doing something for herself. For instance, here's a Gloria story. My sister's father-in-law passed away. And I ran over to the house and one of the neighbors was picking up pine straw in the pastor's yard. And he was handicapped. He could get on the riding lawn mower, but he was in a wheelchair at home. So his lawn mower had gotten too close to the ditch and he tipped over and was sort of half in the ditch and half out.

So I ran in looking for my brother-in-law, but Gloria was the only person home. So she ran out in her apron and she and I just lifted him back on his riding lawn mower back onto the road so that he could continue on with his grass catching. She's just that person. I mean, she didn't hesitate. She just dropped it and ran. And basically, I don't even know if I had my hands on the lawn mower. She just did it herself.

And that was how she was. But as kind and sweet as Gloria was, she had a very tough life. I've been told that she was homeless for multiple times while working for the Murdoch family. And I'll repeat that while working for the Murdoch family who owned multiple homes while Gloria was raising their children. All the family worked. They just, they struggled. They never seemed to have a vehicle that, you know, we think we take things for granted like having a job, a consistent job where you had regular hours and a working vehicle and a safe, comfortable home.

A roof over your head that didn't leak and you weren't concerned about whether or not your electric bill was going to be, were going to be able to pay your electric bill or get gas for your vehicle. It was just, there was always a struggle. Well, lawyers Eric Bland and Ronald Richter, who specialize in attorney malpractice, are fighting for justice for Gloria's family. Think about the type of courage it finally took for them to go see a lawyer and pursue a possible claim against the Murdoch. Now they want answers, which they wanted from the start about the money. Now they want answers about their mother.

And, you know, right now until Alex has proven otherwise, she died because of the dogs. But they also want justice now. And justice comes in many forms. You know, it comes in getting the money, like you said, that they deserve. But if somebody, you know, if a 57-year-old woman died prematurely at somebody's hands, well, then justice has to be served for that too. So we've learned a lot more about Gloria Satterfield and her interactions with the Murdoch family and who she was as a person. And we're going to say that for another episode. So stay tuned to the Murdoch Murders podcast.

And as always, check out fitsnews.com, that's F-I-T-S, news.com for the latest updates in this insane saga. The Murdoch Murders podcast is created by me, Manny Matney, and my fiance, David Moses. Our executive editor is Liz Farrell. Produced by Luna Shark Productions.