The Murdaugh Murders: Inside the Investigation

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Speaker 4 Tonight on Dave Live.

Speaker 5 When you looked into his eyes, did you know?

Speaker 7 Yes. To me, his eyes were cold.
I was like, what is he hiding?

Speaker 8 Did I shoot my wife and my son?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 9 The infamous case of Alec Murdoch.

Speaker 1 Now, a whole new look at the story you think you know.

Speaker 13 Was there a point where you thought he might get away with it?

Speaker 15 That's always been a concern. Every case that we work.

Speaker 4 Investigators speak out in their first and only interview.

Speaker 16 We had over 80 agents, over 200 pieces of evidence.

Speaker 7 We had drones, we had airplanes.

Speaker 17 The phones tell us a story.

Speaker 18 It was just that aha moment.

Speaker 19 Details never shared before.

Speaker 7 I was like, wait a minute. He wasn't being truthful with me.

Speaker 21 Videos never broadcast before.

Speaker 22 My mother and brother had been shot and killed. It was just total panic.
But I didn't think it could be possible. It could be them.

Speaker 23 What did you think when you saw your former boss and friend in handcuffs?

Speaker 24 I cried because that's not the person that I knew.

Speaker 17 Alex made the comment.

Speaker 25 You know, what a tangled web we weave.

Speaker 18 He wove wove that web so tight, but we were able to perfectly untangle that web.

Speaker 4 You're inside this heartbreaking mystery like never before. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 1 Here's Craig Melvin with The Murdoch Murders inside the investigation.

Speaker 26 The air down south feels different before it rains.

Speaker 26 Thick.

Speaker 13 Heavy.

Speaker 29 Ominous.

Speaker 30 The night of June 7th, 2021 was like that.

Speaker 32 The Colleton County Coroner says Margaret Murdaugh and her son Paul both suffered.

Speaker 17 Investigators are still piecing together a motive for the deaths of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh.

Speaker 21 It was a night that would change so many lives, including this man's, Agent David Owen, who would drive straight into the store.

Speaker 7 During that investigation, the only time that I was truly alone was when I was in my car leaving the office and going home, or from home to the office.

Speaker 7 I'd go home and I'm just sitting in my chair, you know, trying to unwind. And I'm like, what did I miss? What else can I go back? Who else can I talk to?

Speaker 7 I'd wake up in the middle of the night i need to do that report mentally exhausted every day 21 months june 7th the time i got the phone call until the jury came back with the verdict i worked on it

Speaker 42 for more than two years now the alec murdoch case has dominated the headlines you may think you've seen and heard it all but you've never seen this tonight for the first time the team of investigators that cracked the case speaks out, telling details only they knew.

Speaker 44 You'll hear about their dramatic discoveries.

Speaker 46 I knew.

Speaker 47 When I heard his voice, I knew.

Speaker 7 I was really excited.

Speaker 23 Why?

Speaker 7 Because I can prove that Islet was lying to me.

Speaker 49 And the moments that changed the case.

Speaker 22 I'm 99% sure that was Mr. Elliott talking.

Speaker 15 We all keep pocket knives, so you pull out a pocket knife and you kind of, you bend down and we look at the puncture and we put our knife up to it and it just seems to match.

Speaker 50 The moments that nearly broke them.

Speaker 7 My mother passed away the day I was set to testify. I took that afternoon to collect myself, think about how we're going to proceed.

Speaker 44 And their cat and mouse game with the most daunting adversary they've ever faced.

Speaker 53 Did you kill Maggie?

Speaker 42 No.

Speaker 53 Did I kill him?

Speaker 7 That response struck me.

Speaker 39 It's like, wow.

Speaker 49 If he was willing to steal from those people, there's no telling what he would do to his own family.

Speaker 55 Plus, just today, Alec Murdoch back in court.

Speaker 57 I agree that I wrongly took all of that money, Your Honor, and did all of those crimes.

Speaker 44 While allegations of jury tampering swirl.

Speaker 59 What we had filed today, supported by sworn testimony of jurors, is that the clerk of court had improper private communications with the jurors.

Speaker 34 And the judge steps down.

Speaker 58 it's the story you really don't know from the only people who can tell it did you know in that moment that the case had been blown wide open oh yes

Speaker 10 South Carolina's low country is a watery landscape often admired for its beauty But its tiny towns and tight-knit working-class communities are some of the poorest in the state.

Speaker 21 The Murdoch family has lived a very different life

Speaker 56 in their river houses, beach houses, and farm estates while managing the legal affairs of generations of their low country neighbors.

Speaker 23 You actually knew the Murdoch's more than 20 years, is that right?

Speaker 48 Yes.

Speaker 42 Gosh.

Speaker 65 Blanca Turbiate Simpson met Alec Murdoch when she sought his help on a friend's legal case.

Speaker 14 He later hired her to work as a housekeeper at his home known as Moselle, a sprawling 1,700-acre property in the Lowcountry where he lived with his wife Maggie and two sons, Buster and Paul.

Speaker 23 So you would cook?

Speaker 64 Yeah. You would clean.

Speaker 24 Cook, clean, do laundry, whatever she needed, run errands for her.

Speaker 19 Blanca became a part of the Murdoch family fold and especially close to Alec's wife Maggie, who some said could could be a little standoffish.

Speaker 23 What was she like?

Speaker 24 When it was just me and her, it was like she was a totally different person. She wasn't guarded.
She would joke around.

Speaker 24 She had this loud laugh.

Speaker 24 She was silly. She loved to dance.

Speaker 77 Blanca made dinner for the Murdochs on the fateful night of June 7th, 2021.

Speaker 23 Why did you cook dinner that night instead of Maggie?

Speaker 24 Maggie was at the doctor's appointment and she had a nail appointment.

Speaker 23 She had a date to herself.

Speaker 24 Yeah, so she said, I'm running late. Can you go ahead and cook? I was like, yeah, sure.

Speaker 19 Blanca left dinner on the stove and headed out. How could she imagine that life as she knew it would never be the same? Because just after 10 p.m.

Speaker 40 that night.

Speaker 83 I have an Alex Murdoch on the line caller from 4147 Moselle Road. He's advising us that his wife and child was shot.

Speaker 19 He told the dispatcher he'd come home to find Maggie and Paul shot near the dog kennels, some distance from the main house.

Speaker 31 And was anyone else supposed to be at your house?

Speaker 85 No, ma'am.

Speaker 1 Please hurry.

Speaker 14 When deputies from the nearby Collington County Sheriff's Department arrived, They found the man who seemed distraught.

Speaker 87 Central 717 seemed insecure. Got a whiskey fox, whiskey mic, both gunshot wounds to the head.

Speaker 86 Sir, I want to let you know because of the scene, I did go get a gun and bring it down here.

Speaker 29 It's in your vehicle.

Speaker 29 Do you have any guns on you at all?

Speaker 87 Yes, sir. That's what it looks like.

Speaker 21 It was a grisly scene.

Speaker 35 52-year-old Maggie and 22-year-old Paul had both been shot multiple times at close range.

Speaker 35 The man who took over the crime scene that night was Special Agent David Owen of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, known as SLED.

Speaker 12 The challenges he and his colleagues would face and the burden they would carry were obvious right away.

Speaker 7 I got there and realized that it was Alec Murdoch's wife and son. Knowing who his father was, who his grandfather was, how prominent the law firm was.
That's a lot of weight.

Speaker 75 But investigators had no idea that night how much of a roller coaster the next two years would be.

Speaker 7 I was like, what is he hiding? Why is he lying?

Speaker 35 Was there a point in the investigation where you thought he might get away with it?

Speaker 15 That's always been a concern.

Speaker 47 We didn't know what we didn't know. It was a very bizarre case.

Speaker 19 In the aftermath of a brutal double homicide, every moment in the investigation counts.

Speaker 88 And in this high-profile case involving the area's most prominent family, police knew their every move was being watched more than they'd ever experienced before.

Speaker 87 That is Paul Murdoch.

Speaker 71 That's one of the reasons why the state's most experienced investigators were brought in immediately.

Speaker 51 Explain to me how much evidence you actually had to process.

Speaker 76 Well,

Speaker 11 when we talk about the data that was involved.

Speaker 34 Mark Keel has been the chief of SLED for more than a decade.

Speaker 19 He almost never gives interviews, but the unprecedented coverage of the Murdoch case led him to talk to us about the work his team did.

Speaker 11 You know, we started getting it from media outside of South Carolina, and the national media obviously was very involved. In fact, I think I got a couple of calls from you as well.

Speaker 42 You did. You did.

Speaker 23 Thank you for answering the phone once or twice.

Speaker 12 County sheriffs keep the chief on speed dial to help with their biggest and toughest crimes.

Speaker 23 Why would a local law enforcement agency ask the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to come in and take it over?

Speaker 11 Well, we were created as an assistant agency. That's what CLED does.
I mean, we're still a rural state.

Speaker 11 We still have a lot of small counties that do not have the ability to have all the technical expertise and and manpower that they may need for some crime.

Speaker 80 Chief Keel knew the Murdoch family's reputation.

Speaker 35 They occupied a prominent position among law enforcement.

Speaker 20 In fact, Alex's father, grandfather, and his father practically wore the law in six low country counties as powerful prosecutors for nearly 100 years.

Speaker 23 What was your impression of the family?

Speaker 11 They were respected. They were great prosecutors.

Speaker 65 And their influence didn't end with elected office.

Speaker 74 The Murdochs founded one of the state's most powerful law firms.

Speaker 72 Alec worked there as a personal injury attorney.

Speaker 1 I didn't know Alec very well.

Speaker 11 I knew who he was.

Speaker 35 Sled investigators took over shortly after they arrived on the scene.

Speaker 23 What becomes the first order of business?

Speaker 11 Trying to protect that crime scene.

Speaker 35 Senior Special Agent David Owen has been in law enforcement for close to 30 years and worked with SLED for nearly a decade.

Speaker 62 When he arrived around midnight, he had to orient himself in a crowded crime scene.

Speaker 7 Saw a crime scene tape up. EMS fire department was still there trying to set up lights to help us illuminate the scene so that we could investigate it.
A lot of dogs barking.

Speaker 93 The Murdoch sprawling 1,700 acre property included a cabin, dog kiddles, and even a landing strip.

Speaker 23 At what point does David Owen realize this was not going to be just a run-of-the-mill murder case?

Speaker 7 Pretty soon after I got there and realized that it was Alec Murdoch's wife and son.

Speaker 19 Blanca knew the Murdoch's reputation well, at home and at the law firm.

Speaker 91 She met Alec in 1997 after he helped her friend on a case.

Speaker 35 She started working with him, doing translations on cases with Spanish speakers.

Speaker 94 She says he had a way with people that made him at home anywhere.

Speaker 24 He just had that personality. He made you feel

Speaker 24 like you were, you know, a good friend. He never treated me like hired help or anything like that.
Never once.

Speaker 66 And when Alec eventually did need someone to help around the house and with his kids.

Speaker 24 He said, hey, Maggie's looking for somebody. She needs help.
Do you know of anybody?

Speaker 24 I told her, I said, hey, Hey, I'll do it. I said, I can help her.
At first, he was like, No, find me somebody else.

Speaker 72 Yeah, he thought it was beneath you.

Speaker 24 I guess he did.

Speaker 24 I didn't see it like that.

Speaker 21 Blanca got close to both Maggie and Paul.

Speaker 24 Paul was a little clown, always the jokester in the house since he was little. He would just do silly things.
He was just one of those kids that

Speaker 24 he was really hyper.

Speaker 24 And

Speaker 24 but he had a good heart.

Speaker 30 She says Maggie had a great sense of humor and knack for southern traditions.

Speaker 24 She was just funny. She had this southern bell, you know, type thing.
Also, she knew when to, she always wanted everything perfect, attention to detail.

Speaker 97 I learned a lot from her.

Speaker 35 David Owen was hearing more about Maggie and Paul now, too, as he examined the crime scene.

Speaker 23 What had apparently happened to Maggie and Paul?

Speaker 7 They both were shot in the head and that they were face down.

Speaker 29 As he took it all in, he realized there were already problems at the crime scene with people walking in and out.

Speaker 7 I've got crime scene experience. I've been in investigations since 2002.

Speaker 2 It's inevitable.

Speaker 7 You know, every time you walk in to a crime scene, you're bringing something in and or you're taking something out.

Speaker 23 The fact that you were not the first agency on the scene, did that put you at a disadvantage?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 7 From the time the 911 call came in until the time I got there, that's two hours lost.

Speaker 23 What about the sheer number of people who were there at Moselle? Is that something you would have changed?

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 43 Why?

Speaker 7 Had I known it that many people were that close to the scene, I would have pushed them back further.

Speaker 7 Because you don't know what you don't know.

Speaker 19 You don't know what you have.

Speaker 14 Investigators recovered two spent shotgun shell casings around Paul's body.

Speaker 36 His mom was killed with what appeared to be an assault rifle.

Speaker 31 But Agent Owen learned that no weapons were found near Paul or Maggie, which meant there was a killer or killers on the loose.

Speaker 71 He needed to talk immediately to the grieving husband and father, Alec Murdoch.

Speaker 23 What was that like?

Speaker 7 Well, I approached him. I introduced myself,

Speaker 7 told him who I was and why I was there, and I said, I need to sit down and talk to you.

Speaker 7 And he understood.

Speaker 19 Alec got into the car with Agent Owen.

Speaker 47 I'm David Owen.

Speaker 29 Who started with the question the whole country would soon be asking?

Speaker 7 What's going on in your world that could bring something like this upon your family?

Speaker 82 In the early hours of June 8th, 2021, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Special Agent David Owen and Alec Murdoch got out of the rain and into Owen's Dodge Durango.

Speaker 7 And you go by Alec?

Speaker 98 Yes, sir. I hate to have to do this.
I understand. I totally understand.

Speaker 35 Owen showed me his portable setup.

Speaker 90 Mobile Command Center, if you will.

Speaker 20 Yes, sir.

Speaker 78 What are you doing here?

Speaker 20 A little bit of everything.

Speaker 7 When I'm out in the field doing interviews, if there's no secure area or safe area to interview somebody,

Speaker 76 I'll use my car.

Speaker 1 Did he know you're recording?

Speaker 7 Yes, sir.

Speaker 7 On my visor, I normally put my body camera, clip it on there, and I angle it towards the seat, the person I'm interviewing, which is the seat you're sitting in.

Speaker 58 This is that same seat where he was in his first interview.

Speaker 66 Yes, sir.

Speaker 98 I pulled up and I could see him and, you know, I knew something was bad.

Speaker 19 And so began a chess match that would consume Agent Owens every waking moment for the next year.

Speaker 23 What were you hoping to accomplish in that first interview?

Speaker 7 You know, I asked him, was he having any trouble at the property? You know, had there been any burglaries, any attempted break-ins, any larcenies in the area?

Speaker 7 That would give me something to try to track down.

Speaker 98 I mean, I can't tell you anybody that I'm overly suspicious of

Speaker 98 off the top of my head.

Speaker 9 Was there anything about his demeanor that struck you during that first conversation in this car?

Speaker 49 He was fidgety.

Speaker 7 I mean, he was always moving around, you know, cleaning his glasses, doing something with his hands.

Speaker 28 But then, Alex said something that seemed like a big deal.

Speaker 98 What comes to my mind is my son Paul was in a boat wreck a couple years ago.

Speaker 84 Agent Owen remembered that case well.

Speaker 93 The nighttime motorboat crash on nearby Archer's Creek.

Speaker 94 It happened in February 2019.

Speaker 88 Paul Murdoch and five of his friends had taken Alex's boat out, but on the way home, they crashed into a bridge.

Speaker 30 Several passengers were hurt.

Speaker 56 And 19-year-old Mallory Beach was thrown from the boat.

Speaker 35 She was found dead almost a week later.

Speaker 44 Paul was accused of driving drunk and causing the crash.

Speaker 20 His blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit.

Speaker 14 Murdoch family housekeeper Blanca remembers the time after that crash vividly.

Speaker 71 Was the mood any different in the house?

Speaker 24 It was a little somber at times. You know, it was, you could see it,

Speaker 24 but they try to keep basically, you know, their spirits up.

Speaker 24 I know Maggie struggled with it

Speaker 24 because that's her baby boy.

Speaker 67 In April 2019, Paul was indicted on three counts of boating under the influence, causing death and great bodily injury.

Speaker 88 He faced a maximum of 55 years in prison.

Speaker 20 He pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 48 Blanca.

Speaker 30 says the negative publicity in Tiny Hampton made Maggie feel alienated.

Speaker 24 I think that's where she was having a hard time with. People that she thought were friends, you know, good friends,

Speaker 24 all of a sudden weren't there.

Speaker 30 The boat wreck had tarnished the Murdoch's reputation in the Hampton community.

Speaker 20 In the patrol car with Agent Owen, Alec now seemed to be suggesting the double murder might be an act of revenge against Paul.

Speaker 98 There's been a,

Speaker 98 you know, he was charged with being arrested for being the driver. There's been a lot of negative publicity about that, and there's been a lot of people online, just really vile stuff.

Speaker 98 Know of any direct threats from people on the boats?

Speaker 98 I don't know of any direct threats between any of the people on the boat specifically, but I do think there's been a small amount of yip yap between a couple of them, but not recently. Okay.

Speaker 40 About a half hour into the interview, Alex's other son, Buster, arrived.

Speaker 7 I just said, you know, go be with your son.

Speaker 7 We can finish this later.

Speaker 99 The first interview was over.

Speaker 23 So when you sat with him in your car that first time, he was not prime suspect number one.

Speaker 2 No, he was not.

Speaker 7 Any death investigation that I'm a part of or that I lead,

Speaker 7 I look at the person who found the bodies or body, and I look at those closest to the decedents, but they know most about them.

Speaker 19 Owen still had enough to get started.

Speaker 7 That gave me people to go out and try to interview people involved in the boat case and just started trying to brainstorm of, you know, what happened, what could have happened, who could have done this.

Speaker 65 Now, members of SLED would start spreading out.

Speaker 75 They had possible suspects to find.

Speaker 15 So we had to ask them, hey, you know, Paul's dead.

Speaker 49 Where are y'all?

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Speaker 65 As the sun rose over Colleton County on the morning of June 8th, 2021, the Murdoch family's housekeeper, Blanca, was getting ready to go to work.

Speaker 42 Then Alec Murdoch called.

Speaker 77 A call she will never forget.

Speaker 23 What did he call and say?

Speaker 24 He told me that they're gone. Be they're gone.

Speaker 24 And I was like,

Speaker 24 she go back to Edisto?

Speaker 24 Never did it cross my mind that he was talking about them being dead.

Speaker 24 I did not associate it with that.

Speaker 24 And he's like, no, B, they're dead. And I was like,

Speaker 42 what?

Speaker 31 He says, Maggie, Papa, they're dead.

Speaker 35 Blanca arrived at Mozell later that morning.

Speaker 23 What did you see?

Speaker 24 When I walked through the door, all the lights were out. I left them off.

Speaker 24 It was just a weird,

Speaker 24 chilly feeling walking in there.

Speaker 62 Agent David Owen was still at Moselle that morning overseeing the crime scene.

Speaker 35 In the light of day, he realized the property would be a nightmare to search.

Speaker 7 1700 acres, a lot of it was swampland, a lot of it was planted ponds.

Speaker 5 Plenty of places for a killer or killers to hide weapons and other evidence.

Speaker 7 You have two different ammunitions used to kill them. So I mean automatically you're going to think okay well I possibly have two shooters.

Speaker 7 It's not very often that one shooter uses two different guns in a double murder.

Speaker 45 Owen deployed a large team of agents to search for suspects and guns.

Speaker 7 Everywhere that we could gain access to on that property that was searchable, we searched. We had drones.
Nothing. Nothing.

Speaker 50 Meanwhile, at the house, Alex's friends and law partners helped other sled agents gather and inventory more than a dozen family guns to see if any were missing.

Speaker 35 On the property's shooting range, investigators sifted through spent shelves to see if any of those matched the ones at the murder scene.

Speaker 70 And scientists at the state lab started to analyze materials found at the crime scene as they came in.

Speaker 30 By now, senior special agent Ryan Kelly had joined the team.

Speaker 58 He spent 10 years as a detective in Charleston before coming to SLED in 2012.

Speaker 51 His job,

Speaker 35 locate some of the remaining survivors of that fatal boat crash.

Speaker 23 Why was making contact with the folks who are on the boat a priority early on?

Speaker 15 It's important to identify individuals as soon as possible.

Speaker 74 That meant hard questions for the parents of 19-year-old Mallory Beach, who was killed in the crash.

Speaker 15 So we had to ask them, hey, you know, Paul's dead.

Speaker 49 Where were y'all?

Speaker 15 And that was something that we didn't take lightly.

Speaker 21 Agent Kelly and his fellow agents also collected DNA samples from all four survivors and some of their parents.

Speaker 58 That included Keith and Beverly Cook's son, Anthony.

Speaker 90 Is it true that Anthony actually had to give a DNA sample?

Speaker 57 Yeah.

Speaker 71 Was he considered a suspect?

Speaker 102 He was never considered a suspect, but all of the boat occupants and I guess Mallory's family were, I don't know if you would call it a person of interest.

Speaker 42 They never called on protocol.

Speaker 76 Yeah, they had to.

Speaker 11 They had to clear their names so they could move on to somebody else.

Speaker 102 Yes, that's what they told us.

Speaker 15 We were quick to locate the families. They were extremely gracious and helpful.
They all met and gave us their whereabouts the night of the incident, and we kind of went from there.

Speaker 23 How quickly were you able to eliminate those folks?

Speaker 15 Within a couple days.

Speaker 82 But that didn't mean scrutiny of the boat crash was over.

Speaker 38 Far from it.

Speaker 23 Did you know when the double murder happened that it was going to reopen this room, that it was going to bring renewed attention to the boat accident?

Speaker 24 I mean,

Speaker 102 shortly after the shock wore off, yeah, I knew what was coming. Yeah.

Speaker 23 Why?

Speaker 102 I always felt like

Speaker 102 the boat crash was going to bring something to light.

Speaker 84 And it didn't take long.

Speaker 82 The ripples of that boat crash had reached every member of the Murdoch family.

Speaker 96 You're talking about bad behavior.

Speaker 94 In never-before-seen video, investigators would peel back the complicated layers of a family that was now at the center of a tragedy yeah they're still married they're still living together far as i know they don't have any problems

Speaker 91 The Murdoch family was very well known in the Low Country, of course, but not much beyond.

Speaker 50 Then, Maggie and Paul were murdered, and the Murdoch's name was being broadcast statewide.

Speaker 32 An update to a high-profile double homicide in the Low Country.

Speaker 80 Then, nationwide.

Speaker 103 We are learning disturbing new details on that mysterious double homicide in South Carolina.

Speaker 19 All that attention put pressure on the investigation.

Speaker 35 But Chief Keel maintains his team tried to shut out the noise.

Speaker 23 Because this was was a prominent family that was well connected.

Speaker 90 Did that affect the strategy behind the scenes at all from an investigative standpoint?

Speaker 11 It didn't. It didn't to me, and it has it disliked.

Speaker 58 Three days after Maggie and Paul were gunned down, investigators simultaneously interviewed Alec Murdoch's brothers, John and Randy.

Speaker 54 Alec called them right after he called 911.

Speaker 84 These interviews are airing here for the first time.

Speaker 22 He says John Paul, and Maggie

Speaker 22 have been shot, have been hurt. It's just total panic.
And he says, please get here as fast as you can.

Speaker 22 Okay, I'm good.

Speaker 22 I just got dressed as quick as I could.

Speaker 22 Okay, okay.

Speaker 22 Could hardly talk.

Speaker 22 But you could tell there was something really bad wrong. It was just a frantic, frantic phone call from him.

Speaker 22 But in those phone calls, and i think it was in the first one he said

Speaker 22 maggie and paul have been shot

Speaker 73 both brothers raced to the scene that night on the way they called in help from their friends in law enforcement greg cook

Speaker 22 is one of the fire chiefs in hampton but most importantly he's one of Alec's very good friends and so he knows the location and so

Speaker 22 I had to tell him what happened. I started driving and I was I mean obviously I was speeding.

Speaker 22 A good friend of mine's the chief in Yemese and I said I said chief I said there's been something bad's happened I said please you know meet me on the road and and help get me there

Speaker 5 Randy arrived first and spotted Alec.

Speaker 22 I found him and we just hugged and cried and

Speaker 42 and and then when we stopped, I could see

Speaker 22 the white sheets.

Speaker 22 I mean, I knew whoever was under those sheets were

Speaker 22 not alive.

Speaker 22 But I didn't think it could be possible it could be them.

Speaker 44 The brothers seemed to still be in shop.

Speaker 22 And of course, I saw Alec and just jumped out and just ran to him.

Speaker 22 Yeah, we just we hugged and I mean it was it was very obvious what they weren't alive so

Speaker 92 John Marvin told the investigators he had a close relationship with Paul and employed him at his equipment rental business that summer.

Speaker 22 Did you ever witness any behavior that was

Speaker 22 bad behavior? Yeah, no, no, not at all. Not at all.
In fact,

Speaker 22 he was an asset. He was a joy.
I mean, customers love talking to him. Okay.

Speaker 75 But both brothers acknowledged Paul's role in the boat accident.

Speaker 22 Paul made some bad decisions one night and

Speaker 22 it led to a grave set of circumstances.

Speaker 22 He put

Speaker 22 his friends in a bad,

Speaker 22 bad situation.

Speaker 37 Still, they were quick to defend him.

Speaker 22 He's a wonderful kid. He'll get your shirt off his back.

Speaker 6 And when it came to Maggie, the brothers said the Murdoch marriage was solid.

Speaker 22 Far as I know, they don't have any problems. Can you think of any relationship Maggie may have been in that would have

Speaker 22 anybody that's in her circle? Not that I'm aware of. Perfectly.

Speaker 30 At the same time, in another car, investigators were speaking with Alex's remaining son.

Speaker 58 25-year-old Buster Murdoch.

Speaker 54 In this never-before-seen interview, Buster recounts the call he got telling him his mom and brother were dead.

Speaker 22 And he said something terrible has happened.

Speaker 22 I could tell that he was emotional. He goes on to tell me that my mother and brother have been shot and killed.

Speaker 22 When you get that news, does your mind go to thinking about how that could have happened? Yes, and just didn't understand how to really comprehend it.

Speaker 94 The investigator asked if his brother Paul had any enemies.

Speaker 22 Do you have any thoughts about who might have wanted to humble brother, anybody? No, sir.

Speaker 22 I know people disliked him due to the accident, but I couldn't single out anybody that I know that would want to do

Speaker 22 what has been done.

Speaker 33 But Buster said he thought his brother was the likely target of the attack.

Speaker 22 Do you think maybe someone was after your brother and your mom happened to be down there? Like,

Speaker 22 what? I would say if I had to have a tape, that's probably what it would be.

Speaker 22 I think that someone was probably trying to kill my brother and that my mom was probably just there. And you think that was because of the boat?

Speaker 22 Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 35 Of course, police had already ruled out those involved with the boat crash, but Alec Murdoch was about to suggest another possible connection between the boat crash and the murders.

Speaker 98 I'm a defendant in a civil case involving my son.

Speaker 77 And that would lead investigators to secrets.

Speaker 80 Secrets Alec had kept not only from them, but from his wife.

Speaker 23 Wonk, you said at one one point that Maggie told you, Alec doesn't tell me everything.

Speaker 23 Any idea what she was talking about?

Speaker 99 Alec Murdoch had lost half his family and for all practical purposes, his home.

Speaker 58 He couldn't bear to spend another night at Moselle. So he asked the family housekeeper, Blanca, to stay there.

Speaker 23 Were you afraid to stay there?

Speaker 24 I remember that evening,

Speaker 24 everybody had left. Alec had already left, and two of the attorneys stayed behind because they didn't want to leave me in the house by myself.

Speaker 68 Blanca brought her own gun for protection, but felt it was important that the home was kept just as her friend Maggie liked it.

Speaker 24 I was just trying to

Speaker 24 make sure that I did things the way that she

Speaker 24 liked things, you know,

Speaker 24 just to kind of honor her?

Speaker 42 Yeah.

Speaker 24 I didn't want anything out of place. I knew how she was, you know, very detailed.

Speaker 23 And you're doing all of this while you're also grieving the loss of a friend.

Speaker 24 Every time I would think about crying or I wouldn't do it in front of her mother, I would run in the laundry room and close the door. with all them people there.

Speaker 77 Alex still dropped by from time to time.

Speaker 63 Blanca says he seemed inconsolable.

Speaker 24 He would have like episodes of crying. If somebody would come around him and say, hey, you know, you need anything or whatever, he just

Speaker 24 would begin to cry.

Speaker 30 Of course, investigators were still combing the property, searching for suspects, looking for evidence, conducting interviews.

Speaker 36 and starting the major process of gathering digital evidence they'd hoped would establish a timeline of the Murdoch family's movements that fateful night.

Speaker 23 What did you have from that night to go on?

Speaker 7 We had Paul's phone that night, but of course that takes a process to get into that phone. The next day, I'd say within 12 hours, we found Maggie's phone on the roadside.

Speaker 78 Meanwhile, Agent Owen climbed back in the car for a second interview with Alec Murdoch at the exact same time his brothers and son were being interviewed by other agents.

Speaker 58 What was the goal of the second interview here in the car?

Speaker 7 Try to get more information.

Speaker 7 I got very limited information that night of the homicides. You know, he had time to let the death of his wife and son start to sink in.

Speaker 76 So, you know, a little more clearer picture in his mind.

Speaker 70 And so, the second round of Owen's cat and mouse game with Alec began.

Speaker 7 I got kind of a basic overview. Yes, sir.

Speaker 47 And it was pretty traumatic.

Speaker 98 That's okay. I know you need to ask me.
You ask me what you need to.

Speaker 74 Owen wanted to lock down Alec's account of where he and his wife and son were that night.

Speaker 98 The more detail, the better.

Speaker 63 So Paul.

Speaker 84 He said Paul arrived home before Maggie.

Speaker 14 The two of them rode around the property.

Speaker 98 We knocked around for,

Speaker 98 you know, just doing things we like to do do out there.

Speaker 77 Paul made a Snapchat video of his dad wrestling with a sapling.

Speaker 35 Alex said they spent two hours together.

Speaker 50 Maggie ran errands that day and planned on staying overnight at the family beach house.

Speaker 70 But Alec texted her, asking her to come back to Mozell.

Speaker 50 By that evening, the family was sitting down to Blanca's dinner of country-fried steak.

Speaker 98 Maggie had gotten home and, you know, we sat down and we ate supper, which we usually eat supper together.

Speaker 77 After dinner, Alex said he took a nap and Maggie and Paul went to the dog kennels on the property.

Speaker 98 I was watching TV,

Speaker 98 looking at my phone, and I actually fell asleep on the couch. Okay.

Speaker 70 He guessed he woke up around nine and drove to check on his mom about 20 minutes away.

Speaker 98 I left my mom's and

Speaker 98 I went back home. I got to the house.
I went inside. Nobody was there.
I got in the car. I went back to the kennels.

Speaker 6 That's where he said he found him, shot to death.

Speaker 90 He dialed 911 just after 10 p.m.

Speaker 64 Alec was emotional again as he spoke about finding his wife and son.

Speaker 38 But then,

Speaker 6 he brought up something that seemed like it could be a big clue.

Speaker 98 I'm a defendant in a civil case involving my son. I told you about the boat wreck.
Yes, sir.

Speaker 98 And there were some motions coming up in that on Thursday, and I was mostly just getting ready for those things.

Speaker 36 In the wake of that 2019 boat accident that killed their daughter, Mallory Beach's family had filed a wrongful death suit against Alec and others.

Speaker 79 It's a loss that they'll never get over.

Speaker 28 Mark Tinsley is their attorney.

Speaker 79 They really wanted to make sure that this didn't happen to somebody else's daughter or son.

Speaker 79 So it was about accountability.

Speaker 90 Tinsley was demanding Alec's financial records to determine how much money Alex's portion of the lawsuit could be, but Alec had refused to give them up.

Speaker 58 Blanca says Maggie felt like Alec was hiding things about the civil suit from her too.

Speaker 24 When they would discuss Paul's, you know, the boating accident, Maggie felt that he wasn't telling her everything.

Speaker 24 She knew a little bit, bits and pieces, but he would only give her just enough, you know, to

Speaker 24 kind of calm her down.

Speaker 90 Alec was due in court where he'd be forced to answer questions about his finances on June 10th, 2021.

Speaker 5 Maggie and Paul were murdered three days before that hearing.

Speaker 77 So what kind of information would he likely have been compelled to turn over?

Speaker 79 I was asking for all of his account. information, checking accounts, savings accounts, retirement accounts, his tax returns, everything.

Speaker 88 Owen realized this was an important moment in his case.

Speaker 23 What did you learn about the civil lawsuit and the effect that that might have had on him?

Speaker 7 The attorneys on the civil side going against Alec, they were out to get him to make him pay.

Speaker 96 The Beach family's lawsuit demanded millions from Alec.

Speaker 90 Blanca said that the lawsuit deeply impacted the family, especially Maggie.

Speaker 24 She said, now they want 30 million. Where are we going to get it?

Speaker 66 Where exactly?

Speaker 61 Alec always handled the money.

Speaker 84 Blanca says Maggie thought they were well off, if not rich.

Speaker 30 But investigators were starting to figure out that Alec Murdoch was hiding something big.

Speaker 23 Something wasn't right.

Speaker 7 He wasn't being truthful.

Speaker 93 In Alec Murdoch's two interviews with David Owen,

Speaker 19 he'd given a timeline of events for the night of the murders.

Speaker 7 After dinner, Alec states that he goes to sleep on the couch, playing on his phone, watching TV, and takes a nap. and that Maggie went to the kennels.

Speaker 7 And he wasn't sure where Paul went, but assumed that he went to the kennels because that's where he later finds him.

Speaker 35 Alec's story didn't put him at the kennels until after 10 p.m.

Speaker 82 But early in the investigation, agents had spoken to a witness who blew that timeline right out of the water.

Speaker 22 That's what kind of dog he got.

Speaker 22 Chocolate lamb.

Speaker 35 You've likely heard his name, Rogan Gibson, but this is the first time you're seeing his police interview.

Speaker 20 Rogan was boarding his dog at the kennels and got a call from Paul that night.

Speaker 22 Paul called me. At what time? At 8.44.

Speaker 30 Gibson told investigators he heard others in the background.

Speaker 63 One of them was Alec Murdoch.

Speaker 22 I heard Miss Maggie and believed to be what was Mr. Ellett

Speaker 22 in the background. Can't swear that it was Mr.
Elliot, but I believe it was Mr. Ellett.
How well do you know Mr. Elliott? I'm like a third son of him.
So you would recognize his voice pretty clearly.

Speaker 22 Yeah, I'm 99% sure that was Mr. Elliott talking to me or talking to them while I was on the phone.
Okay.

Speaker 7 And I was like, wait a minute, that's

Speaker 7 after they had dinner. And Alec told me he stayed in the house while Maggie went to the kennels.

Speaker 23 You believe Paul's friend?

Speaker 42 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 23 Because why would he lie?

Speaker 7 The information he gave us was unsolicited. Nobody prompted him to say that.

Speaker 71 There was no way to confirm what Rogan said.

Speaker 42 Only he had heard it.

Speaker 21 Further complicating matters, in a second interview with investigators, Rogan was less certain he had heard Alec's voice.

Speaker 90 But it was still on David Owen's mind when he asked Alec to come to the sled office and speak with him for a third time.

Speaker 78 It was August 11th, 2021, two months after the murders.

Speaker 1 You can do this? I can do it.

Speaker 78 Agent Owen again asked Alec about what he, Maggie, and Paul were doing earlier on the night they were killed.

Speaker 7 What was conversation around the dinner table?

Speaker 57 Normal.

Speaker 25 Regular stuff.

Speaker 25 I mean, I can't tell you exactly, but.

Speaker 10 Alec repeated his familiar story of taking a nap and driving to his mom's before going to the kennels.

Speaker 7 And you didn't go back down there after dinner until your return trip from visiting your mother?

Speaker 7 Yes, sir.

Speaker 71 Then Agent Owen confronted Alec with what Rogan had said but didn't mention Rogan by name.

Speaker 7 I've got information

Speaker 7 that Paul's on the phone

Speaker 42 and

Speaker 7 Maggie was heard in the background and you were heard in the background and that was prior to 9 p.m.

Speaker 25 I heard Rogan Gibson ask me if I was up there.

Speaker 79 He said he thought it was me.

Speaker 42 Was it you?

Speaker 98 At nine o'clock? Yes, sir.

Speaker 25 No, sir.

Speaker 98 Not if my times are right.

Speaker 98 Who do you think it could have been? I have no idea.

Speaker 65 Owen was surprised that Alec volunteered Rogan's name so quickly and that he seemed prepared to knock down Rogan's version of events.

Speaker 35 It made him suspicious.

Speaker 7 For him to drop Rogan Gibson's name

Speaker 7 pretty much instantaneously instantaneously when I asked him about the information, you know,

Speaker 7 he knew.

Speaker 5 So, Owen decided to go for Brooke.

Speaker 53 Did you kill Maggie? No.

Speaker 79 Did I kill my wife? Yes, sir.

Speaker 25 No, David.

Speaker 42 Do you know who did?

Speaker 53 No, I do not know who did.

Speaker 53 Did you kill Paul? No, I did not kill Paul. Do you know who did? No, sir, I do not know who did.

Speaker 20 With that, Alec and his lawyer left.

Speaker 84 But But Owen says that wasn't all.

Speaker 7 What's not on video is I had to escort him out of the building, and he turned around and he says, David, I understand why you have to ask these questions. I want to thank you for doing your job.

Speaker 7 And he shook my hand.

Speaker 23 Were you surprised by that?

Speaker 7 After I just accused him of killing his wife and son, hell yeah.

Speaker 50 But while Owen had his suspicions, he lacked the evidence to prove Alec was at the scene of the crime.

Speaker 6 Rogan's recollection by itself wasn't enough.

Speaker 72 Plus, Plus, they hadn't found the murder weapons or any blood evidence implicating Al.

Speaker 23 What was the lowest point of the investigation for you? What was that point where you thought,

Speaker 23 we got nothing?

Speaker 7 Probably late August of 21, because I interviewed him on August the 11th of 2021.

Speaker 7 And, you know, the information not really drying up, but just not having any tangible evidence to move forward on other than just going out and shaking trees and talking to people.

Speaker 33 Still, Owen couldn't quite shake that third interview.

Speaker 90 Something about Alex's demeanor nagged at him.

Speaker 7 To me, his eyes were cold.

Speaker 7 You know, especially looking back at the August 11th interview when I asked him if you killed his wife and son. And he said, you think I killed my wife and son? I didn't kill my wife and son.

Speaker 7 Just, you know, that response struck me.

Speaker 39 It's like, wow.

Speaker 62 Yet, even as Owen's faith in the investigation was running low, Chief Mark Keele remained resolute.

Speaker 90 Was there a point during the course of the investigation where you thought, we may not get anybody on this thing?

Speaker 11 I never really thought that. I believed all along that we would make an arrest.

Speaker 30 And that faith would be rewarded because another call was coming that would blow the case wide open.

Speaker 8 I got a flat tire and I stopped.

Speaker 85 Somebody stopped to help me.

Speaker 85 And when when I turned my back, they tried to shoot me.

Speaker 61 Investigators thought maybe Alec was right all along.

Speaker 5 Maybe someone was out to get his family and him.

Speaker 15 Maybe whoever murdered Maggie and Paul is back.

Speaker 70 As the summer of 2021 wound down, Alec Murdoch was struggling to hold it together.

Speaker 64 Friends say he was anguished, hardly sleeping.

Speaker 34 His longtime housekeeper Blanca was worried about him.

Speaker 23 Was he still texting you? Yeah. What would he text?

Speaker 24 Mainly about his clothes and stuff like that, you know, because at that point I was staying at Mozell

Speaker 24 and bringing his laundry over to the little house in Hampton. And I would just go over there and make sure that he had food in the house, snacks, because he wasn't eating much.

Speaker 5 Yet, things in Alec's life were about to get worse.

Speaker 105 Captain County 911 was your emergency.

Speaker 35 The scorching hot Saturday of Labor Day weekend, Alec was on the side of the road and once again called 911.

Speaker 5 There had been another shooting, he said, but this time he was the target.

Speaker 105 Okay, what's going on?

Speaker 85 I got a flat tire,

Speaker 85 and I stopped, and somebody stopped to help me.

Speaker 85 And when I turned my back, they tried to shoot me.

Speaker 37 Sled Senior Special Agent Ryan Kelly was running errands that day.

Speaker 15 I got a phone call from my supervisor, and he's like, you're not going to believe this. He's like, Alex Murdoch's been shot in the head.
I'm like, well, you're kidding me.

Speaker 105 Did they actually shoot you? They tried to shoot you.

Speaker 85 They shot me.

Speaker 8 I'm bleeding a lot.

Speaker 80 A good Samaritan drove Alec to a field where he met up with paramedics.

Speaker 19 An officer was there too.

Speaker 80 Body cam rolling.

Speaker 48 What happened? I got shot.

Speaker 10 Tell me more than I shot.

Speaker 106 I was going down the road. I

Speaker 48 had a tire go flat. I pulled over

Speaker 106 and

Speaker 106 this car went by me and didn't pay a lot of attention truck, but then it turned around, came back.

Speaker 42 I don't want him.

Speaker 106 I got a real nice guy, acted like,

Speaker 106 and I turned my head, and

Speaker 48 I mean boom

Speaker 78 until now investigators had been closing in on Alec but this shooting stopped them in their tracks

Speaker 15 to have him be the victim of a violent crime where he's been shot in the head that's pretty significant and I was like gosh maybe whoever murdered Maggie and Paul is back Alec was airlifted to a Savannah hospital

Speaker 70 Agent Kelly drove down there to meet him.

Speaker 23 What sort of updates were you getting?

Speaker 15 Where Alex was being transported to, what his condition was, because we really didn't know. You consider a head wound that it's going to be, oh, that's going to be pretty significant.

Speaker 15 We don't know if he'd even be able to speak to us.

Speaker 92 Kelly was stunned when he walked into the ER.

Speaker 73 Alec appeared to be more or less fine.

Speaker 15 I mean, he had suffered a gunshot wound, but it was a glancing. It struck the bottom of his skull, rode up the curvature of his skull, and exited through the top.

Speaker 15 So he suffered very minor injuries for a gunshot wound.

Speaker 14 Agent Kelly wanted to see the scene for himself.

Speaker 6 So he drove to Sakahatchee Road where the shooting took place.

Speaker 66 So you get to the scene alongside the road there and what do you see?

Speaker 15 Our crime scene is there. We had other

Speaker 15 agencies were there.

Speaker 82 Alex's story was that his car had gotten banged up when he blew out his tire.

Speaker 19 The first thing Kelly did was check the underside of the SUV.

Speaker 15 He hit something big. He hit something significant.
There was damage. So I was looking for that and it it wasn't there.
So I was like, that doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 74 Neither did the lack of damage to the tire itself.

Speaker 15 And we get back to the rear driver one that he said that he had that had gone flat.

Speaker 15 It's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with it.
So we start looking at it and get up close and we notice on the sidewall

Speaker 15 a little what appeared to be a puncture mark.

Speaker 10 It was a small slit, maybe an inch or two long.

Speaker 36 Kelly had a gut feeling.

Speaker 15 We all keep pocket knives. So you pull out a pocket knife and you kind of you bend down and we look at the puncture and we put our knife up to it and it just

Speaker 15 seems to match.

Speaker 33 The next day, investigators got out their metal detectors and lo and behold.

Speaker 15 Within like an hour, sure enough, they find a knife and we're like, huh, it's a clue.

Speaker 65 Investigators pulled surveillance video from a nearby church, hoping to get a look at the shooter.

Speaker 89 Alec said the man who shot him had been driving a blue pickup truck.

Speaker 95 And there was a blue truck on the video, but it wasn't exactly as Alec described.

Speaker 15 Alex had given us a very, very distinct description of us blue in color, newer model Chevy truck.

Speaker 15 We don't see that truck on the video, but we see an older, almost like Sanford and Sun beat up truck that's blue, but it's got like a gold or yellow quarter panel.

Speaker 15 That should have stood out to Alex's memory, but it didn't.

Speaker 37 Investigators were convinced that Alec was lying.

Speaker 28 What had really happened out there on that country road?

Speaker 65 It was time to confront Alec with their discoveries.

Speaker 15 Give me your full name.

Speaker 57 Look at Richard Alexander Murdoch.

Speaker 94 During that phone call, were you like, what the hell?

Speaker 15 Absolutely.

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Speaker 28 Investigators were all but certain Alec Murdoch had lied about the roadside shooting.

Speaker 52 There was no evidence he'd blown out his tire.

Speaker 33 Lab tests on the knife they found suggested Alec had punctured the tire himself.

Speaker 15 We took the DNA sample and the knife to Columbia, and they were able to quickly identify Alex's DNA on the knife, which was really the linchpin of everything falling apart.

Speaker 96 They also managed to track down the man in the blue pickup.

Speaker 64 The owner of the truck was a former client of Alex named Curtis Eddie Smith.

Speaker 84 Agent Kelly found it strange that Alec had borrowed a hospital employee's phone to call Curtis from the emergency room.

Speaker 15 We're like, this is insane. Why would Alex be calling the guy from the hospital? who was there at Sakahachi the day he was shot.

Speaker 44 Kelly needed to talk to Alec again, but that was the moment Alec made an astounding claim.

Speaker 21 He said he had a 20-year addiction to opioids and had entered an out-of-state rehab facility.

Speaker 35 The news was a shock to his friends and to investigators.

Speaker 23 Did you uncover any evidence that would indicate that he had developed this massive opioid addiction?

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 104 But Blanca says Alec's drug problem was no surprise to her.

Speaker 71 Had you known that he'd been to rehab before?

Speaker 24 He didn't flat out mention it, but I knew that there was some detox issues.

Speaker 77 How'd you know?

Speaker 24 You could see it. You could tell.
He would get jittery. He would get sweaty.

Speaker 104 Agent Kelly feared they wouldn't be able to talk to Alec for a long time.

Speaker 20 But a week later, Kelly got a call from Alec's lawyer, Dick Harputlian, a state senator and one of the most well-known defense attorneys in South Carolina.

Speaker 15 Hey, we're ready to do an interview. I'm like, well, great.
We'll head that way. And he's like, no, no, no, we have to do it over the phone.
We have a limited amount of time.

Speaker 15 We can only do it over the phone.

Speaker 35 That's not standard protocol.

Speaker 15 Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

Speaker 15 So we had to make the call. And I was like, well, let's do it.
Hey, Jim, this is Ryan Kelly and Sled. How are you?

Speaker 57 Officer Kelly, before we start, I just want to tell you, I apologize to you for lying at you in the hospital. I was in a very bad place.

Speaker 10 Then, while Agent Kelly listened over the phone and recorded, Harputlian interviewed Alec, leading him through a head-spinning new version of events.

Speaker 35 The roadside shooting, Alec said, was actually his attempt to kill himself.

Speaker 72 Not only had he been distraught about losing his wife and son, but right before the shooting, he'd been fired from his family's law firm for stealing.

Speaker 57 The previous day, the news had come out about your

Speaker 57 embezzling or taking client money or law firm money, is that correct?

Speaker 35 That's correct i thought that it would make it easier on my family for me to be dead so alec came up with a scheme he asked curtis smith to kill him so it wouldn't look like a suicide and his son buster could collect his ten million dollar life insurance policy curtis wasn't just his former client Alec said he was also his drug dealer, an accusation Curtis later denied.

Speaker 31 And you asked him to shoot you. That's correct.

Speaker 23 During that phone call with Dick Carputli and Alec, were you like, what the hell?

Speaker 15 Absolutely. I'm like, you're kidding me.
Sometimes the best thing to do is if somebody's talking, just shut up and listen. So Dick had Alex confessing to all of these crimes.

Speaker 15 You entered into an agreement, basically, to have him kill you

Speaker 15 so your son would then reap the insurance benefits.

Speaker 83 Alec, is that true? Yes, sir.

Speaker 50 Alec was charged with insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, and filing a false police report.

Speaker 35 Curtis Smith was also charged, but says he knew nothing about the insurance scheme and did not shoot Alec.

Speaker 23 What did you think when you saw your former boss and friend in handcuffs for the first time?

Speaker 48 I cried.

Speaker 24 It's like you're mourning the loss of another friend. Because that's not the person that I knew.
I still felt bad for him. I really did.

Speaker 81 But Alec's legal troubles were only beginning.

Speaker 82 The state attorney general's office had uncovered a web of fraud and deceit going back decades.

Speaker 44 By the end of the year, prosecutors indicted Alec for dozens of financial crimes, alleging that he stole millions from his partners at the firm and also from clients.

Speaker 78 He pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 52 To investigators, it all made him look very capable of killing his wife and son.

Speaker 15 If he's willing to steal from the most vulnerable of people and live this extravagant lifestyle, then he's 100% able to kill Maggie and Paul to continue his facade.

Speaker 50 But they still couldn't prove Alec was at the scene of the crime.

Speaker 92 One source of information they'd never been able to tap was Paul's cell phone.

Speaker 91 It was locked and no one knew the code.

Speaker 73 Britt Dove, who runs Sled's computer crime unit, was tasked with cracking it, but it came with a major risk.

Speaker 108 If we attempted to just punch in numbers, eventually we could have locked the phone, and the only way to have gotten it open would have been to a reset of it, and basically would have wiped out any information that was contained on there.

Speaker 19 So, in March 2022, Dove reached out to the Secret Service.

Speaker 45 They offered to send the phone to a company with the software to crack it.

Speaker 82 That company cautioned it could take years.

Speaker 108 It could run potentially up to seven years or longer in an attempt to obtain that passcode.

Speaker 54 So the Secret Service took a chance, punched in Paul's birth date, and voila.

Speaker 108 They called me early that morning and said, hey, we got into the phone. We got the extraction.
You want to come pick it up?

Speaker 84 Dove knew just where to look among the thousands of Paul's videos.

Speaker 67 He zeroed in on the night of the murders.

Speaker 99 And there it was, 8.44 p.m., moments before Paul's death.

Speaker 108 When I played it, the first thing you see is the dog in the kennel.

Speaker 108 And then you hear voices. You hear three distinct voices in it.

Speaker 19 There was Paul.

Speaker 96 Get it. Get me.

Speaker 78 And Maggie.

Speaker 59 Hey, he's got a bird in his mouth.

Speaker 10 And the third?

Speaker 19 To his ear, it was unmistakable.

Speaker 31 Alec Murdoch.

Speaker 108 I listened to it three to four times. I was in disbelief at the time.
I immediately got on the phone to David Owen.

Speaker 5 Owen said he practically fell out of his chair.

Speaker 7 I was really excited.

Speaker 23 Why?

Speaker 7 Because I can prove that Alec was lying to me.

Speaker 62 Did you know in that moment that the case had been blown wide open?

Speaker 42 Oh, yes.

Speaker 37 First State Attorney General Alan Wilson, the discovery was a game changer.

Speaker 47 The aha moment for me was the Kennel video. It showed that he was there within minutes of their murder, and it gave me the comfort factor that I needed to be able to indict.

Speaker 30 On July 14th, 2022, Alec Murdoch was indicted for killing his wife and son.

Speaker 50 He pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 59 How shall you be tried? By God's my country.

Speaker 14 Alec Murdoch was headed to trial.

Speaker 31 A body.

Speaker 47 It was a completely circumstantial case. A lot of people didn't believe that there would be a conviction, either because of who the defendant was or because of the evidence they knew of.

Speaker 47 And so, at the beginning, there was a distinct possibility that we would lose the case.

Speaker 12 The investigation was far from over.

Speaker 65 Some of the most critical evidence against Alec wouldn't appear until the jury was already seated.

Speaker 17 I mean, that weekend was crazy.

Speaker 4 You pulled an old-school all-nighter.

Speaker 7 That is correct.

Speaker 45 A mere six months passed between Alec Murdoch's indictment and the start of his double murder trial.

Speaker 80 For prosecutor Creighton Waters, that meant a timeframe that's almost unheard of.

Speaker 101 The defense asked for a speedy trial, and I think a little bit to their surprise, we gave them one.

Speaker 23 Do you think they thought that the state wouldn't be ready in time?

Speaker 101 I think they thought there was no way that we would ever be able to pull it off that quickly. I mean, that was actually an insane speed to bring it to trial.

Speaker 56 Insane, yes.

Speaker 58 But Water said the time crunch was also motivating.

Speaker 101 Let's just go ahead and do this thing.

Speaker 50 On January 25th, 12 jurors settled into their seats in this historic Collaton County courtroom.

Speaker 21 The same room where generations of Murdoch had tried cases, including the man at the defense tape, Alec Murdoch.

Speaker 78 How had this man, who'd seemingly had it all, ended up here?

Speaker 101 People, I think, have a hard time because they try to apply their own rational, logical, normal thought processes to what is inherently irrational and illogical and abnormal.

Speaker 109 You're going to hear some of what was going on in Alex Murdoch's life leading up to that day. Stuff that happened.

Speaker 80 In his opening statement, Prosecutor Waters planted the seed for jurors that the events of June 7th could not be viewed in isolation.

Speaker 54 He believed the winds had been swirling around Alec Murdoch for years, a gathering storm of secrets, lies, and cover-ups, all culminating in murder.

Speaker 109 You're going to reach the inescapable conclusion that Alec murdered Maggie Paul, that he was the storm, that the storm was coming for them.

Speaker 101 and that they died as a result.

Speaker 81 According to Waters, the first deluge hit Alec in February 2019 when Paul drove that boat into a bridge, killing Mallory Beach.

Speaker 63 The lawsuit that followed threatened to drown him by exposing his alleged financial misdeeds.

Speaker 101 All those things were coming to a head. Paul and the boat case had become a significant liability to him.

Speaker 12 The prosecution's most crucial testimony, of course, was that cell phone video that placed Alec at the kennels calling the family dog Bubba just minutes apparently before Paul and Maggie were shot.

Speaker 70 Half a dozen witnesses were asked to identify the voices on that video and the answer was always the same.

Speaker 101 Whose voices did you recognize on that video?

Speaker 7 Paul Murdoch, Maggie Murdahl, and Alex Murdahl.

Speaker 11 Paul Murdoch, Maggie Murdoch,

Speaker 16 and Elec Murdoch.

Speaker 18 Paul, Miss Maggie, and Mr.

Speaker 7 Elliot.

Speaker 21 The Murdoch housekeeper, Blanca, was also a key witness for the prosecution.

Speaker 24 I was nervous. I hadn't seen him face to face.
I hadn't talked to him.

Speaker 24 So when I walked in, I could sense like he was trying to get me to look over.

Speaker 24 I couldn't do it.

Speaker 35 Blanca was emotional as she described arriving at Moselle the morning after the murders.

Speaker 24 It was hard because I know she wasn't going to be coming back.

Speaker 54 A main part of Blanca's testimony centered on what Alec was wearing the day of the murders.

Speaker 81 It appeared he wore at least three different shirts.

Speaker 104 Sled got one of them, this white t-shirt, which prompted a question, had Alec gotten rid of a shirt that might have contained evidence?

Speaker 20 A few months after the murders, Blanca says Alec pressed her to remember him wearing a particular shirt that day.

Speaker 24 He was pacing back back and forth in the living room and he said, I got a bad feeling. He said, something's not right.
And then he said, well, you know, there was a video that was out.

Speaker 24 And he said, you remember the shirt I was wearing? I didn't say anything, but I was kind of

Speaker 24 thrown back because I don't remember that. It felt more like he was telling me, you know, this is what I was wearing.
It didn't sound like he was

Speaker 24 asking me, what was I wearing?

Speaker 62 Did it strike you as odd?

Speaker 24 Yeah, it's almost like I had heartburn when he was asking me that.

Speaker 93 Prosecutor Waters believes Alec thought he could manipulate Blanca into saying what he wanted her to say.

Speaker 101 I think that was a prime example of the influence he was used to wielding.

Speaker 60 Influence the state believed he'd used to steal millions of dollars from victims, financial crimes that were about to be exposed by the civil case against him.

Speaker 66 And that's why prosecutors argued Alec killed his wife and son.

Speaker 19 He believed their death would make him a sympathetic defendant, deflect attention away from his financial crimes, and perhaps derail the civil case entirely.

Speaker 101 Alec's real skill as an attorney was not the academic side or the preparation side, but what he did understand was the emotion of a case. He understood the sympathy factor.

Speaker 58 If prosecutors thought evidence of Murdoch's financial financial crimes would provide a motive, they counted on their last witness to prove opportunity.

Speaker 52 Special Agent Peter Rudofsky, that's led special agent Peter Rudofsky unveiled a digital tour de force using cell phone activity and GPS data.

Speaker 10 He built a timeline of the night of the murders.

Speaker 50 It showed Alec had time to kill and to get rid of guns and clothes.

Speaker 101 How long have you been working on this document right here?

Speaker 17 Roughly about a year on this document. I think the biggest thing that the timeline did for the jury was to show that at 8.49,

Speaker 18 Maggie and Paul

Speaker 18 stopped operations on their phone. It was just that aha moment of, yes, now we know

Speaker 17 that this is when they died.

Speaker 35 But when the trial began, Rudofsky's timeline was missing some key information.

Speaker 84 Then, halfway through, General Motors finally handed over long-awaited digital data from Alex Suburban.

Speaker 92 Brudowski had just one weekend to make sense of it all.

Speaker 18 I don't get it until around 7 o'clock on Saturday.

Speaker 17 But by the next morning, we had everything plotted and ready to go to the defense, ready to go to AG's office.

Speaker 42 You pulled an old-school all-nighter.

Speaker 76 Mm-hmm. That is correct.

Speaker 43 The data showed how fast Alec was driving that night.

Speaker 35 When he passed the side of the road where Maggie's phone was found, he was going 42 miles per hour, slow enough to throw it out the window.

Speaker 101 After passing that location, does the defendant's vehicle start to accelerate?

Speaker 16 It does.

Speaker 19 The suburban sped up to 74 miles an hour, reaching his mom's home at 9.22 p.m.

Speaker 35 He stayed there 21 minutes, long enough to establish an alibi and perhaps discard evidence. He then sped back to Moselle, reaching 80 miles per hour.

Speaker 90 Those high speeds got got Rudovsky's attention.

Speaker 56 Was it a sign Alec was frantic after committing the murders?

Speaker 18 Why were you going so fast if you didn't know something occurred and it's just, you know, a normal visit to your mom's house?

Speaker 17 Because during the day earlier, he didn't reach those speeds.

Speaker 18 I think he reached a max of 60 coming back from the office and going to the office.

Speaker 60 That was a red flag. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 105 Please hurry. We're getting somebody out there to you.

Speaker 89 Alec called 911 just 17 seconds after he arrived back at the kennels.

Speaker 51 That didn't give him enough time to check the bodies as he said he did before placing the call.

Speaker 19 With that, the prosecution rested.

Speaker 30 And now it was the defense's turn to make its case, which it would do by going on the attack against Sled's investigation and presenting an unforgettable witness at the center of it all.

Speaker 25 I am going to testify. I want to testify.

Speaker 70 Attorney Alec Murdoch was now defendant Alec Murdoch.

Speaker 14 His defense resting in the hands of two lawyers with decades of trial experience, Jim Griffin and Dick Harputlia.

Speaker 55 This is Alec Murdoch.

Speaker 20 And Alec was the loving father of Paul and the loving husband of Maggie.

Speaker 7 He left, came back and found his wife and child dead.

Speaker 16 He doesn't know who did it.

Speaker 109 He didn't do it. He is presumed innocent.

Speaker 30 Much of the defense's case consisted of attacking Sled's investigation.

Speaker 16 Should the police be walking through the scene?

Speaker 42 No.

Speaker 16 Do we know what other evidence they may have destroyed?

Speaker 86 I have no idea.

Speaker 101 That's right, we don't.

Speaker 19 Special Agent David Owen's work was also criticized by the defense.

Speaker 101 And you never searched the Almeida property

Speaker 101 for any signs of

Speaker 101 murder evidence, guns, bloody clothes, or anything until well after sometime in mid to late September. is that correct?

Speaker 7 That is correct.

Speaker 94 Owen had been consumed by this case for nearly two years and was also dealing with his own personal tragedy.

Speaker 7 My mother passed away the day I was set to testify.

Speaker 7 I took that afternoon to collect myself

Speaker 42 and

Speaker 7 think about how we're going to proceed. She actually was admitted to the hospital with double pneumonia the day the trial started.
And I told her, I said,

Speaker 7 you know, these are going to be long days. And she said, don't worry about coming to see me.

Speaker 7 I know what you have to do.

Speaker 56 That meant explaining and defending Sled's actions during cross-examination,

Speaker 84 including the fact that the two different guns used to kill Maggie and Paul had never been found.

Speaker 101 No murder weapons were found in the residence, is that correct?

Speaker 7 That is correct.

Speaker 101 And no murder weapons were found on the property at

Speaker 101 Mozell, is that correct?

Speaker 7 That is correct.

Speaker 101 Sled failed miserably in investigating this case. And had they done a competent job, Alec would have been excluded.

Speaker 23 When you would hear the defense

Speaker 23 all but say

Speaker 23 Sled bungled this case from the beginning. They mishandled the crime scene.
These bungling idiots couldn't solve anything.

Speaker 7 It does get aggravating to hear that,

Speaker 7 but that's Defense 101. Attack the investigation, attack the crime scene.
You know,

Speaker 7 let's tell the world they screwed it up. They got it wrong.

Speaker 60 Of course, what people probably remember most about this case is Alec Murdoch's two days on the witness stand.

Speaker 25 I am going to testify. I want to testify.

Speaker 101 This was his community.

Speaker 13 This was his circuit.

Speaker 101 I felt that he would be convinced in his ability to sort of lean forward and look those jurors in the eye and convince them, much as he had done in many a closing argument.

Speaker 25 I would never hurt Maggie and I would never hurt Paul.

Speaker 15 Ever.

Speaker 25 Under any circumstances.

Speaker 96 Get that.

Speaker 48 Get that.

Speaker 45 But how would he explain away the cell phone video that placed him at the kennels with Bubba?

Speaker 61 just moments before Paul and Maggie were shot.

Speaker 101 Were you in fact at the kennels at 8.44 p.m. on the night Maggie and Paul were murdered?

Speaker 25 I was.

Speaker 101 Did you lie to Sled Agent Owen and Deputy Laura Rutland

Speaker 101 on the night of June 7th?

Speaker 79 I did lie to them.

Speaker 40 So why did he lie?

Speaker 66 He said his addiction to painkillers was the reason.

Speaker 25 I wasn't thinking clearly.

Speaker 79 I don't think I was capable of reason.

Speaker 25 And I lied about being down there.

Speaker 25 and I'm so sorry that I did

Speaker 101 you know oh what a tangled web we weave you know the first time I ever heard him say that he was on that kennel video was when he got up on the stand the video was damning the video was damning and I think also what was damning was he was lying about lying and I think the jury saw that when the time came for Waters to cross-examine Alec he knew the eyes of the world were watching.

Speaker 90 Did you watch or read any of the coverage or the analysis during the trial?

Speaker 11 Not really.

Speaker 101 There's going to be a lot of criticism, but you just can't let that get off your game. I still get to look at those jurors in the eyes.
This is a South Carolina jury, a South Carolina case.

Speaker 101 It's not Hollywood. And you've been able to lie quickly and easily and convincingly if you think it'll save your skin for well over a decade.
Isn't that true?

Speaker 8 I have lied well over

Speaker 15 a decade.

Speaker 101 I kind kind of wanted him to continue to perfect his lie in front of the jury and for them to watch him lie in real time and sort of work on that, which is why I let him answer a lot of questions. Mr.

Speaker 101 Murdock, are you a family annihilator?

Speaker 8 A family annihilator?

Speaker 8 You mean like, did I shoot my wife and my son? Yes.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 101 Nothing further.

Speaker 23 Do you think putting him on the stand hurt their case?

Speaker 101 Yeah, I don't think it helped it.

Speaker 30 After six weeks of trial, the case case went to the jury.

Speaker 28 Defendant will rise.

Speaker 93 Less than three hours later, a verdict.

Speaker 15 Guilty verdict.

Speaker 14 The next day, in the very courtroom where his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had prosecuted cases before him, Alec Murdoch was sentenced for killing his wife and son.

Speaker 111 I sentence you for a term for the rest of your natural life.

Speaker 6 Judge Clifton Newman, who has served on the bench for more than 20 years, had a question for Alec about something he said on the stand.

Speaker 111 Oh, what tangle web we weave? What did you mean by that?

Speaker 79 Meant when I lied, I continue to lie.

Speaker 111 And the question is: when will it end?

Speaker 88 A once-charmed life now would be spent behind bars, or would it?

Speaker 16 Turns out, the alec murdoch saga is far from over the conduct that the jurors have reported to us is highly improper and frankly illegal

Speaker 65 The trial had been a national spectacle, with viewers in South Carolina and around the country tuning in to watch Alec Murdoch meet his fate.

Speaker 80 The result of all that coverage, unexpected fame for some of the players, including the investigators.

Speaker 7 I was in Costco last week.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 7 as I'm checking out, one of the clerks says, you look familiar. Are you on TV? And I said, no, I'm not on TV.
And they said, well, you look just like the guy from the Alec Murdoch case.

Speaker 79 Busted.

Speaker 60 Prosecutor Creighton Waters had his likeness created in yarn.

Speaker 23 You've got women making crochet dolls of you.

Speaker 101 Celebrity, I'm in minute 14 and 45 seconds of the 15.

Speaker 75 After the verdict, I sat down with three jurors, James McDowell, Amy Williams, and Gwyneline Jennerette.

Speaker 15 The truth is nothing but the truth.

Speaker 35 While they found the testimony about Alec's timeline and financial schemes compelling, they also paid close attention to his performance on the stand.

Speaker 110 You could feel him lying. You could feel him, you know, making these emotions and turning it on and off.
He would go through this sob, you know, he'd just be sobbing, and then he'd just be done.

Speaker 23 He didn't believe the tears.

Speaker 77 He didn't have any tears.

Speaker 19 Alec Murdoch appealed his conviction.

Speaker 65 And then, in September, his attorneys dropped a bomb. They filed a motion declaring Alec should receive a new trial because the jury had been tampered with.

Speaker 59 What we had filed today,

Speaker 59 supported by sworn testimony of jurors, is that the clerk of court had improper private communications with the jurors.

Speaker 21 The tampering accusations stem from alleged conduct by the clerk of court, Becky Hill.

Speaker 34 According to Alex Attorneys, some jurors stated that during the trial, the clerk told them not to be fooled by evidence presented by the defense.

Speaker 21 One juror also said they felt pressured by her to reach a quick guilty verdict.

Speaker 21 The clerk, Becky Hill, denied all allegations.

Speaker 19 In the state's reply, 10 jurors submitted statements saying they were not pressured into a decision by Becky Hill.

Speaker 47 All I can say is that we filed a very strong motion in rebuttal to what they said, and it tells a very different story.

Speaker 47 We're going to defend the trial, we're going to defend our work product, and we're going to defend the hard work of the men and women in law enforcement who help us get this conviction.

Speaker 37 The motion has yet to be ruled on by the court.

Speaker 19 The defense also asked that Judge Clifton Newman be removed from matters related to the murder case, saying he may be called to testify about the alleged jury tampering.

Speaker 27 They also cited this Today Show interview the judge did with me after the verdict, where according to Alec's lawyers, he expressed his personal belief that Alec committed murder.

Speaker 66 Do you think that he'll be haunted by his wife and son?

Speaker 14 No, I think so.

Speaker 111 I cannot imagine

Speaker 111 him having a peaceful night

Speaker 49 knowing

Speaker 111 what he did. I'm sure if he had an opportunity to do it over again, he'd never do it.

Speaker 111 He was driven by whatever caused him to do what he did, and he had a whole lot going on.

Speaker 19 Yesterday, Judge Newman recused himself from the murder case, but he was presiding in court earlier today when Alec reached a plea deal for the state grand jury's financial crimes.

Speaker 57 I plead guilty, Your Honor.

Speaker 19 He'll be sentenced for those later this month.

Speaker 75 While the courtroom drama in the Murdoch case continues, the team who put him away says they stand by their investigation.

Speaker 47 My brother calls me up and he tells me that he's sitting in a restaurant and he overhears someone say, I never dreamed that this guy would get convicted of murdering his wife and son.

Speaker 47 I just thought he was above the law. And then they said, this case.
has renewed my faith in South Carolina's criminal justice system.

Speaker 47 And I said, man, that is probably the best compliment I could ever get.

Speaker 15 We try to let our actions speak for us, and we have very smart people that speak for us in those positions.

Speaker 15 I stand by what we did, I stand by our investigation, and I'm glad that we're getting a chance to kind of stand up for ourselves.

Speaker 63 You seem to get a little choked up sometimes when you talk about the agency, and you talk about the men and women

Speaker 13 who work for you.

Speaker 31 Why?

Speaker 11 Well, again, I've been doing this a long time, and

Speaker 11 being sled chief is

Speaker 11 a very humbling experience.

Speaker 11 I get letters every day.

Speaker 11 I get calls from sheriffs, chiefs, prosecutors talking about the work that our folks do, and they don't get enough credit.

Speaker 66 Life in Hampton County is starting to return to normal after the tempest of the last few years.

Speaker 23 But for Blanca Turviate Simpson, life will never be the same.

Speaker 24 I don't think I will ever get that comfortable with anybody again.

Speaker 26 What made the Murdoch so special?

Speaker 24 They treated me like family.

Speaker 63 She does, however, have a piece of that family with her.

Speaker 61 Where is Bubba?

Speaker 24 He's at home.

Speaker 34 With you? With me.

Speaker 60 And Blanca takes care of something else, too.

Speaker 5 Maggie and Paul's graves.

Speaker 24 I was just at the cemetery yesterday, cleaning it up, making sure her grave's clean. See if they needed flowers so that I can go go back and

Speaker 24 put some down.

Speaker 23 Even in death, you're still taking care of her.

Speaker 24 Yeah, I know it's just a graveside, but it's the only place Bubba and I can go where we can go visit.

Speaker 4 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 79 Thanks for joining us.

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