The Trial of Alex Murdaugh

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Speaker 4 Tonight on Dateline, Mr.

Speaker 6 Murdock, are you a family annihilator?

Speaker 7 A family annihilator? You mean like, did I shoot my wife and my son? Yes. No.

Speaker 4 The verdict is in in the riveting trial of Alec Murdoch. Guilty as charged.

Speaker 8 I sentence you to prison for the rest of your natural life.

Speaker 9 I believe that he loved Paul and Maggie, but I believe that he loved himself more.

Speaker 4 Now, revealing new interviews.

Speaker 2 Prosecutors, do you think Alec testifying on his own behalf was a mistake?

Speaker 11 Absolutely.

Speaker 12 I knew that we could expose him for who he truly was.

Speaker 4 The defense.

Speaker 13 I think this jury had made up their mind about him being a horrible person.

Speaker 4 Close friends, speak out for the first time.

Speaker 16 Maggie was a great person. I still hear her laugh.

Speaker 17 He looked at me and said, I've been stealing from my clients, and I've done you wrong, and I've done a number of people wrong.

Speaker 18 This is a man who had a lot to lose.

Speaker 12 This defendant has fooled everyone, everyone.

Speaker 20 Who is this person? We don't know this person. Who was he?

Speaker 21 A trial full of twists and a stunner of a verdict.

Speaker 4 You won't believe the latest in the mind-bending mystery of the Murdoch family dynasty.

Speaker 2 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 21 Here's Craig Melvin with the trial of Alec Murdoch.

Speaker 2 It took 28 days and more than 70 witnesses.

Speaker 15 Governor, I would like to respond.

Speaker 2 There were arguments.

Speaker 14 They've got a whole lot more evidence about financial misconduct than they have about a murder.

Speaker 12 If you're implying that I would come in here and somehow shade truth in any way because of that, I would take high offense with that, Mr. Harpoot Lee.

Speaker 2 In tears.

Speaker 23 It's just so bad. It is so bad.

Speaker 2 Secrets exposed.

Speaker 17 He looked at me, started to cry, and said, I'm addicted to pain prescription pills, and it's been going on for 20 years.

Speaker 2 And lies revealed.

Speaker 15 Effortlessly and easily lied to you for years and you didn't know it.

Speaker 28 Didn't know it and didn't catch it.

Speaker 10 He was always going to have to pay and pay a lot of money.

Speaker 7 I have lied well over

Speaker 7 a decade

Speaker 2 in a case full of drama.

Speaker 19 Listen to that gathering storm that all came to a head on June 7th, 2021, the day the evidence will show he killed Maggie and Paul.

Speaker 2 And heartbreak.

Speaker 30 It was hard because I know she wasn't going to be coming back

Speaker 31 no mother or father or ann or uncle should ever have to see and do what I did that day Alec is there anything you want to change or survive the channel

Speaker 2 and now it's over Alec Murdoch will never set foot outside of prison again

Speaker 15 tonight we'll show you with new video new interviews this case really boiled down to the big lie versus the big why why would he do it?

Speaker 2 And exclusive new details. We'll take you inside the trial of the year.

Speaker 7 Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

Speaker 2 To help you understand how a decade of deceit started to unravel

Speaker 2 until

Speaker 2 it led to two tragic deaths. They are dead, aren't they? Just turn all those up.
Yes, sir. That's what it looks like.

Speaker 2 And the lies. Finally came to an end.

Speaker 9 I think the jury saw his lies for what they were, a tangled web, as he said.

Speaker 11 Alex Alex Murdoch was his own worst enemy.

Speaker 2 It was June 7th, 2021, a dark night in South Carolina's Low Country.

Speaker 34 Now we're a whole winter emergency.

Speaker 34 My wife and child discovered badly.

Speaker 2 At 10.07 p.m., a call came into the Colleton County Sheriff's Department. There was an emergency at a remote home outside of town.

Speaker 2 Sergeant Daniel Green was the first to arrive. Central Sub 17 senior security.
He had a whiskey fox, whiskey mic, both gunshot wounds to the head. His body camera rolled.

Speaker 2 Tavi, I want to let you know because of the scene, I did go get a gun and bring it down here. It's in your vehicle.

Speaker 2 Do you have any guns on you at all?

Speaker 2 It's leaning up against the side of my car. You're fine, man.
You're fine. Green came face to face with the caller, Alec Murdoch, right away near a a row of dog kennels.

Speaker 2 It's bad check the pulses. Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 There, by the kennels, Maggie Murdoch, 52, and Paul Murdoch, 22, each had been shot multiple times, including to their heads. Before Green could ask any other questions, Alec started talking.

Speaker 2 This is the firearm you brought from inside the house? Sir, yes, sir. I went and got, this is a long story.
My son was in a boat wreck

Speaker 2 months back.

Speaker 2 And while Alex said he didn't know who committed the murders, he suggested the motive, retribution for a crash that killed a 19-year-old woman on a boat Paul Murdoch was said to be driving.

Speaker 2 He's been getting threats. Most of it's been benign stuff we didn't take serious.
Okay.

Speaker 2 You know, he's been getting like punched.

Speaker 2 I know that's somebody. I know that's what it is.
Murdoch also told the sergeant he had gone to visit his mother that night. When did you get home?

Speaker 2 Right when you called or did you go to the house first? Where is the house? I came to the house first. My mom has late stages Alzheimer's and my dad is in the hospital.
Okay. I left.

Speaker 2 I don't know what time. I can go back on my phone and tell you the exact time.

Speaker 2 As he told Green about the moment he found his wife and son, his emotions spilled over. Did you check them?

Speaker 2 We got medical guys that are...

Speaker 2 That's what what they're going to do, okay?

Speaker 2 What are they doing? Can they hurry? They are. Yes, sir.
Once the EMTs arrived, Green confirmed Alex's worst fears.

Speaker 2 They are dead, aren't they?

Speaker 2 Yes, sir. That's what it looks like.

Speaker 2 Alec frantically called his friends and family, and they started arriving too.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, Green learned the central fact about the man who'd made that 911 call.

Speaker 2 What's your first name, sir? My name is Alex Richard Alexander Murdoch.

Speaker 2 Murdoch.

Speaker 2 That was a name known to nearly everyone in the Low Country. A name that meant power and influence for generations.

Speaker 2 As more deputies arrived, they realized the gravity of what had happened here and

Speaker 2 just to whom it happened.

Speaker 2 Y'all familiar with this family? Yes. I wasn't until he told me the name.

Speaker 2 Last name and later. Murdoch.

Speaker 2 Then investigators from SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, arrived. They were crime scene specialists who soon had a lot of questions for Alec Murdoch.

Speaker 35 How is your relationship with Maggie?

Speaker 23 Very good.

Speaker 23 As good as it could possibly be. I mean, you know, we had our issues

Speaker 2 and a lot of questions about his family's secluded property out in the woods. What exactly was going on out here?

Speaker 18 There's a gun room with at least 27 guns and possible murder weapons.

Speaker 2 Even before the sun rose on June 8th, 2021,

Speaker 2 residents of tiny Hampton, South Carolina were playing a game of telephone.

Speaker 18 Keep in mind that Hampton County is a small town, small place. You can't,

Speaker 18 your gossip travels faster than you do.

Speaker 2 Just a few hours earlier, one of the town's most prominent figures, attorney Alec Murdoch, said he had come home to find his 52-year-old wife Maggie and 22-year-old son Paul shot to death on the family's sprawling property known as Mozell.

Speaker 2 They are dead, aren't they?

Speaker 2 Yes, sir, that's what it looks like.

Speaker 2 Reporter Michael DeWitt was born and raised in Hampton. He's writing two upcoming books about the Murdoch family.

Speaker 18 That night and early in the morning, the people in the Murdoch circle

Speaker 18 found out. They're getting phone calls, they're getting texts.
Maggie and Paul have been shot and killed.

Speaker 2 As the news spread, Collaton County Sheriff's deputies and agents from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or SLED, continued to gather evidence at the scene.

Speaker 2 A few things were clear right away.

Speaker 2 Maggie and Paul had been shot at close range,

Speaker 2 each with a different gun.

Speaker 18 It was clear at the scene that Paul had been shot twice with the shotgun, and she had been shot multiple times with this high-powered rifle.

Speaker 2 That shotgun and rifle were nowhere to be found.

Speaker 2 But there were guns, a lot of them on the property, which was often used for hunting.

Speaker 2 A lot of people hunt.

Speaker 18 The fact that the Murdoch family had at least 27 guns in their family gun room. It's not surprising.

Speaker 2 Chris Wilson, a friend of the Murdoch family, who is speaking on television for the first time, was a regular at Moselle.

Speaker 17 Just a very social place.

Speaker 25 They always welcome people into their home.

Speaker 2 His friendship with Alec goes back 35 years.

Speaker 25 Grew up in towns that were close to each other, you know, 30 miles or so apart, played some ball against each other and then a little bit of ball with each other.

Speaker 2 The friends grew closer in law school and by that time Alec had met Maggie.

Speaker 2 Chris was in their wedding party.

Speaker 17 They had a very close relationship.

Speaker 17 I mean Alec did what he needed to do to take care of the things that Maggie needed and Maggie did what she needed to do to take care of the things that Alec and the boys needed.

Speaker 2 The boys, Buster and Paul, became Maggie's world, according to Chris's wife, Dana, also speaking here for the first time.

Speaker 36 When she had boys, she embraced that role and would fish with them and hunt with them. And she probably even threw ball in the yard with them.

Speaker 36 But she was just such a great boy mom.

Speaker 2 Mozell was one of three properties the family owned. And it's where Alec taught his wife and kids to love the lifestyle of the Low Country.

Speaker 2 What did Maggie ever see about her life at Moselle?

Speaker 36 She loved being out there. It was away from everybody.
And I mean, it was just such a beautiful place and so quiet.

Speaker 2 Quiet and remote. It was a special place for Paul, too.

Speaker 16 He was always outdoors and so good at it.

Speaker 36 You know, so good at tending the land and

Speaker 36 hunting and

Speaker 2 just being outside.

Speaker 15 It was a great place.

Speaker 17 1,700 or so acres.

Speaker 25 Hogs, turkey, deer, dove, quail.

Speaker 17 A huge house that would sleep and welcome a number of people.

Speaker 18 The Murdoch would have events, get-togethers, and you'd always find

Speaker 18 a who's who of anybody that was seemingly important in the community was always there. Law enforcement, the mayors whoever

Speaker 2 but now

Speaker 2 the property was the scene of a bloody whore

Speaker 2 sled special agent David Owen was leading the investigation he climbed into a car with Alec to ask him some questions

Speaker 23 and you go by Alec yes sir

Speaker 2 just start the talk take your time Alec told Owen he had been visiting his mother that night. He described what happened when when he got home.

Speaker 2 Maggie and Paul were not at the house, so he said he went looking for them at the dog kennels on the property.

Speaker 23 I mean, I pulled up and I could see them, and you know, I knew something was bad. I ran out, I knew it was really bad.

Speaker 23 My boy over there, I could see

Speaker 23 it was

Speaker 2 Owen asked if the family had had any issues of late, and Alec repeated the theory he had given to Sergeant Green earlier.

Speaker 23 Have y'all been having any problems out here?

Speaker 35 Trespassers?

Speaker 23 None of them. People breaking in? None that I know of.
The only thing

Speaker 23 that what comes to my mind is my son Paul was in a boat wreck a couple years ago. And

Speaker 23 there's been a,

Speaker 23 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 2 That 2019 boat wreck had upended the lives of Paul and four of his friends and caused the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach. Paul was indicted.

Speaker 2 on three counts of boating under the influence causing death and great bodily injury. He faced a maximum of 55 years in prison and pleaded not guilty and awaited trial.

Speaker 2 But now he lay dead alongside his mother on the family's beloved property. He's been getting threats.

Speaker 2 Was Alec right?

Speaker 2 Was this the act of ultimate retribution?

Speaker 23 Has he received any direct threats related to the boat accident?

Speaker 38 Oh, yes.

Speaker 2 From almost the very moment investigators arrived at his country home, Alec Murdoch had been telling them the murders of his wife and son had to be connected to a 2019 boat crash that killed a 19-year-old.

Speaker 2 This is a long story. My son was in a boat wreck.

Speaker 2 That boat crash had turned the lives of Alec's family and several other families upside down.

Speaker 39 911, where's your emergency?

Speaker 2 We're in a boat crash on Arthur's Creek. It happened in the middle of a February night at 2.30 a.m.

Speaker 2 Six teenagers, including Paul Murdoch, were in the Murdoch's motorboat in a local creek when the boat sped up and slammed into a bridge pilot. One of the passengers, Connor Cook, made the call.

Speaker 34 There's six of us and one is missing.

Speaker 2 Please send someone.

Speaker 41 No, I'm telling Recollect, Mercillin, okay?

Speaker 2 Connor and several other passengers were rushed to the hospital. Marty and Christine Cook are Connor's parents.
How did you find out what had happened?

Speaker 42 Connor called them. He said, Daddy, we've been in an accident in Argus Creek, and we can't find Mallory.

Speaker 2 19-year-old Mallory Beach was still missing in the dark water. Paul Murdoch was rushed to the hospital, too.
His father and grandfather met him there.

Speaker 2 And Alec reached out to the cooks, who were still on their way.

Speaker 42 Alec calling me, going on and on about the accident, and the girl was missing, and that Connor was driving the boat.

Speaker 2 He told you Connor was driving the boat.

Speaker 11 Yes, he did. Multiple times he called.

Speaker 2 To check on you, to check on Connor. No, hell no, to trying to get this scheme going.

Speaker 11 They're telling us about how...

Speaker 43 To convince us that our son was driving the boat.

Speaker 2 That didn't make sense to the cooks. Paul usually drove his family's boat.

Speaker 2 The cooks also say Paul was a known troublemaker and thought Alec was wielding his considerable influence that night at the hospital to keep him out of trouble.

Speaker 43 It would be easier for him to get Connor out of trouble than his son.

Speaker 40 That was his exact words.

Speaker 42 I can look out of Connor better than I can, Paul.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, on Archer's Creek, the search for Mallory Beach went went on for a week.

Speaker 44 Crews are continuing to search for a former USC student who went missing over the weekend near Paris Island.

Speaker 2 It ended tragically when two volunteers recovered Mallory's body.

Speaker 28 You know, there were so many opportunities for this not to have happened.

Speaker 2 Attorney Mark Tinsley filed a wrongful death suit on the Beach family's behalf.

Speaker 45 They wanted to hold all those people responsible for her death accountable. But more than that, they wanted to make sure that it didn't happen to someone else's child.

Speaker 2 The suit named Alec, who owned the boat, along with several others. And why name Alec Murdoch in that?

Speaker 40 When you promote a certain kind of behavior, when you condone the sorts of things that Paul did for the length of time without any consequences,

Speaker 40 he bears responsibility for what happened.

Speaker 2 Tinsley requested Alec's financial records as part of the suit. What was the response?

Speaker 40 Just an objection, a refusal.

Speaker 2 In fact, Tinsley said Alec told him he was broke. Tinsley didn't believe it.

Speaker 40 He's making millions of dollars a year, a million dollars a year at least, every year. Why would he have no money? He comes from money.

Speaker 2 The impasse dragged on until early summer 2021.

Speaker 2 Finally, more than two years after Mallory's death, they were scheduled to appear at a hearing where Alec would likely be compelled to turn over his financial records.

Speaker 2 Then, June 7th, 2021, just a few days before that hearing, the unthinkable happened.

Speaker 10 I get a call about 11.30

Speaker 10 that Monday night that Paul and Maggie had been murdered.

Speaker 2 Now, investigators had to find out if the boat crash had anything to do with those murders, even as they seemed to be losing control of a crime scene that was being overrun by Alex's friends and lawyers.

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Speaker 2 Moselle, the Murdoch family retreat that was known for parties and recreation, had become a place where people came to grieve and offer support to Alec Murdoch and his remaining son, 25-year-old Buster.

Speaker 2 Alec's friend, Chris Wilson, was one of them. When you got there, what did you find?

Speaker 17 When I got there,

Speaker 17 pulled into the main gate. I was kind of headed up the driveway towards the main house.

Speaker 11 I saw a lot of lights and people.

Speaker 17 You could tell there was a lot of commotion going on down at the kennels which turned out to be law enforcement and and other people alec was there i walked over and hugged his neck and we cried he didn't say anything he was whimpering and crying and seemed destroyed we hugged was just there i mean i was trying to be there for a friend that

Speaker 17 you know

Speaker 2 didn't know what to do for him didn't know what to say just wanted to be there But some of Alec's friends and lawyers offered more than emotional support.

Speaker 2 On the morning of June 8th, the day after the murders, they helped investigators search the house.

Speaker 18 How are you doing, sir?

Speaker 2 Even as investigators collected possible evidence from the gunroom at Moselle, as well as shell casings found on the steps of the house, it was clear the Murdoch family held a certain status with law enforcement.

Speaker 50 There are a number of lawyers and friends, including Chris Wilson, who are kind of circled up in the gun room at Moselle, which was a, you know, there's a pool table in the middle.

Speaker 50 There's some couches. It's a hangout spot in the house.
And you can see them sitting there, you know, talking and, you know, having, have a red solo cup with a drink in it, just, you know,

Speaker 50 present at not the immediate crime scene, but at the home, you know, adjacent to the crime scene.

Speaker 2 Some questioned why the house wasn't cordoned off as a crime scene. like the kennels were.

Speaker 18 It basically allowed the family and all these attorneys from the law firm to just move over there and set up and console the grieving Alex, console the family.

Speaker 2 While some investigators searched the home and property, others were looking into Alex's theory about the 2019 boat crash.

Speaker 2 They wanted to know where the surviving passengers and their families were on the night of the murders. That meant Connor Cook and his parents, Marty and Christine.
When you heard, what did you think?

Speaker 43 My first thought was, thank God Connor was home with me.

Speaker 2 Did they question him?

Speaker 16 Of course.

Speaker 43 They questioned me.

Speaker 2 They questioned you?

Speaker 43 I was his witness that he, you know, got home from work and that he never left the house.

Speaker 46 They questioned every passenger in that boat.

Speaker 2 But despite Alex's theory, it appeared no one involved in the boat crash was near Mozell on the night Maggie and Paul were gunned down.

Speaker 18 They did,

Speaker 18 you know, got an alibi from everyone. And I think think they fairly quickly eliminated the boat crash passengers as possible suspects.

Speaker 2 Still, the boat crash and the Beach family civil suit against him were never far from Alec's mind.

Speaker 2 In another interview with Sled agent David Owen three days after the murders, Owen asked Alec to take him through how he spent that fateful day.

Speaker 2 Alec mentioned the upcoming hearing where he was likely to be forced to turn over financial records.

Speaker 23 I'm a defendant in a civil case involving my son. I told you about the boat wreck.
Yes, sir.

Speaker 23 And there were some motions coming up in that on Thursday and I was mostly just getting ready for those things and then other junk.

Speaker 2 Alec also gave Owen more details about his whereabouts that night. After work, he said he came home and rode around the property with Paul.

Speaker 2 Paul can be heard laughing on this video from that evening as the two watched a tree bid.

Speaker 2 Then they went home to eat.

Speaker 23 Maggie had gotten home and you know we sat down we ate supper and which we usually eat supper together.

Speaker 2 After dinner Alec said Maggie went to check on the kennels and Paul was outside too.

Speaker 23 I stayed in the house

Speaker 23 and

Speaker 23 I was watching TV,

Speaker 23 looking at my phone, and I actually fell asleep on the couch.

Speaker 2 Alec told Owen he left to visit his mom after he woke up a little after 9 p.m.

Speaker 2 She lived about 20 minutes away, and Alec said he stayed there for a while before he returned home a little after 10 p.m.

Speaker 2 Paul and Maggie weren't there, he said, so he drove around the property. He found them lifeless at the kennels and dialed 911.

Speaker 2 Once again, he got emotional about the moment he discovered his wife and son.

Speaker 23 I know it's hard.

Speaker 23 And sitting here talking today is tough.

Speaker 23 It's just so bad. They did it so bad.

Speaker 23 Such a good boy, too.

Speaker 23 I'm sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 2 After that second interview with Special Agent Owen ended, Alec got more bad news, this time about his father, Randolph, who had been sick.

Speaker 50 On June the 10th, there's all this incredible activity going on in the background, trying to figure out what happened to Maggie and Paul. And his father, Randolph

Speaker 50 III, comes over to kind of huddle up with the lawyers and the family and then goes back home and dies just a couple hours after that interview.

Speaker 50 So it really is stunning to think that one of his last acts was to come and help,

Speaker 50 if not strategize, at least comfort, you know, his son at that time.

Speaker 2 That weekend, the family buried Maggie, Paul, and Randolph.

Speaker 51 A community gathering to remember a mother and son killed in the Low Country.

Speaker 2 On June 25th, Two and a half weeks after the murders, Alec and Buster put out a statement. They asked for help to to bring justice to Maggie and Paul and offered a $100,000 reward.

Speaker 2 By all appearances, Alec seemed to be a grieving father and husband. But that summer was about to unravel Alec's world and make so many question

Speaker 2 if they ever really knew him.

Speaker 17 He asked me to write the checks to pay the fees on the case that would have been payable to his firm directly to him.

Speaker 2 Had you written him checks like that before?

Speaker 46 No.

Speaker 2 The summer of 2021 was a time of grief and confusion for the Murdoch family. Chris Wilson did his best to be there for Alec, his friend of more than three decades.

Speaker 17 I mean, the guy seemed destroyed to me, not eating,

Speaker 17 didn't seem to be sleeping, didn't go back to Moselle to spend another night that I know of.

Speaker 2 It was quite a contrast from their last happy time together. Alec had celebrated his birthday just one week before the murders.
That's Chris giving him a bear hug.

Speaker 17 Everybody was having a good time that night. It was Maggie, Paul, Buster, my wife, my family, a number of their friends, and we had had a a good time together.

Speaker 2 Alec and Chris were lawyers in neighboring counties and sometimes took on cases together to better serve their clients.

Speaker 2 And it was a relationship of mutual benefit.

Speaker 25 It's not the mutual benefit for me or Alec or me and his firm.

Speaker 17 I do what's necessary to benefit my client. And if I can bring in another law firm that can benefit my client, at the end of the day, that's what I'm going to do.

Speaker 2 But Chris would soon discover his apparently wealthy friend was hiding some secrets.

Speaker 2 In the spring of 2021, Alec was facing mounting pressure to turn over his financial records to Mark Tinsley for the 2019 boat crash lawsuit.

Speaker 2 Around that time, Chris says Alec asked him to do something unusual.

Speaker 17 Alec asked me to write the checks for the fees directly to him instead of to his firm, which I did in March of 2021. He told me he had authority and approval from his firm.

Speaker 2 And you had no reason not to believe believe him.

Speaker 17 I didn't have any reason not to trust the guy. I mean, we had been dealing with each other, business and professional, for 30 years with no problems whatsoever.

Speaker 2 But a few months later, Alec changed his mind.

Speaker 17 He contacted me and said the fees can't be paid to me this way. They have to be paid directly to my firm.
He was supposed to send me $792,000 back, same amount of money that I had paid him.

Speaker 2 Chris said Alec only sent back $600,000.

Speaker 17 I had to put $192,000 of my own money into my account to have that money available to pay the way that it should have been paid had it been done the right way.

Speaker 2 What Chris did not know was that he wasn't the only one getting suspicious of Alec.

Speaker 2 Murdoch's law firm had quietly started an internal investigation and found several missing payments related to his cases. On June 7th, the CFO confronted Alec about it.
That night,

Speaker 2 Maggie and Paul were killed. After that, no one was asking questions about missing fees.
They were doing their best to surround Alec with support.

Speaker 2 Even Mark Tinsley had paused his civil case in the wake of Maggie and Paul's murders. He thought maybe for good.

Speaker 28 If Elliot is the victim of some vigilante, the boat crash probably as it relates to him would have been over.

Speaker 2 But then Tinsley noticed another lawsuit related to Alec had settled. It was the case of his longtime housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, who died after a fall at Moselle in 2018.

Speaker 2 The settlement seemed suspiciously small.

Speaker 28 The fact that she died, her age, how long she lived, case was worth a lot more than $505,000, which was the only thing reported in terms of the settlement.

Speaker 2 He was right. Gloria's family should have gotten over $4 million.

Speaker 2 Alec and two co-conspirators didn't tell the family that and kept most of the money for themselves.

Speaker 2 And once that case became public, other allegations surfaced about Alec stealing money from clients for years.

Speaker 2 The allegations were a bombshell for the large group of people who'd circle their wagons around Alec all summer. In September, Chris Wilson heard about those allegations and he was shocked.

Speaker 17 I told him that I needed to speak to him and I wanted it to be face-to-face.

Speaker 2 That conversation was tense.

Speaker 17 I looked at him and I said, Alec, I need to know what, I'm sure I used a cursed word, I said, I need to know what's going on.

Speaker 24 And he looked at me, started to cry.

Speaker 17 and said, I can't right this second, walked inside, grabbed some paper towels, came back out, dried his eyes off,

Speaker 17 and said, look, I've been having, I've got a drug addiction. I'm addicted to pain prescription pills, and it's been going on for 20 years.

Speaker 17 And I've been stealing from my clients, and I've been stealing from my firm, and I've done you wrong, and I've done a number of people wrong.

Speaker 2 Wilson left the meeting furious, but also worried about his friend. And he was right to worry.
Because just a short time later.

Speaker 17 I'm on my ride back to Columbia, and I got a phone call and and told me that Elliot had been shot on the side of the road.

Speaker 2 Alec Murdoch, now 911

Speaker 2 again.

Speaker 41 Okay, what's going on?

Speaker 41 I got a flat tire and I stopped and somebody stopped to help me

Speaker 41 and when I turned my back, they tried to shoot me.

Speaker 2 Alec was on the side of this country road when he claimed the shooting happened.

Speaker 41 Did they actually shoot you or they tried to shoot you? They shot shot me and I'm bleeding a lot.

Speaker 2 When you heard about what had happened on the side of the road there, what was your initial thought?

Speaker 17 I thought he had tried to kill himself.

Speaker 2 Alec was airlifted to a Georgia hospital with a fractured skull and a minor brain bleed. But one week later, he confessed that he'd made up the whole thing.

Speaker 2 It was a failed attempt to get life insurance money for his son, Buster. He also admitted publicly to that 20-year opioid addiction and promptly entered rehab.

Speaker 2 Alec seemed to be spinning out of control. He was fired by the law firm and he was facing charges related to both the botched suicide attempt and the insurance fraud of his longtime housekeeper.

Speaker 2 During that tumultuous summer, Alec and his lawyer also had an ominous meeting with Sled Special Agent David Owen about the status of the murder investigation.

Speaker 52 Everybody stays in that investigation until we can get them out.

Speaker 52 And right now, because of the questions that I have that I need explanations for, I cannot get Alec out. So, does that mean that I am a suspect? You were still in this.

Speaker 52 With everything that we've talked about, with the family guns, the ammunition,

Speaker 52 nobody else's DNA.

Speaker 52 I have to put my beliefs aside and go with the facts.

Speaker 2 In October 2021, Alec was arreigned for some of his alleged financial crimes. The Wilsons no longer recognized the man they considered family.

Speaker 36 We didn't want to believe it.

Speaker 16 More came out, kept coming out.

Speaker 36 More's still coming out, probably.

Speaker 20 I mean, it's just, who is this person?

Speaker 36 We don't know this person.

Speaker 20 Who was he?

Speaker 2 The world was about to find out.

Speaker 38 What say you, Richard Elliot Murdoch? Are you guilty or not guilty of the felonies wherein you stand indictment?

Speaker 53 After more than a year of speculation and questions, investigators appear ready to name Alec Murdoch as the killer of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.

Speaker 2 On July 14th, 2022, it happened. Alec Murdoch was indicted for killing his wife and son.
He pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 38 How shall you be tried by God and my country?

Speaker 2 The trial was scheduled surprisingly quickly. On January 23rd, 2023, the Colleton County Courthouse in tiny Walterboro, South Carolina felt like the center of the universe.

Speaker 54 An invasion of cameras, tents, and trucks on every corner of the courthouse.

Speaker 2 A nation now hooked on the spectacle was greedy for every turn, every twist to come.

Speaker 2 The trial was going to be live streamed, but spectators were out at dawn anyway, lining up for a courtroom pass. Food trucks served breakfast.

Speaker 2 And reporters? The place was crawling with them.

Speaker 18 You will find every major TV network. The New York Times is here, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 2 Alec Murdoch arrived in an unmarked van at the court's back door, straight from the jail cell where he spent more than a year, dressed in business casual, a jacket draped over his handcuffs.

Speaker 2 Why did you kill your wife and your father?

Speaker 2 Generations of Murdochs have tried cases here. In fact, A Murdoch family portrait was taken down on the judge's orders before opening arguments began.

Speaker 19 Listen to that gathering storm that all came to a head on June 7th, 2021, the day the evidence will show he killed Maggie and Paul.

Speaker 2 Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters, a 24-year veteran of the State Attorney General's office, opened with the prosecution's version of how the murders happened.

Speaker 27 The defendant over there, Alec Murdoch, took a 12-shade shotgun and shot him in the shoulder.

Speaker 2 Paul Murdoch was shot first.

Speaker 15 But after that, another shot went up under his head and did catastrophic damage.

Speaker 2 Then Waters told the jury, Alec picked up an AR-style rifle and turned it on his wife, Maggie. How, how?

Speaker 27 Two shots, Abderman, in the leg, and took her down.

Speaker 2 I've got multiple gunshots out of him. Two victims shot at close range.
The scene, bloody, horrific, and, the prosecution said, a pile of evidence pointing to Alec Murdoch as the killer. The motive?

Speaker 2 He was trying to deflect attention from his storm of troubles.

Speaker 14 They'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 12 that they died as a result.

Speaker 2 Alec listened at the defense table, family members behind him, including his remaining son, Buster.

Speaker 1 It is our honor to represent Alec Murdoch.

Speaker 2 Dick Harputli, lead defense attorney, a member of the South Carolina Senate with decades of lawyering behind him. I submit to you what you have heard from the Attorney General as facts are not.

Speaker 14 Alec, stand up.

Speaker 14 This is Alec Murdoch.

Speaker 2 And Alec was the loving father of Paul and the loving husband of Maggie.

Speaker 2 The facts were on his client's side, he told the jury. There was no direct evidence tying Alec to the murders.

Speaker 14 He didn't do it.

Speaker 55 He is presumed innocent.

Speaker 2 Please be seated.

Speaker 2 Next morning, the prosecution called its first witness.

Speaker 37 Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony?

Speaker 2 Sergeant Daniel Green of the Colleton County Sheriff's Office was the first to respond to the murder scene. They are dead, aren't they?

Speaker 2 The prosecutor used Green's body cam footage and testimony to examine Alec's behavior that night. Green didn't quite buy the seemingly distraught man he encountered.

Speaker 24 He was able to answer all the questions that I asked him.

Speaker 12 Was he panicking in any way?

Speaker 3 He seemed upset, but I wouldn't say panicky.

Speaker 2 The prosecutor said Alec immediately tried to divert attention to other suspects. My son was in a boat raid.

Speaker 2 Casting suspicion on how he pointed to Paul's boat crash as a possible motive for a revenge killing.

Speaker 5 And who brought up the boat incident?

Speaker 24 Mr. Murdoch did.

Speaker 12 And he offered that right out of the gate as a possible explanation for what happened here. Is that right?

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 2 Prosecutors went on to attack Alex alibi. Remember, Alec told everyone he had a nap after dinner while Paul and Maggie went down to the kennels.
Alec insisted he did not go with them.

Speaker 23 I was at the house.

Speaker 23 I left the house and went to my mom's.

Speaker 2 But prosecutors unveiled an explosive exhibit that would gut Alec's alibi. A video that had been discovered on Paul's cell phone recorded at the kennels at 8.44 p.m.

Speaker 2 when Alec said he was napping at the house. And just minutes before prosecutors say Paul and Maggie were shot.

Speaker 2 Get back. Get back.
Jurors were told to focus on the voices, not the pictures. Paul is heard calling to this dog named Cash.
Quit, Cash.

Speaker 2 Quit.

Speaker 2 Then Maggie.

Speaker 2 Hey, he's got birds in his mouth.

Speaker 2 And a third voice.

Speaker 2 A man's voice saying, come here, Bubba, to a dog.

Speaker 2 Half a dozen witnesses were asked to identify the voices on that video. The answer was always the same.

Speaker 12 Which voices did you recognize on that video?

Speaker 24 Paul Murdahl, Maggie Murdahl, and Alex Murdahl.

Speaker 13 Paul Murdock,

Speaker 53 Maggie Murdock,

Speaker 53 and Alec Murdick.

Speaker 3 Paul, Miss Maggie, and Mr. Ellick.

Speaker 2 It was a major blow to Alex's defense, but hardly the last. The prosecution had more surprises up its sleeve.

Speaker 57 There were a significant number of particles characteristic of gunshot prime residue on the inside of this jacket, yes.

Speaker 9 Disturbing new details coming to light in the Alec Murdoch murder trial.

Speaker 4 Alec Murdoch is charged with killing his wife and son.

Speaker 2 As one of the most infamous trials in South Carolina's history played out on the nation's screens, the prosecution was under a spotlight.

Speaker 12 This has been a long, exhaustive investigation.

Speaker 2 No wonder the state's attorney general Alan Wilson was a near-constant presence at their table.

Speaker 2 Journalist Michael DeWitt.

Speaker 18 I'm half a century old and there's never been a case like this in my neck of the woods.

Speaker 2 The prosecution had undermined Alec's alibi with that video at the kennels. Now they tried to poke holes in the rest of his story.

Speaker 2 Remember, Alec said he napped after dinner, then went to visit his mother.

Speaker 26 Now call Miss Michelle Smith to see.

Speaker 2 Shelly Smith was Alec's mother's caregiver. She was there when he arrived at his mother's house about 9:20.
An unusual hour for him to stop by, she said.

Speaker 37 Becky was fidgety.

Speaker 6 Fidgety? Yes.

Speaker 6 Did he talk to his mother?

Speaker 58 She was asleep, yes.

Speaker 2 She was asleep.

Speaker 2 She said he left after 15 or 20 minutes.

Speaker 26 Did she even know that he was there?

Speaker 2 Smith saw Alec again the next week.

Speaker 2 She testified they had an upsetting conversation where he appeared to be coaching her to tell investigators if they asked that he was at his mother's home longer than Smith said he was.

Speaker 26 His phrase was, I was here or you notice that.

Speaker 37 I was here 30 to 40 minutes.

Speaker 2 Days later, Smith testified, Alec was back at his mother's place, this time early in the morning, with something balled up in his hands.

Speaker 37 Like a blue tarp, like a tarp.

Speaker 2 Blue? Blue. Okay.

Speaker 26 Was it vinyl?

Speaker 37 It's like a tarp that you put on the car and you keep your car covered up.

Speaker 26 What did he do when he walked in?

Speaker 12 Went upstairs.

Speaker 2 Investigators later searched the house and discovered a blue raincoat, similar to a tarp, balled up in a closet.

Speaker 2 Agent Megan Fletcher, a trace evidence analyst, examined it for GSR, gunshot residue.

Speaker 57 There were a significant number of particles characteristic of gunshot primer residue on the inside of this jacket, yes.

Speaker 6 Would your findings be consistent with that item containing a recently fired primer?

Speaker 57 It is possible, yes.

Speaker 2 Other people in Alex's circle also found his behavior after the murders strange.

Speaker 2 Prosecutors called Maggie's sister, Marion Proctor, to the stand.

Speaker 59 I'm Marion Proctor, P-R-O-C-T-O-R.

Speaker 2 She told the jury her family was terrified the killer would target Alec and Buster next, but Alec didn't appear worried at all.

Speaker 59 I was scared for Alec and

Speaker 59 Buster. I think everybody was afraid.
And

Speaker 59 Alec didn't seem to be afraid.

Speaker 2 Marion told the jury Maggie was only at Mozell that night because Alec had asked her to be there. He told her his father was gravely ill.
The sisters talked on the phone as Maggie drove.

Speaker 2 Marion, still haunted by that last call.

Speaker 59 And I said, well, Maggie, I said, you know, Alec and his dad are super close, and that's probably what you should do. Go be with him if you need to.

Speaker 5 You encouraged her to go to Moza.

Speaker 2 I did.

Speaker 5 Was that the last time you talked to him?

Speaker 31 Yes.

Speaker 2 One apparent weakness in the prosecution's case was the lack of blood evidence. They tried to turn this to their advantage by playing one of Alex's statements to police.

Speaker 2 recorded just hours after the murders.

Speaker 23 And I ran over to Maggie and

Speaker 23 actually i think i tried to turn paul over first

Speaker 23 um

Speaker 23 uh

Speaker 23 you know i tried to turn him over did you touch maggie at all i did i touched them both okay i tried to take i mean i tried to do it as limited as possible but i i tried to take their pulse on both of them

Speaker 2 so Why wasn't he covered in blood? The implication was that he'd washed up after the murders. Carlton County Lead Detective Laura Rutland was on the scene that night.

Speaker 26 How would you describe the defendant's hands when you saw him when you were interviewing him? How would you describe his hands? They were clean. How would you describe his t-shirt? Clean.

Speaker 26 How would you describe his shorts? Clean. Did he look like somebody who just changed his clothes?

Speaker 31 Yes.

Speaker 2 Alex said something else prosecutors seized on in another statement to police three days after the murders.

Speaker 23 Sitting here talking today is tough.

Speaker 23 It's just so bad. I did it so bad.

Speaker 2 The prosecutor asked senior special agent Jeff Croft to repeat the words.

Speaker 12 What did he say?

Speaker 26 It's just so bad.

Speaker 15 I did him so bad.

Speaker 12 I did him so bad.

Speaker 2 Yes, sir. Was it a slip of the tongue, an inadvertent confession? On cross-examination, Alex defense attorney Jim Griffin played the tape at a slower speed.

Speaker 2 The question,

Speaker 2 did Alec say I

Speaker 2 or they?

Speaker 2 It is so bad.

Speaker 22 Did you hear they then?

Speaker 6 No, sir, I did not.

Speaker 60 But you would agree the jury gets to decide

Speaker 60 what he said on that tape. That's the best evidence.

Speaker 60 I agree that they get to hear the tape and make their own mind up as to what he said, yes, sir.

Speaker 2 But no matter how much testimony prosecutors elicited about Alec Murdoch's inconsistencies and lies, they still had to answer the most basic question of all:

Speaker 2 What could motivate a man to brutally murder the wife and son he seemed to adore?

Speaker 2 They would throw a Hail Mary to try to make that case.

Speaker 14 They got a whole lot more evidence about financial misconduct than they have in evidence of guilt in the murder case.

Speaker 14 Martin.

Speaker 2 Prosecutors had punched holes in Alec Murdoch's alibi and cast doubt over many of his statements. But the biggest question of all lingered.
Why?

Speaker 2 Why would Alec Murdoch kill his wife and son, especially since they seem to be a close-knit family? Journalist Valerie Borlau.

Speaker 50 And I think that is a high bar for the prosecution to have to get over to explain, yes, those things do hold together.

Speaker 2 Prosecutors had an explanation. Alec Murdoch was a compulsive thief, they alleged, a spinner of scams who stole money from everyone.

Speaker 2 And because those financial crimes were about to be exposed, they argued, he murdered his wife and son to win sympathy and time.

Speaker 50 He was eager to keep concealed this long-running financial fraud that would ruin his family and his family name.

Speaker 2 This issue is before me on the motion of the state. Normally, jurors are not allowed to hear about a defendant's past bad acts.

Speaker 2 But in this case, prosecutors believe they were crucial to explain motive. They asked the judge for permission to present testimony about Alex's alleged financial crimes.

Speaker 15 Your Honor, I would like to respond.

Speaker 2 The defense protested loudly.

Speaker 22 They got a whole lot more evidence about financial misconduct than they have about a murder and evidence of guilt in the murder case.

Speaker 2 But in a pivotal decision, Judge Clifton Newman decided for the prosecution.

Speaker 8 I find that it is so intimately connected with and explanatory of the crime charge that proof of it is essential to complete the story.

Speaker 2 Prosecutors exhaled and called Jeannie Seckinger to the stand.

Speaker 30 I would be CFO/slash COO.

Speaker 2 Seconder told the jurors the Murdoch family law firm PMPED operated on trust like a brotherhood. She said Alec Murdoch was a successful lawyer largely because of his gift of the gab.

Speaker 12 He did it through the articles basically.

Speaker 2 In May of 2021, Sekinger learned of Chris Wilson's missing check. She discovered other financial irregularities involving Alec too.

Speaker 2 She confronted him about it for the first time that month and then again on June 7th.

Speaker 30 He looked at me with a pretty dirty look, one I'd not seen before, and said, what do you need now?

Speaker 2 The conversation was interrupted.

Speaker 30 He took a phone call and the call was saying that his father was in the hospital and he was terminal. So at that point, it turned into a personal conversation.

Speaker 2 Prosecutors argued that was the day, June 7th, Murdoch realized his crimes were about to be revealed. And that very night, Maggie and Paul were murdered.

Speaker 2 As prosecutors demonstrated, Alec got a reprieve from the firm's investigation.

Speaker 12 After the murders happened, did it seem right to you to raise those issues to the defendant?

Speaker 30 No, we were concerned about the welfare of Alec, and we were trying to make sure that he was emotionally okay.

Speaker 2 Old friend Chris Wilson testified he also stopped asking questions about that missing check after the murders.

Speaker 48 We all talk regularly about keeping an eye on him, about

Speaker 10 being there for him.

Speaker 2 If prosecutors thought evidence of Murdoch's financial crimes would provide a motive, they counted on their last witness to prove opportunity.

Speaker 9 Special Agent Peter Rudofsky.

Speaker 2 The prosecution's final witness, Sled Special Agent Peter Rudofsky, unveiled a digital tour de force using cell activity from Alex, Maggie's, and Paul's phones and GPS data from Alex's car, he built a timeline of the night of the murders.

Speaker 2 It showed Alec had time to kill and to cover it up.

Speaker 5 How long have you been working on this document right here?

Speaker 24 Roughly about a year on this document.

Speaker 2 Rudofsky's timeline showed that Not long after Maggie and Paul's phones went silent forever at 8.49 p.m., about the time prosecutors believe the two were killed, Alex's phone, which had been inactive for nearly an hour, suddenly came alive.

Speaker 2 From 9.02 to 9.06 p.m., it counted his steps.

Speaker 12 How many steps?

Speaker 24 283 steps.

Speaker 24 70.75 steps per minute, estimated.

Speaker 12 He was a busy guy right in, wasn't he?

Speaker 2 At 9.07 p.m., Murdoch's Suburban left Moselle, heading to his mother's home. As it neared the location where Maggie's phone was later found, the vehicle was going 42 miles an hour.

Speaker 12 After passing that location, does the defendant's vehicle start to accelerate?

Speaker 6 It does.

Speaker 2 Then the Suburban sped up to 74 miles an hour, reaching Murdoch's mother's home at 9.22 p.m.

Speaker 2 It departed at 9.43 p.m., traveling back to Moselle, this time clocking a maximum of 80 miles an hour.

Speaker 12 Would you at night or did you ever at night

Speaker 12 on the roads as they existed at the time of June 7th, 2021, run in code with your lights on, run 80 miles an hour down that road?

Speaker 6 I would not, no.

Speaker 34 Please hurry, but we're getting somebody out there to you.

Speaker 2 The suburban arrived at the kennels at 10.05 p.m. Alec called 911.

Speaker 2 Less than 20 seconds later, telling the dispatcher he checked both bodies and neither was breathing. With that, prosecutors rested.

Speaker 3 In the matter of the indictments, the state of South Carolina rests.

Speaker 2 In all, they called 61 witnesses, elicited hours of damaging testimony. But was it enough? The defense had its own cards to play, starting with insinuations of a botched and biased investigation.

Speaker 13 What effort, if any, was made to take fingerprints at the scene?

Speaker 7 None that I observed.

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Speaker 2 Alec Murdoch's attorneys laid the groundwork for his defense long before the prosecution arrested.

Speaker 13 Is that preservation of the scene that your standards require?

Speaker 32 Not exactly, no.

Speaker 13 Not exactly.

Speaker 2 In their cross-examinations of state's witnesses, Dick Harputlien and Jim Griffin criticized the way the murder investigation was handled.

Speaker 13 Should the police be walking through the scene?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 13 Do we know what other evidence they may have destroyed?

Speaker 7 I have no idea.

Speaker 6 That's right, we don't.

Speaker 60 You've described this investigative circle.

Speaker 55 So you draw a circle around potential persons of interest, and Alex was in that circle.

Speaker 3 We don't draw a circle around any individual person.

Speaker 60 We worked with a crime scene, which is what we considered the circle.

Speaker 10 There was a circle, and it was only around Alec.

Speaker 33 He was the only living and breathing person in the circle.

Speaker 28 Is that correct?

Speaker 15 That is the only person that we could place in the circle at that time.

Speaker 2 They accused law enforcement of conducting a sloppy investigation from the very start.

Speaker 13 Do you know whether any of those showers or tubs were in any way swabbed or checked for blood or tissue or any DNA, anything that would indicate somebody had washed off evidence of a crime?

Speaker 50 Nothing that I'm aware of.

Speaker 2 The defense also called its own expert witnesses to make the same point.

Speaker 13 If this had been your crime scene, would you have saved that sheet and saved his clothes?

Speaker 46 Definitely.

Speaker 13 What effort, if any, was made to take fingerprints at the scene?

Speaker 7 None that I observed.

Speaker 55 A lot of the testimony has been about the failure to protect the crime scene and preserve whatever evidence was there.

Speaker 2 Joe McCullum is a criminal defense attorney who has been in court almost every day throughout the trial. He has a close relationship with Alec Murdoch's defense team.

Speaker 55 So the poor showing by Sled that's alleged by the defense is intended to tell the jury if they had done their job, if they'd taken fingerprints, if they'd done X, Y, and Z, then Alec Murdock wouldn't be sitting here.

Speaker 55 Somebody else would be.

Speaker 2 At the end of the day, the defense argued, there was no physical evidence tying Alec to the murders of Maggie and Paul. No murder weapon, no blood evidence on him.

Speaker 2 Sure, Alec had lied about being at the Kennels that night, they said, but that wasn't evidence he killed his wife and son.

Speaker 2 Our guy may be a liar, our guy may be a thief, but he's not a killer. Correct.

Speaker 55 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 37 He's verified the testimony.

Speaker 2 The defense also called people close to Alec and the family to attest to Alec's grief and pain after the killings.

Speaker 28 He was devastated. I mean, he was crying.
He was, I mean, just

Speaker 6 beside himself. He said, look at what they did.
Look at what they did

Speaker 55 to them.

Speaker 3 He was pretty distraught. When I got there, he and I saw each other and he gave me a hug and just started crying and told me they were gone.

Speaker 2 Alex's older son, Buster, had sat quietly in court for weeks. When it was his turn on the witness stand, he relived the horror of losing both his mother and brother.

Speaker 58 My dad called me.

Speaker 55 He asked me if I was sitting down and I was like, yeah.

Speaker 10 And then he, you know, sounded odd.

Speaker 58 And then he told me that my mom and brother had been shot.

Speaker 2 Buster said his father didn't act like a man who had just slaughtered his own family.

Speaker 58 His demeanor was, I mean, he was destroyed.

Speaker 10 He was heartbroken.

Speaker 58 I walked in the door and saw him and gave him a hug and just

Speaker 33 broken down.

Speaker 28 Could he speak?

Speaker 58 Not really.

Speaker 21 Was he crying? Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 Alex's brother, John Marvin, also took the stand in his defense.

Speaker 55 As devastating as it was for me,

Speaker 7 it was a thousand times worse for him.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 61 I knew as a brother, I needed to be there for him.

Speaker 7 And I was.

Speaker 55 I would have to create a new word to describe how distraught he was.

Speaker 2 Pausing to wipe away his own tears, John Marvin told the jury about the morning after the murders.

Speaker 62 I walked over to the feed room.

Speaker 31 It had not been cleaned up.

Speaker 62 I saw blood. I saw brains.
I saw pieces of skull. It was terrible.

Speaker 2 And for some reason, I thought it was mine,

Speaker 31 something that I needed to do for Paul to clean it up.

Speaker 31 And I can promise you, no mother or father or aunt or uncle should ever have to see and do what I did that day.

Speaker 2 And he asserted his brother Alex's innocence by revealing a promise he made to his nephew Paul, Alex's son, in that tortured moment at the kennels.

Speaker 62 I don't know. I just, I loved him, and I promised him that I'd find out who did this to him.

Speaker 6 Have you found out?

Speaker 7 I have not.

Speaker 2 He got very emotional at times. How effective do you think that was?

Speaker 55 I think that's big. And I think what John Marvin succeeded in doing for the defense was humanizing their family, and he came across as

Speaker 55 a very nice person, a person who was suffering mightily, and his true genuine emotions to the jury, and especially ending with

Speaker 55 deciding that he owed it to Paul to go and clean up his remains, was just excruciating for the jury. And

Speaker 55 I think it brought home the true tragedy.

Speaker 2 But when the story of Alec Murdoch's defense is ultimately written, it will not dwell on those emotional statements from family and friends or accusations about slappy crime scenes or even withering cross-examinations.

Speaker 2 It will focus instead on the testimony of one man.

Speaker 14 The defendant, Richard Alexander Murdoch, wishes to take the stand.

Speaker 2 As day 23 of the Alec Murdoch trial dawned, there was a lot of buzz around the Collington County Courthouse. Would he take the stand?

Speaker 2 The decision was only one man's to make, and Alec Murdoch gave his answer.

Speaker 7 I am going to testify.

Speaker 29 I want to testify.

Speaker 2 Now, most defense lawyers will tell you that putting a defendant on the stand only to be cut up by a prosecutor,

Speaker 2 not worth the risk. But then again,

Speaker 2 this wasn't just any defendant. This was Alec Murdoch, a lawyer from a long line of lawyers.
Attorney Jim Griffin started by cutting to the chase.

Speaker 60 Did you take this gun or any gun like it?

Speaker 60 and shoot your son Paul in the chest in the feed room at your property off Moselle Road.

Speaker 7 No, I did not.

Speaker 22 Mr.

Speaker 60 Murder, did you take this gun or any gun like it and blow your son's brains out on June 7th or any day or anytime?

Speaker 7 No, I did not. I didn't shoot my wife or my son anytime.

Speaker 10 Ever.

Speaker 2 For three weeks, prosecutors had branded Murdoch a serial liar and believe they caught him perhaps in his biggest lie with that video placing him at the dog kennels that June night in 2021.

Speaker 2 Alec and his attorney confronted that head-on.

Speaker 60 Is that you

Speaker 60 on the kennel video at 844 p.m. on June 7th the night Maddie Maggie and Paul were murdered?

Speaker 61 It is.

Speaker 60 Were you in fact at the kennels at 844 p.m. on the night Maggie and Paul were murdered?

Speaker 26 I was.

Speaker 60 Did you lie to Sled Agent Owen and Deputy Laura Rutland

Speaker 60 on the night of June 7th

Speaker 60 and told them that you stayed at the house after dinner?

Speaker 7 I did lie to them.

Speaker 60 Did you lie to Agent Owen and Agent Croft on the follow-up interview on June 10th that the last time you saw Magdie and Paul was at dinner?

Speaker 7 I did lie to them.

Speaker 2 So why did he lie? He said his addiction to painkillers was the reason. Up to 60 pills a day.

Speaker 7 As my addiction evolved over time

Speaker 7 i would get in these situations or circumstances where i would get paranoid thinking

Speaker 7 and it could be anything that that triggered it it might be a look somebody gave me it might be a reaction somebody had to something i did um it might be a policeman following me in in a car

Speaker 2 He said he distrusted Sled intensely and his drug-induced paranoia, coupled with the shock from the murders fogged up his mind.

Speaker 7 On June the 7th

Speaker 7 I wasn't thinking clearly.

Speaker 29 I don't think I was capable of reason

Speaker 7 and I lied about being down there

Speaker 7 and I'm so sorry that I did.

Speaker 60 But you continued lying after that night, did you not?

Speaker 7 Well, once I lied, I continued to lie, yes, sir.

Speaker 61 Wow.

Speaker 7 You know, oh, what a tangled web we weave.

Speaker 2 Murdoch went on to give a new account of that afternoon and evening, constantly using the nicknames Mags and Pawpaw for his wife and son, and offering details he had never mentioned in his interviews with law enforcement.

Speaker 2 He described driving around Moselle with Paul on his son's last afternoon.

Speaker 7 You could not be around Paw Paul.

Speaker 7 You could not be around him and not have a good time. I love doing anything with Paw Paul.
He was an absolute delight.

Speaker 2 After dinner that evening, he said, Maggie asked him to go out to the kennels where she and Paul were checking on the dogs.

Speaker 2 And this was his new story. He said he drove a golf cart out there.

Speaker 7 I'm talking to Maggie for just, you know, a short time before Bubba catches the chicken.

Speaker 2 There's a chick out there.

Speaker 2 Alec said he tried to pull it away from him.

Speaker 6 Did you get the chicken out of Bubba's mouth?

Speaker 7 I did. I took the chicken from Bubba and I put it on top of that, what looks to me like a portable dog crate.

Speaker 60 What did you do after you got the chicken out of Bubba's mouth?

Speaker 7 I got out of there.

Speaker 7 I left. I went back to the house.

Speaker 60 So you went back to the house, you lay down on the couch, and then what happened next?

Speaker 7 I'm not positive. I dozed off for a minute or didn't doze off for a minute, but I got up off of the couch

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 7 I made up my mind I was going to visit my mom.

Speaker 2 He described that trip over to his mother's house. All routine, he claimed.
When he got back to the house about an hour later, he said he didn't see his wife or son anywhere inside.

Speaker 2 So he started searching.

Speaker 60 And Alec, did you drive down to the kennels in your suburb?

Speaker 26 I did.

Speaker 15 What did you see?

Speaker 26 So what y'all have seen pictures of.

Speaker 26 So bad.

Speaker 60 What did you do when you went up to Paul at some point in time?

Speaker 26 Paul was so

Speaker 55 bad.

Speaker 7 At some point, I know I mean, I know I tried to check him for a pulse.

Speaker 7 I know I tried to turn him over.

Speaker 60 When you say you tried to turn him over, why were you trying to turn him over?

Speaker 42 I don't know.

Speaker 26 I don't know. I don't know why I tried to turn him over.

Speaker 32 Me and my boy's laying face down.

Speaker 26 He's done the way he's done. His head was the way his head was.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 55 could see his brain laying on the sideball.

Speaker 61 I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 2 He said in the weeks after the murders, he was ready and willing to give the police anything they needed, whether it exonerated him or not.

Speaker 2 But the bottom line for the defense was this. Murdoch had no motive to kill his wife or son.

Speaker 7 I would never hurt Maggie, and I would never hurt Paul.

Speaker 31 Ever.

Speaker 7 Under any circumstances.

Speaker 2 But Alec wasn't finished on the stand. Now, It was the prosecution's turn to question him.

Speaker 12 And you've been able to lie quickly and easily and and convincingly if you think it'll save your skin for well over a decade.

Speaker 5 Isn't that true?

Speaker 2 Alec Murdoch had lied to police for a year and a half. He told them he was not at the dog kennels before his wife and son's murders.
Now, he said he was.

Speaker 12 All this time later, this is the first time you've ever said that.

Speaker 31 Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 Prosecutor Creighton Waters wanted to underscore that point. This defendant was a liar and not just about the murders.

Speaker 2 For years, he'd been using one hand to shake with trusting clients and the other to rip them off.

Speaker 9 You would agree with me

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 47 for years

Speaker 12 you were were stealing money from clients.

Speaker 7 Yes, sir, I agree with that.

Speaker 12 And that you were stealing from your law firm?

Speaker 7 Yes, sir, I agree with that.

Speaker 12 And that had been going on since at least 2010.

Speaker 7 I'm not sure the exact date, but it's been going on a long time. I'll agree with that.

Speaker 2 This defendant, said Waters, stole millions of dollars, even from people he claimed to care about.

Speaker 12 What was going through your head and how it went down when you sat there and looked them in the eye and convinced them that you were doing them right while you were lying to them and stealing their money?

Speaker 5 Yes, sir.

Speaker 7 I had a lot of conversations with a lot of my clients that I cared about. And so I will tell you that I had conversations with them where I misled them and I lied to them and I took their money.

Speaker 2 The only reason Alec stopped lying about stealing money, the prosecutor argued, was because he got caught.

Speaker 2 Just as the only reason he stopped lying about being at the kennels, get it, get that, was the tape.

Speaker 12 You agree that the most important part of your testimony here today is explaining your lie for a year and a half that you were never down at those kennels at 8.44.

Speaker 29 Would you agree with that?

Speaker 7 I think all of my testimony is important, Mr.

Speaker 27 Waters.

Speaker 5 Would you agree that that's an important part of your testimony?

Speaker 55 Sure. I think he was tired.
I won't say his wheels came off, but they started to get wobbly.

Speaker 2 Attorney Joe McCullough was in court for Alec's testimony. He could see Alec beginning to buckle as the prosecutor pressed into his ever-changing story about where he was the night of the murders.

Speaker 55 That's a telling blow. It was set up well with a series of questions to kind of,

Speaker 55 I think, wear him out,

Speaker 55 kind of fool him into committing himself to that point of lie.

Speaker 55 And then they showed that he was lying again.

Speaker 2 The prosecutor attacked Murdoch's new version of that night,

Speaker 2 which went like this. He was at the kennels at 8.44, but only for a minute or so, to rescue a chicken in distress.
Then he went back to the house.

Speaker 12 So we got you back around 8.49 and he didn't hear anything at all. Did you hear anything at all, Mr.
Murdoch, during that time period?

Speaker 7 No, I did not.

Speaker 2 That's possibly because he was napping by then, Alex said. He had missed his wife and son's murders by mere seconds, missed the sound of multiple gun blasts, likely because he was out cold.

Speaker 12 According to your news story,

Speaker 12 how long did you doze?

Speaker 7 If I dozed,

Speaker 7 extremely short time.

Speaker 12 Extremely short time?

Speaker 12 Because you would agree with me that at 9.02,

Speaker 3 you're up and moving

Speaker 33 according to the data?

Speaker 7 I agree that according to that data,

Speaker 7 my phone's recording steps at whatever time it is, 9.02 something.

Speaker 2 So what was he doing? Creighton Waters asked.

Speaker 7 I know what I wasn't doing, Mr. Waters, and what I wasn't doing is doing anything

Speaker 7 as I believe you've implied that I was cleaning off or washing off or washing off guns or putting guns in a raincoat, and I can promise you that I wasn't doing any of that.

Speaker 2 Waters dismissed the latest alibi as the words of a man who routinely lied to escape trouble.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 5 Isn't that true?

Speaker 7 I have lied

Speaker 7 well over

Speaker 7 a decade.

Speaker 12 And you want this jury

Speaker 25 to believe a story

Speaker 12 manufactured to fit the evidence

Speaker 12 that you brought forth just yesterday after hearing this trial's worth of testimony.

Speaker 7 No, sir, that's not correct.

Speaker 2 The trouble Murdoch was trying to save himself from this time, the prosecutor argued, was impending financial exposure at his law firm and in the mallory beach civil case to avoid that he seized on a hairbrained scheme commit a greater crime to blot out the lesser ones kill two loved ones to attract sympathy instead of scrutiny

Speaker 12 mr murdock are you a family annihilator

Speaker 7 A family annihilator?

Speaker 7 You mean like, did I shoot my wife and my son? Yes. No.

Speaker 2 Nothing further. As a former attorney, Alec Murdoch had a knack for reading juries.
But all that mattered now was how these jurors were reading him.

Speaker 2 After 28 days of testimony, the case was theirs to decide. And they did it in less than three hours.

Speaker 8 Defendant will rise.

Speaker 2 28 days had barely ended in the most watched trial in South Carolina's history. The case was in the hands of the jury, and everyone was trying to catch their breath when the word came.

Speaker 2 A verdict was in.

Speaker 2 Already.

Speaker 32 Guilty verdict.

Speaker 2 Guilty of the murders of his wife and son. Bailiffs flanked and cuffed Murdoch, his surviving son, Buster, watching from the gallery.

Speaker 8 And he may be taken away.

Speaker 32 Alec, is there anything you want to say to your surviving family members?

Speaker 2 As he was led out of the back of the courthouse to spend his first night in jail as a convicted murderer,

Speaker 2 a jubilant prosecution team assembled in front of the building.

Speaker 2 There were cheers for lead prosecutor Creighton Waters, and he heaped praise on the jurors.

Speaker 2 We had no doubt if we had a chance to present our case in a court of law that they would see through the one last con that Alec Murdoch was trying to pull.

Speaker 15 And they did, and we're so grateful for that.

Speaker 2 This past weekend, I was talking about. The trial had drawn spectators from across the country.

Speaker 2 And now they also weighed in.

Speaker 54 It's the demise of an entire family.

Speaker 57 This was the only way that Paul and Megan will ever have any justice. Justice was served.

Speaker 2 It was.

Speaker 7 Now maybe they can lay you in peace.

Speaker 2 Mark Tinsley, lawyer for Mallory Beach's family.

Speaker 28 It was interesting to me

Speaker 28 that the trial testimony ended on the anniversary of the boat crash, but then for Elliot to be held accountable for what he did and have to account for what he did in such a public manner on the anniversary of

Speaker 28 them finding her body,

Speaker 55 it really has to be something more than just coincidence.

Speaker 13 We knew that the lie, as we call it, would be a major issue.

Speaker 2 Alex defeated defense team, Dick Harputlian, and Jim Griffin.

Speaker 2 How damning was that video at the kennels?

Speaker 1 Damning.

Speaker 46 Extremely. Extremely.

Speaker 13 I mean, we were talking about Jim and I were getting prepared four or five months ago. And, you know, we were looking for a way to get around.
We call it the lie. I mean, every time it's the lie.

Speaker 13 How do you get around it? How do you explain it? And apparently he didn't.

Speaker 15 So this case really boiled down to the big lie versus the big why.

Speaker 2 But South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson and Prosecutor Waters contend it was more than just that taste.

Speaker 9 Alec Murdoch, I think his voice on the kennel video, coupled with his testimony, I think that's ultimately what hung him with the jury.

Speaker 3 South Carolinians, you know, they have a good, as you know, they have a good sense and a good meter for BS.

Speaker 3 And I think that he looked them in the eye and told them lies, and that was all it took to get it over the finish line. How does Master Devi being found guilty?

Speaker 2 His first day as a convicted man, Murdoch came to the courthouse in a jumpsuit and shackles for sentencing.

Speaker 60 Would you like to address the court on any matters?

Speaker 2 The judge asked each side if they wanted to address the court.

Speaker 13 Mr. Griffin and I would have no comment.
The defendant would like to address the court, though.

Speaker 7 I would never hurt my wife, Maggie, and I would never hurt my son, Papa.

Speaker 2 The judge had a question for the convicted man about something he said on the stand. What tangle web we weave?

Speaker 8 What did you mean by that?

Speaker 7 I meant when I lied, I continue to lie.

Speaker 8 And the question is, when will it end?

Speaker 2 And then, 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 8 I sentence you for a term of the rest of your natural life.

Speaker 2 Two life terms to be served consecutively. He is appealing.

Speaker 2 The trial may be over, but for old friends of Alec, the heartbreak will never end.

Speaker 2 What's been the hardest part?

Speaker 15 Hardest part is

Speaker 17 two friends that we'll never see again, two people that we love, knowing that we'll never see Maggie and Paul again.

Speaker 2 Who was the Paul that you knew?

Speaker 36 The Paul that we knew was loving.

Speaker 36 He was funny. He had a big heart.

Speaker 2 What do you want the world to know

Speaker 2 about your sorority sister turned dear friend, Maggie Ruddough?

Speaker 16 The world lost a very special person.

Speaker 37 I lost a dear friend.

Speaker 16 I still hear her laugh. It's at a very loud

Speaker 16 laugh.

Speaker 16 And I miss her.

Speaker 2 But when the the talk turns to Alec, Chris Wilson struggles. Theft, lying,

Speaker 2 drug addiction.

Speaker 2 It's a lot of secrets to have between

Speaker 2 two really good friends of more than 30 years.

Speaker 25 I thought I knew him.

Speaker 17 At the end of the day, I thought I knew somebody that I didn't know.

Speaker 2 A favored son of the Low Country, a life with all that glitter. A legendary family, now with a tragic new chapter.

Speaker 14 I mean, as we sit here right now, how do you feel about him?

Speaker 16 My thoughts right now aren't

Speaker 16 good at all about him, but

Speaker 16 I know I'm supposed to forgive him.

Speaker 59 The Bible teaches us to forgive.

Speaker 20 One day I hope I can forgive him, but not this day.

Speaker 20 Not this day.

Speaker 21 That's all for now.

Speaker 2 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 4 Thanks for joining us.

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