Side Stories: Dig Me A Grave w/ Dick Harpootlian

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Speaker 1 There's no place to escape to. This is the last podcast on the left.

Speaker 1 Side stories?

Speaker 1 That's when the cannibalism started.

Speaker 1 Side stories. Yes.

Speaker 1 A B C D E F J H I J K L M N A P Q R S T U P W X

Speaker 1 really really good stuff.

Speaker 1 A B C D A F J H I J L I'm not a pay. Yeah, I am.

Speaker 1 Henry, is that the alphabet? Yeah, you know what it is. And you know what I do, and this is true, this is a little helpful tip for everybody out there: is

Speaker 1 I practice doing it backwards. Oh, really? For when you get arrested eventually for yourself.
Yeah, for my DOI, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I practice it.

Speaker 1 Because they can give you a DOI for weed. I practice it.
You find like a half joint in your car. I practice the walk.
Uh-huh. I practice holding my leg up.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I practice, I'm so good at drunk tests. Yeah.
You'd have no fucking idea how drunk I was until obviously I was like fighting the officer.

Speaker 1 That's the thing is like you just you get you pass all the tests and then you take a swing and you're fucked. Your problem is it cuts to the SUV on the

Speaker 1 SUV just seesawing on the divider. Being like, I'm walking fine.
It's the driving. That's the problem, officer.
You know, like maybe the problem is I shouldn't be in a car, officer. I'm joking.

Speaker 1 I don't drink and drive anymore.

Speaker 1 Anymore.

Speaker 1 Is the real key there. Yeah, I don't do it anymore.
Yeah. And when I used to do it, I used to do it in Henry's car.
Yep. When I would steal it from him.
And that's called sharing.

Speaker 1 It's called community. And the Zoomers are losing it.
Welcome to Side Stories. My name is Henry.
I'm sitting here with Ed Larson. Yeah, the Zoomers are losing and the gooners are winning.
Maybe.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they are. Now, you would say, oh, Henry and Ed, what a wonderful bunch of stories that are coming out this week.
Aren't you so excited to do a show?

Speaker 1 And we were like, let's save it all for next week. Yes.
It's Thanksgiving. Because we know we were tired.
We still got together to talk. We did.
But we're like, we're not working.

Speaker 1 Technically, we are, but we're not. Well, it'll be fun, though.
We have a good thing. There's two things that I would.
Well, next week we're going to come back hardcore with these amazing topics.

Speaker 1 Number one, the DeForved story is about to absolutely. There's a new guy.
They believe that there is a person that helped them. Of course there is.
He's an idiot. He got away with it for too long.

Speaker 1 Very much so. The Celestial Mystery, she was frozen, so they don't know if they can find out a way of dying.
Like how she died. They think it's going to fuck up when she finding out when she died.

Speaker 1 So that's going to be very... Like, that's why the Iceman used to freeze him.
Oh,

Speaker 1 okay. Because it fucks up the time of death.
Interesting, interesting. So, all right, all right.
But they don't know how she died? No, we don't know yet. No, like, strangulation, nothing like that.

Speaker 1 Well, it certainly wasn't of old age in a nursing home. Certainly not.
No, so that is,

Speaker 1 it was bad. Whatever it was, it was before her time.
And also, we missed. Maybe you could have froze her in the bin? Like, put her in a deep freezer? I actually, I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't think DeForvid's forward-thinking enough to buy a deep freezer. There's a weird part of me that thinks that DeForvid doesn't have a queen's fridge like I do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like I have the meat freezer in the other room. Nothing made me feel like I had made it till that second refrigerator came into my life.
I don't care.

Speaker 1 I keep it on, and I warm, like, I cool like four beers in there and I don't care. I have a drink fridge because it's trash and that is my right.
Yes, it is. As trash.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't need much more than that. No, that's all I ever wanted was the second one.

Speaker 1 And also possibly a television outside. Whoa.
That's the other big sign of true trash with money. Really? Is putting a television outside of your home.
Yeah. Are you ready for that?

Speaker 1 I mean, you got the screen. You put the.
Natalie says she wants me to watch her more outside. Oh, Oh, so you're going to put a TV and

Speaker 1 physically be there? Yeah. But you're not actually watching it.
No, I'm watching both. What do you mean? She wants you to watch her because she's scared she's going to fall?

Speaker 1 No, she's just like, oh, we should spend more time outside together. We have a backyard.
And I was like, yes. I agree with that, by the way.
Same, but. And Julie talked about this recently as well.

Speaker 1 But I like watching movies so we can be outside together while I'm watching a movie. That makes sense.
That makes sense. You know what it is?

Speaker 1 It's like whenever I'm out of town or I like get an Airbnb, I spend the whole time in the backyard. And then I come home and I never enjoy my own backyard.

Speaker 1 You got to put time up, but that's why you got Julie working like she's a human backhoe back there, dragging rocks back and forth. She's a fucking

Speaker 1 human fucking piece of construction equipment.

Speaker 1 My yard looks amazing. I love you, Julie.
Julie has been hand-digging up that yard like she's.

Speaker 1 My therapist had, like, I was like having problems because my manliness came into question because I'm not helping no

Speaker 1 I was like no no no no no no no I refused to and I was like let me hire somebody to help you and I'm not trying to fucking dig up the backyard and she's like no she took that as like a challenge yeah wow that like I like me saying you can't do this I'm like I'm not saying you can't do this I'm saying you don't have to do this I'm gonna do this Natalie be like I bet you can't dig us a pool yeah

Speaker 1 bet you can't dig us a pool huh i mean oh i bet a woman can't dig a pool on her own, huh? If that don't work with her, try it on Julie. I will.

Speaker 1 It will get her to dig it. Oh, I bet a woman wouldn't know how to order the proper shovels in order to dig this pool.

Speaker 1 But also, you know what a woman can do is help a murderer get out of their care home. Morgan Geyser, that was the other big story of the week.
God, she a woman with the last name, Geyser. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The boys come knocking for old geysers. Put on your water shoes.

Speaker 1 It was a little girl. So Morgan Geyser.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 I thought that was the adult. Yeah, I mean, it sort of is.
So Morgan Geyser and her cohort, I forgot her cohort, but she was actually put into jail for stabbing a little girl, their friend.

Speaker 1 Now, we remember this is the Slender Man stabber. Morgan Geyser was put into, she was released from jail

Speaker 1 against a lot of our thoughts here. Last podcast and the left, we thought maybe she could, she, I feel like that she maybe should have been in a more controlled environment.

Speaker 1 And it turns out I was completely right because then she immediately escaped from the halfway home that she was in with a geolocator tracker on her that was snipped off.

Speaker 1 It turns out she was helped by some random busybody woman that decided to just help her.

Speaker 1 She's a quote-unquote victim advocate. Yeah.
Decided to help her escape. from the insane asylum.
So for a second, we thought that we had Michael Myers on our hands. I was so excited.

Speaker 1 God, it is like I was going to say, is it wrong that this is like fun and exciting to me? Dude, Natalie yelled at me. Because I say, it was like, what?

Speaker 1 When the news came out, I was like, this is amazing.

Speaker 1 And she's like, it's not amazing. She's a vulnerable person.
I was like, yes, I know, but she's also a psychopath. She's got a fucking, you're doing it.
She's going rogue, you know?

Speaker 1 Oh, she went too early. That's the problem.
She had no idea what she was doing. So she made it up to Madison.

Speaker 1 She made it pretty far with the help of another dumb person that helped them go and it's really sad morgan geyser i think is going to there's a lot going on here i uh i still think that morgan geyser is not yet out of the woods of course not i will say even though they can't just go into the woods and come back out of the woods that other person uh technically who helped her if i was morgan geyser i'd be like she convinced me to do it i'm a victim you know i'm a victim to victim is what she's that's basically what she's doing that's what she should do that is kind of what she's doing we're already saying that she was manipulated by somebody that, and it's, yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 She's a murderer. I know she's a murderer.
She's a murderer. Well, yeah.
She's a child murderer, though. She's not a murderer.
She's let her out eventually.

Speaker 1 The child never died. The child never died.
The child never died. You know, you got to let these people have to rehabilitate, and you got to let them out eventually.

Speaker 1 Utterly agree, except for the fact that she was still talking to Slender Man until not that long ago. Oh, really? Yeah, Slender Man.
What did he say? He's saying lots of stuff.

Speaker 1 Weirdly, a lot about bonds,

Speaker 1 which I actually thought was interesting. He said,

Speaker 1 he said something about the idea of let your bonds mature and then let's go. I got Bologna coin.
Did you order Bologna coins? Yeah, yes. Yes, I ordered the Trump shoes.
Where are they?

Speaker 1 Where are my Trump shoes?

Speaker 1 But yeah, that's the big case, which is sad. Also, it's nice because of the side story's curse.
It was wrapped up already, at least. Okay, all right.
So that's already happened.

Speaker 1 She escaped. She was already recaptured by the time the news cycle was over.
Hell yeah, man. Well, that's so exciting.
But it made me sad.

Speaker 1 So we're going to, we did get the Epstein shits finally coming out, but it hasn't come out yet. It's all going to be so redacted.
It's going to be so redacted. It's going to be dragging.

Speaker 1 I don't think the fact that they all said that they were going to do it all of a sudden means like, oh, it's just all redacted. Every one of these fucking slime balls can each one of them.

Speaker 1 Honestly,

Speaker 1 at least we know that they're going to take down all the Democrats. I mean, I know.

Speaker 1 Honestly, though, at least like some people are going to get fucked. Yeah, I get it.
Which is nice.

Speaker 1 But I want all of them to get fucked, Eddie. Yes, I want all of them too.
But we can start. Well, they're going to start rolling.
Yeah, get all of them.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes, they should. Yeah.
Oh, my God. What if they go arrest Bill Clinton? He's like, yeah, Trump blew me.

Speaker 1 Trump sucked my fucking dick. Bill Clinton needs to put out the pictures.
He's going to die any day. The pictures were in its shows with Donald Trump with cum on his lips.

Speaker 1 Oh, because you know if he had a camera phone in the moment. Oh, yeah, they're taking a selfie.
Well, they didn't have camera phones. No, would you believe this? It's hilarious.

Speaker 1 No, this is funny. I can't even believe it.
You guys hold it on your chest. No, listen.

Speaker 1 I got to say to you, Donald, I've had a lot of blowjobs from all fat girls before, and you're one of the best I've ever had. God damn it, I love your man, pussy.

Speaker 1 I just got to say,

Speaker 1 you've got the best gut I've ever seen since Betunia Richardson, who I met at the Cracker Barrel in Tuscaloosa.

Speaker 1 I swear to God, when you were giving me a blowjob, I thought I was fucking you in the ass. Here, come on, can you push it? You push the goddamn ugly.
You push the bottom of your belly together.

Speaker 1 I want to match it up tiny fucking cousin. I want to match up titty fucking my cousin.
Oh my god, there's shit coming out of my penis.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Guys, don't worry.

Speaker 1 This is going to be a fun news cycle. Can't wait for the rest of that news.
I say we dig up No Machinsky. Oh, Machonski's still alive, right? Who cares? He's going to fall.
Let's get his fucking ass.

Speaker 1 All right, so this is it. So now we are going to, because this is a holiday break, this is Happy Thanksgiving.
First intro for the senator.

Speaker 1 Eddie did this random interview.

Speaker 1 It's really good. It's a really good interview.

Speaker 1 I was so scared.

Speaker 1 I was losing my mind. I was terrified.
Henry's like, I'm sick. I can't make the interview.
I was like, for the senator? Yeah. For the Alex Murdoch defending senator? I have to do this by myself.
Mr.

Speaker 1 Mortick. Mr.
Mortick.

Speaker 1 He'd be a charge with the capital crime of mortal.

Speaker 1 He's like, Yeah, no, don't worry. He wrote, he's got this new book coming out about Pee Wee Gaskin.
I'm like, who? Yeah, exactly. So I had to fucking study for a day and a half.

Speaker 1 But Ed Larson sat down with the, I believe, the head of the defense team for Alec Murdoch, who is a former senator and a he's friends with the Murdoch family, which we got into a little bit.

Speaker 1 Very fascinating. But Ed did this in such a, I'm so glad I wasn't there so that you could do what you do best, which is you kind of innocently

Speaker 1 pushed buttons on the senator that loved you for it.

Speaker 1 So, you got, I mean this.

Speaker 1 I honestly, I have a respect for this man, even though I'm not sure if he's evil or not. But the book seems good.
You guys got to check. He's got a new book coming out all about Pee Wee Gaskins.

Speaker 1 Pee Wee Gaskins tried to kill,

Speaker 1 tried to kidnap his daughter. Yes, he prosecuted Pee Wee Gaskins.
He then switched over to the other side to make that money.

Speaker 1 He became a senator and then advocated for the firing squad during his time being a senator, which I talked to him about. And then after that, he defended Alex Murdoch.
You got to see that.

Speaker 1 You got to go and check out this interview. Ed does with Dick Harputlian.
Check this out next.

Speaker 1 And we will be back next week after Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 Everything's just going to go worse. And that only means we get funnier.

Speaker 1 Hey, Henry, did you know that the apparently the Department of Homeland Security's Twitter account is based out of Tel Aviv?

Speaker 1 Nothing says home like another country.

Speaker 1 So go check it out. Hail Satan and enjoy Ed's lip service to old dick.

Speaker 1 Oh, and I want to hail Jimmy Cliff. He passed away today.
Oh, wow. One of my favorite artists of all time.
Also, strangely enough, Udu Kiir died as well. Really? Yeah, the great actor.
Oh, man.

Speaker 1 What a fucking day. And all on Bootsy Collins' birthday.
What are we supposed to do with all this information? Listen to the Dick Harpoolian interview starting now. Yep.

Speaker 2 Live from North Lauren.

Speaker 1 Thank you and welcome, honored and loyal Patreon listeners of last podcast on the left.

Speaker 1 I'm sitting here with the most prestigious man I've ever talked to, Dick Harpoolian, former senator of South Carolina, Democrat senator of South Carolina. Not very common that you get one of those.

Speaker 1 And you were a Democratic senator from 2018 to 2024, but we're not talking about that today too much.

Speaker 1 Today, we're talking about his new book, Dig Me a Grave, and it tells the story of Harpulian's real-life prosecution of Donald Pee-Wee Gaskins. Wow.

Speaker 1 So you were the prosecutor on one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.

Speaker 1 Well, the largest serial killer in South Carolina, convicted of murder number 14, this guy really liked to kill.

Speaker 1 He arranged, we don't think for money, but he arranged with the son of two folks that were gunned down during an armed robbery,

Speaker 1 hired Gaskins or arranged for Gaskins to kill the perpetrator. of that armed robbery and murder who is on death row

Speaker 1 and gaskins smuggled in a quarter of a pound of C4 explosive, blasting up to the most secure wing of the most secure facility in South Carolina in 1982 and blew the guy's head off.

Speaker 1 How do you smuggle in C4 into a prison?

Speaker 1 That's a great question.

Speaker 1 You know, we have it. Gaskins tape recorded his conversations with SEMO.
We know what he said to do, which was to mail it him, mail it to him

Speaker 1 in a radio.

Speaker 1 And I actually at some point during this process can play a couple minutes of that conversation if you find it interesting, or I could send it to you. Oh, please send it over.
I'd love to hear that.

Speaker 1 That's incredible. We'll add that in.

Speaker 1 In fact, we'll hear it right here.

Speaker 3 I need one electric cap

Speaker 3 and as much of a stick-o-damn dynamite as you can get. I'll take a damn radio and rig it into a bum before he plugs it up.
That sound of a bitch will go off and it won't be no damn coming back on that

Speaker 3 okay I'll get one of these battery electric types up in one of these old cheap things and put it in and give it to him and when he plugs that son of a bitch up it'll blow him on the end of hell

Speaker 3 but one electric cap and as much of a stick you can get in as pure as you can get he told me to call you maybe over the weekend you can find one stick somewhere and get it to me and damn if I can't fix him up.

Speaker 1 Okay, well

Speaker 3 I'll probably get at least plastic explosive. Well, that'll be good.
I can have it as long as I got that electric cap of where it'll go out when he plugs it in the wall socket.

Speaker 3 All the troubles will be over. If I thought about that a long time ago, it'd already been over with you.
Because he's in a cell by himself.

Speaker 1 It ain't done nothing.

Speaker 3 That's making him sick as hell. Just make him sick as hell.
He'll look pale as hell for a day or two. And that's it.
Give it to him. Give it to him.
I got about one more ghost.

Speaker 3 I'm going to give him his eggs in the morning.

Speaker 3 That's only that you about run me crazy. All right.

Speaker 1 Well, I'll get that stuff going this weekend. I get there.
I know where I'm good.

Speaker 3 Good, good. Just getting enough to do the damn job and listen for the bang.

Speaker 1 So he was hired to kill.

Speaker 1 So as a conviction, he's already on death row at this point. Hey,

Speaker 1 give you history. Gaskins was convicted and sentenced to death for two murders in the 73, 70, I can't remember the exact time, range.

Speaker 1 U.S. Supreme Court decided a case called Furman versus Georgia, which

Speaker 1 set aside virtually every death penalty conviction or sentence in the country, including Gaskins. Gaskins was told

Speaker 1 that they would reprosecute him for that and get him the death penalty unless he confessed to every other murder he had done for which he had not been caught. So he confessed to 11 other murders,

Speaker 1 actually took him out, dug up the bodies,

Speaker 1 helped them dig up the bodies. But 13 victims were, bodies were recovered total, including the two he was convicted of.
And he got, you know, 12 or 13 life sentences. Now,

Speaker 1 in 1975, when that happened, the

Speaker 1 penalty for murder

Speaker 1 was life.

Speaker 1 However,

Speaker 1 They had never changed the law that said if you got life, you're eligible for parole in 10 years.

Speaker 1 so technically he was eligible to get out in 10 years um so and he was the he was the model inmate so they made him the building man they call it for the cell block in which death row cell block two death row was contained and

Speaker 1 he became uh he he was the head trustee he and he had a background of uh he could fix uh the plumbing he could fix the electrician the electrical problems he basically was the maintenance guy and he picked all the other trustees so he had a tremendous amount of power in that cell block.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 again, he

Speaker 1 now, one of the sort of overarching issues in Pee Wee's life was he was probably the worst, the most virulent racist you could ever imagine. One of the murders or two of the murders in the book

Speaker 1 are early on in his career where a woman he had dated or I use that term loosely a few years before shows up in his doorstep pregnant with her two-year-old child who who she admitted was of mixed race and she was pregnant by a black man so in pee wee's mind that those folks um

Speaker 1 would not if they realized how bad and how awful the situation was uh would not want to live so he took him to a little pond behind his house uh where he drowned the pregnant woman and then beat the two-year-old to death with a hammer and then buried them in the swamp

Speaker 1 so um the Tyner, who was the guy on death road, who was African-American, killed two white folks. And so I'm not sure he was hired to do it.
I think he did it because he wanted to do it. And

Speaker 1 that was that final one, the 14th murder was the one I convicted him of.

Speaker 1 He was sentenced to death and executed about

Speaker 1 six years later. No, about eight years later.

Speaker 1 And at the time he was executed, I was the elected DA,

Speaker 1 and he attempted to have my four-year-old daughter kidnapped and held hostage

Speaker 1 two weeks out to try to get me to get him brought up to the courthouse where he thought he could escape. And how did that go?

Speaker 1 Well, his son, a teenage son, was visiting him, and his name was Donnie. He said, Donnie, look, they're going to kill me unless we can find a way out.
And here's what you do. You go kidnap.

Speaker 1 Swister Harpuyan's daughter,

Speaker 1 put her in the trunk of your car, hold her hostage, call him him and tell him to have me brought up to the courthouse for a meeting with him in his office.

Speaker 1 Now, Gaskins somehow knew I had a private entrance and exit. Not many people did, but he knew that.
And he thought if he could get up there, he could escape.

Speaker 1 And he said, and he, and this is in the young Gaskin's statement he gave later on, what am I supposed to do if he won't do that? And he said, kill her. Now,

Speaker 1 little Gaskins, young Gaskins, went to a friend of his and tried to recruit him, said his father paid him five thousand dollars to help him pull off this kidnapping. That kid, well,

Speaker 1 he his background was a little had plenty of criminal activity in it,

Speaker 1 knew this was a bridge too far. So he went to the sheriff, told the sheriff what was going on.
They took young Gaskins into custody and this kid into custody.

Speaker 1 But there were other people out there that Gaskins may have talked to. So we lived, my four-year-old, my wife, and I lived

Speaker 1 with the

Speaker 1 police

Speaker 1 special agents living with us armed with automatic weapons for two weeks until they executed him. So

Speaker 1 he made it personal, you know. Yes, he did.
That is, it couldn't be more personal.

Speaker 1 And what happened to young Donald? What was his sentence after that?

Speaker 1 Well, he didn't actually effectuate anything. So they held him for a while and then let him out.
I mean, once his dad was dead, he was no longer a threat to me.

Speaker 1 Okay. And his father went to the electric chair.
Now, his father went to the electric chair and you prosecuted him.

Speaker 1 And you also, you prosecuted some other people who went to the electric chair as well, right? Like 12 people total. No, I prosecuted, I prosecuted probably 15 death penalty cases.

Speaker 1 Post

Speaker 1 Furman,

Speaker 1 I prosecuted

Speaker 1 Gaskins and one more where he was sentenced to death. Our state Supreme Court affirmed it.
I argued it in front of the U.S.

Speaker 1 Supreme Court and it got his death sentence commuted to life by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Speaker 1 A little bit of a side note: Justice Souter had just been appointed by George H. Bush and turned out to be not the conservative that George H.
Bush thought he would be.

Speaker 1 And he was vehemently anti-death penalty. And while he was on the court, he always voted against it.
And look,

Speaker 1 I'm not a death penalty fanatic. I think in limited circumstances where the act is an act of self-defense, I mean, Gaskins,

Speaker 1 you know, gets sentenced to death, then gets a break, commuted to life, and then he tries to, I mean, not tries, he does assassinate somebody on death row. I mean, if not him, who?

Speaker 1 I mean, how are you going to stop him? In prison, he continues to kill.

Speaker 1 This other guy was a serial rapist. He preyed on women, ate women in their 80s, beat one to death.
He beat them all up, but beat one to death. He was an animal.
He was

Speaker 1 just, you know, someone that every minute he's breathing air, somebody's going to get hurt.

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Speaker 1 That's betterhlp.com slash lastpod.

Speaker 1 So also, speaking of capital punishment and death penalty, you've advocated for firing squad to be brought back, correct?

Speaker 1 As a senator, I introduced legislation to bring the firing squad back. And the rationale for that is, in my mind, pretty simple.

Speaker 1 When Gaskins was executed, his hair caught on fire, his eyes exploded.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a horrible way to die. And, you know, we're better than him.

Speaker 1 So for a number of years, we had the option of electric chair. They picked electric chair or lethal injection, and almost everybody picked lethal injection.

Speaker 1 And then the drug companies would not, would they stop furnishing the drugs. So the only option was the electric chair.

Speaker 1 And so I'd read a number of articles, including an opinion, including an opinion by Justice Sotomaire, a liberal, that she felt that the firing squad was much more humane than than the electric chair.

Speaker 1 And by all

Speaker 1 accounts, it is.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 the inmate take, now we've gotten the drugs back here, so you can choose firing squad, lethal injection, or the electric chair.

Speaker 1 And I think most of them are going for lethal injection again. Although a guy a few months ago picked

Speaker 1 firing squad.

Speaker 1 So it's their choice. They made some bad choices in their lives.
They get to make one more.

Speaker 1 So when someone's executed by firing squad, like is that true that one person has blanks, or is that just a myth? That's a myth. That's a myth.
So everyone has, how many people?

Speaker 1 Can you explain the process to me?

Speaker 1 So in South Carolina, it differs from state to state that have this. There's three people.
They're about, I think, 15 feet away.

Speaker 1 The

Speaker 1 condemned wear

Speaker 1 a hood. There's a target put over,

Speaker 1 a paper target put over their heart.

Speaker 1 They use a 30-06, which is, you know, what you shoot a grizzly bear with. I mean, it's a big gun.
Yeah. And they have laser sights on it.
So,

Speaker 1 you know, you're not going to miss. Yeah.
You're not missing. All three know

Speaker 1 they're using a loaded weapon and all three shoot with the intent to kill. Who are, who gets hired for this job? What is that?

Speaker 1 Oh man, they had hundreds of volunteers. Okay,

Speaker 1 you gotta, you gotta, but you've got to be a Department of Corrections employee to begin with,

Speaker 1 which narrows it down. And then you have to have some skills.
You have to show you have a background in being able to handle a weapon, aim a weapon, and be effective at it.

Speaker 1 So it's a very confidential process.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 recently

Speaker 1 there was rumors that the gentleman who was executed by firing squad, somebody missed because there was only two holes,

Speaker 1 entrance wounds.

Speaker 1 And what they found was that because of the laser sights,

Speaker 1 one bullet went in right where the other bullet went in. So, I mean, it's...

Speaker 1 I mean, it's really hard to miss, especially if you're a professional. And with the laser sights, it's impossible.

Speaker 1 Do you believe that firing squad is the most humane way to administer the death penalty?

Speaker 1 You know, I think it is a it's more humane than the electric chair. There's no question about that.

Speaker 1 Now, whether it's more humane than lethal injection, there have been reports of people that some of the inmates yell out and scream they're in pain before they actually go out.

Speaker 1 I don't know, but my goal Again, the only option when I put this bill in and got it passed was the electric electric chair. Is it more humane than the electric chair? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 You can see case after case after case where people don't die. They're in agony for minutes.
They take a second, it takes a second jolt. Their hair catches on fire.
Their eyes explode.

Speaker 1 Their skin burns. I mean,

Speaker 1 you're basically burning somebody to death.

Speaker 1 Have you ever been in the room? No, I was invited to Gaskins, but,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 there was, and maybe this,

Speaker 1 it's in the book

Speaker 1 during the trial, which lasted about six weeks

Speaker 1 on lunch break.

Speaker 1 And by the way, Gaskins was an extraordinarily five foot two, tiny little guy, very engaging, very friendly.

Speaker 1 In all the years that I prosecuted cases, I'd never had a defendant refer to me by my first name.

Speaker 1 But during this process, the pretrial hearings and the trial, as Gaskins would come into the courtroom, he'd say, hey, Dick, you know, it's a big smile.

Speaker 1 And of course, at some point, you say, hey, Pee-Wee, you know, he's just doing a job. So we're sitting in the courtroom one day at lunch.
I'm working at my table, the prosecution table,

Speaker 1 getting ready for a witness in the afternoon. And Pee Wee, the Gaskins, is sitting over at the defense table.

Speaker 1 And they were letting him eat his lunch up in the courtroom because the holding cell is not conducive to any

Speaker 1 quiet or privacy because there's a whole bunch of other inmates down there um and he's eating his lunch and i'm working and i hear him his high-pitched voice say uh dick dick i said what pee wee what do you want he said you know you're a lot like me

Speaker 1 and i said uh

Speaker 1 what what are you talking about i'm not a lot like you he said yeah yeah yeah

Speaker 1 six foot tall

Speaker 1 he said he said no no no he said you like killing i said what he said you like killing

Speaker 1 no i don't he said well i've been watching it. You like killing me.
You're enjoying it. I said, no, no, no, you know,

Speaker 1 I'm just doing my job. I'm trying to see justice done.
He said, no,

Speaker 1 you like killing. So what he's basically saying is trying to get in my head.

Speaker 1 I'm the same as him. He kills.
I kill.

Speaker 1 And so when I was, I mean, first of all, I don't want to watch anybody die. But secondly,

Speaker 1 I'm better than Gaskins. I wasn't going to go watch him die.
He enjoyed watching people die. That's not what I,

Speaker 1 I mean, I enjoyed doing my job, which is being an effective advocate for my position, but watching him die.

Speaker 1 And I had that opportunity. I turned it down.
I probably. And by the way, I would have had to left my family who was under guard,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 because of the assassination of the kidnapping threat.

Speaker 1 which I wasn't about to do. I got a call about midnight from the head of our law enforcement division saying he was dead.
And I got a good night's sleep. I bet you did.

Speaker 1 That must have been a very trying time. And I appreciate you.
It was a very, and by the way, I quit six weeks later. Really?

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, it was traumatic.

Speaker 1 The prosecution,

Speaker 1 and that was my third death penalty case in like two years, the preparation, the intensity.

Speaker 1 And then on the Gaskins case, it was

Speaker 1 six weeks,

Speaker 1 longest criminal trial in the history of the state until two years ago when

Speaker 1 uh i would participate in a case as a defense attorney representing a guy named alec murdah oh yeah so that's a very crazy case as well now that's the longest now that's the longest criminal case in the history of the state 40 years apart i did both of them of course man well you got to call him the best guy for the job apparently um so Alex Murdaugh, I do want to talk more about, let's get to Alex in a second.

Speaker 1 I want to talk more about Pee Wee in your book before we, before we talk about Alex Murdaw, because that's a whole nother can of worms. I want to stay on Pee-Wee for a little bit.
Pee-week askins,

Speaker 1 you said he was a model prisoner. Did he, is it true he escaped a couple times?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it's sort of a long history, but when he was, he was born in 1933

Speaker 1 and went to what

Speaker 1 would be called a reform school today when he was 14 in the 40s.

Speaker 1 And he was a little guy, and they, you know, 50 of them slept in one big room. He was sexually assaulted every night.
And I think

Speaker 1 it's part of what twisted him the way he was. But he escaped from that reform school six times, seven times, over a short period of time.
And during his criminal

Speaker 1 career, if you will, he escaped a number of other times.

Speaker 1 One time from a courthouse during a trial. He was so small,

Speaker 1 he bent the bars back on a second floor. This is back before we had air conditioning in courthouses.
And so they just had an open window. You could close the window with openness and bars.

Speaker 1 And he got the bars, got out, dropped down, broke his ankle, actually. He walked with a limp later on in life, but he hid under a police car.
When they found out he was gone, they'd spread out.

Speaker 1 When they came back the next next morning, written in the dew

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 the windshield of one of the police cars was,

Speaker 1 I was here, ha ha, peewee.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 and he escaped two other times when he was incarcerated

Speaker 1 in county facilities. Now, having said that,

Speaker 1 after he

Speaker 1 confessed and was incarcerated, occasionally he would say, at least two occasions, and I talked to agents that went with him, said, you know, I killed somebody else.

Speaker 1 I can't remember the name, but I buried him. I can show you where I buried him.

Speaker 1 And he went out one time and I talked to a guy named Tom Henderson who was out there, a sweat agent, a state law enforcement agent, went with him.

Speaker 1 And he kept looking around and across the field, there was a car sort of driving back and forth.

Speaker 1 And they believe that it was Gaskins had arranged for a car to be there and he was going to hoof it across the field. And they told him, Pete, we see that guy over there.

Speaker 1 If you make a break, we're going to shoot you. So,

Speaker 1 and they always had ankle

Speaker 1 things on, you know, bracelets on. So, and

Speaker 1 cuffs. So he couldn't run very fast.
But there's no question he was always looking for a way to break out.

Speaker 1 Even during the trial,

Speaker 1 He, and of course, the courthouse he went to in 1983 was different than any courthouse he'd ever been in here in Richmond County. It was a brand new courthouse, no windows.

Speaker 1 Okay. No windows.

Speaker 1 Okay. And so no way to break, go through a window.
The holding cell was in the basement. And again, no windows, no way to get out of there.

Speaker 1 So he figured, we believe,

Speaker 1 the only way to get, to escape, and he wanted to escape, was to do this.

Speaker 1 He had gotten a prescription for valium, Resannex, one or the other, to take one every day to quote, calm him down, which I'm sure was a faked diagnosis. I imagine he was a little high stroke.

Speaker 1 A little high stroke. So he saved him up and took like 10 at once.
And so in the middle of the trial, one day in the courtroom, Gaskins just falls over hard face down on the table.

Speaker 1 And they carried him downstairs to the holding cell where

Speaker 1 he thought they would put him in an ambulance and take him to the hospital. But they brought an EMS in there.

Speaker 1 Now, if they take him to the hospital, we think he had maybe had an associate ready and willing to help him escape from the hospital. Once he was outside those walls,

Speaker 1 you know, he thought he could get away. But they brought EMS in who treated him, gave him some fluids.
Maybe, I don't think they pumped his stomach, but he was fine by the next morning.

Speaker 1 When he was getting ready to be executed the day before, he cut his wrists. Now, A, where did he get a razor? And B, he cut him, you know, he cut him knowing it wouldn't kill him.
And he wanted again

Speaker 1 to go to the infirmary or go somewhere less secure than death row. They sewed him up.

Speaker 1 And the day he was to be executed, he told the warden, he said, you know,

Speaker 1 I'm not going to make you look for that razor that I used. And he like.
coughed it up. I don't know whether he had in his stomach or not, pulled it out and gave it to the warden.

Speaker 1 I mean, that was incredible. I mean, he was a killing machine.
He really was. No.

Speaker 1 Cunning, very cunning. Yeah, he's on record, you said, for 14 officially.
Officially.

Speaker 1 And wasn't there someone in prison that he like, didn't he slit the throat of another man in prison?

Speaker 1 Early on, he stabbed an inmate that had threatened to kill. I mean, I say early on in the 60s.
He was in there on some minor charge and he had a beef with this guy and he stabbed him. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that he didn't even get prosecuted for murder that he got prosecuted for something else. But I mean, it wasn't any significant sentence.
Gotcha. Gotcha.

Speaker 1 And his daughter is on record saying that he killed 105 people involving the coastal murders. And that seems ridiculous, right?

Speaker 1 Well, he wrote a book before he was killed, executed called The Final Truth.

Speaker 1 It was published afterwards, where he claimed to have killed over 100, picked up girls hitchhiking, tortured them, mutilated them, ate part of their bodies, killed them.

Speaker 1 And I mean, again, I spent a lot of time with Gaskins. He always wanted people to think that he was a big guy, five foot two and 110 pounds.

Speaker 1 He obviously had some issues about being the biggest, the best, or whatever.

Speaker 1 And again, in 1975, He was told, if you tell us about a murder, you won't be prosecuted. You won't either be prosecuted or we'll give you life for it.

Speaker 1 So he had to get out of jail free for every murder

Speaker 1 that he'd ever done. And by the way, he never got out of jail after 75.

Speaker 1 So he couldn't, he didn't have an opportunity to commit any of those murders he talks about. They all had to be pre-1975, 73.

Speaker 1 Don't believe it.

Speaker 1 He made it up. And by the way, there was a time, there was a guy who was convicted ultimately of kidnapping and murdering a girl from Sumter, South Carolina.
And her father was of some renown.

Speaker 1 Her name was Kutno. A guy named Junior Pierce in Georgia was convicted and sentenced for that.
Gaskins claimed

Speaker 1 at some point that he committed the murder, and then they found out he'd been communicating with Junior Pierce was his name, the guy in Georgia. So he was just doing that to misdirect.

Speaker 1 Again, master of chaos, master of murder.

Speaker 1 That is wild. So do you believe that his number is 14? Or do you think it's a different?

Speaker 1 I don't think so. It might be a stray one here or there.
But again, he had to get out of jail, not get out of jail, but avoid prosecution card for simply telling about all of them.

Speaker 1 It didn't matter how they happened, didn't matter, whatever. And he confessed to 13.

Speaker 1 And so Pee Week asks, what was his job in life? I know he drove around a hearse, but he wasn't, you know, he wasn't a gravedigger or anything.

Speaker 1 He,

Speaker 1 you know, he was a guy that worked as a roofer. He worked as an electrician.
He worked as a plumber. He had all those skills.

Speaker 1 He also was very good at

Speaker 1 dealing with mechanics. He could fix a car

Speaker 1 back in the day when you didn't need a computer to do that. He was supple, you know, mechanical.

Speaker 1 He was great with cars.

Speaker 1 He could put a bomb in a cup.

Speaker 1 He, well,

Speaker 1 and, you know, people say, well, how did he put a bomb in a cup? And by by the way, the cup is about this size. This is my Yeti, about this size.

Speaker 1 And what he did was he had a soldering iron, which the prison allowed him to have because he was working on their electrical work, melted a hole in the bottom right here, put a female plug there, connected it on the inside with the blasting cap, put the C4 on top, and then nuts.

Speaker 1 and bolts,

Speaker 1 any sharp piece of metal he could think of. And then he glued a speaker on top and he convinced Tyner this was an intercom and had it delivered to him.

Speaker 1 And they would, they had communicated, Peewee's cell was on one side of the tier. If you know what a tier in a prison looks like, it's like a battleship that comes out of the ground.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And there's cells on the ground and then tier two and tier three. This was tier two.
One side was death row. The other side was just regular inmates.

Speaker 1 But there were vents in the back of the cells across from each other as you go down. And Gaskin's cell was one, was offset by one Batiner cell.

Speaker 1 So he used to yell at him or communicate through those vents. I'm sure it was lovely.
And he got Tyner,

Speaker 1 he befriended him. He got him marijuana.
He got him, and he could have extra food delivered to him because he was the building man.

Speaker 1 And we found out later on he was putting poison. I'll send you that tape.
He talks about how they're trying to poison Tyner. It won't work.

Speaker 1 So Gaskins finally says, look, I've rigged up this intercom. He has delivered when the guy delivers his food, he brings that with him too.

Speaker 1 And he said, and he'd run a wire because he had access to that area between the back of the cells, a wire from his cell to Tyner's cell and has a mail plug on it. And he told.

Speaker 1 Tyner to plug it up and put it up to his ear,

Speaker 1 which

Speaker 1 he yelled through the thing, can you hear me? And then he plugged his end into the 110.

Speaker 1 And I'm telling you, the pictures, and we have them in the book.

Speaker 1 He's missing a hand. That speaker went into his brain.

Speaker 1 I still have the shrapnel they took out of his body

Speaker 1 from the autopsy. But

Speaker 1 it took him a while to die.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 1 Even after all that? Yeah, I mean, apparently, I mean, he wasn't, I don't think he was conscious, but it took him a while for, for, when I say a while, 10, 15 minutes was hard to stop.

Speaker 1 That is truly awful. And then Pee-Wee pulls the wire back through, cuts it up, laying on his bed,

Speaker 1 went, whoa, what was that? Runs outside like everybody else. If he had not tape-recorded his phone calls with Simo, the guy whose parents were killed by Tyner, he would have gotten away with it.

Speaker 1 And what happened to Simo?

Speaker 1 So after

Speaker 1 Pee-Wee was convicted, we talked to SEMO, and here's what we found just from an informal

Speaker 1 sort of focus group of potential jurors.

Speaker 1 Most of the jurors we talked to, or potential jurors we talked to, said this guy waited for the South Carolina criminal justice system to give him justice. It didn't work.

Speaker 1 And what all he did

Speaker 1 was

Speaker 1 what the state was trying to do anyway, kill the guy. So

Speaker 1 we pled him guilty. He served a couple years to some accessory thing, served a couple of years and got out.
Simo,

Speaker 1 you'll see this in the book. Simo was twisted up about the death of his adoptive parents.
They adopted him.

Speaker 1 His house was right near the store, and he saw Tyner walking towards the store that night while he was watching TV. Dogs were barking.
He thought about checking into it and didn't.

Speaker 1 So when he finds out later that night that Tyner's killed his parents, he blamed himself. And ultimately, he killed himself after all of this.
So,

Speaker 1 he paid.

Speaker 1 Wow, that is

Speaker 1 a lot.

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Speaker 1 I'm very excited to read the book, Dig Me a Grave. It comes out this December 16th in 2025.

Speaker 1 And you can and you can pre-order right now. Just go to digmeagrave.com.

Speaker 1 You can pre-order. And so where'd you get the title?

Speaker 1 From Gaskins.

Speaker 1 One of the people who he didn't kill, but went with him on one of the killings.

Speaker 1 Gaskins hands him a shovel to,

Speaker 1 wants to bury the guy out in the swamp. He says, quote,

Speaker 1 to the guy he handed the shovel to, dig me a grave. That's a quote from Pee Wee.
And I'm sure he said it more than once.

Speaker 1 How many associates did he have? And how would he have any? Like, who's going to take this guy seriously?

Speaker 1 He was sort of charismatic. And of course, the floatsum and jetsum of society gravitated around him.

Speaker 1 You know, time men, thieves, people that committed crimes with him, stole cars or

Speaker 1 fenced, stolen goods. I mean, there were all kinds of people, some on parole, some that just gravitated towards him for a couple of reasons.
One, he always had young girls around him.

Speaker 1 Young girls. And

Speaker 1 he said he was married six times. We don't know.
We can't find any official record of him ever being married or divorced, but from time to time, he'd have a different wife, wife.

Speaker 1 And some of these wives ended up with, you know, one of these losers that gravitated towards him. And they were all miscreants.
They were all nobody. I mean,

Speaker 1 and he was smarter, more cunning, and he was so affiable. I mean, there were judges I know from where

Speaker 1 he did, where he lived, Sumter and Florence and North Charleston knew him because he might have done, helped put the roof on their house or fixed the car or in some other way did some odd job for them because everybody knew Pee-Wee could do just about everything.

Speaker 1 And they loved him. I mean, he was just a friendly,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 unless you were a threat to him or he felt

Speaker 1 You know, he should kill you for one reason or another. You know,

Speaker 1 the first murders that we know of that he's admitted to and we found bodies for, it's sort of an interesting story. He had a niece,

Speaker 1 a little bit younger than 18, probably a little bit over 17, named

Speaker 1 Janice Kirby. And she had a good friend named Patricia.
I'm going to be sure to get these names right. Patricia's

Speaker 1 Aldsbrook.

Speaker 1 And Pee-Wee, driving that hearse around, goes into a drive-in restaurant one night and sees his niece and this girl with a bunch of other girls, and they're drinking beer. And

Speaker 1 the Aldsboro girl seems, and she's probably 17, somewhat

Speaker 1 intoxicated. And

Speaker 1 his niece expressed some concern about that. He doesn't want her driving home.
Peewee said, I tell you what,

Speaker 1 why don't we drive over to my place and she can sober up and then go home? And they said, fine. So both of them get in the car and they go over to his house.
And when they get to his house, the

Speaker 1 Kirby, his niece, goes to the restroom. When she comes back out, Pee-Wee is pulling this drunk girl's pants off.
He's got a butcher knife and threatening her.

Speaker 1 And they push him out of the way and they take off and go into the woods. He grabs, he's got a little Beretta.

Speaker 1 He chases after him, brings him back to the house, and then uses the gun and beats both of them to death.

Speaker 1 Okay, now,

Speaker 1 he then puts their bodies in that hearse and drives them to a house where he knows there's a septic tank and he puts their bodies in a septic tank. Now,

Speaker 1 for your viewers that don't know what a septic tank is,

Speaker 1 okay. Well, you know what it is.

Speaker 1 It's a place the sewage percolate, it goes into this chamber, it percolates, but the bulk of the sewage stays in that chamber and occasionally you may have to get it drained, but nobody ever, ever looks in a septic tank.

Speaker 1 No. And the smell, and the smell, It's awful.

Speaker 1 It's awful. And it's going to be awful whether there's a decomposing body in there or not.
But later on, he took police there and they found the remains.

Speaker 1 So that's the first time we know, other than that prison stabbing, that he actually killed somebody.

Speaker 1 And it was his niece and her friend. uh the friend he and he had a thing for young girls um virtually i mean he married a 14 year old

Speaker 1 married and a 14 year old and um

Speaker 1 uh these girls, and one girl,

Speaker 1 Kim Gelkins, later on, probably the last murder he committed,

Speaker 1 he was afraid that she was pregnant by him,

Speaker 1 and she was very young. And she was going to tell people that he was the dad.
So he killed her.

Speaker 1 And anybody that crossed him, and of course,

Speaker 1 One of the great love stories

Speaker 1 of this book

Speaker 1 is there's a woman named Suzanne Owens, also known as Longlegs. She was about six feet tall.

Speaker 1 She had a boyfriend

Speaker 1 who

Speaker 1 broke up with her and promised her to give her a house and all, and didn't do it. So she paid Gaskins $1,000 to kill him, which he did.
He cut his throat, killed him, and she helped.

Speaker 1 And she ended up getting convicted of accessory to murder, got a, I believe, a life sentence also.

Speaker 1 One of, and sort of

Speaker 1 they continued to correspond even after Pee Wee was on death row.

Speaker 1 And he tells her in

Speaker 1 a letter or maybe it was on a telephone call that we got a copy of,

Speaker 1 that, look, your custody

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 minimal security now.

Speaker 1 Get a job where you work on the gardens around the gate and just one day go out there and just walk off, which she did. And she stayed gone for almost 10 years.

Speaker 1 She was on escape when,

Speaker 1 and of course, Pee Wee said, I'll escape and meet you somewhere, but she was on escape when this plot to kidnap my daughter was going on.

Speaker 1 So even after we had Donnie in custody, we didn't know where she was or who else might be involved. That's why we locked down.
Well, you probably see her coming down the road, six feet tall, you know.

Speaker 1 Well, remember now, he's five foot one. Yeah.
She's six feet tall. And there's no question they had a physical relationship after he killed her ex-boyfriend.
So they were lovers.

Speaker 1 I mean, if you want to, I don't, we have no graphic section in this book, but love finds a way. Yes.

Speaker 1 So, all right, I'm going to switch gears from Pee Wee Gaskins. I can't wait to read this book.
It's going to be incredible.

Speaker 1 You have

Speaker 1 a bevy of information that I'm sure is unbelievable comes out around christmas if you got a true crime fan in the in the family let me let me show you something with this and this is why i can tell you this book is virtually 100 accurate this document right here is a transcript whoa and when gaskins when gaskins confessed to all the other murders a prosecutor named ken somerford had it had a court reporter there and took it down.

Speaker 1 That's what this is. This is 500 pages of Pee Wee describing each and every murder.
So when we have details in this book, they're from Pee Wee. Or other witness, we had other witnesses too, but

Speaker 1 primarily from Pee Wee.

Speaker 1 All this stuff were exhibits in the 1983 trial. And when I got elected solicitor in 1990, took office in 91, a few months before he was executed.
After he was executed,

Speaker 1 The Court came to me and said, we've got all these exhibits, this transcript and da-da-da-da, all pictures and

Speaker 1 physical evidence.

Speaker 1 We're getting ready. We normally would just throw this stuff out.
I said, no, no, I'll take it. So I put it in storage back in 1991.

Speaker 1 And then when I began the process of writing the book, I mean,

Speaker 1 this is the only copy of this transcript that exists today. Wow.

Speaker 1 And it would have been thrown out. So

Speaker 1 this book is based on not only my observations, but Pee Wee's observations. Wow.
How much of that can we actually trust, though? Well, he was making, remember now, when he's giving this statement,

Speaker 1 the more he tells and the more accurate he tells it,

Speaker 1 locks down the promise not to prosecute him or give him any additional time for it. It was his get out of jail free card.
So it's much more accurate.

Speaker 1 If you read his book, The Final Truth, and compare it to what he said. you know, before 20 years earlier, this is much more accurate.

Speaker 1 And the sweat agents, I mean, if he said, I buried the body in such and such a place, they went out there and dug it up. He took them out there and showed them where it was.

Speaker 1 He corroborated in many ways what he says in this statement.

Speaker 1 500 pages of it. So you were a solicitor in South Carolina? Yes.
What exactly is that job? Same as district attorney. You're the prosecuting attorney.
Okay. Solicitor is a...

Speaker 1 is a term that was used in South Carolina in colonial times.

Speaker 1 And remember now, in England, a solicitor is a lawyer. So

Speaker 1 there's several states that still use the term solicitor, but it's more of a colonial

Speaker 1 term that people continue to use. That's what we call them here.
Nice. And that's the same job that the Murdoch family had, right?

Speaker 1 Not Alex, but his parents, his dad and his grandfather.

Speaker 1 His great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his dad, yes. Did you know them?

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 I knew his grandfather,

Speaker 1 Buster, the original Buster, not the original Buster, but the Buster, who was when I got sworn in as an assistant DA in 1975,

Speaker 1 Buster Murdoch was sort of

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 granddad of all Swisters in the state. I mean, everybody had known him.

Speaker 1 He was famous for his courtroom.

Speaker 1 drama antics, whatever.

Speaker 1 And of course, the Murdoch firm, which was much smaller at the time, was renowned for the civil verdicts they got in

Speaker 1 that part of the state. And back then, the solicitor or DA could also have a private civil practice.
So not only was he prosecuting cases, he was trying civil cases

Speaker 1 and doing very, very well. He was very good in the courtroom.

Speaker 1 And his son, Randolph,

Speaker 1 was the solicitor or DA down there when I was a solicitor or DA in Columbia, where I'm from. So we got to know each other really well.
I never knew Alec

Speaker 1 because he was the son of

Speaker 1 Randy. I knew his brother, Randy, who was older than he was, because I'd met him a couple of times.
He's still a kid when I was the DA. I mean, you know, so,

Speaker 1 but the way I got into the case, the Murdoch case, was that Paul Murdoch, which would have been Alex's son,

Speaker 1 Randolph's grandson, was charged in a homicide involving a boat.

Speaker 1 Mallory Beach. Mallory Beach.
And when Alec talked to his dad about who would you get to represent him,

Speaker 1 Dad, who knew me well, said you need to get to Carpuvian. So I got involved.
I got Jim Griffin involved. And we for a year worked on the Paul Paul Murdoch case involving the death of Mallory Beach.

Speaker 1 And what happened with that? He was convicted, right?

Speaker 1 No, no, no. He got killed before we went to court.
He got killed before he went to court. That's right.
And he was. And then you then represented his father.
And obviously, he was guilty.

Speaker 1 He got the death penalty as well, Alex Murdaugh, correct? No. No, he's just life in prison.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 So let me

Speaker 1 back up just a little bit. Alec,

Speaker 1 Maggie, his wife, Paul's mother, and Paul came to this office where I'm sitting right now every couple of weeks during a one-year period while we're trying to get ready for the trial in the Mallory Beach case.

Speaker 1 And so I spent time with them,

Speaker 1 watched them, observed them,

Speaker 1 watched the interactions.

Speaker 1 And so the

Speaker 1 night that Paul was murdered along with Maggie, Alec reached out to us. And actually, Jim Griffin, my co-counsel on the Paul case, an old friend of mine,

Speaker 1 went down to Moselle the next day I couldn't go

Speaker 1 and met with Alec and law enforcement officers.

Speaker 1 Alec

Speaker 1 was convicted of Maggie and Paul's murders and got life. Now, was it technically, could it have been a death penalty case? Yes.
The Attorney General's office chose not to go for the death penalty.

Speaker 1 I will also tell you

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 we were unaware, but obviously became aware

Speaker 1 that Alec, there were two issues that we were unaware of. One was Alec had stolen about $12 million from his clients.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Nobody knew that.

Speaker 1 We found out when everybody else found out. And he pled guilty to that, by the way.
He's pled guilty and gotten sentenced by the federal authorities. He can't get out.

Speaker 1 He probably served 25 or 30 years on that. So

Speaker 1 murder convictions, however,

Speaker 1 we were following a brief in a couple, three weeks, our reply brief to the prosecutor's brief.

Speaker 1 I think we have a significant chance of getting a new trial based on, if nothing else, the Corca court's conduct during this trial. The uncontradicted evidence is she spoke to jurors during the trial.

Speaker 1 in such a way that

Speaker 1 indicated that they should not believe Alex when he testified and

Speaker 1 that she felt he was guilty. And you can't do that.

Speaker 1 A court official can't do that. Nobody should do that, but a court official can.
Number one, number two, the uncontradicted testimony at her,

Speaker 1 at the hearing we had on after discovered evidence was she told several people,

Speaker 1 her employees and others, that she was writing a book about the Murdoch trial and that it would, she could sell more books if there was a guilty verdict and she wanted to buy a house up on the lake

Speaker 1 so yeah motive um and we believe um that the judge that heard that hearing applied the wrong legal standard um and that we'll get a new trial based on that if nothing else so now but murdaw was found guilty you don't think he was guilty i don't think he was i don't think he killed maggie and paul you don't think he killed maggie and paul is there any suspects that lead to what that would be there are in my mind there are others but but if you look at the testimony in the trial and the evidence when the police got there that night

Speaker 1 they decided alec did it because he got dead wife dead kid and by the way when they show up he's holding a shotgun okay

Speaker 1 not the gun involved in any of the any of the homicides but he's holding a shotgun. So Paul was shot with a shotgun, wasn't he? Yeah, but not that shotgun.
Okay.

Speaker 1 You know, shotgun shells make extractor marks. Well, A, it was the wrong gauge, the one he was carrying, as opposed to what Paul was shot to.

Speaker 1 They also make extractor marks when the shell is ejected, which are unique and can be compared by ballistics.

Speaker 1 Suffice it to say, he had gotten the shotgun from the house after he found the bodies, thinking somebody might still be around.

Speaker 1 But when the police got there, They immediately, we believe, based on what we saw, decided it was him and they were not going to investigate.

Speaker 1 They took no DNA, no fingerprints from the feed room where Paul was killed.

Speaker 1 When the fire chief got there, he saw the

Speaker 1 tire tracks leading from the murder scene going on a dirt road back to the highway.

Speaker 1 He went to the investigating agent, said, you need to block this off.

Speaker 1 We need to, you know, somebody needs to get castings or whatever you photographs so you can compare them to other cars. They didn't do that.

Speaker 1 that law enforcement in about five minutes obliterated those um

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 uh uh there was a number of forensic things they didn't do and here's key key point our expert and their expert testified whoever shot paul

Speaker 1 shot him in the head

Speaker 1 There's no question that the gas, it had to be a contact wound because the gas exploded his head.

Speaker 1 His brain literally shot out of his head, hit the ceiling in that feed room room, and fell at his feet. Okay.

Speaker 1 Whoever did that

Speaker 1 would have had massive amounts of blood and brain tissue embedded in their hair and their face and their clothes, their shoes.

Speaker 1 You couldn't have just gotten in the shower, washed it off. It'd take

Speaker 1 a, I mean, it'd be embedded. You might even have blinded yourself.

Speaker 1 45 minutes after the time the police say that the murder, the sledge said the murder was committed,

Speaker 1 Alec

Speaker 1 is walking up to his mom's house. No blood,

Speaker 1 no blood at the house. They checked the showers, no blood

Speaker 1 in the drain,

Speaker 1 no blood on clothes, no,

Speaker 1 and they know he rode down in a golf cart and back, no blood on the golf cart.

Speaker 1 I mean, and here's another piece, there's two other pieces of evidence.

Speaker 1 One is, and this is sort of an interesting story, Alec was driving a GMC vehicle that night from the house at Moselle to his mom's. And that's how he got there.
That's what he drove from work.

Speaker 1 In the GMA, the GMC, there is a black box, just like any car. And with that black box, you can, if you have access to it, you can determine where it's been driven, how fast it was driven.

Speaker 1 It's got GPS in it. So you see exact times and movements.

Speaker 1 Sled tried to get

Speaker 1 GMC to, or whatever, whoever makes it the suburban, I guess it was a suburb,

Speaker 1 to give them or to download the contents. Apparently it's difficult to, if you don't have the exact equipment or code, you can't get in.

Speaker 1 And GMAC never, GMC never responded. During the trial,

Speaker 1 Apparently the wife of one of the major officers at GMC was watching the trial and heard that testimony. They won't cooperate with us.
She apparently called her husband, chewed his ass out.

Speaker 1 And the next day we get a call during the trial saying, you're going to have the stuff. You'll have the download tomorrow.
So in the middle of the trial, we get this download. And the download shows

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 Alec drove that vehicle to the house

Speaker 1 at Moselle, parked it. And then when he left, and it would have been after the murders, murders at the exact time alec was cranking his car to leave to go see his mom

Speaker 1 maggie's phone is being thrown out on the side of the road

Speaker 1 we had an expert testify um it it it showed motion and then it stopped and it didn't have any other motion until it was found the next day okay it's being thrown out on the side of the road while he's a half a mile away cranking his car.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's extraordinary. I mean, that piece of evidence shows at the minimum.

Speaker 1 Someone else is involved. Something else is involved.
At the maximum, it ain't him.

Speaker 1 The state came up with some jackweg expert after we put our expert testimony up who wasn't qualified to do it. And it's one of the grounds for appeal.

Speaker 1 I believe

Speaker 1 that...

Speaker 1 And I believe there's a drug connection. Alec bought

Speaker 1 millions of dollars worth worth of oxy. I'm not sure all of it was oxy through his so-called cousin, Eddie Smith.
Yeah, because two days after he went into rehab for opioids, correct? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 And clearly, if you look at the records, he was horribly addicted to opioids.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I think what you'll find is that the forensic evidence, if you, I mean, the jury heard two weeks of how he stole money from orphans and disabled people and,

Speaker 1 you know, amputees and stuff. Once they heard all that,

Speaker 1 he was cooked. I don't care what evidence we had or they didn't have.
That won't happen in a retrial. Yeah.
I mean,

Speaker 1 there's lots of crazy issues around the Murdoch family, also.

Speaker 1 Have you ever represented anybody? I'm not saying this is it, but have you ever represented someone that you knew was guilty and still represented them as a defense attorney? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 1 let me

Speaker 1 explain this to you i'm a lawyer okay now if i'm a prosecutor my

Speaker 1 my

Speaker 1 goal my sworn ethical duty is to see that justice is done that means you don't hide evidence you don't put a witness up that you know is going to lie because you bought his testimony because he's got trouble you you do everything that you ethically should do to see that justice is done.

Speaker 1 If you have a reasonable doubt about the guilt of the guy you're prosecuting, you don't prosecute him. You dismiss the case.
Done that many, many times.

Speaker 1 When you're a defense attorney, your duty is to represent your client with these caveats. You don't fabricate evidence.
You don't help. If your client comes in, and

Speaker 1 you see this rarely, but if your client comes in and says, I did it,

Speaker 1 in my mind, that's fine.

Speaker 1 You can't put him on the stand to say he didn't do it. And if he insists on doing that, you call him to the stand.
He gives his story. You don't ask him a single question.

Speaker 1 And in final argument, you don't argue his story. I mean, those are the rules.
And if you do that, you're representing people. And, you know, I've seen the system for 50 years.

Speaker 1 It's a great system if everybody plays by the rules. And the rule of law, and we'd hear a lot about that today, the rule of law keeps all of us free if people

Speaker 1 play by the rule of law. The idea is not winning or losing.
This This isn't a football game.

Speaker 1 This is about seeing, there's a system that's been constructed, and I think a great system. Our American criminal and civil justice system is great.
And I like it. I love it.

Speaker 1 I've worked through it for 50 years, both civil and criminal. And

Speaker 1 these people, a lot of people say, how can you represent somebody you know is guilty? Well, because they

Speaker 1 look,

Speaker 1 John Adams,

Speaker 1 second president united states represented the six british soldiers who the boston massacre yeah boston massacre four were acquitted uh two were convicted um but he

Speaker 1 it wasn't whether he liked him or disliked him it's not whether he believed in what uh uh they stood for he was a lawyer and he was going to do his job abraham lincoln represented 20 people accused of murder.

Speaker 1 That's what, I mean,

Speaker 1 he was a criminal defense lawyer before he was president. So,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 it's not how do you represent somebody who's you think,

Speaker 1 I mean, you don't know they're guilty.

Speaker 1 They say, they may even say they're guilty, but you make the system work. It's about can the state prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
That's the standard.

Speaker 1 That's the constitutional standard. And if you're accused of somebody of something, you want to make sure everybody presumes you didn't do it and you get the benefit of

Speaker 1 every reasonable doubt. And that's what it's about.
What was it like defending someone while being judged on a mass scale by the media?

Speaker 1 Well, again, I've been doing this so long that the judgment of outside people or the media,

Speaker 1 the only what I've heard consistently from everybody I've talked to and everything I've watched, even Nancy Grace. I say even Nancy Grace, was that we did our job.

Speaker 1 That's the highest compliment I can get. Now, did I get just horrible emails from people around the country? You know, my favorite still is, how can you represent that guilty son of a bitch?

Speaker 1 I hope you die of ass cancer.

Speaker 1 It's prostate cancer, please.

Speaker 1 But why did they feel compelled to sit down? and spew

Speaker 1 this vitriol, this hate towards me. I mean, they need therapy or something.
Something's going on there. It's they're the problem, not me.

Speaker 1 Well, I really appreciate you sitting down with me, Dick. Dick Harpulian, former senator of South Carolina,

Speaker 1 I really appreciate you coming in. Pick up the book, Dig Me a Grave.
It comes out December 16th. Get it for the

Speaker 1 true crime junkie in your family for Christmas.

Speaker 1 They'll love it. I really, you were amazing.
I'd love to talk to you more again sometime about the Alex Murdoch case when we're going to do a big episode about that at some point.

Speaker 1 And I would love to talk to you again if it's possible. Super, super.
Love to do it. Hey.
Thank you. Thank you very much, sir.
You take care of yourself.

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