The Murdaugh Murders (podcast)

[Fiascoist]

How do you cheat in law school so badly to get kicked out. Did he get copies of the essay questions and then still got bad grades? Guess I wasn't smart/clever enough to to figure out the trick.

[RVInit]

How do you cheat in law school so badly to get kicked out. Did he get copies of the essay questions and then still got bad grades? Guess I wasn't smart/clever enough to to figure out the trick.

Apparently he completed one semester of law school with a very low GPA. Then, was kicked out of school for plagiarism during his second semester. In one of the conversations, he and Alex allude to some of the conditions for his return to law school, which apparently include his having to get his GPA up to a 3.0. Alex tells him even if he gets 4.0 there is no way to pull his GPA up to a 3.0, so that is apparently why Alex was trying to pull strings to basically let Buster start law school "from scratch", erasing his first semester and allowing him to repeat it over again so he can possibly achieve a 3.0. When it becomes clear that the school isn't going to go along with that, then Alex tells his brother he wants Buster to be able to retake his first semester as an "audit" student, where he won't get a grade, but he can at least get the knowledge and get back into the swing of things before his spring semester where his grades will start counting again.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

https://mailchi.mp/news.courttv.com/ale ... nts-128034

Here are a few of biggest moments from last week:

Gloria Satterfield's Son

Michael Satterfield said his mom cleaned the Murdaugh home, but also babysat their two sons and did anything else they asked for over 20 years. She died at age 57, a few weeks after hitting her head in a fall in February 2018 on steps at the Murdaugh's house.

Satterfield testified that Murdaugh promised to take care of his housekeeper’s family, but instead created a fake bank account to claim the money for himself.
“Did you ever get one cent from Alex Murdaugh?” prosecutor Creighton Waters asked.
“No,” Satterfield answered.

Alex's Mother's Caretaker

Alex Murdaugh's alibi received a blow when his mother's caretaker, Shelly Smith, took the stand and testified she saw the defendant between 8:30-9:00 p.m. the night Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed. Smith said it was unusual to see Murdaugh visiting his mother at the time. Smith said he brought a “blue something, looked like a tarp” into his mother’s home nine days after the killings.

A GoFundMe page was launched by Shelly Smith's daughter in honor of her mother's "bravery and honesty" on the stand.

The Blue "Tarp"

The prosecution seized a rain jacket found at Alex's mother's home in Almeda three months after his wife and son were killed. Gunshot residue particles were later found on the inside of the seized jacket.

The defense tried to keep forensic testimony on the jacket out, saying prosecutors didn’t connect the jacket to Murdaugh through the caretaker's confusing testimony.

In cross-examination, the forensic analyst told defense attorney Jim Griffin that gunshot residue doesn’t break down and can stay on an object for years unless washed off, thus lending to the defense's theory that particles from Alex's father's shotgun kept in the backseat of his truck could have rubbed off on the raincoat.

Alex Murdaugh's Clothing

When the police arrived the night of the murders, Alex is dressed in a clean white t-shirt, khaki shorts and colorful Nike shoes. However, we know from Paul's Snapchat video taken around 7:30 p.m. that Alex was wearing a blue button-down shirt, khaki pants and brown boat shoes. Two witnesses have testified about those shoes, which according to the Murdaugh's most recent housekeeper are nowhere to be found since.

Cousin Eddie

It’s unclear whether prosecutors will ask for a Rule 404 hearing regarding the roadside incident involving Curtis “Eddie” Smith, but here's what we know about this potential witness.

A few days after the Murdaugh family law firm discovered stolen money in September 2021, Murdaugh asked Smith to meet on the side of a lonely Hampton County highway, according to prosecutors. Murdaugh said he asked Smith to kill him so his surviving son could get a $10 million life insurance policy. Smith said Murdaugh threatened to kill himself and the gun fired as Smith tried to wrestle it from his grip. The shot only grazed Murdaugh’s head. Murdaugh’s lawyers called Smith a drug dealer.

Smith's lawyer Aimee Zmroczek sat down with Vinnie Politan to reveal some big takeaways about her client, who she says is being used as a scapegoat for Alex Murdaugh's crimes. WATCH THE INTERVIEW

Curtis Eddie Smith is a distant cousin of Alex Murdaugh.
Only the prosecution subpoenaed Smith.
Smith has not received a deal from the prosecution, which "makes it risky," according to his attorney.
Smith is prepared to testify if called.
Smith's attorney says he has an alibi for June 7th, and it was not close to Alex's home.

[pjhimself]

[pjhimself]

This now seems like a clown show, methinks….
I may still follow but…….

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

It seems like an Alex Murdaugh created clown show.

[RVInit]

It seems like an Alex Murdaugh created clown show.

He created a huge mess out of a supremely privileged life. If you listen to the video I posted about the jailhouse phone calls, he's teasing Buster about having to fly to Las Vegas on a commercial airline because all he ever knew was private flights. And his arrogance also showed in the courtroom where he at least tried to look remorseful whenever the people he clearly sees as his equals were testifying about how he lied and cheated them. But when the Satterfield kid (not meaning any offense, I can't think of his name right now) testified that Alex got approx 4 million dollar payout for Satterfield's mother's death and pocketed it himself, the only look on his face was contempt. he doesn't feel bad at all about cheating that kid out of that kind of money.

The prosecutor is saving their most powerful testimony for last. Oh my gosh, after hearing what we've already heard so far we are now hearing the third interview of Alex. We are 10 minutes into it and he's telling more lies about things that are important to understanding what happened to Paul and Maggie. I'm listening and cleaning house. I just took a brownie break and checking in on the forum.

[RVInit]

The prosecution is going to wrap up in the next day or two. Today's testimony, IMO, puts several nails in Murdaugh's coffin. Of course, we haven't heard from any defense witnesses, and the defense has hired a boatload of expert witnesses. They can easily throw a wrench in the prosecution case.

One of the defense attorneys, who is a very experienced ex-prosecutor himself, has a very effective schtick going on. He acts like the poor outgunned scatterbrained guy who is up against the big bad government. He has gotten the jury to laugh along with him a couple of times, which is very telling.

I don't have any doubt that Murdaugh did this, there are just way too many coincidences, he told way too many lies, way too numerous to mention right now. When the prosecution does their closing argument I will try to give a report on that. This is definitely a case where I can see the jury hanging because so much of the evidence takes too many different parties giving their knowledge about that evidence. That is hard for a jury to follow.

A lot of the online lawyers are skeptical about the prosecution case because they keep taking single pieces of evidence and saying "that doesn't prove he killed them". I've watched an awful lot of murder cases, and I don't think it's at all unusual for most of the evidence to be circumstantial, and where a single piece of evidence, all by itself, is not enough. Just because you can't take each piece of evidence all by itself and say "this piece of evidence, all by itself, shows he killed them" doesn't mean anything. I think it's very powerful that there are multiple pieces of evidence all taken together that you just can't fit all those coincidences and evidence to some random person coming to the house to kill two people, both of whom were not even supposed to be there except that Alex lured them out there (and lied about that, too!).

[AndyinPA]

IANAL, but I think circumstantial evidence can be at least as good as eye witness testimony. People often don't have memories as good as they think they, don't identify people of other races as well as their own, and can just have their own prejudices. With DNA, many people have been exonerated, often after spending decades in prison for something they didn't do.

[pjhimself]

Recap:

[RVInit]

I have some general opinions about the trial and the investigation, I think I have opined a little on the trial.

On the investigation side, I am beginning to think that there was little interest in finding that Alex was the culprit. There were so many signs early on that he did it and it took a very long time for the locals to finally recuse themselves. I think after that, there was still enough pressure exerted to prevent some investigative steps from being taken. It took way too long to finally arrest him, and I do think there was a great deal of pressure put upon investigators. Alex himself was able to exert a disturbing amount of pressure on the boat case investigation- he made a great deal of effort to try to point to one of the other people in the boat as having been the "real driver" of the boat. To the point where statements made by some of the kids on the boat where they absolutely identified Paul as being at the wheel of the boat and yet the officer who took those statements left those statements out of his report and the report itself suggests that one of the other kids was possibly at the wheel at the time of the crash. All the passengers have subsequently said they gave statements that had absolute certainty about Paul being at the wheel and that they had made such statement to the police officer who left those statements off his report. The Murdaugh family was able to very easily interfere in that investigation, and I believe similar interference happened in the murder case as well. At least in the early months.

This morning the prosecution put on a forensics expert that apparently was hired after prosecutors probably realized the initial investigation was not really up to snuff. This guy was very impressive, if anyone is considering watching any of the testimony and doesn't want to watch everything, the feed from this morning was very interesting. It dealt with the actual shooting of Paul and Maggie.

This guy was really impressive, his credentials are solid, and he did an excellent job of explaining his opinions and showing very clearly how and why he came to those opinions. I think he also was able to put to rest and overcome what some people thought was a disaster for prosecutors during cross exam of the lead detective yesterday regarding the family's habit of loading multiple types of shot into their shotguns.

His testimony was very consistent with the medical examiner in terms of his opinion as to the order of wounds, which ones were fatal and non fatal on Maggie, and the position her body would have been in to receive her initial fatal wound.

He also did a great job of explaining something that the defense has been trying to use to "prove" that the investigation was totally botched and that there was somehow some really important piece of evidence that had been ignored or destroyed from Maggie's body. In one of the photos of Maggie's body there is apparently a small bit of mud that the defense was trying to build into a huge big deal because it was "gone" by the time it got to the medical examiner and she never mentioned it. So, this forensics investigator explained the whole thing in a way that fits everything that has been brought up about a four wheeler and this bit of mud on Maggie's back calf.

The forensics guy says that there appears to be a bit of biological material on the four wheeler. And he matched the pattern on mud on the back of Maggie's calf with the pattern on the wheels of the four wheeler. Maggie was basically trapped between the shooter and the four wheeler. One of her first wounds was non fatal and she more than likely backed up, putting some of her blood on the four wheeler and at the same time picking up some mud from the wheel of the four wheeler, which eventually dried up and fell off her body and was not present when she arrived at the medical examiner's table. So, that does not sound like any nefarious mishap in investigation. I haven't described how he meticulously matched up the pattern from the photo to the pattern on the wheel tread, but, in my opinion he completely destroyed any idea that there was anything nefarious or incompetent involved in the "disappearance" of a bit of mud that apparently had been on the back of Maggie's calf.

The defense also made a huge deal about investigators not taking the drains apart to look for biological material down the drains. He explained that because all three family members lived at that house, stayed overnight, likely took showers, brushed their teeth, and ate dinner, etc, they are all three depositing biological material in the drains and at various places throughout the house. It would not have been of any real forensic value to have found DNA from Alex, Maggie, and Paul in the drain pipes or other areas of the house. That is totally expected. This isn't like when an unrelated shooter goes back to his/her own home and brings DNA from victims who don't live there into the shooter's home. That is a completely different scenario.

Also, evidence came in yesterday afternoon that reduces the possibility of some unknown person coming to the property and killing them. Or at least if some unrelated persons came to that property, they would have had to turn off their cell phones. Since they didn't have specific phone numbers to look up for unknown persons, there was a data dump of cell tower and no phone numbers from people who are not known by investigators show up on the cell tower in the time period surrounding the murders. Every phone that pinged that tower were from people who were eliminated during the investigation by alibi. Except for Alex.

I think the past two days have closed up some holes that the defense could use, so generally I think yesterday and today were very good for the prosecution.

[Kendra]

https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2023 ... t-10pm-et/

CNN to Air Special Presentation of Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty Sunday, February 19 at 8pm ET
NEW YORK, NY – (Friday, February 17, 2022) – CNN will air a special presentation of HBO Max original documentary series, Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty, on Sunday, February 19. Beginning at 8pm ET, CNN will broadcast all episodes of the three-part series.

Produced by Campfire Studios, Low Country examines the legacy of the Murdaugh family, whose decades of powerful influence over the legal system in the South Carolina low country unravel amid accusations of fraud, deception, and murder. Hailing from a long line of powerful legal figures, Alex Murdaugh along with his wife, Maggie, and sons, Buster and Paul, enjoyed unparalleled sway over authorities, until Paul’s involvement in a tragic boating accident thrust a level of scrutiny on the family’s actions and legacy, revealing a bizarre and deadly chain of events. Now, with Alex on trial for the double homicide of his wife and son, CNN’s special presentation offers viewers a deep dive into the case that is gripping the nation.

Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty is available to stream on HBO Max.

[RVInit]

I have the PDF file for the detailed timeline for the day of the murders. A SLED agent testified yesterday as to the timeline that includes Maggie, Paul, and Alex movements and phone calls, text messages, steps taken, including the detailed GPS and speed data from his car. That data finally fell into the prosecution's hands via GM, who "found" the data after saying more than a year ago that they did not have the data. They magically came up with it right after an FBI agent testified that he was able to unencrupt and decipher some of the data. The data provided by GM corresponds with what the FBI was able to get, except far more detailed and far more damaging.

I tried to upload, but the file is too big. If anyone wants it you can DM me and I can email it to you.

The defense is going to have to have an uphill climb to explain every single inconsistency between the data and Alex' statements, as the data from phones and his own car betray his story big time.


You will notice that there are other people outside the family whose data appears on the timeline, mainly because the defense has suggested these people as the possible "real killer". their data is shown to show they were not in the vicinity of the Moselle residence any time before or during the murder, some of them arrived after Alex called 911 because he called virtually every person he knew and asked them to come to the house.

You can also watch the feed from the trial to see this data given to the jury from the witness stand,

[RVInit]

I now understand why the prosecutor wanted Blanca to mention the pots and pans in the refrigerator. After Alex called Paul and Maggie and asked them to come out to Moselle, Blanca made dinner for the family before she left the property. She left it on the stove.

The detailed timeline just doesn't match up with Alex' story in so many aspects and here is yet another one. He says they all sat down one little happy family and had dinner before Paul and Maggie went out to the kennels. The timeline showing the location of phones, and Maggie's arrival time at the house doesn't allow for them to have sat down and had dinner.

Blanca found the pots and pans stuffed into the refrigerator the day after the murders. She found that odd, but she never said she opened them up to see how much food was still in them, just that Maggie normally left dirty pots and pans on the stove from dinner and the housekeeper would clean up the next day.

I think the defense will be able to confuse the jury, but the prosecutor is going to be able to give a closing statement. If his closing statement is at least halfway competent I don't see how there can be "reasonable" doubt that it was Alex that killed Maggie and Paul.

There was brief mention that they did a dump of the data from cell tower that shows only known residents and people whose alibis were confirmed that ever showed up in that area anywhere near the time of the murders.

[pjhimself]

. He says they all sat down one little happy family and had dinner before Paul and Maggie went out to the kennels. The timeline showing the location of phones, and Maggie's arrival time at the house doesn't allow for them to have sat down and had dinner.

Did any part of the autopsy include stomach content ?
Don’t remember seeing that.

[RVInit]

. He says they all sat down one little happy family and had dinner before Paul and Maggie went out to the kennels. The timeline showing the location of phones, and Maggie's arrival time at the house doesn't allow for them to have sat down and had dinner.

Did any part of the autopsy include stomach content ?
Don’t remember seeing that.

I think the autopsy did show they had some stomach contents. I went back and looked at the timeline. Maggie's car did not arrive until 8:17 at the house. Paul arrived back at the house after going to the caretaker at 8:19, that is when his phone autoconnected to the home wifi. Alex turned his phone off from 8:02 to 9:02. Paul continued to text from 8:19 until they ended up down at the kennels within 10 minutes. So, they had 10 minutes to heat up the food cooked by Blanca (she left it on the stove in the pots and pans when she left round 5 PM). The food would have been cold at 8:17 when Maggie arrived. I suppose she could have heated it up and they wolfed it down while texting and then arriving at the kennel 10 minutes later. The phones show steps taken around 8:31, so I guess they had a little over 10 minutes to warm up and have a meal.

But Blanca found the pots and pans in the refrigerator the next morning. I suppose that could have been leftovers, I don't see anyone putting empty pots and pans into a refrigerator. She stated that was odd that Maggie typically left the empty pots and pans on the stove to be cleaned the next day.

[pjhimself]

Tx

[humblescribe]

Great play-by-play, RV.

So, my mind got to wondering:

Let's say that Alex does take the stand in his own defense. Let's say (as some of the lawyers on the local TV news have opined) that he does confess to his financial crimes and defalcations under oath. Let us further say that by some stroke of luck he is acquitted of the murders.

Is his testimony in his murder trial admissible evidence in his trial for all his financial crimes? I tried looking under the rules of evidence and procedure, but they just seem to be a circle that do not answer this question. In other words, is he trading a sure-fire conviction of theft and other crimes for life insurance proceeds and other inheritance with the possibility of serving 15-20 years instead of life sans parole?

[RVInit]

I would be very surprised if Alex takes the stand. The jury has already heard on a taped interview that Alex admitted to crimes relating to his getting shot, although I don't believe his BS story on that either. I think the bullet was intended to graze his head and once again, show that the family was "targeted" and gain sympathy for him yet again.

If he takes the stand he will be confronted with at the very least, the following:

1. He turned his phone completely off at 8:02 supposedly to take a nap after eating dinner with Paul and Maggie. Paul and Maggie did not even arrive at the house by that time, so we know that is a lie. Also, while he had a habit of silencing the ringer, he never turned it off. For some reason, his phone is off on this night only, totally out of character, and it got turned back on conveniently in time for him to dial Maggie after she was dead and show he was calling her to tell her he's going to visit mom.

2. When asked to give police the clothing he wore that night, he gave them clean clothing that both investigators said smelled and looked like freshly laundered clothing. he has to explain why he never remembered changing clothes until his THIRD interview when he was confronted with the video from Paul's phone showing what he was wearing. And then, his response was "I'm not sure, I think I may have changed after dinner. So, why did it take three months and them showing their cards that they knew about his change of clothing.

3. The clothing he is seen wearing in the video seems likely to be what he was still wearing when he shot them. That clothing has never been seen again, as the housekeeper does all the laundry and she testified that she never saw those clothes that he was wearing when he left for work again. And some other shirt also went missing,

4. Why did he say he took a nap and never went down to the kennel on THREE different interviews? They have video from Paul's phone with his voice in the background and half a dozen close family members and close family friends that 100% identified his voice on that video.

5. The longitude/latitude data from his car showed him arriving at the kennels at 10:05:57. He called 911 at 10:06:14, which is 17 seconds later. He told the exact same story three times about what he did when he
"discovered" his dead wife and son. He went to his son first (which means he would have walked past his wife's body), tried to find a pulse, tried to turn him over once or twice, picked up his sons' phone and considered doing "something" with it, put it back down, went to his wife's body, checked her for a pulse and then "pretty much called 911 after checking both bodies". That is an awful lot of activity to complete within 17 seconds, he will be confronted with that.

5. His phone comes back on at 9:02 after being off for an hour. I believe it's pretty clear he is at the kennels still after killing Paul and Maggie. Many reasons I believe that, but here is the biggie. He dials her phone at that time after turning it back on. Her phone makes changes from landscape to portrait or vice versa even though she never answers or sees any messages at any time after approx 8:49 PM. Then, he takes 293 steps as recorded in his iPhone health section. I believe he walked back to the house, as he entered his car and left for his mother's house within minutes of that. Maggies phone took a couple of portrait to landscape orientation changes during this time, including one that commenced at a certain time and took about 10 or more seconds to complete. When you change your phone orientation, it takes about 1 or 2 seconds at most. I believe the long time frame that it started to change orientation and finished changing orientation is when he chucked it out the window and through it a good distance in a field right beyond his driveway when he left the house. I think when it hit the ground it "finished" the orientation change.


I have a bit of a raging sinus headache and I know there is lots more than just those inconsistencies, but those are the ones that come to mind first. I think he would get pulverized under cross examination.

[pjhimself]

This was posted on YouTube a while back. An inside look at what’s not seen in the courtroom views.
Apologies for repeating (if so):

[RVInit]

That was interesting, thank you, pj.

[pjhimself]

Another juror replaced due to illness, two alternates remain.

Defense plans to rest by Friday.

[Chilidog]

I've been thinking about this....

The housekeeper, Blanca has an extra ordinary recall of minute details of that day involving AM.

My guess is that when she heard about the murders, she knew instantly who committed them, and she went over all the details of that day in her mind.

Don't ever try to keep secrets from the housekeeper.

[Chilidog]

The other think that I wonder about...

Did Paul figure out thst his dad was up to his neck in money problems?

[pjhimself]