Hi, Crime Junkies.
I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
And I'm Britt.
You guys, the story I have for you today is one that you've probably heard something about.
A powerful low country dynasty, a double murder, a trial that gripped the country.
We're covering it.
Not just because of the killer's shocking fall from grace or the trail of death's corruption and cover-ups that seem to follow him wherever he goes, but because buried beneath the courtroom drama are stories of people who never got justice, mysteries still unsolved and a system that let one family operate above the law for nearly a century.
And the fallout isn't over.
As of this recording, appeals are moving forward.
The South Carolina Supreme Court is getting involved.
And with the possibility of a new trial on the horizon.
One question is more important now than ever.
Why?
Why would a man who seemed to have everything choose to destroy it all by murdering his own wife and son?
This is the story of the Murdoch family.
Yes, sir.
Stay on the line with me, okay?
Yes, sir.
Stay on the line with me, okay?
I've been up to it now.
It's bad.
Okay.
How did they shoot?
Did they shoot themselves?
Oh, no.
Hell no.
Okay.
And are they breathing?
No, ma'am.
I can tell that he shot in the head and he shot really bad.
Okay.
Where is he shot at?
Ma'am, I don't know, but there's blood everywhere.
I can see his brain.
I tried to turn her a little bit, but she's got a hole in her head.
Please hurry.
Those are just excerpts from the nearly 10-minute call Alec Murdoch made to 911 on June 7, 2021 at 1007 pm.
Between sobs he tells dispatch that he had just discovered the bodies of his wife and son near some dog kennels on his estate in rural Colleton County, South Carolina.
And rural is for real, because even speeding with lights and sirens on, it takes South Carolina law enforcement about 20 minutes to get out to moselle road.
Now, when they finally turn up the long driveway to get to the dog kennels, the first thing they see is alec standing by his truck with his hazard lights flashing, and leaning against his truck is his 12 gauge shotgun, which alec says that he got from his house in case whoever hurt his wife and son decided to come back.
Now officers immediately take the gun.
They secure it in their patrol car and make their way to the kennels to see for themselves what Alec described on the phone.
His 22-year-old son Paul, is lying face down in the open doorway to a feed room that's at the end of this, like row of dog kennels.
He has traumatic chest and head wounds.
And police know, as Alec told the dispatcher, that the majority of Paul's brain is actually lying next to him on the ground.
Everything they're seeing is consistent with a gunshot wound.
Now first responders also find Paul's iPhone laying on top of his body, like just resting on top of his shorts, kind of like it was placed there.
And there's no blood on it or anything.
But Alec did tell the 911 dispatcher that he had touched both of the bodies to try and see if they were breathing.
So the positions that they're found in might not have been the positions that the killer left them in or that they naturally like, fell in.
Mm-hmm.
I mean Alec actually said to the operator that he tried to turn his 52 year old wife Margaret, who goes by Maggie.
He tried to turn her over a little bit, too, but she had a hole in her head.
And first responders see what looks like five gunshot wounds to her back, her chest, wrist and leg.
And is Maggie right there next to Paul?
No, she's actually about 30 feet away, like across this gravel driveway.
But there is this like clear line of sight between the two victims.
There are also 12 gauge shell casings and 300 blackout casings next to the bodies and like strewn along the gravel driveway between them.
So it's definitely looking like both victims were shot.
But what's weird is that it seems like those two casings would have been fired from two different guns a shotgun and a semi-automatic rifle.
And neither of those weapons were left behind.
And what about the gun that Alec had with him when they showed up?
Like, that was a shotgun, right?
And it was a 12-gauge shotgun, too, but it actually wasn't the one used to kill Maggie or Paul.
Investigators eventually, are going to take it into evidence, but right now they're more focused on hearing from Alec.
Their first interview with him actually happens in one of the officer's cars.
And again, between, like, sobs and dry heaving, Alec walks them through the events of that night.
And here is some of that 34-minute interview.
So just start at the top, take your time.
Like when I came back here, I mean, I pulled up and I could see him.
And, you know, I knew something was bad.
I ran out.
I knew it was really bad.
My boy over there, I could see it was.
And I ran over to Maggie.
Actually, I think I tried to turn Paul over first.
You know, I tried to turn him over, and I don't know, I figured it out.
His cell phone popped out of his pocket.
I started to try to do something with it, thinking maybe.
But then I put it back down really quickly.
Then I went to my wife, and I mean, I could see.
Did you touch Maggie at all?
I did.
I touched them both.
I tried to take I mean, I tried to do it as limited as possible, but I tried to take their pulse on both of them.
And, you know, I called 911 pretty much right away.
And she was very good.
I know you said the phone fell out the pocket, but did you see anything else that didn't belong or shouldn't belong, or that wasn't part of Paul?
No, sir.
Not... No.
Not... No, sir.
How about Maggie?
No, sir.
You didn't see anything around them?
What made you come out here tonight?
Um, I went to... My mom's a late-stage Alzheimer's patient.
My dad's in the hospital.
Um...
My mom gets anxious when she does.
I went to check on them and Maggie.
Maggie's a dog lover and she fools with the dogs.
And I knew she'd gone to the kennel.
I was at the house.
I left the house and went to my mom's for just a little while.
Tried to call her when I left.
Texted her.
No response.
When I got back to the house, the house was, obviously nobody was in there.
So I figured they're still up here fooling around.
Paul was gonna be getting set up to plant.
Our sunflower seeds got sprayed and died and he was refiguring to do, to plant the sunflower seeds.
So I came back up here and I drove up and saw and called.
The window of time from when Alec left to see his mom to when he came back is small 9 pm to 10 pm-ish.
The window for when Maggie and Paul were murdered is even smaller.
The coroner estimates that that was between 9 and 9.30.
But Alec says that he didn't hear or see anything odd when he got home.
In fact he says he only went to the dog kennels because he was looking for Maggie, like he couldn't find her inside.
Had Maggie and Paul been arguing over anything?
No.
What was their relationship like?
Wonderful.
Wonderful.
How about yours and Maggie's?
Wonderful.
I mean, I'm sure we had little things here and there, but we had a wonderful marriage, wonderful relationship.
And yours and Paul's relationship?
As good as it could be.
Have y'all been having any problems out here?
Trespassers, people breaking in?
None that I know of.
The only thing What comes to my mind is my son Paul was in a boat wreck a couple years ago.
And there's been a, you know, he was charged with being arrested for being the driver.
There's been a lot of negative publicity about that.
And there's been a lot of people online, just really vile stuff.
But when Paul's out and about, I mean, people routinely, I don't think I know the full story.
So I don't think they give it to me, but I mean, he's been punched and hit and just attacked a lot.
So, you know, but I mean, nothing like this.
Alec is downplaying the situation here.
The boat wreck he's talking about happened in 2019 and resulted in the death of a 19-year-old girl named Mallory Beach.
And a couple months afterwards, Paul was charged with three felony counts of boating under the influence, which included causing Mallory's death and seriously injuring two other passengers.
But the boat crash is just like the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Murdoch family.
Mallory's death, Paul and Maggie's deaths.
They're not the only suspicious deaths that Alec and his family have been tangled up in.
Yeah, I remember when all of this was like dominating the news.
The Murdoch name was just being brought up with, like one tragedy after another after another.
Right.
And it's because like the Murdochs, they're not just like any old Southern family.
They were a huge name in South Carolina.
I mean, for over a century, the Murdoch name was basically synonymous with power and money.
Three generations of Murdoch men served as the region's top prosecutors, overseeing every criminal case across five counties.
According to an article published in The State, they sent thousands of people to prison and more than a dozen to death row.
People seem to believe that they are untouchable, but beneath that polished surface there are cracks like big cracks.
And with the deaths of Paul and Maggie, for the first time in nearly a century, they are about to split wide open.
The media latches on to Paul and Maggie's deaths immediately and the rumors and speculation are rampant.
In the month that follows the incident.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division doesn't name any suspects or people of interest, but they also don't publicly clear anyone.
And given the Murdoch family history, people are quick to jump to their own conclusions.
I mean the first incident that starts getting a lot of airtime is that boat crash, the death of Mallory Beach.
On February 23rd 2019, she was ejected from Alec Murdoch's boat after it crashed into a bridge at 221 in the morning.
Now, there weren't any adults on the boat.
It was just a group of teenagers with Alec's son, Paul, allegedly at the wheel.
And while all of the other kids made it back to shore after the crash, Mallory didn't.
Her body was found eight days later in a marsh about five miles away from where the crash originally happened.
Now, according to the coroner, Mallory drowned after suffering a blow to the head from impact.
When officers got to the scene that night and started talking to all of the kids, it was clear that they had been drinking.
A police report describes them as grossly intoxicated and there was a cooler full of beers and seltzers on the boat and a bunch of empty cans.
But no one was breathalyzed at the scene, which...
So that's the thing.
At least on paper.
Officers couldn't confirm who was driving, even though the passengers on the boat were all pointing fingers at Paul.
And according to one of the passengers, that night, while everyone was focused on Mallory...
Paul's main concern seemed to be getting in touch with his grandfather, Randolph Murdoch, who was the former South Carolina Circuit solicitor.
In an audio recording taken that night by first responders you can hear one of the kids, Mallory's boyfriend in particular, shouting at Paul during his conversation with an officer.
Bro, you f***ing smiling like you're f***ing funny.
My f***ing girlfriend goes, bro.
Later in that same conversation, Mallory's boyfriend is heard warning the police.
I feel like there's so much behind that good luck.
Yeah, so...
Mandy Matney, the investigative journalist who covered this boat crash and went on to deep dive into the Murdoch family and break a lot of the news surrounding Maggie and Paul's deaths.
She told our reporters that immediately following the crash, she started getting tips from people saying that there was going to be a cover up.
She kept hearing that the alleged boat driver belonged to a powerful family of lawyers.
That quote got away with everything and did not believe that anybody could touch them.
Which seems like it was the case, if all the kids from the crash were telling the officers that Paul was driving the boat and the officers were, like you said, on paper writing that no one really knew who was driving the boat.
Right.
And, like, I get it to some extent.
This was a chaotic scene.
Yeah.
The kids aren't necessarily of sound mind.
Mm-hmm.
But it is hard to shake the idea that maybe Paul might have been getting some favorable treatment because of his last name.
I mean Mandy actually said that when she began reporting on this boat crash story, people were scared to talk to her or even say the name Murdoch, out of fear of the family's power.
And the family's power was in full force that night.
When the kids were taken to the hospital Paul's dad and grandfather were there waiting.
They were like walking through the ER trying to talk to all of the kids while they were talking with officers trying to like prevent them from taking those sobriety tests and eventually stopping all police interviews.
Is that even allowed?
Well, I mean, like they're all lawyers.
So if they were their lawyers?
But according to AP News, one nurse did actually tell Alec Murdoch to stay in Paul's room or like leave the hospital.
And she asked security to keep an eye on him.
Now, eventually, over an hour after the crash, Paul's blood was taken at the hospital.
And even then, his BAC was more than three times the legal limit.
But at least at that time, no charges were filed.
Over the next month, authorities continued their investigation into Mallory's death.
Her mom filed a civil lawsuit over it, accusing three Murdoch men of wrongdoing.
And ultimately, the county sheriff's office ended up recusing itself from the investigation due to their quote longstanding relationship with Randolph Murdoch.
So that's when the case got handed over to the Department of Natural Resources.
And, within a matter of weeks of them having it, they end up charging Paul with boating under the influence, resulting in Mallory's death.
Paul pleaded not guilty at his arraignment, which two judges recused themselves from, by the way, because of the Murdoch family.
But here's the thing.
He is murdered before the trial can take place.
And two months after his murder, all charges get dismissed in what officials describe as a formality.
So all of that is a pretty far cry from how Alec was talking about this incident to the cops the night of Paul's murder.
Right.
And because Alec isn't just some guy talking to police, like he is used to dealing with law enforcement, used to dealing with judges, the whole system.
He knows the right things to say.
He knows the right way to position himself to make sure things get handled quietly.
And the boat crash wasn't even the first time the Murdochs had inserted themselves legally into the case of a dead teenager in the area.
I'm going to take one more detour to give everyone like background before we come back to Maggie and Paul because, like this is important to know.
So six years before the murders of Maggie and Paul, a 19-year-old named Stephen Smith was killed.
And from the jump, his death was suspicious as hell.
Yeah, full disclosure, this is the case that I have the most questions about.
I think it's the one that most people have the most questions about, because none of the facts seem to be matter of fact.
On July 8th 2015, around four o'clock in the morning, Stephen's body is found in the middle of a road, like 10 to 15 miles away from the Murdoch home.
Now, originally, investigators thought that he had been shot.
I mean, like I've seen some of the photos from the road that day and it is like gruesome.
But at autopsy it was determined that he died from blunt force trauma to the head resulting from a possible hit and run.
I mean, his shoulder had been dislocated.
But the thing to me that doesn't line up with a car crash is he had apparent defensive wounds on his hand.
Right.
And like, you aren't fighting a car.
How do you get a defensive wound from a hit and run?
You don't.
And that's one of the reasons that the coroner and the pathologist and the detectives and Stephen's family all seem to have different ideas about how Stephen actually died.
SLED, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.
They believe that Stephen was on his way home when he likely ran out of gas on the highway and decided to like walk the rest of the way.
Like his car is found with the gas cap unscrewed, about two to three miles away from where he would have been killed.
And to explain the severity of Stephen's head injury.
The pathologist who performed the autopsy suggested Stephen had been hit by like the mirror of a passing truck.
But an investigator from Highway Patrol wrote in reports that there was no evidence of Stephen being struck by a vehicle.
Like things you would expect to see, right?
Like no glass, no debris from a car found anywhere on the road or on Stephen's body.
So the investigator asked the pathologist if it was possible that could Stephen have actually been struck with a baseball bat?
Now, she said no.
But then he asked OK well, what if someone was like driving by and swung the bat from a moving car?
Because I think she's saying like just a hit from a baseball bat wouldn't be this severe.
Right.
But what if they have the bat and it's like in a moving car?
And the pathologist said, well, I guess that's possible.
Now, the county coroner didn't buy the hit-and-run theory either.
His theory was that Stephen was actually shot, like they initially thought the first time.
And Stephen's mom, Sandy, was adamant that her son's life did not end from a vehicle collision.
Sandy has said that her son was skittish, like he would not have been walking in the middle of the road and even if, for some reason, he was, he would have gotten off the road once he saw the headlights coming.
Mm-hmm.
And she doesn't think he ran out of gas either.
She thinks it was a setup and that he was beaten to death.
I mean so severely, by the way, that part of Stephen's face had to be rebuilt with putty for his funeral.
So why does she think it was premeditated?
Well, Sandy tells SLED that Stephen was acting strange in the weeks leading up to his death.
He was being more secretive, not studying as much, and playing hooky from school.
So her theory is that his classmates who were coming home from a baseball game that night were responsible.
Hence the baseball bat theory.
Right.
And in a letter Sandy wrote to the FBI, she mentions Alec Murdoch's sons specifically.
Now, Alec's oldest son, Buster, went to high school with Stephen.
Buster is actually mentioned a couple of times throughout the Highway Patrol report, along with others that police were looking into.
And I mean we're talking about a small town in South Carolina that is far from the only connection between the Smiths and the Murdochs.
Alec Murdoch coached the boys' Little League baseball team and his brother Randy, reportedly repped Stephen's dad in a workers' comp claim.
And wasn't there a rumor that Stephen and Buster were possibly in a relationship at some point?
Like, is that just internet noise?
No, that rumor is actually in the police report.
It is not verified or anything, just an early rumor that investigators were tipped off to.
Stephen was out as gay and was in a relationship when he died, but people online have brought up the Stephen Buster secret romance theory to suggest that silencing Stephen might have been a motive.
And Buster has never even explicitly acknowledged the rumor.
He said in a statement that he was not involved in Stephen's death and that all of the vicious rumors swirling about him were false.
But what makes me like double take is that a sexual assault kit was ordered in Stephen's death by a coroner without consulting investigators.
Which is that normal for a supposed hit and run like you're investigating as a hit and run?
One of the highway patrol officers who responded the night said that he had never seen anything like that done before in any traffic accidents like he was aware of.
And like the autopsy didn't know anything abnormal that would like prompt a sexual assault kit.
And what's so interesting is like the coroner who performed it is no longer in office.
And because the records have been sealed, I don't know the results of the kit, if there were any.
It's not even clear they collected a kit.
Was the kit actually tested?
Now, because everyone seems to disagree on what really caused Stephen's death, we reached out to an Ohio-based forensic pathologist, Dr Kent Harshberger, to get our own professional opinion.
Full clarity, like he did not work Stephen's case but he agreed to like look at the autopsy photos and tell us his thoughts.
And according to Dr. Harshberger, the injuries don't look like a typical hit and run.
The head trauma is forceful enough that Stephen had to have been struck by either a moving vehicle or something in motion, but not in a way that matched the usual patterns.
Like it seems too much to just be a beating and a bat likely would have left a different he said, narrower wound.
What stood out most to him, though, was the blood all pooling in one area.
Like no sign of a second impact, which you would normally expect in a hit and run when the body like hits the ground.
There's two impacts.
Right.
And then the ground.
And then the ground.
Dr Harshberger said that he would have ruled it blunt force trauma to the head and left the manner undetermined, not ruled it an accident with a car.
But, rulings aside, what really gives me pause is that Sandy claims that the day of her son's death, the first call she received was from authorities notifying her.
Do you want to guess who the second call was from?
Alec Murdoch?
Not Alec, but his brother, solicitor Randy Murdoch.
Sandy says that he told her he was interested in working pro bono as a liaison between her family and the authorities.
Stephen's dad accepted, though neither he nor Sandy had any idea how Randy found out about the incident so quickly or why he would have been interested in it specifically.
And shortly thereafter, Randy just stopped returning their calls.
So by June 7th, 2021, when Alec is sitting in the patrol car talking to officers.
He's telling them about the Mallory Beach incident.
Kind of.
Yet way underplayed.
But there is all this stuff just like bubbling under the surface.
So once Maggie and Paul are killed, every suspicion.
Anyone's ever had, any rumor that they've heard about this family.
They're all getting spoken about louder and more often than ever before.
I mean, this is all anyone is talking about in this area at the time.
Now, I don't know what police think of Alec's story early on, but they don't arrest him that night.
Per some redacted police reports I have, it doesn't even seem like he's even the first suspect.
A kid named Rogan Gibson is.
And Rogan is like a third son to the Murdochs.
And the night of the murders, Paul had actually been dog-sitting for him.
That was likely why he was out in the kennels that night to begin with.
And they know that Rogan was the last person Paul talked to.
But when they interview him the next day, they end up quickly ruling him out.
It turns out Paul had called Rogan at 840 pm to tell him that something was wrong with his dog's tail.
The pair, like, tried to FaceTime, but Paul had a bad connection.
They end up disconnecting.
And then after that, Rogan tried texting and calling Paul, tried texting Maggie to get Paul to call him back, even tried Buster, but no one was answering.
So this FaceTime call and the logs proved that Rogan was telling the truth.
But all the stuff they get from the phone also proved that someone else was lying.
Alec.
There is a 50-second cell phone video that Paul took via Snapchat at 844 pm on the night of his murder.
And the video, taken at the dog kennels, shows Paul petting Rogan's dog.
But it isn't the visuals that investigators are interested in.
It's the audio.
Because in the background...
You can hear Paul's voice talking to Rogan's dog.
You hear Maggie's voice shouting that an off-camera dog named Bubba has a bird in his mouth.
But then there's a third voice, Alex.
You can hear him trying to get Bubba's attention to drop the bird.
So this video basically says that Alec was at the crime scene right before the murders.
And he lied to police about it.
Originally he said that the last time he spoke to Maggie was around like 8 or 830 pm that night, after which he laid down for a quick nap.
Then just after 9 o'clock, he woke up, left to go visit his mom.
So in his version of events he never stopped by the dog kennels that night or saw Maggie or saw Paul before leaving.
Him leaving just after 9, though, which was always his story, doesn't seem to be a lie.
The telemetry data from his car shows that he left the Moselle property at 9.07 p.m.
So he would have been there during the 9 to 930 window that Maggie and Paul were presumably murdered.
Yeah.
At least a small portion of that.
Yeah.
And there's the fact that Alec practically raced to his mom's house that night, driving faster than he had on any other trip that day.
And that his car idled for a period of time halfway up the driveway at his mom's house.
Perhaps, they suspect, when he was trying to conceal or stash the murder weapon.
So he did go to his mom's that night then?
Yeah, they think he went to establish an alibi, but he for sure went.
And that is proven by his car's GPS data, which makes the evidence that they end up finding in his mother's house all the more suspicious.
Because there is this blue rain jacket in a closet of hers.
And when tested, this jacket is found to have a large amount of gunshot residue on the inside of it.
Now it's probably sounding like all of this is happening fast, but keep in mind the Murdoch of it all.
Yeah, that's his like supposed alibi.
That doesn't happen often. until four months after the murders.
And I think it was only prompted by information from the woman who took care of Alec's mom's house.
She said that she saw Alec carrying what looked like some sort of blue tarp under his arm.
To like go into the house.
And given the placement of the gunshot residue, SLED agents put forward that, aside from shooting a gun while wearing the jacket inside out, the residue could have gotten there if the jacket was like wrapped around the weapon that had recently been fired.
Now, I thought that they never found the murder weapon though.
They didn't.
So, I mean, this is just circumstantial evidence, but it definitely doesn't do Alec any favors.
And by month four, when they're finding this, there is already so much more that they've learned to make Alec look suspicious.
I mean, for starters, everyone by now is talking about Mallory's case and Stevens' case.
And Stevens had so much that was like glaringly suspicious around it that it actually got reopened.
Not officially tied to the Murdochs, though, just reopened.
But another case undeniably is being connected to the Murdochs.
It's the case of Gloria Satterfield.
Her death, and specifically the aftermath of it, starts to raise a lot of eyebrows.
Gloria had worked as a nanny and a housekeeper for the Murdochs for over 20 years.
She helped raise their kids, practically spent more time with them than her own family.
I mean Gloria's sister said in an interview with People magazine that she would have given Alec anything she had.
So Gloria was 57 years old when she allegedly suffered a trip and fall accident at the Murdoch home.
According to the family, she tripped over their dogs and fell down the front steps of their house.
Gloria got admitted to the hospital with severe head trauma and just over three weeks later she died from the injury.
What's weird though, is that the coroner wasn't notified about Gloria's death, nor was an autopsy performed.
And on Gloria's death certificate her manner of death is listed as natural autopsy, which is obviously not consistent even with a trip and fall accident.
Right like Gloria, didn't just happen to die of natural causes at the exact moment she tripped down the Murdoch residence stairs.
Exactly.
But with no autopsy or police involvement.
There is just no way to know what happened or was anything about her death intentional?
I mean, I can't find anything that might have motivated them to want her dead.
Right.
But the weirdness doesn't even, like, stop there.
At Gloria's funeral, Alec apparently approached her sons and told them that they should file a wrongful death suit against him, or technically claim it against his home's insurance policy, which would be able to pay them compensation.
And so her sons do, but they, like, never hear anything.
The whole thing just sort of, like, fizzles away, which is, like...
Catching a theme here?
Yeah.
So by fall, SLED seems to be focusing specifically on Alec and they expand their investigation into his finances, which uncovers some irregularities.
It comes out that the very day that Paul and Maggie were shot to death, June 7th, the CFO of Alec's law firm confronted Alec about funds that seemed to be missing from the firm's settlements.
Now, Alec tried to talk his way out of it.
And then, of course, everyone became distracted by the slaying of his wife and son.
Hmm.
But not forever.
On September 3rd the firm confronts Alec again after another employee discovers that, instead of making sure settlement money went to the firm's clients, Alec was actually redirecting it into a personal account or accounts that he had set up to look like they belonged to the law firm and using the money himself.
And he had been doing this for years, by the way.
And this is where Gloria Satterfield comes back in.
So remember, he like tells the sons, you should file a claim against my insurance.
They're like, OK, we're going to do it.
They did it.
Never see a dime.
Well, it turns out his home insurance did pay out $4.3 million.
But the Satterfields never received a dime.
Alec was the one who pocketed all of it.
He and some associates diverted the money and Gloria's kids were completely in the dark.
And so now, after learning about the payout, they file a lawsuit against Alec and his associates.
And also, SLED decides to open a criminal investigation into Gloria's death.
They even get permission from her family to exhume her body so they can finally do an autopsy.
So, I mean, the information is just avalanching at this point.
But before anyone can dive fully into this twisted string or like web or whatever you want to call it of deaths and fraud and forgery, on September 4th 911 gets a call that turns everything on its head.
I stopped.
I got a flat tire.
And I stopped, and somebody stopped to help me.
And when I turned my back, they tried to shoot me.
Did they actually shoot you or they tried to shoot you?
They shot me.
Okay, wait, you need EMS?
Well, I mean, yes.
I can't drive.
Okay.
And I'm bleeding a lot.
What part of your body?
I'm not sure.
Somewhere on my head.
Okay, and what's your name?
I'm still here.
I'm going to stay on the line with you.
What's your name?
Alex Murdock.
Alex Murdock?
Yes, ma'am.
Shortly after that call, Alec is airlifted to a hospital in Savannah, Georgia for treatment.
He sounded totally fine on the phone for someone who'd just been shot in the head.
So authorities say Murdoch had a superficial head wound, though his attorney will later call it significant head trauma.
I mean there definitely was a lot of blood on him coming from his head, enough to have spilled into his car when he went to get his phone to call 911, and enough for somebody driving by to feel like they needed to pick him up from the side of the road and bring him to a nearby ambulance.
So in my mind, like it might be a protocol thing, like when you're dealing with a head injury like this because, like I mean, it turns out he did have a bullet wound to the back of his head and he suffered a skull fracture and a brain bleed.
He was hospitalized for two to three days, in which time he tells SLED agents that the man who pulled over to help him with like a flat tire he had, he's the one that did this, and he was driving a blue pickup truck.
And he tries to give details to a sketch artist, but SLED never releases any images because they are apparently not satisfied with them.
Like, they say at first Alec didn't have enough information about the driver's features.
And the rest of us online just didn't buy the story from the job.
I mean, it seems like this guy's M.O. is when he gets backed into a corner.
Uh-oh, a gun goes off.
It definitely felt fishy to me at the time.
Now, after this, like within a couple of days, Alec releases a statement announcing his resignation from the law firm and that he'll be entering rehab for a 20-year opioid addiction which has only gotten worse since the deaths of his wife and son.
He essentially uses the addiction to explain his financial misconduct.
And his lawyer says that it was an enormously expensive habit and that he stole the money to fund that habit.
So two days after that statement, Alec's law license is suspended indefinitely.
And not even a week after that, some new details come out in this roadside shooting.
Basically, Alec admits to police that this was staged.
He said it was a staged suicide attempt.
And he had asked a man named Curtis Smith to shoot him during a fake car breakdown in order to make his death look like murder, because he believed it would help his surviving son Buster, collect his 10 million life insurance payout.
And for what it's worth.
Mandy Matney believes that the insurance settlement thing is actually made up to.
Did he really mean to die, though?
So Curtis, who doesn't go by Curtis, he goes by Eddie.
Okay.
He's this 61-year-old former client from like a workers' comp case and like also apparently like a distant cousin of Alex.
So they find him.
On September 14th.
He's arrested on charges of assisted suicide and assault and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, among others.
But Eddie's version of things doesn't quite line up with what they heard from Alec.
Eddie actually goes on the Today Show and says that he was not a willing accomplice in the whole scheme.
He says, quote, Fair enough.
He claims that he had a close relationship with Alec, but said that he was.
He thinks he was basically set up.
He said he had no clue about the stage suicide plot.
And in his telling he didn't know why Alec asked him to even meet him on this like remote road in Hampton County.
But he went anyways.
And then he says Alec showed up with a gun, asked Eddie to shoot him.
When Alec made a sudden movement, Eddie intervened.
The gun went off.
But Eddie says that when it went off, that bullet didn't hit Alec.
And once he realized Alec was OK, he took the gun, drove off and disposed of it.
So how does Alec end up with the bullet to the head if Eddie drove away with the gun?
Honestly, nothing about this incident adds up.
It's Alec's word against Eddie's word.
Alec's attorney says Eddie was basically Alec's primary drug dealer.
Eddie's attorney says that's not true.
Eddie said he just did like odd jobs for Alec and that they stayed friends after Alec represented him.
I mean, it's reported some places that Alec hired Eddie to kill him.
Other places say that Eddie shot Alec willingly without pay.
I mean, there is so much conflicting information out there it is almost impossible to pin down what exactly happened on the side of that county road.
But one thing is clear.
Alec has been committing financial crimes for years.
And finally, authorities are charging him for them.
And they are not holding back.
But that's just for the financial crimes, right?
Like, not for murder.
That eventually comes too.
So according to NBC News, Alec first faces 84 criminal charges and 11 lawsuits by July 2022.
We're talking fraud, money laundering, computer crimes forgery, criminal conspiracy, narcotics offenses, conspiracy to purchase and distribute oxycodone.
And honestly, like, none of these charges seem to be very shocking.
Mm-hmm.
And Alec will end up pleading guilty to a number of them eventually.
Then, that same month, Alec is finally indicted by a grand jury for the double murder of his wife and son, Maggie and Paul Murdoch.
And he does not go down without a fight.
Alec pleads not guilty to the murder charges and a trial date is set for January 2023.
Now that trial has been covered extensively.
It was one of the longest in South Carolina history.
And according to Alec's lawyer, Dick Harpoolian, who we spoke to for this episode, people came from across the country to spectate.
So I'm only going to walk everyone through like the highlights.
The prosecution puts forward that Alec killed Maggie and Paul on the night of June 7th and then left to alibi himself at his mom's house.
Their theory is that, leading up to the murders, Alec feared that his financial crimes were on the verge of being exposed basically, and that he saw no way out.
So he draws up this scheme to protect himself by becoming the victim.
Like they think in his mind.
If he could be seen in the eyes of the public as a grieving husband and a grieving father, maybe all that sympathy would drown out the growing suspicions about his fraud and his theft.
Plus, he wouldn't get caught because the murders could be attributed to the threats that Paul had been getting at the time since Mallory Beach's boat crash in 2019.
Because that was, he was getting a lot.
Like Alec, reached a point of desperation, saw no way out and made like this incredibly dramatic, violent decision in a distressed state.
And so many times with the family annihilator stuff.
I see over and over what it comes down to is not even so much like trying to not get caught for financial crimes.
It's like this image of themselves they don't want.
Right.
Yeah.
And like you just said, like the image, not just... The whole family legacy.
Not just the image of himself, but like painting himself as sympathetic even versus, like distracting from a poor image.
And family annihilator, like that is a phrase that the prosecution throws out repeatedly.
Mm-hmm.
But the defense counters that the case against Alec is entirely based on circumstantial evidence.
They know his car left Moselle at 907 but it's impossible to say whether Maggie and Paul were alive or dead at 907.
They also claim that law enforcement was biased against Alec from the beginning, deciding that he was guilty, and then they say fabricating evidence.
They say someone else committed the murders, if not multiple someones.
And they point to some data from Alec and Maggie's phone suggesting that a person other than Alec was in possession of Maggie's phone after the murder.
Wait, did they find her phone?
They did.
So remember, Paul's was like on top of him.
Hers wasn't anywhere near her body.
They actually had to track it down using the Find My iPhone feature on Buster's phone.
So her phone is found on Moselle Road just beyond the Murdoch property.
Like on the ground?
It sounds like it was tossed in the woods.
But anyways.
The defense uses the data from Alex's phone to argue that it couldn't have been him who tossed Maggie's phone.
Like you have to remember, just because someone's phone is somewhere, it doesn't mean they're with the phone.
Right.
And there are some wild theories out there about why Alec might have even tossed Maggie's phone.
That honestly, like I say they're wild but like some of them kind of make sense.
Like.
One theory is that basically Alec, Maggie and Paul all rode down to the kennels together in one of the family's golf carts, which wouldn't have recorded the trip.
Right.
Right.
Once they got there, Alec killed Paul and Maggie and then quickly jumped back in the golf cart to go back to the house.
But here's the problem.
Maggie had left her phone in the golf cart.
So when Alec drove away... He has it with him.
He accidentally took it with him, right.
Investigators say that the phone data backs this up.
Like no steps are logged on Maggie's phone while she's at the kennels.
And then it suddenly unlocks and changes orientation, just as Alec or someone would have been handling it.
And the theory goes, once Alec realized that he had Maggie's phone, he panicked.
He didn't have time to go back to the kennels because he needed to rush to his mom's house for an alibi.
But he definitely couldn't go there with Maggie's phone still in his possession, so he just tossed it into the woods.
And does anybody ever explore the possibility that Alec may have had an accomplice?
I mean, with regard to his financial crimes, definitely.
With the double murder, it seems like SLED really just hones in on him.
Now the defense.
They present a two-shooter theory based mainly on the fact that there were two different guns that were used.
But they obviously assert that neither of those two shooters was Alec.
Honestly, we're so deep into the story I kind of forgot that there were two different guns that were used.
I know.
And like, it's such an oddity in this case.
And like when you talk about the guns, like the other weird thing that I don't think I touched on is they did a bunch of crime scene analysis.
And the angle of the shots fired also were weird to me.
Like they point to an assailant that was shorter than Alec.
Alec is like 6'3", 6'4".
And is that like the analysis of all the shots or just one or just like some of them?
So the what they think is I think they believe that Paul was shot first.
The initial shot to Paul's shoulder seemed more straight on.
All of the others were like angled up.
I'm also just thinking, like, Alec was a trial lawyer.
Like, and we already know about one incident that he staged involving a gun.
Like, he would have known that using two weapons would complicate a case against him in a courtroom.
Like, two guns makes more sense with two people.
He's only one person.
Yeah.
It makes things muddy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Muddy's usually like for a defense, good at trial.
Yeah.
Listen, there are so many theories out there about exactly how these shootings might have gone down.
I mean, there's literally even videos of people online who have like, literally rebuilt the dog kennels and acted out the shooting with dummies.
And like.
Basically, one of the other theories that they like play out explains the low angle shots by suggesting that Alec may have like fallen down from the recoil or like tripped after shooting once at Paul on the shoulder, which then would have even forced him to like take a second shot from the ground.
So like, did he do it intentionally?
Did he fall?
Did he?
Is there some other excuse?
Basically, he's like when he's like on the ground, that's when he like fires at Maggie.
And that's what they say.
There's a theory.
That's why the angle doesn't make sense.
OK, so if it's not Alec, then who?
Right.
Like, who does the defense put forward?
If I'm a juror, I'm supposed to believe Alec didn't do this.
I kind of want to see an alternate theory, like someone else that we aren't looking at.
Yeah.
So Dick Harpoolian, his lawyer, suggested in our interview with him that he suspects Eddie, that guy that was tangled up in Alec's like roadside shooting thing.
But even though he said that to us, like Eddie, was never put on the stand or called as a witness at this trial.
Because, again, like you don't have to say I know the jury wants it.
You don't have to say who you just have to provide reasonable doubt.
And to provide that reasonable doubt, I mean the defense points out that there was unknown DNA found under Maggie's fingernail and a brown hair in her hand that ostensibly had not been tested or explained.
I mean, Alec had red hair.
And these are two details that the Internet has really run with.
Some people say that the hair in Maggie's hand was her own.
Like maybe it got there when she was shot in the head.
She was dirty blonde.
So I don't know.
I haven't seen it myself.
Or they say, like, was it from one of the dogs?
I, again, haven't seen it.
How long was it?
And then there's all these Reddit threads that pour over the DNA under her fingernails.
Like some, attribute it to the fact they say Maggie went to the nail salon earlier that day where other people would have obviously been like touching her hands.
She also went to the doctor's office.
I don't know.
And honestly, the defense doesn't spend nearly as much time on either of those pieces of evidence as, like I would have expected.
And...
Yeah, this trial is just like such not even a mess, just confusing.
What about the car data and the blue jacket and stuff like?
How does the defense explain those things?
Not even the defense.
Alec actually ended up taking the stand in his own defense to explain it.
Oh, how could you?
So in his testimony, he says he's clear.
He says, I didn't kill my wife.
I didn't kill my son.
He like breaks down multiple times in describing how he allegedly found them that night.
I mean he admits that he lied to law enforcement in early interviews but claims that it was because he was on a massive amount of Oxycontin which made him paranoid and distrustful of law enforcement.
And he said that he was basically afraid that if he told investigators he was at the kennels that night, like the video at 844 they have of his voice.
He thought that they would immediately set their sights on him.
And he's like if they were looking at me as the suspect that's going to distract them from finding like, the real killer.
Now he explains that stopping in the driveway of his mom's house was because he was trying to grab his phone, which had like fallen in a crack between like, the seat and the console.
He says he doesn't remember bringing a blue anything there, knows nothing about the rain jacket.
So he doesn't really explain it.
He's just like non-factor.
But in the end, like it's not enough to convince a jury.
Absolutely not.
End quote.
It takes the jury less than three hours to return a guilty verdict.
On March 2nd 2023, Alec was found responsible for the murders of Maggie and Paul and later sentenced to the maximum, which is two consecutive life sentences.
I think the one thing I'm still struggling with in this case is just the why.
Like, to be clear, I feel really, really certain of Alec's guilt.
But like, why would he go so far as to kill his wife and son just to essentially distract people from his financial crimes?
Like, is that really the only explanation we get out of this?
I know.
Which, like—
Every family annihilated case, I feel like this is where we end up.
We're like, really?
This is why?
There are like a million other options that don't include killing your own family.
When we spoke to Mandy Matney who, in my mind, she's like one of arguably like the deepest in the trenches of this case.
She's like in the same boat.
She says that the motive in this case is one of the most misunderstood parts of the story.
She told our reporters that she believes Alec was in this sort of like downward spiral before he killed Maggie and Paul.
And that we have to remember that he, like grew up with this belief that because of his last name, he could just get away with anything.
Now, I didn't mention this before because I didn't want to distract from the other cases I told you about.
But just three days after Maggie and Paul were murdered, Alec's father, Randolph Murdoch, died in his home.
And I don't bring this up to suggest in any way that like Alec was involved in his father's death.
Like Randolph died after a battle with cancer.
But what Mandy suggested is that Alec was used to relying on his father to get him out of messes that he made.
She said that Randolph was really the one who had the pull at police stations and with solicitors and judges.
So maybe Alec believed that this mess was just another thing that he could get away with.
And he had no way of knowing that his father wouldn't be around to help him anymore.
That safety net disappeared after he took these drastic actions.
Yeah, and maybe that's why things continued to escalate.
Or we saw him scrambling, making those drastic moves.
Now, did Alec really believe that he could get away with double murder?
I don't know.
But I also don't really have a better theory to give you.
Like, no one does.
So can I ask like what happened to Buster?
I feel like you don't really hear about him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's he's tried pretty hard to like keep just a low profile.
Like from what I can tell, he seems to still be living in South Carolina.
I know he was enrolled in law school at the University of South Carolina.
But by 2021 he'd actually been asked not to return, according to court records, citing plagiarism and low grades.
Recorded phone calls that Alec made in prison to him show that he was trying to pull any strings he could to get Buster back in.
But in 2022, Buster's attorney stated that Buster had quote put his desire to go to law school on hold for now.
Now, I know our reporter tried every number we could find online to contact him.
And we even emailed his long-term girlfriend, turned wife as of earlier this year, for any kind of comment.
But we never heard back.
And all I know is that Buster maintains that his dad is innocent.
And Alec also continues to maintain his innocence from protective custody at a maximum security prison in South Carolina.
We sent him a letter and asked Dick to make sure that he got it, but we never heard anything back.
And all the while, Alec's lawyers are still fighting to appeal his conviction.
I mean, they are also pushing for a new trial, alleging jury tampering.
Now, a judge denied that motion back in January of 2024 after an evidentiary hearing.
But Alec's team didn't stop there.
In August of 2024, they elevated the issue to the South Carolina Supreme Court.
Oral arguments are pending.
And until then, Alec will remain in his 8x10 single-cell unit.
According to Dick, he's now sober busy with prison jobs and, of course, still poring over his own defense.
Still strategizing.
Still looking for a way out.
Now Mandy Matney ended up writing a book on this case called Blood on Their Hands Murder, Corruption and the Fall of the Murdoch Dynasty.
And her work has been optioned into a dramatized limited series that's about to come out.
So I don't think that this is the last we'll be hearing about the Murdochs.
In 2023, South Carolina law enforcement officially declared Stephen Smith's death a homicide rather than a traffic accident.
But still, it's never been fully explained and no one has ever been arrested in connection with it.
We reached out to SLED for more information about Stephen's case, but they declined to comment, saying that it's an ongoing investigation.
So if you out there, if you know anything about his roadside death in July of 2015, please come forward.
Now Mallory's family was eventually able to settle a lawsuit with one of the places that served Paul that night and with Maggie's estate and Buster, whose ID Paul used to buy the alcohol.
But no one has ever been put behind bars.
As far as I can tell, Gloria's body was never actually exhumed.
The criminal investigation into her death is ongoing.
You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, CrimeJunkie.com.
And if you want to listen to more episodes like this one and all of our episodes completely ad-free, be sure to join our fan club.
You'll also get early access to new episodes every week.
And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production.
I think Chuck would approve.
