In rural South Carolina, lawyer Alex Murdaugh, a third generation leader of the place, is on trial for shooting his wife Maggie and son Paul on June 7th 2021, at the dog kennels on their 1770-acre property.

I'm a true crime reader, and this one is an eye-opener. In this case we see a county where law and law-enforcement are completely useless to the average citizen. For example, young Paul had been operating a motorboat while drunk and had caused the death of a girl aboard. When a DNR employee arrived, one of the teens told him not to waste his time investigating the death, because Paul was the son of Alex Murdaugh, and nothing would ever be done. [DNR = department of natural resources]

Now I understand the MAGA crowd better. A lot of them must come from places like this, where there has been no justice for decades.

I've had a second insight, and that is modern affluent life is no good when it comes to crime. Your phone reveals where you've been, who you texted and what you said. Your car tracks your location, direction, and speed. It knows every time you hit the brake. Apparently this record is stored in a black box in your car and with services like OneStar. Your watch tells how many steps you took at a given time.

Here's an example: Maggie's mobile phone was missing from the murder scene. A search located it on a country road in the vicinity. General Motors provided the information that Alex Murdaugh's car had been driven down that road at about 80 miles per hour (!) around the time of the murders. His car slowed from 80 to 45 at the place where the phone was found, then accelerated after 6 seconds. It seems clear that Murdaugh, in shock and fear after the murders, drove like hell down a remote road, slowed down, threw the phone out, and then sped up again.

It beats me how a guy 6'4" tall couldn't throw a phone further than that, but he was not himself.

I had no idea. I knew our car had a service that I could get if we had a wreck, but as to this precise tracking of all that stuff...whew!