BS: Murdaugh murders and trial

Subject: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: leeneia
Date: 22 Feb 23 - 12:06 AM

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!

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Rain Dog
Date: 22 Feb 23 - 03:32 AM

The Guardian newspaper had a piece about this case a couple of days ago.


South Carolina Murdaugh murder saga winds towards its end

"No confession, no murder weapon, no witnesses – and yet the case against Alex Murdaugh, 54, has been convincingly argued."

I watched an American TV documentary about the case, which was made before the trial started. The whole thing was kind of unbelievable. Made me feel sad about the lives lost and the lives which have been disrupted.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Feb 23 - 08:16 AM

Alex was an accident personal injury lawyer like his grandfather and dear old dad. Murdaugh stole over 8 million dollars from his clients. He had a paid in full relationship with local and State police. This is a good ol boy well known to have a fiefdom in the deep south. As a lawyer he actually developed warlord-like power in his county.
Jury selection will be interesting imo.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: leeneia
Date: 23 Feb 23 - 12:04 AM

Yeah. A lawyer named Mark Tinsley represents the family of Mallory Beach, the student drowned when Paul M. drove a motorboat into a bridge while drunk, late at night.

Tinsley said Mallory's parents rushed to the bridge and were told by law enforcement that they could not go to scene. Then Alex M and Maggie appeared, and law enforcement let them right under the crime scene tape and down to the sight of the wreck.

Talk about rubbing salt into a wound.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Mr Red
Date: 24 Feb 23 - 02:16 PM

Tesla cars are full of recordings. Or they transmit it for evaluation servicing needs etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: meself
Date: 24 Feb 23 - 09:47 PM

The whole thing just keeps getting weirder - at least for someone like me, who just started kinda following it. Strangest of all, maybe, there doesn't seem to have been any particular motive for Murdaugh to have committed the crime, if indeed he did. It's become a cliche, but - if this was a movie, you'd think it was just ridiculous.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Feb 23 - 08:01 PM

Ridiculous about sums it up for our good ol boy oligarchs.
Listening to his testimony about senseless detail regarding the unimportant and the lack of recall concerning every crucial fact is a tactic the jury should see through.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: leeneia
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 12:53 PM

About the motive: first, you need to remember that Alex Murdaugh has been abusing pain killers for a long time. Been through rehab twice. He is not thinking or feeling normally. And thousands of dollars have been wasted on this addiction.

Two, you need to see the testimony of Mark Tinsley, injury lawyer for the family of Mallory Beach, the student who drowned when a drunk Paul Murdaugh slammed a motorboat into a bridge in the middle of the night. To put it briefly, apparently Alex Murdaugh thought that if he made it seem like some third party (presumably the Beach family) was persecuting himself, then when it came to trial, the community would know about the persecution, and the jury would give the Beach family a small amount in damages.

I think that the peculiar story about Alex being shot at on a country road was meant to be part of that scenario. But the story just couldn't hold up.

The murders were in June, 2021. The Beach case looked to be going to trial maybe 3 months after that, and Tinsley was prepared to go after Murdaugh's personal assets, not just insurance money. Murdaugh seemed to be getting desperate.

Only a madman would take this thinking to the point of a double murder, but given the illegal drugs, the dishonesty, the entitlement, the habitual using of guns, and who-knows-what-else, Murdaugh may have been madman enough to do it.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 03:29 PM

minor points< Opioids are not illegal per se'.
That Alex did not have the will to be uncomfortable for 16 to 30 days of withdrawal is an indication of his spoiled self entitled state of mind.
Getting away with stealing millions could translate into stealing lives.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: leeneia
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 10:32 PM

The jury returned a guilty verdict in 3 hours.

I believe that drug addiction muddled Murdaugh's brain to the point that he had no idea how much evidence he was leaving behind. See the first post. Arrogance is a common symptom of drug abuse. Also:

the hired hand testified that somebody had run the hose the day of the murders, had left puddles in strange places, and had hung the hose up wrong. Outsiders wouldn't have done that. It was probably done by Murdaugh, cleaning himself up.   

casings were found around his property which matched those that shot Maggie, proving that she was shot with a Murdaugh family gun, not by outsiders.

Paul's friend Will Loving testified that he had been shooting with the murder weapon (supposedly lost somehow) in Dec. 2020.

Murdaugh's phone had 73 deleted messages the day of the crime

His car was documented by OnStar.

The clothes he wore before the shooting have disappeared. His son had made a video of him wearing them and sent the video to a friend.

Enough. Murdaugh's ravaged brain was no longer up to coping with a trial like this.

The Guardian commented, "No weapon, no confession, no motive." That's obsolete. If you're hip enough, your electronics will convict you.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 10:49 PM

I just saw some video of the end of it - the poor sod dripped snot he was crying so hard. He must really feel entitled.

Good that it's over. Now will he waste everyone's time mounting an appeal?

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 05:50 AM

Of course. Murder convictions seek appeals 99.99% of the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: meself
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 02:42 PM

Is anyone else uncomfortable with jurors talking about what went on the jury room? Just saw a snippet of one the jurors in this trial being interviewed ....

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 03:47 PM

Interviews with jurors don't happen all of the time, I imagine mainly in high-profile trials. I wonder what instructions they're given regarding interviews, if any?

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: leeneia
Date: 04 Mar 23 - 12:26 PM

No, I am not uncomfortable with jurors talking. Why shouldn't they? Members of a grand jury are forbidden to discuss proceedings because the defendant has not even been charged yet, much less convicted. But after a criminal trial, everything is public.

As for Murdaugh's tears, he has been in jail for weeks, and he's had to withdraw from oxycodone. I think it has hit him what he's done, and how he wishes he hadn't done it. How could it not? That's said, I'm sure he still hoped to get away with it.

Now it's time to ask how many other counties in the country are as lawless as Colleton County, SC.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: leeneia
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 11:39 PM

South Carolina politics is kinda baffling. Evidently Colleton County and Hampton County share a solicitor (prosecutor). I'm used to the one-county-one-DA system.

It turns out the prosecutor, Creighton Waters, plays guitar and has been playing since age 15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGRUGZzwCgI

As a student of the English language, I find it interesting that Murdaugh's name is Alex, and it's pronounced Elek, even by fellow lawyers. Whenever I watched the trial, I was interested by southern speech and southern culture. (Culture is too big a word, but you know what I mean.)

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: meself
Date: 12 Mar 23 - 12:18 PM

"Why shouldn't they?" I don't like the idea of jurors worrying about how what they do or say in the seclusion of the jury room is going to come across when one of them starts yapping about it later, or jurors planning how they're going to milk the situation for their fifteen minutes of fame. It does nothing to enhance the gravity or the dignity of the business they're engaged in.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Mar 23 - 08:34 PM

It can also give material for an appeal, or during an appeal. Jurors should shut up, or there should be a time following the trial when they cannot discuss the case, even within their families. Say, two years.

As pitiful as it can be, I still believe in the majesty of the Law.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Mar 23 - 08:42 PM

One other thing: if Murdaugh wasn't a bigwig in his locality you probably wouldn't have heard of the case. Have you heard of the Degnan murder in Bear Lake County? How about killing of John Owens up in Sandpoint?

Also, the proximity to large cities where the media congregate has a lot to do with coverage. That is, a California murder, especially around LA, is more likely to be covered than one in Arimo, Idaho or Lorraine, Illinois.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Mar 23 - 03:24 PM

Val McDermid's book "Forensics" is a good collection of anecdotes about how it's done. She includes the case of Suzanne Pilley, murdered by her lover David Gilroy in 2010 - the conviction was only possible because of mobile phone records, which were good enough even back then. But the records weren't quite good enough to reveal exactly where he buried her and the body still hasn't been found.

Gilroy was a regular customer at the charity bookshop I worked at. He had really boring tastes - contemporary fiction of the sort that gets to the middle of the best-seller lists and nobody remembers a few years later.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Mar 23 - 04:12 PM

The US has about 14,000 murders a year that are reported. Half of those are done by friends and family.

Subject: RE: BS: Murdaugh murders and trial
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Mar 23 - 05:31 PM

Truth is a strange thing that can be denied or pushed back under the surface but with time it floats back up to the surface.
I've noticed that even big lies rarely persist after 8 years.
Deniers after that time are generally evil.