You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Ever Murder. I'm Kristin Dilley and
I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined again by author John Glatt, here to
talk to us about his new book, Tangled Vines, Power Privilege in the
Murdoch Family Murders. John, thank you for joining us again on Mind over
Murder. You keep for having me so it was a pleasure. Tell us
about what you've been up to since the last time we talked to you.
We had you on to talk about The Doomsday Mother, which we loved,
and actually I think I loved Tangled Vines a lot more. But talk to
us a little bit about what you've been doing since then. Actually, after
The Doomsday Mother, I threw myself right into Tangled Vines the best part of
two years, and I didn't think I've had any book with so much research.
I had to buy new furniture just to keep the files because it was
just growing exponiciously. Almost every day there'd be something new and it was very
hard to keep up with. So that ent be pretty busy. And since
I finished it a few months ago, I've just been taking this summer off
and relaxing. Gosh, I can understand that. Tell us a little bit
about your research process then, because as you said, this is a massive
case and there is so much that had to have gone into this really even
start, it's labyrinthin really as so many different strands. Basically, I started
by going down to Hampton. Took myself down for the best part of a
month to Hampton in South Carolina, to the low Country to try and get
a feel for the place and meet as many people that knew the Murdocks as
I could, and it was a very educational visit. You know. It
took a lot of time to get to know the people. A lot of
people that was getting so much publicity by that time after the murders of Mackie
and Paul that were people with closed rags for the Murdocks. So I took
a lot of talking and socializing getting to know the various people to get the
interviews I was looking for. My next question was going to be how open
were those residents in Hampton County to talking about the Murdock It's a small community,
is it not very small? Everybody knows everybody else. The Murdocks,
through Alex, his father, grandfather and greatfather great grandfather have ruled the low
Country and the five counties as solicitors and powerbrokers for about one hundred and ten
years, so they know everybody. And there was a certain amount of fear
about talking about the Murdocks. People were very closed up. They were worried
that they didn't want anything to come out in prints against them. But as
things went on they relaxed and became more open. But there was a protective
shield for the Murdocks and they liked them where they genuinely. I think the
Murdocks helped a lot of people. When somebody had a fire or something,
they would give some money to rebuild. Somebody had an illness, they would
pay hospital fees. So there was a lot of good will generated for the
Murdocks too. That surprises me on some level because of the characterizations of the
Murdochs seemed so dark or maybe now in retrospect you actually found there were positive
perceptions of the family when you were talking to people and trying to draw them
out. Oh. Absolutely, there were two. There was the public Murdocks
and maybe you could say the private side. People saw the public Murdocks who
were back slapping, they shake your hand. Alex Murdoch, for instance,
knew everybody by name, and he'd walked past them in the street and he'd
say hi, ask about their family. He was a genuinely gifted politician and
he engendered a lot of goodwill because of this. So I think people felt
protective again against them for the Murdocks, which I think, as you said,
Bill would surprise a lot of people. But that was something I found
definitely. What did you have to do to get people to open up to
you. Did you have to socialize a lot or was it enough to say,
hello, I'm an author and I'm interested in writing about this case.
What did you need to do to get people to open up to you.
I just had to tell them where I was coming from. I'd written these
books before. Sometimes I would give people books of mine that's been published,
just so they could get a feel for what I was doing and where I
was at. I have a total respect for everybody I interviewed. That taught
me something Off the record, I wouldn't use it. Also, there are
a lot of people in this book that I can't name because it would be
dangerous for them for their livelihoods or something. So I had to give them
pseudonyms. But that was to protect them. But I think once people got
to know me and feel comfortable with me, they would open up. That's
the fact that your accent stands out anywhere you go in the United States.
Here you are. I have stings an Englishman in New York in my head
as I say this, so it's obvious you're not from around here. As
you travel around. Does that work to your benefit because you're seen as exotic
or does it make you stand out because you're clearly not from the Low Country.
How funny you should mention stings the Englishmen in New York. Is I
actually knew quinc and Crisp and spend time with him when I first came to
New York forty years ago. They to the song's about. But as far
as my acsence concerned, it depends where you are. Sometimes it will work
for me and sometimes it won't work for me at all. You can never
really tell. And I think the longer I've been here, the more Brits
are coming to America. It's not such an unusual absence as it was when
I first arrived forty years ago. But it can play to your advantage and
it can also play to your disadvantage. Though it's a toss up. What
would you say are some of the most surprising things that you learned about the
Murdoch family and their history in Hampton County as you were going through this research
process. Yeah, I think how they operated as a family and as the
family law firm PMPED, which Alex's great grandfather I found it in nineteen ten.
They basically had Hampton and they had five counties. It's the biggest kind
of low countries. Biggest constituency legal constituency in South Carolina, and the murders
controlled it. They also controlled the juries. When you had civil plaintiff actions.
There was a shopping venue thing in South Carolina, so depending it didn't
matter where you had the accidents. It could be some other state. As
long as the person the company was suing had a presence in Hampton or four
other counties, they could be sued there. So that's why all these hugely
big lawsuits came to Hampton, and that's why they were good to the people
in Hampton, because the Hampton jurors were synonymous with giving huge cash payouts,
bigger than anywhere else. And that's one of the most interesting things I discovered.
In fact, the railroad CSX runs directly through South Carolina and through Hampton,
so anytime there was a train accident or something, it would come to
a Hampton jury. The interesting thing about that is Alex's great grandfather, Randolph
Senior, actually was killed by a train by the same company in another incarnation
in nineteen twenty. He was coming back from a very drunken pokon night and
nobody really knows if it was just because he was drunk, or he was
trying to commit suicide because his wife had just died. He drove as the
tracks as the train was coming and just waited there, actually waved to the
Sigleman said, as it plowed into him and killed him completely. I think
he was thrown a hundred and twenty yards away. And in fact, his
son Buster actually sued the train company and from then on they made millions,
the Murdochs suing this train company forever for the next hundred years. So that's
how that started. That's I found that very interesting. Yeah, that sounds
like a suicide more than an accident, wouldn't you say? I thought so.
Nobody wanted to speculate. To me, I thought it was a suicide
I spoke to. One of my best interviews was with a very close Murdoch
Frank called Sam Cruise, the third Him, his father and grandfather have been
in twined with the Murdocks for over one hundred years. He opened up to
me in his house. I went to his house and spent a couple of
hours there on a Saturday morning. He was very generous and he told me
a lot of things I never knew about the Murdocks before, and I think
new things that nobody else will ever hear about until the book comes out.
He wouldn't commit whether it was suicide or drunkenness, but I think it was
suicide. You were talking about these massive sums of money awarded by Hampton County
Juries, and that really struck me too. As I was reading just the
huge payout. When all of the reporting was being done on the Murdoch family,
it had come out that Alec was shafting people for this huge amount of
money. I had no idea of the extent of it. I was reading
your book and at times as I'm coming across these figures, my jot is
dropping going I can't believe he embezzled that much money from that many people.
I was really just astounded by that. I had no idea the scope of
it. Was that a surprise to you when you started doing this much research,
Yeah, I didn't realize that you could. He basically stole nearly ten
million dollars from his clients. These are people that were horribly injured or died
in car crashes. He befriended them, a lot of them grew up with
Alex. Some of the people he ripped off. Actually went to school with
Alex and knew him and trusted him. He was president of the South Carolina
Association of Justice for three or four years. He was the lawyer in South
Carolina for plaintiffs. People trusted him, and he just ripped them off for
millions and he would look them in their face and smile and take their money.
Which was that came out at trial He actually admitted it. He finally
admitted it, so that he did this, I personally think he's a sociopath.
He has no empathy with anybody, and he would look you in the
eye and steal the clothes off your back. I didn't know somebody that could
exist and be so well respected for so many years before his downfall. It
sounds like there's almost two murders. There's this public facing, friendly, as
you said, backslapping guy who is well known and respected in the community,
and then with the other side of him, he's reaching around and stealing tens
of millions of dollars from his clients, many of whom needed that money as
a result of accidents, injuries, or deaths. Yeah, what do you
make of that? There are I mean, there's a I mean maybe he's
a schizophrenic. There are definitely two sides, and his family also saw the
same side. He actually stole one hundred and twenty thousand dollars from his own
brother, Randy. Can you believe that from his own brother he stole it.
I think his family really loved him and believed in him. Maybe there's
a really dark side deep inside Alex Murdoch that nobody ever saw that never came
out until all these things were exposed. But he must be a very deeply
troubled man to be able to live with these two sides going on. Obviously
he compartmentalizes a lot to do it. I've tried to get into a lot
of people's minds for these books, but with Alex Murdock it was really impossible.
I think he is. Maybe there's a new medical term for it,
but I haven't found it. There's another person in this book who also has
two sides to his personality, of course, in that is Paul, who
turns into Timmy whenever he drinks alcohol. That part of it was shocking to
me as well. How large a role does the abuse or addiction to alcohol
and drugs play in the Murdock's downfall, do you think, oh, hugely.
Absolutely. For a start, Alex Murdoch admits that he was addicted,
heavily addicted to opioids and we spent thousands of dollars every week on it.
And he's also been charged with manufacturing and distributing through a cousin of his,
Curtis Smith, who's very involved in the whole story. If you've got somebody
on opioids all the time, that's got to do something to their head.
And the whole Murdoch family was based on alcohol. Basically. His grandfather was
pretty much a bootlegger. This is Buster Murdock. He was arrested and stood
trial for him being involved in bootlegging operations in the fifties, but gone away
with it and resumed his job as a solicitor. Paul Murdoch, the younger
son of Alex and Maggie, and his brother Buster, they were both brought
up with alcohol. It was like a part of the family. There was
always a cooler of cold beers when they went hunting, and the kids had
free access to it. And I understand from friends that Maggie would proudly joke
about how their little instance sons were drinking. She thought it was fun.
So they were brought up in this kind of childhood of alcohol, and I
think Paul became an alcoholic at a very young age. He'd drink every day,
he'd get out of control, and his friends gave him the nickname Timmy
because when he got drunk, his fingers would stretch out and remain like that,
his eyes would get huge, and he'd just been wandering around like a
separate person. It was like a jackal and hide thing, and he'd scare
people when he became Timmy, and his friends would say Timmy is out.
And basically that was the downfall of the Murdocks when Timmy came out on this
boat trip to the Oyster Fest and crashed the boat and killed Mallory Beach,
and that's when everything started. The domino started falling with the Murdoch Fan just
recently announced a few days ago that there's been a very large settlement in that
boat crash, and it's taken this long for them to get to a place
where they arrived at a settlement five years. I think what I understand is
is eighteen million dollar global settlement. It hasn't been announced exactly where the money
is going to who, but I think the beach Manory's parents are going to
get a huge amount of it. And also Connor took his cousin Anthony,
who were on the boat to Miley Altman. I think she was also on
the boat, was she not? He's his girlfriend? Yeah, I think
it was Miley. The other one Morgan Morgan Yeah, yeah, so's there
hasn't been announced exactly who's getting watched yet, but it seems to be like
the civil part of it is over because it was posted go to trial in
August with Alex Murdoch probably testified, So now that's not going to happen.
There are so many twists and turns to this story, and one thing I
really appreciated about the book is we finally have a timeline, because when I
remember becoming aware of the Murdoch case, it started with Alec being shot in
the head on the side of the road, and then bits and pieces of
the story started coming out from there it became really hard to follow. So
I appreciated the fact that this book really sets the record straight. Here's what
happened first, then second, and third and fourth. It really smoothed things
out for me. Was it difficult to untangle all of the things that had
happened and put them in a linear order. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean
there's a real job. With all my books, I do a timeline,
a single space timeline of everything, and this ran to two hundred and fifty
pages. It was a huge timeline because that's the only way you could make
sense of it. And I found we need to do a timeline. Certain
things that you don't think are related, when you put them in a timeline,
that they are. And that's how I do my books. So I
think for the first time you're going to get the reader will get a clear
and concise look at the Murdoch history, which up to now has been in
bits and babs and tangled like the book tangled vines the story. I think
I've hopefully untangled it and made it clear to follow from beginning to end.
The story has been so twisted, and of course their family history is bizarre.
This timeline, I think is going to serve a very valuable function for
people understanding how the Murdochs built this fantastic dynasty. But ultimately it collapses under
its own way. Yeah, and I think there's no way to understand what
happened unless you go back to the Murdoch history, how they came to Hampton,
great grandfather Randolph Senior, started the law business and then became the first
solicitor of the Five Counters of the low Country, and how the family tradition
went from there. I think that is all part of it, a very
important part of understanding exactly what motivated Alex to do what he did and the
horrific murders that he's been found guilty of. I think it all comes down
to the legacy he perceived as a murder being very special and different than anywhere
else. The only comparison I can make is as Sam Cruz, the third
Tommy is like the Kennedy's but without the publicity and out would glamor. But
there was the Kennedy part of it, with the children and everything that reigned
through the low Country. Okay, So English teacher question, once you've got
your two hundred and fifty page timeline, how long does it take you to
flush out the book after that? Because I imagine the timeline and getting it
all placed in a linear fashion probably takes a while. How long does it
take after that to do the rest of the process. I'm doing about three
months on the timeline, but I've also got a lot of interviews. I've
done the three dozen interviews, I have to transcribe them and everything. I'm
doing my research and printing everything else. So once I got that, I
think that was probably near around three and a half months actually writing. Yeah,
probably three and a half months writing it. Then it has to go
to my editors at Saint Martin's with their input and make changes there from the
first draft. So it's a very long process until you get into the gallis
which you have there. Most people allow themselves to be recorded for your interviews,
John, because obviously there's a tremendous amount of detail that you want,
and yet you mentioned fear on the part of some of these people. How
do you balance that? Will they let you record? Oh? Yes,
I have to tell them I'm recording first of all, But they're pretty open
about that, and if there's something they didn't once said, they say,
turn off the recorder. So I'd let them do the off the record bit
and then turn it back on. One thing that I was particularly interested in
the book is that Alec had a number of co conspirators in this money laundering
operation that he was doing, which I hadn't heard anything about in the reporting.
Can you talk to us a little bit about his buds who helped him
out with this money laundering. There was a lawyer that he was at law
school with South Carolina School of Law, Cory Fleming, who they were very
close. They were very close friends, and in fact, Corey was in
Alex's wedding to Maggie. He was also I think Paul's godfather. And when
a lot of these cases came up, the plaintiff cases, especially the Gloria
Satterfield, Alex would use Cory as the main person to do the cases without
telling the people that how close he was. But that was the lawyer.
So Corry, in fact was charged with a number of crimes. So does
that mean that Corey and Alex weren't necessarily as public about their close friendship and
alliance. They wouldn't reveal it at all, that nobody knew. They just
said. Alex would just say this is a great experienced lawyer without saying they
were roommates at college and he was the godfather of the son. The other
one was Russell Lafitte, who in fact was president of the Hampton Bank very
close to Alex. In fact, Alex dated his then before his wife Susie,
and in school in the Wade Hampton School they dated there in the year
book. They were both very close. Russell Lafitte would just give him really
generous loans from the bank which were paid back late and whatever. And he
has actually gone to trial and being found guilty and is about to be sentenced.
But really I think the whole of Hampton I was always told there were
a lot of other heads that were going to fall in different areas, maybe
legal and police, that were aiding and abetting the Murdocks over the years,
because it was just it was an old boys club. You're listening to Mind
over Murder. Will be right back after this word from our sponsor. We're
back here at Mind Over Murder. And one of the things about the Murdocks
or generations of them, was they knew how to entertain on a lavish scale
and they'd have these kind of hunting parties. They'd invite the main police chiefs
of the different areas, the judges, people like that, and they socialize
with them so they could call in favors basically, and that's how you know
that Low Country worked, and it worked very successfully for well over one hundred
years. When Alex Spell, everybody's saying this is the end of that.
Things are going to have to change for the better, and just out of
curiosity, because I was looking for it in the book and I don't think
I ever found it. Do we ever run in total on how much money
Alec actually laundered from all of his clients, I think there is. I
think it was near around ten million something with all the different I mean there
were all when it came to trial, I think ninety nine or so civil
actions against him, federal actions and the South Carolina Attorney General actions. He's
got a lot of court cases pending. And even after he was found guilty
of murdering Paul and Maggie, I think twenty five more federal actions came out,
so he's facing I don't know how many years of trials going forward on
this. It was hard to keep a running total because every time I did
there he'd get charged with more crimes, he'd get indicted. So it was
an ongoing thing, which after I finished the book, continues to this day.
It's absolutely crazy. Now, as we've mentioned, Aughair, what Bill
and I have heard the events reader copies which don't talk about the trial,
but the trial is included in the version of the book that is releasing in
August. Correct the copies you've got were came out were printed before the trial.
But I covered the trial. I called him most of it, took
careful notes, so I've added like two or three chapters on the end of
the book, which really makes it complete. Covering the whole trial and the
dramatics of it were just quite amazing. Nobody dreamed that Alex Murder would actually
take the stand in his own defense. In fact, his lawyers did not
want him to, but against their wishes, he was so arrogant, so
much hubris, that he actually took the stand for almost two days. I
think he thought he could persuade the jury, could look them in the eyes
like he did in so many plaintive cases successfully and sway them over to finding
him not guilty. But that didn't work. What was your perception sitting there
watching him testify? Was the inner monologue in your head staying, I can't
believe he's doing this, or what were you thinking? Yeah, I couldn't
believe it. I just thought this is the worst possible thing he could have
done. I think up to that point many eepen, including myself, thought
that it might be a hung jury because it was in Colleton County Court,
where the Murdock's practiced Alex did cases. In fact, the interesting thing is
that his own grandfather, Buster Burdock, had his portrait at the back of
the court, and the judge order it ordered it taken down before the trial
started, because it would have been unfair to the state. So I watched,
I watched Alex, and I just thought, this is he's damning himself
because it could have been a hung jury. They all didn't needed was one
juror to find not guilty and he would have gone free, or there would
have been a retrial. But it was unanimous and incredibly, in just three
hours they came back and found him guilty of all charges. I was really
surprised that nobody filed for a change of venue. Was that ever know,
was that ever even a possibility or were they just going to try it right
there in the same place where his grandfather's portrait was. Yeah, I thought
there might be a change of venue, but I think Alex murder wanted it
tried there. Because he thought he might get the oculoons of a Hamton jury
because Collinson County is right next door. He thought they'd be sympathetic. But
anyway, they decided to go with Collinson County, and obviously for justice a
good decision, this track record that he had and his law firm had to
win these massive judgments. Do you think money may have changed hands after the
fact with key jurors in some of those cases. If he's stealing money all
over the place, he's not going to stop necessarily at the ethical boundary.
Oh, I couldn't possibly bribe members of the jury or after the fact.
Yeah, I can't speak for some of the other cases, but I didn't
know from one of a librarian I spoke to interviewed her husband was in fact
sitting on a jury and it was a very interesting, I think early nineties
case when Maha mid Ali's doctor, Muhammad Ali was suffering from cancer and he
had this doctor he totally believed in, and the doctor was getting sued as
a quack basically Hampton County Court for about twenty million dollars. The trial went
on with the jury, Muhammad Ali was actually called. He came and testified
in Hampston County at one of the days of trial. But the interviewed the
librarian's husband he was serving on the jury, and he basically said that it
was going on past the money they would pay per diem rate to the jurors,
so they weren't going to get paid because they weren't getting paid by their
jobs. Alex Murdoch, he said his company were very generous with the jurors.
They kept paying the money even when they wouldn't have got paid or declared
a mistrial. So I won't say there were huge amounts of money being paid.
But another interesting thing is that I heard that his father, Alex's father,
Randy Murdoch, would often boast and say, oh, we had to
pay off a few jurors. Today. It's very tongue in cheek and nobody
knows whether he was serious or not. So it's a closely guarded secret whether
they were doing anything nefarious like that. Unbelievable. Can you go back over
and again this You weren't able to get into this in the advanced reader copies
that we'd have, but I know it's in the I know it's in the
upcoming release book. Can you go over the evidence that eventually led investigators to
conclude that Alec did in fact murder Maggie and Paul. Like, what was
the smoking gun in this case? If I can be so glib to say
that, Yeah, right after the night Maggie Paul were murdered, right by
the Doc Kennels. Alex Murdock's story was that, in fact, his son
and wife had gone to the Doc Kennels. I think after dinner around six
o'clock, he'd had a nap, he'd be watching TV. He hadn't seen
them until the murders, which I think we're around the post to ten o'clock
that night. He hadn't seen them at all. He'd gone to visit his
ailing mother who was very sick with Alzheimer's, and then come back to discover
them dead. Amazingly enough, when they took all the evidence, they took
Paul's iPhone and they couldn't break it down and they couldn't get into his password
for more than a year. I think the state police sled tried FBI,
and eventually it took a year to get into his iPhone, which he came
out at trial was something to do with his birthday, which baffled me,
why would have taken so long. But more than a year later they got
into it and they discovered a snapchat video that Paul had taken minutes before his
murder when he was in the kennels and he was sending it to one of
his good friends. Paul was looking after his dog that was sick, and
he was taking videos of the dog telling his friend how it was doing.
And in the video you can distinctly hear Alex's voice saying something like Bubba,
which was the dog had come in with a chicken and going Bubba. And
there's one line where you can hear Alex's voice saying that, which proved he
was actually in the kennels with Maggie and Paul literally two or three minutes before
the actual murder. Now, this came out very dramatically at trial. Nobody
had an idea about this before and this was the smoking gun. Witness after
witness that knew Alex murder for years. Friends, they all like, they
were played this tape, which was like a thirty second tape. It was
pretty short with Alex's voice. They all testified that was Alex's voice. He
had no leg to stand on when he came up to in the witness stand.
He had changed his stories to try and make allowances for this, but
I don't think the jury would have bought it. And one of the most
dramatic things was that the summing up, the prosecutor Craton Waters said, actually
that was Paul speaking from the grave, because Paul was called as the little
detective because right before the murder it was shown that Paul was looking into Alex's
case and finding all his opioids, and the mother had found it, and
they were doing checks on Alex's drug use, and they called him the little
Maggie called him the little detective. So at closing, Crayton Waters I think
said, this is the little detective from the grave exposing what his father did.
That was, to me was so dramatic and intense. And if there
was a smoking gun, that was it. And without that Paul's few second
tape with Alex's voice on, I'm sure he wouldn't be in jail right now
for murder. I think he would have walked free. That one bit of
recording with Alex's voice in the background took all the air out of his false
story that he was visiting his mother, which would have taken him elsewhere and
substantially a number of miles away from the location where the murders took place.
At the Hunt Club. He was obviously he committed the murders, and then
he got in his cars to visit his mother, fighting these rural, thin,
rural country roads which I know I drove them. They scared the head
out of me when I was in Hampton, and he drove to his mother's
house at speed's reaching up to eighteen miles an hour. The caregiver you testified
that Alex came there and he was holding something. She didn't know what it
was, and he didn't. He sat with his mother on the bed for
a few minutes, then he got up and left, drove back and that's
when he drove straight to the kennels and dialed nine one one and called the
police. That tape from Paul's iPhone, I think just destroyed his whole alibi,
And there was I felt sorry almost for the defense because there wasn't much
they could do. What if anything is happening with regard to the death of
Stephen Smith and Gloria Saderfield, or are you aware of anything new that's happening
there. Well, Gloria Satterfield, this is the Murdock housekeeper that supposedly in
two I think it was twenty fifteen. Oh, no, I think it
was two nineteen, had tripped that you had gone up to Moselle, tripped
down the stairs and suffered a faithful head injury, and Alex took responsibility saying
that dogs had tripped her, and then managed to get like a I think
four or five million dollar payout to the sons, which never went to them,
went to Alex's bank account. When this all came out, her body
was exhumed, and we still haven't heard the post. We still haven't heard
autopsy results. That's still pending. But with Stephen Smith, that has been
since the trial. There was a lot of Stephen Smith was actually in Wade
Hampton class with Buster Murdoch. They were in the same class, and there
was a lot of rumors unsubstantiated, that Stephen, who was openly gay,
had some kind of relationship with Buster. In twenty fifteen, he was mysteriously
found in the middle of the road run over. Supposedly even the Highway com
patrol police were convinced it was murder, but it was supposedly hushed up through
the Murdocks. That's been reopened again. And I understand there's a grand jury
right now convening on what action they're going to take and if anyone's going to
be charged in it. So that's an open case, as is Gloria Satterfield.
Yeah, it's fascinating. So there is a strong possibility that there may
be further developments in both the Stephen Smith and Gloria Satterfield cases. I would
best on it. Yes, whether the Murdoch or not, I do not
know. There's other names that have been levied about that wonder. Yeah,
it was about to ask, what do you think the chances are that Buster
Murdoch comes out of this completely unscathed. I have no idea, to be
honest. Watching the trial, I felt sorry for Buster. He lost his
mother and his younger brother and his father's been convicted of their murderer. You
hear some of these phone calls. One of the things in the book I
got access through another reporter by out the freedom of information request for Alex's gelhouse
cause when he was first arrested, and I managed to I got access to
more than two hundred of them, which I painstakingly went through, and there's
a lot of conversations between him and Buster, who you can see he's manipulating
the whole time. One of the most amazing things I found. You asked
me earlier, what did you find in the book? Was that behind bars.
I think for the second anniversary of Paul's death, Buster organized the birthday
party for all Paul's friends in Charleston at a bath through their lawyer and a
young Buster. This was Alex organizing this party on Paul's birthday. Also,
whenever it came up to Mother's Day or something like that, he would urge
Buster to put flowers on Maggie and Paul's grave and keep reminding them and everything.
He was a master manipulator. But you can hear in his calls health
fraught, Buster sells as things progress and more and more comes out. So
who knows what the real relationship is. But Buster is a murder and I'm
sure he feels like a family closing ram. So even if he believes that
his father is guilty of the murders he found guilty of. And there's a
possibility, as has been mentioned elsewhere, that Buster and perhaps some of his
friends may be involved in the murderer of Stephen Smith. I'm saying that was
basically rumors. I interviewed Stephen's twin sisters, Stephanie and her mother Sandy.
I went to a fundraiser, That's when I came to meet with them,
and Stephanie says that Stephen confided that he was having a fling with some very
high powered young man in Hampton, which he assumed was Buster. There was
also taught right after Steven Smith was found dead, the rumor will went into
overdrive that somehow Buster was involved. To be honest to Buster, this has
never been substantiated, and it remains rumors at the moment, and I wouldn't
want to bet how that would turn out. It looked at the end of
the book that Buster is not planning on following in his father's footsteps, because
there was a portion of a phone call where Alec was encouraging him to go
back to law school and Buster was hemming and high and on that is he
going to be? I would say the murder to break the cycle? Do
you think I reckon? So Buster was expelled from South Carolina Law School,
where Alex his grandfather, Randy great great grandfather Buster and great great grandfather Randolf
Senior. They all went to law school. Buster was rather renomably expelled for
supposedly plagiarism. From the phone calls, you can see that annex paint some
very big wheels in the South Carolina legal profession about sixty thousand dollars to try
and get Buster reinstated. And during the phone calls, he's nagging Buster,
have you followed up with the dean? Have you done this? And Buster
sounded very disinterested. In the meantime, Buster has I know he's got a
job for the corporate office. I think it's called Wild Wings. It was
a chain franchise food place that he's working for there. And he seems disinterested
in the lord at the moment, and I can't see he's with what's happened.
He could possibly get back into law school, So I think that was
the end of the chain, although maybe other Murdocks may become lawyers next the
generation, next generation. It does sett a lot like the Kennedy family,
now that you've made the comparison, I can't see it. Absolutely, yeah,
it totally does. The whole thing makes me shudder because it sounds like
there's been eruption at its highest and lowest level going on there for over a
hundred years, over a hundred yes, and they got away with it.
The Murdocks were the law. Basically, they were the police. They were
everything in those five counties, which is a huge area extending to Beaufort,
and they really ruled the roost and they could get away with anything. Interestingly
enough, it came out at trial that when Paul crashed the boat, they
went to the hospital and very soon afterwards Alex Murdoch and his father Randy turned
up to try and control the situation. Alex walked in and he was an
assistant solicitor. He had a get badge. He pulled out his badge and
he put it round his neck when he walked into that hospital to try and
get people to shut up. We're lawyering up and they're not saying anything.
And he tried to stop any of the five other teenagers, four other teenagers
talking to any of the police or anything when he tried to put a hold
on it. That just shows the corruption there. You had used the word
hubris a while back to describe Alec, and I feel like that really is
the best descriptor for him. This feels almost like a Greek tragedy in a
way, except I'm glad for the murder down fall. I'm not gonna lie
about that. But this definitely has the feeling of you fly too close to
the sun and look what happens. Right as Arrogance and Hubris and the generations
before Alex, they knew how to work that, they knew how to control
the whole area, but they weren't so public about it. They drove normal
kind of cars, they didn't flaunt their worth. And I spoke to people
that very close to the murders and they say that Alex, this was the
first time Maggie was a social media you know nuts. She would get on
Facebook and she would post pictures of them all in their private planes flying off
to these various venues, hunting and fishing and just putting in everybody's face.
And I think if they kept a lower profile like their ancestors, this might
never have happened. To make too close to the sun, it feels like,
you know, the sins of the father, and then the story you
mentioned about Maggie the mother being so amused by Paul and Busters drinking and hijinks
when they were teenagers. Ultimately that also led to their downfall because the whole
boat crash and the appearance of Timmy the alter ego. It's all there,
and these are all patterns and self destructive behaviors that started back when they were
still under the control of their parents. Absolutely, and I think it started
even further back than that. I go into Alex's childhood and especially when he
was at the University of South Carolina. I got into a lot of hijinks,
drunken fight, strip clubs with his friends and rules and whatever, and
they were always swept under the carpet. As soon as they realized he was
a solicitous son, they would drive him home and no questions asked. So
it goes back generations, but Alex really took it to the next stage with
being so public about it, on flaunting his wealth. It's an absolutely amazing
book. John. I know you said you were taking the summer off.
What is next in terms of projects. Being a little close lips about this
at the moment, but there's a few things I'm looking into at the moment.
You know, fantastic. We definitely want to have you back whenever you've
got another book ready for publication. The book is Tangled Vines. It comes
out August eighth, with author John Glatt. Thank you very much for having
me. It's been a pleasure. As always, John, we really appreciate
you taking the time. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of mind
Over Murder. We'll see you next time. Mind Over Murder is a production
of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions. Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and
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