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 Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. 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 Dilly 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. John, thank you for joining us again on Mind Ever Murder.
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 love 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 don'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 exponitiously.
Almost every day there'd be something new and it was very hard to keep
up with. So that kept me 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. Where do you
even start? It's labyrinthine really has 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
Maggie and Paul that were people with a close rags for the Murdocks. So
it 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 Murdoch It's a
small community, is it not very small? Everybody knows everybody else. The
Murdocks, through Alex, his father, grandfather and great father 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 print 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. Were they genuinely
I think the Murdocks helped a lot of people. They 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 the
characterizations of the Murdoch seemed so dark or maybe now in retrospect actually found there
were positive perceptions of the family when you were talking to people and trying to
draw them out. Oh, absolutely, there was the public Murdocks and maybe
you could say the private side. People saw the public Murdocks who were backslapping,
they shake your hand. Alex Murdoch, for instance, knew everybody by
name and he'd walk 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 good will because of this. So I think people felt protective 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 my brittin 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 told 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 and Englishmen 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 Englishmen in New York, because I actually knew Quent and Crisp and
spend time with him when I first came to New York forty years ago to
the song's about. But as far as my accents concerned, it depends where
you are. Sometimes it'll 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 founded 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 jurors when you
had civil ac plaintive actions. There was a shopping venue thing in South Carolina,
so depending it didn't matter where you had the accident. It could be
some other state. As long as the person the company you were suing had
a presence in Hampton or the four other counties, they could be sued there.
So that's why all these hugely big law suits 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. Sorry. 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 poker 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 dove as the tracks as the train was
coming and just waited there, actually waved to the sippleman said, as it
plowed into him and killed him completely. I think he was thrown one hundred
and twenty yards away. And in fact, his son Buster actually sued the
train company and from then on they made millions, the Murdocks suing this train
company forever for the next one 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 friend called Sam Cruz,
the Third. Through him, his father and grandfather have been in time
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 jurys,
and that really struck me too. As I was reading just the huge
payouts. 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 the extent of it. I was reading your book
and at times, as I'm coming across these figures, my jaw 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,
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 plaintifs.
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 shouldly 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 for 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. 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 Murdock that nobody ever saw that never came out until all
these things were exposed. But he must be a very deeply strubled 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 is that 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, and 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 an addiction to alcohol and drugs play
in the Murdock's downfall, do you think, well, 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 hair. And the whole
Murdoch family was based on alcohol. Basically. His grandfather was pretty much a
bootlegger. This is Buster Murdoch. He was arrested and stood trial for being
involved in bootlegging operations in the fifties, but got away with it and resumed
his job as a solicitor. Paul Murdoch the younger, 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 instant 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 be wandering around like a separate person.
It was like a jecky and hide thing, and he'd scare people when he
became Timmy, and his friends will 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 dominoes 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. Matory's parents are going to get a
huge amount of it. And also Connor took his cousin Anthony, who were
on the boat. Miley Altman, I think she was also on the boat.
Was she not miss his girlfriend? Yeah? I think it was Miley.
No, the other one, oh Morgan Morgan. Yeah. So there
hasn't been announced exactly who's getting what yet, but it seems to be like
the civil part of it is over because it was supposed to go to trialie
in August, with Alex Murdock probably testifying. 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, then third, and fourth.
It really smooth 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 it was 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. I had. It was a huge timeline
because that's the only way you could make sense of it. And my family
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
follow from beginning to end, this 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 counties 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 Tobby was is like the Kennedys, but without
the publicity and outward glamour. But there was the Kennedy part of it,
with the children and everything that rained 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 out.
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 galleys which you have there. Most people allow
themselves to be recorded for your interviews, John, 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
want 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
Flenning. 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 Corey as the main person
to do the cases without telling the people how close he was. But that
was the lawyer. So Cory, 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. Nobody knew.
They just said. Alex would just say this is a great experienced lawyer
without saying they were the 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 way Hampton's school they
dated. They're in the yearbook. 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 betting
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 sponge. 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 socialized 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 fell, everybody's
saying, this is the end of that. Things are going to have to
change for the better, just out of curiosity, because I was looking for
it in the book, and I don't think I ever found it. Do
we have a running 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 or when it came to
trial, there was 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 was a
He'd get charged with more crimes gettingdicted. 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 enough here, what Bill and I have here
the of 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 we 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, he 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 saying, 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 peop including myself, thought
that it might be a hung jury, because this was in Collinson County Court
where the Murdock's practiced Alex cases. In fact, the interesting thing is that
his own grandfather, Buster Murdock, had his portrait at the back of the
court, and the judge ordered it taken down before the trials started because it
would have been unfair to the state. So I watched, I watched Alex,
and I just thought, this is he's dammy himself because it could have
been a hung jury. They all it needed was one jura 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, you 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 equivalents of a Habiton 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 do 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 mahar
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 Hampton County
at one of the days of trial. But I 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 durors today, very tongue in cheap and nobody knows whether you were
serious or not. So it's a closely guarded secret whether they were doing anything
the farious 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 have
that I know it's in the I know it's in the upcoming release book.
Can you go over the evidence that eventually allowed investigators to conclude that Alec did
in fact murder Maggie and Paul, Like, what was this 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 dog kennels. Alex
Murdoch's story was that, in fact, his son and wife had gone to
the dog 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 closet to ten o'clock that night. He hadn't
seen them at all. He'd gone to visit his aily 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 came out a trial with something to
do with his birthday, which baffled me why it 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 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 created Waters said, actually that was Paul speaking from the grave,
because Paul was called 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 drug use and
they called him the little Maggie called him the little detective. So it closing
Creyton 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's committed
the murders. And then he got in his car to visit his mother,
biding 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 speeds reaching up to eighty miles an hour.
The caregiver, you know, 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 dull nine to one one and called the police. That take 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 Sadderfield,
Are you aware of anything new that's happening there? Well, the 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'd gone up to Mozelle, 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 Sun's
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 Wadehampton class with Buster murder. 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 patrol police were convinced it was murder, but it was supposedly hushed up
through the Murdochs. 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. You know, it's fascinating. So there is a strong possibility that
there may be further developments in both the Stephen Smith and Gloria Sadterfield cases.
I would best on it. Yes, whether Murdoch or not, I do
not know. There's other names that have been levied about that one. Yeah,
I 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 child, I felt sorry for Buster. He lost
his mother and his younger brother and his father's being convicted of their murder.
You hear some of these phone calls. One of the things in the book
I got access through another reporter by the freedom of information request for Alex's gelhouse
calls 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 a birthday
party for all Paul's friends in Charleston at a bath through their lawyer and young
Buster. This was Alex organizing this party on Paul's birthday. 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 how fraught Buster sounds
as things progressed 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 rank. So even if he believes that his father is guilty
of the murders he's been 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 murder of Stephen Smith. I'm saying that was basically rumors.
I interviewed Stephen's twin sister, 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 Hampson, which she assumed was Buster. There was also talk right after
Stephen 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 unfollowing 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 in 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 rand Of Senior they all went to
law school. Buster was rather remomably expelled for supposedly plagiarism. From the phone
calls, you can see that Alex paid 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 sounds 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's the end of the chain, although
maybe other Murdocks may become lawyers in next the generation, next generation. It
does sound a lot like the Kennedy family, now that you've made the comparison,
I can't unsee it. Absolutely, Yep, 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 one hundred years, at over one
hundred yes, and they got away with it. The Murdochs 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 gift 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. 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 any 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 downfall. I'm not going to lie about that. But this
definitely has the feeling of you fly too close to the sun and look what
happens. Right, And 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 are 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. 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. He got into a lot of hijinks, drunken fight,
strip clubs with his friends and brules and whatever, and they were always
swept under the carpet as soon as they realized he was the solicitor's 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 this summer off. What is next in
terms of projects. I'm 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 Glutt. 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 of a 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 Kristin Dilley.
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