Alex Murdaugh Murder Case Comeback Takes Dramatic Turn

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Why we did a fine lock? Because it was clean. I mean, it was manipulated. There's evidence removed from the scene. [00:00:05] Speaker 2: That's what a lead investigator said about the Murdoch crime scene after the first trial. Now Alec Murdoch is back in court for the first time in more than two years after his convictions for the murders of his wife and son were overturned. But this time, there's a new strategy and a new question. Unknown DNA found underneath Maggie Murdoch's fingernails. Could that be the key to his freedom? Or is this case about to take another twist? I'm Ann Jeanette Levy and this is Crime Fix. Well, it's deja vu all over again. Alec Murdoch was back in a South Carolina courtroom with his defense attorneys and prosecutors from the attorney general's office talking about when he will go on trial for the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, again. A second trial, a retrial that could look very different from the first trial. Alec Murdoch, as we know, is a convicted fraudster. He admitted to stealing millions and millions of dollars from his clients, some who were very poor. He's never denied that. He's serving decades in prison for financial crimes, but he has denied using a shotgun and a blackout rifle to shoot Maggie and Paul at the family's Moselle hunting estate on the night of June 7th, 2021. The murders were horrific. Paul was shot in the chest and the head with a shotgun. Maggie was shot several times. Prosecutors say as she tried to run away, she was shot with a blackout rifle. Prosecutors painted a picture at Alec Murdoch's first trial of a mother who ran to help her son after hearing the shots fired at him. Creighton Waters said the evidence showed that Maggie was on her hands and knees at one point before she was shot again. Alec Murdoch said he wasn't at the kennels with Paul and Maggie that night, but a video recorded by Paul, prosecutors argued shortly before the murders, proved otherwise. [00:02:16] Speaker 3: Get back. Get back. Quit, Cash. [00:02:27] Speaker 4: Come on. Quit. It's okay. Come on. [00:02:31] Speaker ?: It's not a bad thing. [00:02:32] Speaker 4: Come on, Cash. [00:02:34] Speaker ?: Shit. Come on. [00:02:36] Speaker 4: Post it. Cash. Hey, he's got a bird in his mouth. Bubba. Hang on, Bubba. That's a guinea. This is a chicken. Come on, Bubba. Come on, Cash. Come on, Bubba. Cash. Quick. Quick. [00:03:05] Speaker 2: Now that Alec Murdoch has won a new trial, because of misconduct by the clerk of court in his first trial, his lawyers believe they can explain that kennel video. And another theory will be explored more thoroughly this time around by the defense. They want to test unknown male DNA found under Maggie Murdoch's fingernails. More on that shortly. The defense believes it could be a bombshell moment for them, while the prosecution is pretty much poo-pooing it. There's a new judge this time around. Her name is Deborah McCaslin, and she is no-nonsense, but fair. She's a former defense attorney who once named Murdoch's attorney Dick Harpootlian as a lawyer she admired. As for Alec Murdoch, he was all smiles as he walked into court in his orange prison jumpsuit, handcuffed and shackled. Judge McCaslin wasted no time getting down to business. [00:03:55] Speaker 4: I see we have a full house. Good morning. [00:03:59] Speaker 2: Good morning. [00:04:00] Speaker 4: For those of you who have never been to Lexington County, welcome to the Lexington County Courthouse. All right, we're here for a status conference. I'm going to get the clerk to call the case, please. [00:04:32] Speaker 5: In the matter of state of South Carolina versus Richard Alexander Murdoch, indictment number 2022-GS-15-00-592-3595. [00:04:50] Speaker 2: Now, the first thing the judge wanted to know was how quickly she can get this case moving. Much of the evidence is the same, but discovery can be ongoing. So she asked, does the defense have everything they need? [00:05:02] Speaker 4: Do we have all the phone records, and are they complete text messages, cell phone extractions, and if there's any supplemental extractions, video recordings, whether there's ballistic firearms, are we complete in that, fingerprints, toxicology? I think there was a blood splatter expert last time. I just want to know where we are with these discovery items. I'll let the state address that, please. [00:05:37] Speaker 3: Yes, ma'am, your honor. So we have provided, and obviously provided well in advance of the first trial, a very extensive discovery. I'm not aware of anything in the item that you mentioned that they can have provided to the defense. And if anything, the defense has more than the state does because there's a very heavy privilege review that was done, for example, on Murdoch's phone and the warm-o-day attorney and that sort of thing. So to my understanding, complete extractions were provided to them, whereas the prosecution team and the investigative team only received in privilege review some of the extractions in the place for this kind of message. As always, we are constantly auditing and looking at everything, but I'm not aware of any discovery from the various extensive productions that have been made, not only from just the murder investigations, but also from the extensive state and career investigations as well. So we have provided those, and obviously I'm not aware of anything in the category of issues. [00:06:39] Speaker 2: The defense begged to differ. [00:06:41] Speaker 1: So we don't know what we don't know. And I'll give you an example. Let me hand this up to Your Honor, I'll hand copies too. Your Honor, this is a transfer, an interview done for a guy named Chapman and another officer who were folks that arrived on the scene to begin with, processed the scene, and were very involved in the forensics of processing the scene. And if you go to page six, Chapman, who was in charge of the scene, says this. This is some of the interviews on March 13th, 10 days after the verdict in this case. He says, in response to a question, "I believe you had some help in the aftermath." Or, "Yes, Captain Chapman, you know the disposal of weapons, the moving around a vehicle. We heard so much about the SLED and AG's office and they don't have anything. It's all circumstantial." So I pose this question to you. It was a clean crime scene, stage crime scene, clean crime scene. Would you expect to find more evidence or less? And that's what's kind of hard to get people to understand is we didn't find a lot. But why we didn't find a lot? Because it was clean. I mean, it was manipulated. There's evidence removed from the scene. Now, this is 10 days after the trial. This is not what Chapman testified to. If Chapman has evidence there were other people in the scene that he had assistance under their theory or there were other people there, we need to have that furnished to us. [00:08:36] Speaker 2: Dick Harputlian says a deputy granted an interview after the trial saying that the crime scene had been scrubbed, which differed from his trial testimony. Harputlian also brought up the lead agent on the case, David Owen, who is now retired. At the first trial, Murdoch's lawyers questioned his testimony in front of the grand jury and accused him of lying to get an indictment. A murder case Owen was the lead on was dismissed in 2025 after the judge determined that Owen withheld evidence that could have helped the defendant. [00:09:08] Speaker 1: He knows from testimony in the first trial that the chief slate officer involved admitted he'd misrepresented things as a grand jury. Since the trial, the case was dismissed in which he testified because the judge found he was hiding evidence and misrepresenting that. That's the chief officer. But it raises questions with us, not whether it's been repelled by the state, by the prosecution, but did he give them everything he had? Did he do what he did in the subsequent case after the trial where he hid evidence? And I think we've got to go through it and look and say, are there gaps here? Are we missing something? And for us, look, we want to try this case as quickly as possible, but what we don't want to do is not be prepared based on what we now know happened in the first trial. And we'll have a motion probably next week that will expand on that a little bit. We didn't feel we wanted such a motion. [00:10:15] Speaker 2: Then came the argument over the unknown male DNA under Maggie's fingernails. I told you Creighton Waters poo-pooed it. [00:10:21] Speaker 3: But ultimately, there's absolutely no evidence that Maggie Murdoch was in a struggle with anyone, that she had any sort of defensive wounds, that she was scratched, being a sort of attacker. And we also know that it's very common with how sensitive touch DNA is. We're constantly shedding DNA and picking up DNA from others by shaking hands and doorknobs and all the rest of it. So, you know, this is a bit of a red herring. And that doesn't mean that we are not willing to discuss with the defense anything that they want to do. And if it's reasonable, we're the first to do that. And the president needs to come back to this court to do that as well. [00:10:58] Speaker 2: But the defense fired back. [00:10:59] Speaker 6: My folks, I do want to address this red herring argument. The DNA that we're talking about, Your Honor, came from Maggie Murdoch's left fingernails. That was tested by SLED, which was STR analysis. The DNA sample number 70 that we're asking to be tested, it positively was not Alec Murdoch's. Any of the other folks who they took buccal swabs from went through a long list, not them, except for one potential. And that potential, the ultimate result was it's 11 times more an unknown male, so they know it's a male, than it was this person. That's how they do things in their DNA analysis. And Mr. Waters said, well, there's no evidence of struggle. But there was a shell casing under Maggie Murdoch's body from the gun that killed her. I mean, that shell casing and that gun had to be in very close proximity. Maggie Murdoch's cell phone was missing from the crime scene. Was DNA transferred at that point in time? And so we don't think it's a red herring. We think it's very important. Now, it may turn out to be, you know, innocuous. We don't know, but it's worth looking. [00:12:32] Speaker 2: The defense wants to use Othram Labs to analyze the DNA found under Maggie's fingernails. Othram typically works with law enforcement to solve cold cases using investigative genetic genealogy. But Othram actually worked on an active case, a new case, the Idaho murders in 2022, and helped ID Brian Koberger as the prime suspect. Murdoch's defense wants to work with Othram to find out whose DNA was under Maggie's nails. [00:13:02] Speaker 6: We've agreed to pay for it. And just background information. [00:13:05] Speaker 4: I'm going to let you pay for it. [00:13:09] Speaker 6: These murders happened in 2021. We're in 2026. 2021, there's no such thing as artificial intelligence. In 2021, this genetic genealogy was just on the ground floor. In 2026, we are light years ahead. And so what we're asking for didn't really exist in 2021. It does exist today. And Othram is the leading lab that performs this analysis. Last year, in 2024, the statistics are that they cleared 200 cold cases on behalf of law enforcement around the United States and the country. They worked with law enforcement every day. The most high profile case they did was at the University of Idaho, the Moscow, Idaho murders that took place about the first week of our trial. College kids were massacred in a in a house at the University of Idaho. They had a DNA sample. They ran through CODIS. Came up nothing. There was nothing. The state of Idaho Police Department, like SLED, had a contract with Othram. They sent the test to Othram. Othram does this genetic genealogy DNA analysis. And it comes back to a family member who had done a DNA test, ancestry test, of the person who committed these murders, Brian Coburg. That's how they solved the Moscow murder cases was through Othram lab. The difference between, and they say they don't have enough samples to get through CODIS, and I've talked to the lab about that, and that's not an issue. CODIS uses an analysis called STR. This analysis is SNP, and they call it SNPs. They have, CODIS has 20 data points. SNPs has half a million data points that they analyze. Now, it takes a while to do that, and so, you know, we're going to have to see what the lab says. They've asked me to get information from SLED as to, you know, they like to see the electropharogram or mixture proportions so they can have a better handle on it. And I'd ask Mr. Waters to give us a name so that these experts can interface. But what they're doing in Houston, Texas, they don't do in South Carolina at the SLED lab. There are handfuls of labs around the country, and they are certified. They work with law enforcement. I don't know that they've worked specifically with SLED. They're familiar with SLED when I spoke with them, but they have a whole division. [00:16:00] Speaker 4: So you need an expert's name or whoever has this sample to see if there's a viable sample that you can send? Correct. That they could send? [00:16:10] Speaker 6: And they can work with the extract that SLED used when they did their STR analysis. Okay. They can work with that out there. They've told me. [00:16:21] Speaker 4: Mr. Waters, can you give him a name so he can move forward? [00:16:25] Speaker 3: That's what I put in my motion, Your Honor, is please give us a name. And I'm happy to have SLED reach out and talk to them about what their supposed capability proposals are and any procedures. [00:16:35] Speaker 2: The DNA testing through Othram isn't a given. The judge would still have to sign off on it, and it would depend on whether the sample is viable or not. [00:16:44] Speaker 4: This is what I do want you to do, though, Mr. Griffin. I want to know how long it's going to take to analyze what it is that you're asking for. And even if I expedite it, I'd like to know how long it's going to take. And I'd also like to know if there's even a viable sample that they can get. And we will discuss this at our next pretrial. Anything, Mr. Waters, you're going to give them the name of the person at SLED that he can get in contact with. Let's see if there's a viable sample. [00:17:29] Speaker 6: And the lab has told me, if there's not a viable sample, we'll tell you that. Right. But they work with a lot less than SLED. Okay. [00:17:37] Speaker 4: Well, let's start with that. Let's make sure we get a viable sample, and then we'll go forward, and we're going to go forward at the next pretrial. I promise you, the pretrial is not going to be that far away. All right. [00:17:52] Speaker 2: Judge McCaslin is fair, but she's been clear she's not going to take any guff from anyone. She set a trial date for April 5th, 2027, with a firm warning. [00:18:02] Speaker 4: Do I? And let me tell you this. Tell both of y'all. I think y'all know me pretty well. When I set a trial date, I don't do continuances. I don't do it. I'd better be a really good reason. So how does April the 5th sound, Mr. Waters? Mr. Harpooli? [00:18:28] Speaker 1: We'll be ready with some contingencies if the DNA takes longer, for instance, or... [00:18:36] Speaker 4: I will have that information by next pretrial. If I need to extend it out a couple of weeks, I will, if that's the case. Please do not think that this case is going to be tried a year later, because it's not. We're going forward. [00:18:51] Speaker 1: We're more than happy with that, Mr. Murdoch, more than happy with that. I just, again, the DNA really is all, everything they provide. Because the science in all these areas is much better than the work five years ago. [00:19:08] Speaker 4: I understand technology changes overnight. Overnight, I understand. Mr. Griffin, anything you'd like to add? [00:19:17] Speaker 6: Yes, Your Honor. The Supreme Court reversed this case on misconduct by the clerk of court. But the Supreme Court also addressed financial crimes evidence. And depending on how much of that or any of that comes in, will determine the length of the trial in many respects. Judge Newman last time would not rule pretrial on that issue. And it's going to be an issue that we're going to have to brief and argue with Your Honor as to, you know, we don't think any of the financial crime evidence should come in at trial. And so I'm just flagging that that it would be helpful to us, I believe, and to know if we're going to have to defend against that during the trial or are they going to be able to put it up. And so I'm just asking maybe some earlier date that we can have Your Honor as to address those issues. [00:20:15] Speaker 4: We will. We will. We will. I'm just going to tell you I like to address all pretrial matters beforehand because when I say April the 5th, we're picking a jury and going forward. All those issues should be decided. [00:20:32] Speaker 2: So I want to bring in Gigi McKelvey. She's the host of the Pretty Lies and Alibis podcast and also works with us here at Law & Crime. So, Gigi, I said at the beginning it was like DJ vu all over again. What was it like to be in the courtroom with Alec Murdoch and all the players all over again? [00:20:51] Speaker 7: Yeah, it felt like a time warp. I felt like I just kind of circled back three years ago, and it was like a little messed up family reunion seeing everybody that sat through all six weeks of the trial, as did I. So we were all catching up with each other. Yeah, very surreal to be back with the same players and seeing Murdoch right there again in the defendant's table as an accused murderer and not a convicted murderer. [00:21:14] Speaker 2: From what I saw, he looked a little smiley. He's always kind of smiley, and maybe not all of the time, but what kind of vibe did you get from Alec Murdoch as he walked into that court and sat there and listened to the proceedings? [00:21:29] Speaker 7: Kind of the same as every day in his previous trial. He always came in very confident. He always smiled and nodded at people, and it was just more of the same today. And although his back was to us, I was able to look at a little bit of the feed, and yeah, he was smiling. And look, why would he not be? You know, the highest court has granted him a new trial, so I think he has a lot of reasons to smile right now. [00:21:53] Speaker 2: The talk today, the big talk was the DNA. You know, there was talk about, oh, should he get a laptop? Should he not get a laptop? But really, that's not the big deal here. The big deal is this talk about the unknown male DNA. We heard about that in the first trial, but they didn't really dive into that too much. Now they're talking about actually doing some work on that, the defense, paying for it themselves, and testing that, doing genetic genealogy testing on it in order to identify the source of that unknown male DNA. Was there any reaction to that among the gallery in the courtroom? [00:22:28] Speaker 7: No, but that was one of the things where everybody sat up and listened a little closer. Because, you know, you think about it, this was a circumstantial case that he was convicted on, other than a couple of things with that infotainment center showing the car slowed down when they think he threw Maggie's phone out the window. Otherwise, there was nothing linking anybody to these murders. And so I think the defense has to go hard with this DNA because you can create a lot of reasonable doubt depending on these results. If it goes in their favor that this potentially could be a known offender that they'll certainly bring in and talk to. But I think this may be what they're riding on in this second trial, because like you said, nothing was really done with it last trial. And now they're wanting to send it to one of the leading DNA experts in our country to test it and see, like with Brian Koberger, can they get some kind of a familial connection down to whoever's DNA this was under her fingernails? So I think this is the thing to watch with this trial right now. [00:23:29] Speaker 2: And we have a new judge. We have a new judge, Deborah McCaslin. She was a defense attorney earlier in her career. She got in there and she got right down to business. What did you think about her? [00:23:40] Speaker 7: I love this judge, Judge Newman. There's only one Judge Newman. He won all of our hearts. But she is very no-nonsense. Like she said, this is the oldest case on her docket and she doesn't want to wait. And I also see how she's being fair with both sides. And in fact, in her early days as an attorney, she actually said one of the most influential people for her was Dick Harpootlian. Ironically, who now is arguing his case before her. Probably the biggest case besides Peewee Gaskins that he'll ever have. So I think with one hearing down, she wants to get down to business. She does not want delays, late filings. She wants this run like a well-oiled machine because this now was 2021 since the murders happened. We're 2026 now, so she's like, let's get this done. And I think this judge is going to hold their feet to the fire with deadlines and dates. And that's refreshing because, as you know, these things can get delayed for months or even a year. I don't think this judge is going to let that happen. [00:24:41] Speaker 2: Yeah, she's no-nonsense for sure. Gigi McKelvey, thank you so much. Thanks, Anjanette. So I want to turn now to Vinny Politan. He is the host of Vinny Politan Investigates on the Court TV YouTube channel and on Court TV, the lead anchor there for many years. Vinny, thanks for joining me. What are your thoughts on Alec Murdoch being back in court after all of this time? [00:25:05] Speaker 8: Well, first of all, I can't believe we're doing this again, but we are, and it's going to happen. We are. But it's got to be different, right? It has to be different because for the defense, they lost last time. They lost terribly. Alec Murdoch was a horrendous witness, was not believed by the people that he wanted to judge him, right? So they've got to change course, and it looks like they may be going down the road of this, you know, unidentified male DNA that's found under Maggie's fingernails. And that's an interesting tact to take because they sort of addressed it the first time around, but I think it may be a potential centerpiece of the new defense. [00:25:50] Speaker 2: I think you're right. I think 100% it's the centerpiece of the new defense. It's risky because they are going to Othrum, which has a track record of actually tracking people down using this technology. I mean, they're very good at it. So what if you find this person, and then they're like, I have an alibi. I was in wherever. I mean, it doesn't help them. [00:26:16] Speaker 8: Well, it depends, right? Well, you know, in the first trial, there was unidentified male DNA. Obviously, it wasn't the bulk of what they were building their case on. So you're 100% right. You don't know what this road leads to. But to me, like, I saw the evidence in the first case. It's strong evidence. And, you know, you're sort of backed in the corner. You need something. And maybe it does lead to somebody, right? What if it leads to someone who's, like, a little mysterious or a little shady or is asked about something and lies about something? All of a sudden, you can have one or more jurors looking at this person who, at this point, is unidentified but may be identified and say, yeah, what about that guy? Why didn't he see where he was that night? You know, there's the possibility, which I think is something they're thinking about. But they know that it could lead to something that's very ordinary and some person who has a documented alibi and no reason at all to kill Maggie. And, oh, by the way, the person who did it also killed Paul. [00:27:34] Speaker 2: Killed Paul. And killed Paul first. [00:27:36] Speaker 8: Right. [00:27:36] Speaker 2: They think they say Paul was killed first and that she was basically running toward him to save her baby. That's what they said in the first trial. The defense and the prosecution both agree on that. Just a horrific, horrific crime scene. You know, Alec Murdoch never ceases to amaze me. Maybe it's the good old Southern boy type thing. But he's always smiling. And he was not. He was smiling today. This guy, he's full of confidence. [00:28:04] Speaker 8: Well, what else? Well, he's full of a lot of things, right? I guess there is some confidence. You know, hey, I won my appeal. You know, you can puff your chest a little bit. You know, the system did me wrong kind of deal. But he's still in prison. There's not much, I think, that he can cheer for in his life. And this becomes the only thing, right? They have not convicted me of murdering my own wife and my own son, right? So that's, like, the worst thing that you could do. And, yeah, I'm not convicted of that. So I think from that perspective, he kind of shows it off a little bit. But at the end of the day, like, he's not going anywhere. His life is way different than it was before when he's taking, you know, helicopters to the College World Series and doing whatever he wants, wherever he wants, getting away with things left and right. It's a different world. So I guess in that much smaller world he lives in, this is a big deal for him. [00:29:02] Speaker 2: It is a big deal for him. And I'm still waiting for a couple of more rabbits that I think the defense is going to try to pull out of their hat. So I think it's a stay-tuned kind of thing. But the evidence is still the evidence from the first trial. So we'll see what happens. And they still have to get past that kennel video. So we'll see what happens. Vinnie Politan. Vinnie Politan investigates. Check it out on Court TV's YouTube channel. Thank you so much. [00:29:28] Speaker 8: Thanks so much. [00:29:28] Speaker 2: So here's my take on the judge. Judge McCaslin seems firm. She's fair. No nonsense. She has a really good sense of humor. She seems kind of like the perfect judge for this case. She's giving the prosecution what they need and also giving the defense the time they need to do their investigation and hire experts. So let's just sit back and watch what she does. Meanwhile, Alec Murdoch's next pretrial hearing will be in August. For now, he's back to the prison where he's serving his time for those state and federal financial crimes convictions. Right now, the trial is tentatively set for April 2027. So stay tuned. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.