July 22, 2024 • 44 mins
I’ve listened to many versions of the story of the Murdaugh dynasty and I’m always interested in hearing new, fresh details. Well, author and podcast host Mandy Matney didn’t disappoint with her book, Blood on Their Hands: Murder, Corruption, and the Fall of the Murdaugh Dynasty. She told me details that I’ve never heard before after she talked with countless locals in the low country of South Carolina.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The family read one of my articles and said, what,
there's a five hundred thousand dollars settlement. We haven't gotten
a dime, but they were too scared to say anything
because it's the Murdochs.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:51):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. I've listened to many versions
of the story of the Murdoch Dynasty, and I'm always
(01:11):
interested in hearing new, fresh details.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Well.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Author and podcast host Mandy Mattney didn't disappoint with her
book Blood on Their Hands Murder Corruption in the Fall
of the Murdoch Dynasty. She told me details that I've
never heard before after talking with countless locals in the
low country of South Carolina. So let's get for the
(01:35):
audience out of the way. The pronunciation of our main
character here, because I have heard every iteration, is it
Alex or Alec from you?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
His friends and family call him Elick. It's spelt like Alex,
but they call him Elick like that. Okay, some people
call him Alex, some people call him Aleck.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I'm gonna go with Alec because I don't think I'll
remember the family pronuncie.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
It's too hard too.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
If you don't have a serious Southern accent, and that's
where it flows naturally, it's a hard look.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Well, let's start with your origin story with this story.
You started as a reporter right when this whole thing
came out.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I was a reporter at the Island Packet newspaper in
Hilton Head, South Carolina, and we were covering the county
where the infamous boat crash occurred in twenty nineteen. I
was actually the breaking news editor at the time. The
day of the boat crash, when Mallory went missing and
(02:37):
we started to hear who the potential driver was. Immediately
people started saying, look for corruption in this one. This
family's very powerful. Paul, the alleged driver is from a
family of big time attorneys, and look out, you guys
need to be on this story. So that just kind
of turns something on in my brain that made me
(02:59):
dig and not stop. And that will be five years
ago this February, which is insane.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
My gosh, more involved with someone else's family than your
own family sometimes, I'm betting, yeah, And I.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Just know too many details at this point.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I missed my brain when it wasn't like completely occupied
by you know, what happened on the day of the
murders and just different random facts of this case.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I would say, what this has always reminded me of
is the Kennedy's, which stretches across Michael Skagel into you know,
Edward Kennedy and Chapiquitic into all kinds of rumors with
JFK and Robert. I mean it just the Kennedys seemed
like one of those self sabotaging families. The Murdocks kind
(03:46):
of have that same feel to me. But let's go
through you. You started talking about what happened with Mallory
Beach in the boat. So let's start for the year
and just give me the nuts and bolts of that
story for people who haven't heard it yet.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
So it's interesting that you say the Kennedys because my
first episode of the Murdoch Murders podcast was called South
Carolina's chap Equittick and it was about the boat crash,
which the boat crash is very, very similar to Chapiquittick,
an extremely tragic story. Six teenagers were having a good
(04:20):
time partying in a boat on a February day and
evening and Paul Murdoch was driving his father's boat, got
way way way too drunk and crashed into a bridge
outside of Paras Island, South Carolina. During that crash, Mallory
Beach's body was ejected from the boat and she went
(04:42):
missing for a week before her body was found. Initially
it was a rescue mission. They weren't making a rest
in the boat crash. We were pushing asking for what's
going on with the criminal investigation. I mean, at this point,
I had been a reporter almost ten years and was
used to you know, dei crashes, where it's a dui
crash and somebody's immediately breathalyzed and tested, and it was
(05:07):
very bizarre right off the bat that there was no arrest,
and it was very clear early on all these kids
were drinking. And when you start talking to people from
around town, and that's in Hampton, South Carolina, they all
said Paul was driving the boat. There's no questions about that.
Paul doesn't let anybody else drive his father's boat, and
(05:29):
he's known for drinking and driving, and he and this
family's done for getting away from things. Another great reporter
who worked for the Packet at the time, her name
was Teresa Moss and my co host on True Sunlight
Now and has always been my partner in true crime.
Liz Ferrell was working with me at the Packet at
(05:50):
the time, and the three of us just kind of
started digging into different angles of this story and started
getting sources to tell us exactly what the deal is
with this family. Where our newsroom was was about an
hour and a half away from Hampton, South Carolina. So
like the place where the Murdocks really ruled in Beufort County,
(06:13):
some people knew them, especially in law enforcement and things,
and new stories of them.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Because the Murdoch family.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Ruled this solicitor's office, which is our form of a
DA's office for nearly one hundred years in South Carolina.
So three different Murdochs were essentially the position of the
DA from the nineteen twenties to the early two thousands,
and that.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
Comes with a lot of power.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And they also had this giant law firm, giant as
in very powerful, not a million lawyers in it. They
were known for settling huge, multimillion dollar cases. And anyways,
there's just all of these little strings of this story
and we just all started pulling at them and pulling
at them. And for the two years after the boat crash,
(07:01):
the strings I was mostly pulling at was did the
Murdoch family interfere with the investigation? And if they did,
then why is nothing happening with that? And the more
we learned, it was very clear that they interfered, and
still to this day they haven't been charged with any
interference in the boat crash investigation. Paul Murdoch was charged
(07:22):
in April of twenty nineteen with three felony buis and
unfortunately he was never able to stand trial for that
because in June twenty twenty one, his father murdered him
and his mother. It felt like the whole world had
shifted when I heard that Paul and Maggie were murdered.
(07:43):
I had just been admittedly obsessing over the story and
over this family and had the strings. Liz and I
had so many different files that we would share with
each other constantly, and we were constantly getting new sources
and learning new tidbits about the Murdoch family for those
two years, like our reporting did not stop. So when
(08:04):
it happened, I was like, this is going to I
knew right then that it was going to be one
of the craziest murder investigations, and not only our state's history,
but in the United States because of the power of
the Murdoch family. So I approached this story differently because
I was working on it. I like to say I
was working on it before mainstream media cared about it.
(08:26):
I really cared about the boat crash story, I really
cared about Stephen Smith, I really cared about Gloria Sadderfield
and wrote about all of those stories before that happened.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Well, let's get the timeline down before we start talking
about the stories. So, just for the audience that doesn't know,
we have Stephen Smith who was a nineteen year old
young man who was found in the middle of the road, right,
and it was presumed that this was a hit and run.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Then we have.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Gloria Sadderfield, who was the Murdoch's housekeeper, who supposedly fell
on some stairs and ended up dying. You've got the
boat crash, You've got the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdoch,
and then finally you've got Alec and his banana plan
to have someone shoot him, apparently so that his son,
(09:16):
his remaining son, could receive the life insurance money.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
What comes where and in what order?
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Because even now, despite the fact that I have literally
seen six different types of television programs about this, I
still am not one hundred percent sure what goes where
in the order?
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Right, So I will tell you about how I found
out about each one of them. In the weeks after
the boat crash, and I was starting to learn as
much as I could about the Murdoch family and was
poking around online. I started to see all of these
memes saying justice for Steven, and Mallory just started out like,
(09:53):
Who's Steven? What happened to Stephen? What's going on here?
And I was able to contact some Hampton County locals
who talked to me and were terrified. It's so terrified
to speak about. Just to utter the Murdoch name in
twenty nineteen was a very scary thing for locals to
(10:14):
do and very against the grain. So the reporting initially
was really difficult to get because it was just hard
to get sources who weren't terrified enough to talk. Rumors
were that the Murdoch boys did it. I heard they
covered it up, and then so I got the case file,
and then in the case file, Liz and I start
(10:37):
going through it and we see that the Murdoch name
is brought up dozens of times.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
I didn't know that dozens of times in.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
The dozens, wow, dozens, And then they investigate. So Stephen died.
He was found in the middle of a Hampton County
rural road in twenty fifteen, and the case went to
the Highway Patrol because they thought that it was a
hit and run, but his only injury was to his head,
so it was and there was no evidence of a
(11:06):
vehicular homicide whatsoever that the Highwave Patrol found.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
The Highway Patrol didn't believe that it.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Was a vehicular homicide, but they still were given this
case and it was really weird, and it was It's
an example of when that initial call is wrong in
an investigation, everything goes wrong. So it was the Highway
Patrol investigating what is a murder and what is actually
a homicide, and they were not just equipped to do that.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
They did not interview nearly the amount.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Of people that I believe that they should have, just
things like an initial canvassing of the area of where
he was found, Like they didn't ask the neighbors, did
you hear anything this night? Things like that, And it
was a very poorly done investigation that just ended in
twenty sixteen. But through out twenty fifteen, the little that
(12:02):
the Highway Patrol did gather was people kept saying, I'm
hearing it was the Murdoch family. I'm hearing it was
Buster Murdoch. I'm hearing it was a bunch of boys
that hit him with a baseball bat. And they never
got close to where the rumor was coming from, and
they just kind of quit, which was very strange.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Did you find anything that really does point to Buster
Murdoch being involved with this, because I'll be honest, I've
been unsatisfied with any kind of evidence that points to him.
I know that rumor he was with somebodies and coming
back from maybe baseball practice or something, and they were
toying around with him and then he ends up dead.
(12:45):
But I just haven't heard anyone say we know for
sure Buster was involved in a sexual relationship with Stephen,
and that is a motivation. This seems to be the
flimsiest of all the cases.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
It is a flimsy case, and it's because it was
investigated so poorly, and so many strange things happened, and
the initial steps of the investigation that appeared to be
like somebody was interfering with it, and appeared to look
like somebody was intentionally tanking this case.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
And to me, that is the most evidence.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
And I know that it's it's not nearly enough to
charge anybney, not near And I've never said I believe
Buster did it.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
I don't know who did it.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
But I think the most compelling part of this case
is that the Highway Patrol did such a terrible job
with investigating it in the first year, and so many
things went so wrong in those initial steps of the investigation,
and now It's going to be very.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Hard to figure out because.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
We're on eight years later, and you know, the further
away you get from a murder, it's just a lot harder.
But it was interesting the amount of times the Murdock
name got brought up, and then Highway Patrol now says
that there was pressure not to investigate them. And it
was also very interesting like Buster and Murdos name was
written down as a person that they wanted to interview,
(14:07):
and they called him one time and then they just
dropped it and moved on. So it's just things like that.
I don't know what kind of evidence there could be
against anyone, not just Buster, and I again got to
be a crystal clear we don't know who did it.
It was just a very strange investigation that appeared to
(14:28):
have powerful people influencing it. And you have to ask
the question who was powerful enough to do that and why.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
You would think that pulling Buster's text records, you know,
his text messages would unless he has a burner phone,
which is possible I guess, would at least be able
to create some kind of connection. But I'm assuming they
did that with Stephen, and maybe they didn't find a
connection to Buster, but I just know it's so man.
It is the most ambiguous thing on anything that I've
(14:59):
ever heard.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
So that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So you didn't track down anyone in Hampton County who
said I know or I know there's rumors, but I
know that they were involved. That was a hard nut
to crack. I'm assuming for y'all.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
I had one source who swore it, and then the family.
They think that they would have been aware if he
was involved with Buster. It's just hard. Teenagers are secretive.
He was nineteen. I know that, Like my parents didn't
know who I was dating or involved with at nineteen
a lot of the times, because I mean, it's just
(15:35):
a different part of life. So especially when it's being
gay in a small town, you're even more secretive about everything.
And it's all just extremely weird. But the bottom line
and the most unfortunate part about all of it is
how Steven was just shoved to the side, and investigators
(15:57):
really in the media didn't care about it either, And
that made me really angry when I started looking into
it in twenty nineteen, like, how does a nineteen year
old nursing student, how does he get found in the
middle of the roads headbashed and there's only three four
articles in total at that time about what happened, and
(16:19):
that was just so sad to me.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
It was like nobody cared.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
So this was twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Then the next thing is the boat accident which ends
the life of Mallory Beach, which is twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
What is the next thing that happens.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
You're digging into the story of Mallory Beach, you're hearing
everything about Stephen Smith now because it's going viral, and
then the next thing that happens is what well.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
We have to rewind again during that investigation, when I
was speaking with a few people from Hampton County, if
you owed my initial sources, I kept hearing over and
over look into Steven Smith's death, but also did you
hear about the housekeeper? Oh, there was rumors online that
(17:04):
Paul had killed Gloria.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
There were she was nameless online.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I again, it was the phrase like, did you hear
Paul killed the housekeeper? Did you should look into the
housekeeper's death? That was one of the things that when
I first heard it, I was like, there's no way.
That just sounds like a movie, That sounds like the
craziest thing I've ever heard. And then I found digging
into Alex Murdoch. In the court filings in Hampton County,
(17:33):
I found a very odd five hundred thousand dollars settlement
that ended up being like the document that exposed Alex's
extreme financial crimes. So in twenty nineteen, I find this
document that essentially says the Gloria Sadderfield, the Murdochs housekeeper,
fell down the stairs at the Murdoch's property and Alex
(17:58):
was getting sue by his best friend, Corey Fleming for
her death. And that was the first red flag to me.
It was like, why would Alex's best friend be on
Gloria Sadderfield's side in a lawsuit?
Speaker 4 (18:12):
This doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Wrote about it a couple times, and the family I
didn't know at the time, but the family in twenty
twenty one, I believe, or twenty early twenty twenty read
one of my articles and said, what, there's a five
hundred thousand dollars settlement. We haven't gotten a dime, but
they were too scared to say anything, wow, because it's
the Murdochs. So I was skeered into all of this,
(18:36):
and then the murders happened.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
When does the podcast start?
Speaker 3 (18:41):
So you are the host of a wildly popular podcast,
the Murdoch Murders Podcast.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
When do you start that?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Well, it's funny because my husband and I during the pandemic,
were often bored and I loved true crime podcast I
started listening to Cereal. I just really was excited about
like this new form of storytelling and this new form
of journalism that didn't exist when I was in school,
or I didn't know it existed. And I always wanted
(19:09):
to do a podcast ever since I heard Cereal. And
when the boat crash happened and we start to get
the nine to one one tapes and we start to
get all of this crazy stuff, David and I are like,
we need to do a podcast on the boat crash
and everything that happened with the boat crash, and we're
going to call it on Archer's Creek. But you know
how things like that go. It was a great idea,
(19:31):
but we never got around to like doing it. But
the day that the murders happened, David, my husband, sent
me an email and the day was really crazy. But
it's funny to look back on this email and the
email says how to start a podcast, and it's like
a link to a Wikipedia page or something, and he
says something like, we need to do this. We both
(19:52):
understood like, if we're not going to do it now,
then never. But the other reason was because the story
started to spin very quickly, and it was national media
came in right after the murders, and it was very
clear that the Murdoch's agenda and narrative was getting out
into the national media's narrative and they were just getting
(20:16):
a lot wrong with the story. And a lot of
people just didn't understand all the complexities of the Murdoch story,
and a lot of people following it nationally didn't understand
what kind of family we were talking about. This was
not an in cold blood situation where an innocent family
is just slaughtered and there's no reason for it, and
(20:37):
not at all to say that any of them deserved this,
But it was an extremely complicated story I knew was
perfect for podcasting, and so we put out our first
episode two weeks after the murders.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Wow, and did you feel like you had good access
at this point to local sources, even if they stayed
on background for listeners who dont no background basically means
they're not being named, they're just getting information and maybe
they want to remain anonymous. Did you have good sources?
Do you think locally at this point?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Oh? Yeah? And that was what was amazing. It was
like I was just sitting on this pile of information
or access to sources. And I also, at the time
of the murders, my Facebook inbox especially and my email
started to get full with more sources from Hampton saying
(21:32):
I know that you've been on this story for a while,
and I know that you cared about all of this before,
and we trust your reporting, so let me tell you this.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
So yeah, I had.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
A huge, huge headstart and a lot of reporting that
was very, very difficult to do and took a long time.
So I and again I didn't know what to do
with it, and a documentary companies started coming in and
wanting things, and it was just an insane time.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Let's go back just for a moment and just a
quick little nuts and bolt of what happened with Gloria Sadderfield,
which I think is one of the saddest aspects of
this family. I mean, every death that happens here is sad,
but with Gloria Sadderfield is one of the more mysterious ones,
and just it just feels like her poor family has
(22:19):
just gone through the ringer on this. But can you
tell me, give me a little summary of what happened
with her and when.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Gloria Sadderfield is one of the saddest stories in this
and I to this day don't think that we are
ever going to be able to fully nail down exactly
what happened because the witnesses are dead and Alex is
a liar.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
So Gloria was the housekeeper for.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
The Murdoch family for a very long time, but way
more than a housekeeper. She was very close with Paul.
Paul considered her like a mother and raised the Murdoch
boys and did a lot for them. In February of
twenty eighteen, we don't know what happened, but she was
(23:09):
at Moselle. Maggie Murdoch heard a scream, came outside, and
they thought that she fell at the stairs. But I'm
not even going to say for sure that she fell
because I honestly do not know what happened to her.
Injuries are again very strange and don't really match up
with falling, but she saw her unconscious on the ground
(23:30):
and bleeding and with Gloria was taken to the hospital
and a few weeks later she died. And she was
just in her fifties, and it was such a horrible situation.
Alex Murdoch unfortunately took advantage of her death.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
That is a fact.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Whether or not he had something to do with her death,
we don't know, but I think it's the question is
worth asking still to this day. What Alex did following
her death was probably one of the most horrible crimes
I've seen in my reporting, and just greedy and disgusting,
which is, he set up a perfect system between He
(24:12):
got Gloria's sons to agree to basically sign their rights
away to sue him, and got his friend to sue
him for a insurance settlement, and they pressured the insurance
company to settle for an astronomical amount of four point
three million dollars without any litigation, with just a couple letters.
(24:36):
Instead of Gloria's family getting that money, Alex took all
of it and Gloria's family didn't get a dime. Gloria's
son was kicked out of his trailer during this time
didn't have enough money to afford the home that he
lived in. Both of her sons needed money terribly bad,
and Alex s Murdoch was completely aware of this and
(24:58):
would not throw them a a dime.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Every time Tony.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Saderfield, Gloria's son, would ask Alex what's going on at
the lawsuit, he would just say, yeah, yeah, buddy, it's coming,
and he had already taken all the money.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Alex made a.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Fake Forge account, which I don't even want to explain
it because it's so stupid. He made a company, a
fake company named Forge, and when insurance companies and lots
of people should have been checking, why is this Forge
company going to a PO box in Hampton County And
why are we just sending multimillion dollar checks that say
(25:33):
four if there's just a million things that were wrong,
And I believe lots of people knew that something was
going on but didn't say anything, and that's just disgusting.
But we didn't discover that until after the murders, the
full scheme, and that was when my co host on COBA,
Justice attorney Eric Bland came into the picture and he
(25:55):
found out within he was hired by the Saderfield family
and really uncovered the scheme within a few weeks, and
it was just unbelievable. Then we found out that he
was stealing from He was doing this to multiple clients,
not to the extent the Saderfield seems to be the
worst one. Everybody else He kind of gave a little
bit of money to and lied to them about how
(26:16):
much they were fully being given. But yeah, he stole
and lied and cheated a lot of very vulnerable people
who were grieving the loss of a family member. And
that's just a horrific financial scheme to uncover.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
You know. One refrain that I've heard a lot around
his motive was drug abuse, and I feel like one
of the things I had heard was where else would
the money have gone?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
This is so much money.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah, I think the drug addiction was always a convenient
excuse that team Murdock has used. I think, especially at
the time in twenty twenty one, people were very sympathetic
towards opioid addicts across the country and rightfully, oh, and
I think that they saw that as an opportunity to
get sympathy from the public. And I've heard from sources
(27:07):
that they've seen him doing pills. He did have some
sort of a lots of recreational drugs, but as far
as like a multimillion dollar drug habit have never bought
that theory, not for a second. I believe his money
is overseas and we are starting to uncover little strings
with that. And it's really exciting because whereas the money
(27:28):
has been one of the biggest questions, he stole over
ten million dollars from these people and claims to be broke.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
So we get to the night of the murders, which
is sort of the big climax of this story. Will
you lay out what happened the night that Maggie and
Paul died?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So June seventh, twenty twenty one, and this is how
all of these cases kind of collide. On June tenth,
Alex was anticipating a hearing in the boat crash law suit.
He would likely have not gone his way. He had
been avoiding lots of requests from the Beaches family's attorney
(28:10):
to reveal his financial records, and that he had been
fighting that for a very long time, and because he
had been saying I'm broke, I don't have any money,
don't sue me because I don't have any money, and
the Beaches lawyer was saying, I know you're rich, Alex,
you have money somewhere.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
Fork it over.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
So he had a hearing coming up, and he was
very nervous about this hearing because his finances are a
disaster and potentially if a judge took a look into
his finances, he would see that he had this entire
criminal operation happening. So he was facing that pressure. And
at the same time, on the morning of June seventh,
(28:51):
at PMPD, the law firm that Alex Murdoch worked for,
the CFO, Genie Seconder, approached him with a a major problem,
which was, we are missing seven hundred and ninety thousand
dollars from one of your lawsuits.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Where is it, Alex?
Speaker 2 (29:08):
And you've been messing around and you've been avoiding this
what is going on? And it was really the first
time his own law firm had put any sort of
real pressure on him, showing that they were somewhat aware
of his financial crimes. So Alex has a lot going
on that day and he goes back to Mozille, his
(29:32):
home in Callington County that's on a beautiful hunting estate,
and he has dinner with his wife, Maggie and his
son Paul, and after dinner they all go to the
dog kennels for some reason. We don't know why they
were down there, and Maggie and Paul are murdered while
(29:54):
they are down at those kennels. The probably biggest thing
as far as the evidence against Alex Murdoch is that
right before Maggie and Paul were murdered, Paul was taking
a video on his phone for his friend who he
was watching his dog, and there was something wrong with
the dog's tail. And because his friend was saying, what's
(30:17):
wrong with the dog, show it to me in a
video and I'll send it to you. And this is
just a few minutes before this happened, and Alex obviously
didn't realize it, but his voices in the background of
that video, and so Alex was at the murder scene
minutes before they were murdered, and immediately when police got
(30:40):
there that night light about it and said I wasn't
at the counts. Alex says that he goes to his parents'
house and to check on his mother. His father is dying.
His father ends up dying on June tenth, of cancer.
His father's anticipated death was also a part of the
pressure that was weighing on Alex time because his father
(31:02):
was the real power in that family, and as his
father was really the one who could pull strings. So
I think that all of these things combined in the pressure.
I believe in his mind he thought if he murdered
his wife and son, all of his problems, all of
his financial problems, would go away. People would stop looking
(31:23):
at him with a critical eye and just immediately feel
sorry for him, which most people did.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
It seemed to me like people thought that this was
something that was connected. This was a vengeance thing, you know,
something connected to the boat. Did you get a sense
that at any point early on local law enforcement thought
that this was a funny story and they suspected him,
or do you think kind of from the very beginning
(31:50):
with his brother coming down to the scene and you know,
all of the real skeezy things that happened in the
story that this was, you know, had the potential for
him to to actually get away with this.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
That's actually a really good question.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
I have text message is between me and Liz the
morning that we found out, and we both immediately said
it has to be somebody within the family, Is it Alex.
I've started to recently watch a lot of the videos
within their initial investigation, and while they are being extremely careful,
and I believed that they were being careful because the
(32:25):
prosecutor Duffy Stone, who was in charge over the entire investigation,
we have heard many times that he was telling SLED
agents and investigators to not look into Alex Murdoch and
that there's no way that he did anything with that.
But you could tell that SLED and investigators just gave
him a lot of grace and deference during the investigation,
(32:49):
but all signs were always pointing to him. I believe
in the first few days of the investigation, when SLED
started to understand who the Murdocks were in the kind
of power that they had, I think it was very
obvious it would be highly unlikely for somebody to sneak
on to the Murdoch's property and murder them with the
(33:11):
Murdoch's guns. That was probably the biggest sign. Maggie and
call were both killed with two different weapons, a shotgun
and a semi automatic rifle, and that was a crazy
part of the crime as well, because it's rare and
a double homicide for two people to be killed with
different weapons, and that was making a lot of people say, oh,
(33:31):
it had to be two different shooters. It was very
unlikely early on for people who understood the magnitude of
the Murdocks and the story that there would be anybody
brave enough to sneak onto that property and kill the
Murdoch family with their own guns. It's like you said,
it would be like killing the Kennedys in this area.
(33:52):
There were just so untouchable at the time and people
were so terrified of them.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
But yeah, in the.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Initial in those initial few first weeks, I was getting
really angry seeing a lot of coverage pointing at this
is a revenge killing for the boat crash, pointing at
everywhere else, and I felt horribly for those kids who
were involved in the boat crash. They were really trying
(34:20):
to move on with their lives and had the worst
thing ever happened to them when they were just nineteen
of their friend being killed in front of them, and
then their other friend is now dead and random people
in the media and on social media are all of
a sudden blaming them and saying that they had something
to do with this.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
And it was just really tough to watch.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
What is the biggest surprise to you that maybe someone
like me doesn't know up until this part of the story.
Is there something that you dug up or somebody told
you that you know, you've talked about in the book
or on the podcast, that it just seems fresh to you.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Gosh.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I mean, the book is filled with tiny details that
I think a lot of a lot of very loyal
podcast listeners really enjoyed it because it was so different
from the podcast. It was behind the scenes how I
got connected with my sources in this case, and how
(35:20):
I continue to push a lot of them for a
long time to really get the truth out, and just
the work that's involved in this kind of journalism. And
I think the people reading the book got an appreciation
for that because you just don't talk about those things.
I didn't talk about a lot of that and the
little details of how things came about. And I think
(35:43):
that this is going to be one of the most
overwritten and overcovered true crime.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
Stories of all time.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
And I knew that when I started working on my book,
and it just occurred to me, there's going to be
a million book report type books with this story that
are just this is what.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Happened, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
And so my book is the story behind the story
and specifically a lot of the women who helped expose
this dynasty and really took it down.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Well, let's talk about the end of the story, which
is back on a road, like a lonely, dusty road, right,
and something really dramatic happens that shocked even me. I
don't know I could be shocked anymore with this story.
Talk about kind of what the finale was of this
before he really goes on trial.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
I wish that was the finale. That was like the
beginning of the marathon. That was really when things spirallled
into another atmosphere in this story. It was covered in
national media, but not nearly to the same level. A
(36:56):
Labor Day weekend of twenty twenty one, so a few
months after the double homicide, there was no arrest being
made in the murders and Alex was still out free,
but we did not know behind the scenes, Led was
kind of closing in on him, on us as a
suspect and was not dismissing him and was not saying
you're clear, which was adding to the pressure and throughout
(37:19):
the summer, We've seen a numerous reports of Alex's financial
crimes and the problems that were occurring with that were
starting to rear their head again, and his law farm
was starting to question where this money was and it
was just a lot more pressure on him. And Alex
(37:42):
gets shot on the side of the road Laborty weekend
of September of twenty twenty one, which was just insane.
I remember where I was when I found out. I
remember the moment of looking at my phone and it's
just like Alex's Stott, alexis Stott, Alex's trot. Immediately right
off the bat, people started saying, but the story doesn't
(38:05):
add up.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
There's something weird here o.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Sources were saying that he was shot in the leg,
then shot in the head at different hospitals, and it
was just really weird. I'm used to getting kind of
a variety of different information and figuring out how to
verify it in these breaking news situations, but this was
just so different. If he was shot in the head,
(38:28):
that would be a completely different scenario than anything else,
and that would be very serious. So what happened here
and it turned out he was just nicked in the head.
I don't even think it was a bullet. I think
that he took a rock to his head personally and
then called the cops and said that he was shot.
A gun did go off, and he essentially staged this
(38:50):
roadside shooting incident and included his distant cousin buddy known
as cousin Eddie. And I don't believe that cousin Eddie
really had an idea of what was going on there.
I think Alex came up with a scenario to make
it look like his family was being targeted and that
(39:12):
his family was in danger so that Sled would get
off of him for the murders. And I also think
that his life was just collapsing in again. He didn't
know what to do, so again he chose violence, and
that's the pattern of Alex Murdock.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
So you don't think it was an intentional taking his
own life, but faking a murder so that Buster could
get the life insurance money, which is sort of the
story that goes around. Do you think it was different,
it's a sympathy thing.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I don't think he ever had an intention of killing himself.
In the initial hours after the Murdochs were found deb
After Maggie and Paul were found dead, I was on
the phone with one of their family members, because at
that time we didn't even know if it was murder suicide.
All we knew were Maggie and Paul were dead and
that was it. And I remember asking him do you
(40:01):
think it's murder suicide? And he said, nobody in this
family kills themselves. Wow, And that has always stuck with me.
It's the Murdoch attitude, the especially Alex. He's a classic narcissist.
I don't think he would ever take his own life
or even think about doing that. I think again, it
(40:23):
was a manipulation tactic for sympathy, which he has a
track record of doing.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Okay, so this does not work, this ploy, and he
ends up going to trial and we know the end
of this.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
He ends up going to prison.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
And yet the story continues to drain our lives.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
If you choose to dig into it. What do you
think the moral is for this story?
Speaker 3 (40:47):
And I already know you're going to say, there's a
gazillion of them, so pick your top. What do we
learn about us from the Murdoch dynasty in its fall?
Speaker 4 (40:57):
What do we learn.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
I think one of the biggest lessons in all of
this is that this is what happens when you don't
speak up against evil and just let it happen. Not
to place blame on people in Hampton County, but they
operated just in fear of this family for so long
and were just so terrified to say anything. And I
(41:21):
think if you see something, say something, speak up, get
it out there. The Murdochs had control over this entire
area for so long, but they did not know how
to fight social media.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
They weren't prepared for that.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
They weren't prepared for people speaking up and telling their
dirty secrets online. And I think that another oh a
million lessons in this. With Alex Murdoch, he was a
man who was just allowed to do things because of
the status of his family, and nobody ever questioned why.
(41:56):
And also no one ever questioned, or a few people
did his motives and intentions behind things. They just he
looked like a dad to everybody, so people and he
was very nice to everyone. He was very polite to everyone.
He was seen around town escorting old ladies with their
groceries or whatever like. He played the part of night
(42:19):
of a nice guy really well, and it fooled a
lot of people. So the lesson there that I've seen
is to really question how well you know someone and
why you think that they have a character willing to
stand up for Because a lot of people initially stood
up for Alex and said, no way he could have
done this, but we A big lesson is you don't
(42:40):
You really don't actually know. A lot of people are
and a lot of people, unfortunately are living double lives
in the ways that Alex Murdoch is. And I think
the biggest lesson is for people, especially journalists, to keep
digging at stories and what can happen if he just
keep trying and pulling its strings and they also this
(43:03):
is a story that shows how important journalism is and
how sacred our profession is, and how important it can be,
and how it can really change the course of so
many different things. When we first started investigating this, people
were constantly saying, well, the Murdocks get away with everything,
and that's just how the way that it always is. Well,
(43:25):
Alex Murdoch was convicted of murder and a lot has
changed in the low Country since the boat crash, and
so I think that it's important for people to know
that things can change and it doesn't have to say
the same.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
If you love historical true.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Crime stories, check out the audio versions of my books
The Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock
and Don't Forget. There are twelve seasons of my historical
true crime podcast, Tenfold More Wicked right here in this
podcast feed, scroll back and give them a listen if
you haven't already. This has been an exactly right production.
(44:12):
Our senior producer is Alexis a Morosi. Our associate producer
is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Curtis heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive
produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer. Follow
Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More Wicked and on
(44:33):
Facebook at Wicked Words Pod.
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The family read one of my articles and said, what,
there's a five hundred thousand dollars settlement. We haven't gotten
a dime, but they were too scared to say anything
because it's the Murdochs.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:51):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. I've listened to many versions
of the story of the Murdoch Dynasty, and I'm always
(01:11):
interested in hearing new, fresh details.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Well.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Author and podcast host Mandy Mattney didn't disappoint with her
book Blood on Their Hands Murder Corruption in the Fall
of the Murdoch Dynasty. She told me details that I've
never heard before after talking with countless locals in the
low country of South Carolina. So let's get for the
(01:35):
audience out of the way. The pronunciation of our main
character here, because I have heard every iteration, is it
Alex or Alec from you?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
His friends and family call him Elick. It's spelt like Alex,
but they call him Elick like that. Okay, some people
call him Alex, some people call him Aleck.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
I'm gonna go with Alec because I don't think I'll
remember the family pronuncie.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
It's too hard too.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
If you don't have a serious Southern accent, and that's
where it flows naturally, it's a hard look.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Well, let's start with your origin story with this story.
You started as a reporter right when this whole thing
came out.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I was a reporter at the Island Packet newspaper in
Hilton Head, South Carolina, and we were covering the county
where the infamous boat crash occurred in twenty nineteen. I
was actually the breaking news editor at the time. The
day of the boat crash, when Mallory went missing and
(02:37):
we started to hear who the potential driver was. Immediately
people started saying, look for corruption in this one. This
family's very powerful. Paul, the alleged driver is from a
family of big time attorneys, and look out, you guys
need to be on this story. So that just kind
of turns something on in my brain that made me
(02:59):
dig and not stop. And that will be five years
ago this February, which is insane.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
My gosh, more involved with someone else's family than your
own family sometimes, I'm betting, yeah, And I.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Just know too many details at this point.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I missed my brain when it wasn't like completely occupied
by you know, what happened on the day of the
murders and just different random facts of this case.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I would say, what this has always reminded me of
is the Kennedy's, which stretches across Michael Skagel into you know,
Edward Kennedy and Chapiquitic into all kinds of rumors with
JFK and Robert. I mean it just the Kennedys seemed
like one of those self sabotaging families. The Murdocks kind
(03:46):
of have that same feel to me. But let's go
through you. You started talking about what happened with Mallory
Beach in the boat. So let's start for the year
and just give me the nuts and bolts of that
story for people who haven't heard it yet.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
So it's interesting that you say the Kennedys because my
first episode of the Murdoch Murders podcast was called South
Carolina's chap Equittick and it was about the boat crash,
which the boat crash is very, very similar to Chapiquittick,
an extremely tragic story. Six teenagers were having a good
(04:20):
time partying in a boat on a February day and
evening and Paul Murdoch was driving his father's boat, got
way way way too drunk and crashed into a bridge
outside of Paras Island, South Carolina. During that crash, Mallory
Beach's body was ejected from the boat and she went
(04:42):
missing for a week before her body was found. Initially
it was a rescue mission. They weren't making a rest
in the boat crash. We were pushing asking for what's
going on with the criminal investigation. I mean, at this point,
I had been a reporter almost ten years and was
used to you know, dei crashes, where it's a dui
crash and somebody's immediately breathalyzed and tested, and it was
(05:07):
very bizarre right off the bat that there was no arrest,
and it was very clear early on all these kids
were drinking. And when you start talking to people from
around town, and that's in Hampton, South Carolina, they all
said Paul was driving the boat. There's no questions about that.
Paul doesn't let anybody else drive his father's boat, and
(05:29):
he's known for drinking and driving, and he and this
family's done for getting away from things. Another great reporter
who worked for the Packet at the time, her name
was Teresa Moss and my co host on True Sunlight
Now and has always been my partner in true crime.
Liz Ferrell was working with me at the Packet at
(05:50):
the time, and the three of us just kind of
started digging into different angles of this story and started
getting sources to tell us exactly what the deal is
with this family. Where our newsroom was was about an
hour and a half away from Hampton, South Carolina. So
like the place where the Murdocks really ruled in Beufort County,
(06:13):
some people knew them, especially in law enforcement and things,
and new stories of them.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Because the Murdoch family.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Ruled this solicitor's office, which is our form of a
DA's office for nearly one hundred years in South Carolina.
So three different Murdochs were essentially the position of the
DA from the nineteen twenties to the early two thousands,
and that.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
Comes with a lot of power.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And they also had this giant law firm, giant as
in very powerful, not a million lawyers in it. They
were known for settling huge, multimillion dollar cases. And anyways,
there's just all of these little strings of this story
and we just all started pulling at them and pulling
at them. And for the two years after the boat crash,
(07:01):
the strings I was mostly pulling at was did the
Murdoch family interfere with the investigation? And if they did,
then why is nothing happening with that? And the more
we learned, it was very clear that they interfered, and
still to this day they haven't been charged with any
interference in the boat crash investigation. Paul Murdoch was charged
(07:22):
in April of twenty nineteen with three felony buis and
unfortunately he was never able to stand trial for that
because in June twenty twenty one, his father murdered him
and his mother. It felt like the whole world had
shifted when I heard that Paul and Maggie were murdered.
(07:43):
I had just been admittedly obsessing over the story and
over this family and had the strings. Liz and I
had so many different files that we would share with
each other constantly, and we were constantly getting new sources
and learning new tidbits about the Murdoch family for those
two years, like our reporting did not stop. So when
(08:04):
it happened, I was like, this is going to I
knew right then that it was going to be one
of the craziest murder investigations, and not only our state's history,
but in the United States because of the power of
the Murdoch family. So I approached this story differently because
I was working on it. I like to say I
was working on it before mainstream media cared about it.
(08:26):
I really cared about the boat crash story, I really
cared about Stephen Smith, I really cared about Gloria Sadderfield
and wrote about all of those stories before that happened.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Well, let's get the timeline down before we start talking
about the stories. So, just for the audience that doesn't know,
we have Stephen Smith who was a nineteen year old
young man who was found in the middle of the road, right,
and it was presumed that this was a hit and run.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Then we have.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Gloria Sadderfield, who was the Murdoch's housekeeper, who supposedly fell
on some stairs and ended up dying. You've got the
boat crash, You've got the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdoch,
and then finally you've got Alec and his banana plan
to have someone shoot him, apparently so that his son,
(09:16):
his remaining son, could receive the life insurance money.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
What comes where and in what order?
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Because even now, despite the fact that I have literally
seen six different types of television programs about this, I
still am not one hundred percent sure what goes where
in the order?
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Right, So I will tell you about how I found
out about each one of them. In the weeks after
the boat crash, and I was starting to learn as
much as I could about the Murdoch family and was
poking around online. I started to see all of these
memes saying justice for Steven, and Mallory just started out like,
(09:53):
Who's Steven? What happened to Stephen? What's going on here?
And I was able to contact some Hampton County locals
who talked to me and were terrified. It's so terrified
to speak about. Just to utter the Murdoch name in
twenty nineteen was a very scary thing for locals to
(10:14):
do and very against the grain. So the reporting initially
was really difficult to get because it was just hard
to get sources who weren't terrified enough to talk. Rumors
were that the Murdoch boys did it. I heard they
covered it up, and then so I got the case file,
and then in the case file, Liz and I start
(10:37):
going through it and we see that the Murdoch name
is brought up dozens of times.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
I didn't know that dozens of times in.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
The dozens, wow, dozens, And then they investigate. So Stephen died.
He was found in the middle of a Hampton County
rural road in twenty fifteen, and the case went to
the Highway Patrol because they thought that it was a
hit and run, but his only injury was to his head,
so it was and there was no evidence of a
(11:06):
vehicular homicide whatsoever that the Highwave Patrol found.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
The Highway Patrol didn't believe that it.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Was a vehicular homicide, but they still were given this
case and it was really weird, and it was It's
an example of when that initial call is wrong in
an investigation, everything goes wrong. So it was the Highway
Patrol investigating what is a murder and what is actually
a homicide, and they were not just equipped to do that.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
They did not interview nearly the amount.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Of people that I believe that they should have, just
things like an initial canvassing of the area of where
he was found, Like they didn't ask the neighbors, did
you hear anything this night? Things like that, And it
was a very poorly done investigation that just ended in
twenty sixteen. But through out twenty fifteen, the little that
(12:02):
the Highway Patrol did gather was people kept saying, I'm
hearing it was the Murdoch family. I'm hearing it was
Buster Murdoch. I'm hearing it was a bunch of boys
that hit him with a baseball bat. And they never
got close to where the rumor was coming from, and
they just kind of quit, which was very strange.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Did you find anything that really does point to Buster
Murdoch being involved with this, because I'll be honest, I've
been unsatisfied with any kind of evidence that points to him.
I know that rumor he was with somebodies and coming
back from maybe baseball practice or something, and they were
toying around with him and then he ends up dead.
(12:45):
But I just haven't heard anyone say we know for
sure Buster was involved in a sexual relationship with Stephen,
and that is a motivation. This seems to be the
flimsiest of all the cases.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
It is a flimsy case, and it's because it was
investigated so poorly, and so many strange things happened, and
the initial steps of the investigation that appeared to be
like somebody was interfering with it, and appeared to look
like somebody was intentionally tanking this case.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
And to me, that is the most evidence.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
And I know that it's it's not nearly enough to
charge anybney, not near And I've never said I believe
Buster did it.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
I don't know who did it.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
But I think the most compelling part of this case
is that the Highway Patrol did such a terrible job
with investigating it in the first year, and so many
things went so wrong in those initial steps of the investigation,
and now It's going to be very.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Hard to figure out because.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
We're on eight years later, and you know, the further
away you get from a murder, it's just a lot harder.
But it was interesting the amount of times the Murdock
name got brought up, and then Highway Patrol now says
that there was pressure not to investigate them. And it
was also very interesting like Buster and Murdos name was
written down as a person that they wanted to interview,
(14:07):
and they called him one time and then they just
dropped it and moved on. So it's just things like that.
I don't know what kind of evidence there could be
against anyone, not just Buster, and I again got to
be a crystal clear we don't know who did it.
It was just a very strange investigation that appeared to
(14:28):
have powerful people influencing it. And you have to ask
the question who was powerful enough to do that and why.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
You would think that pulling Buster's text records, you know,
his text messages would unless he has a burner phone,
which is possible I guess, would at least be able
to create some kind of connection. But I'm assuming they
did that with Stephen, and maybe they didn't find a
connection to Buster, but I just know it's so man.
It is the most ambiguous thing on anything that I've
(14:59):
ever heard.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
So that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So you didn't track down anyone in Hampton County who
said I know or I know there's rumors, but I
know that they were involved. That was a hard nut
to crack. I'm assuming for y'all.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
I had one source who swore it, and then the family.
They think that they would have been aware if he
was involved with Buster. It's just hard. Teenagers are secretive.
He was nineteen. I know that, Like my parents didn't
know who I was dating or involved with at nineteen
a lot of the times, because I mean, it's just
(15:35):
a different part of life. So especially when it's being
gay in a small town, you're even more secretive about everything.
And it's all just extremely weird. But the bottom line
and the most unfortunate part about all of it is
how Steven was just shoved to the side, and investigators
(15:57):
really in the media didn't care about it either, And
that made me really angry when I started looking into
it in twenty nineteen, like, how does a nineteen year
old nursing student, how does he get found in the
middle of the roads headbashed and there's only three four
articles in total at that time about what happened, and
(16:19):
that was just so sad to me.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
It was like nobody cared.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
So this was twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Then the next thing is the boat accident which ends
the life of Mallory Beach, which is twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
What is the next thing that happens.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
You're digging into the story of Mallory Beach, you're hearing
everything about Stephen Smith now because it's going viral, and
then the next thing that happens is what well.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
We have to rewind again during that investigation, when I
was speaking with a few people from Hampton County, if
you owed my initial sources, I kept hearing over and
over look into Steven Smith's death, but also did you
hear about the housekeeper? Oh, there was rumors online that
(17:04):
Paul had killed Gloria.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
There were she was nameless online.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I again, it was the phrase like, did you hear
Paul killed the housekeeper? Did you should look into the
housekeeper's death? That was one of the things that when
I first heard it, I was like, there's no way.
That just sounds like a movie, That sounds like the
craziest thing I've ever heard. And then I found digging
into Alex Murdoch. In the court filings in Hampton County,
(17:33):
I found a very odd five hundred thousand dollars settlement
that ended up being like the document that exposed Alex's
extreme financial crimes. So in twenty nineteen, I find this
document that essentially says the Gloria Sadderfield, the Murdochs housekeeper,
fell down the stairs at the Murdoch's property and Alex
(17:58):
was getting sue by his best friend, Corey Fleming for
her death. And that was the first red flag to me.
It was like, why would Alex's best friend be on
Gloria Sadderfield's side in a lawsuit?
Speaker 4 (18:12):
This doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Wrote about it a couple times, and the family I
didn't know at the time, but the family in twenty
twenty one, I believe, or twenty early twenty twenty read
one of my articles and said, what, there's a five
hundred thousand dollars settlement. We haven't gotten a dime, but
they were too scared to say anything, wow, because it's
the Murdochs. So I was skeered into all of this,
(18:36):
and then the murders happened.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
When does the podcast start?
Speaker 3 (18:41):
So you are the host of a wildly popular podcast,
the Murdoch Murders Podcast.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
When do you start that?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Well, it's funny because my husband and I during the pandemic,
were often bored and I loved true crime podcast I
started listening to Cereal. I just really was excited about
like this new form of storytelling and this new form
of journalism that didn't exist when I was in school,
or I didn't know it existed. And I always wanted
(19:09):
to do a podcast ever since I heard Cereal. And
when the boat crash happened and we start to get
the nine to one one tapes and we start to
get all of this crazy stuff, David and I are like,
we need to do a podcast on the boat crash
and everything that happened with the boat crash, and we're
going to call it on Archer's Creek. But you know
how things like that go. It was a great idea,
(19:31):
but we never got around to like doing it. But
the day that the murders happened, David, my husband, sent
me an email and the day was really crazy. But
it's funny to look back on this email and the
email says how to start a podcast, and it's like
a link to a Wikipedia page or something, and he
says something like, we need to do this. We both
(19:52):
understood like, if we're not going to do it now,
then never. But the other reason was because the story
started to spin very quickly, and it was national media
came in right after the murders, and it was very
clear that the Murdoch's agenda and narrative was getting out
into the national media's narrative and they were just getting
(20:16):
a lot wrong with the story. And a lot of
people just didn't understand all the complexities of the Murdoch story,
and a lot of people following it nationally didn't understand
what kind of family we were talking about. This was
not an in cold blood situation where an innocent family
is just slaughtered and there's no reason for it, and
(20:37):
not at all to say that any of them deserved this,
But it was an extremely complicated story I knew was
perfect for podcasting, and so we put out our first
episode two weeks after the murders.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Wow, and did you feel like you had good access
at this point to local sources, even if they stayed
on background for listeners who dont no background basically means
they're not being named, they're just getting information and maybe
they want to remain anonymous. Did you have good sources?
Do you think locally at this point?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Oh? Yeah? And that was what was amazing. It was
like I was just sitting on this pile of information
or access to sources. And I also, at the time
of the murders, my Facebook inbox especially and my email
started to get full with more sources from Hampton saying
(21:32):
I know that you've been on this story for a while,
and I know that you cared about all of this before,
and we trust your reporting, so let me tell you this.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
So yeah, I had.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
A huge, huge headstart and a lot of reporting that
was very, very difficult to do and took a long time.
So I and again I didn't know what to do
with it, and a documentary companies started coming in and
wanting things, and it was just an insane time.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Let's go back just for a moment and just a
quick little nuts and bolt of what happened with Gloria Sadderfield,
which I think is one of the saddest aspects of
this family. I mean, every death that happens here is sad,
but with Gloria Sadderfield is one of the more mysterious ones,
and just it just feels like her poor family has
(22:19):
just gone through the ringer on this. But can you
tell me, give me a little summary of what happened
with her and when.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Gloria Sadderfield is one of the saddest stories in this
and I to this day don't think that we are
ever going to be able to fully nail down exactly
what happened because the witnesses are dead and Alex is
a liar.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
So Gloria was the housekeeper for.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
The Murdoch family for a very long time, but way
more than a housekeeper. She was very close with Paul.
Paul considered her like a mother and raised the Murdoch
boys and did a lot for them. In February of
twenty eighteen, we don't know what happened, but she was
(23:09):
at Moselle. Maggie Murdoch heard a scream, came outside, and
they thought that she fell at the stairs. But I'm
not even going to say for sure that she fell
because I honestly do not know what happened to her.
Injuries are again very strange and don't really match up
with falling, but she saw her unconscious on the ground
(23:30):
and bleeding and with Gloria was taken to the hospital
and a few weeks later she died. And she was
just in her fifties, and it was such a horrible situation.
Alex Murdoch unfortunately took advantage of her death.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
That is a fact.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Whether or not he had something to do with her death,
we don't know, but I think it's the question is
worth asking still to this day. What Alex did following
her death was probably one of the most horrible crimes
I've seen in my reporting, and just greedy and disgusting,
which is, he set up a perfect system between He
(24:12):
got Gloria's sons to agree to basically sign their rights
away to sue him, and got his friend to sue
him for a insurance settlement, and they pressured the insurance
company to settle for an astronomical amount of four point
three million dollars without any litigation, with just a couple letters.
(24:36):
Instead of Gloria's family getting that money, Alex took all
of it and Gloria's family didn't get a dime. Gloria's
son was kicked out of his trailer during this time
didn't have enough money to afford the home that he
lived in. Both of her sons needed money terribly bad,
and Alex s Murdoch was completely aware of this and
(24:58):
would not throw them a a dime.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Every time Tony.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Saderfield, Gloria's son, would ask Alex what's going on at
the lawsuit, he would just say, yeah, yeah, buddy, it's coming,
and he had already taken all the money.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Alex made a.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Fake Forge account, which I don't even want to explain
it because it's so stupid. He made a company, a
fake company named Forge, and when insurance companies and lots
of people should have been checking, why is this Forge
company going to a PO box in Hampton County And
why are we just sending multimillion dollar checks that say
(25:33):
four if there's just a million things that were wrong,
And I believe lots of people knew that something was
going on but didn't say anything, and that's just disgusting.
But we didn't discover that until after the murders, the
full scheme, and that was when my co host on COBA,
Justice attorney Eric Bland came into the picture and he
(25:55):
found out within he was hired by the Saderfield family
and really uncovered the scheme within a few weeks, and
it was just unbelievable. Then we found out that he
was stealing from He was doing this to multiple clients,
not to the extent the Saderfield seems to be the
worst one. Everybody else He kind of gave a little
bit of money to and lied to them about how
(26:16):
much they were fully being given. But yeah, he stole
and lied and cheated a lot of very vulnerable people
who were grieving the loss of a family member. And
that's just a horrific financial scheme to uncover.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
You know. One refrain that I've heard a lot around
his motive was drug abuse, and I feel like one
of the things I had heard was where else would
the money have gone?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
This is so much money.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah, I think the drug addiction was always a convenient
excuse that team Murdock has used. I think, especially at
the time in twenty twenty one, people were very sympathetic
towards opioid addicts across the country and rightfully, oh, and
I think that they saw that as an opportunity to
get sympathy from the public. And I've heard from sources
(27:07):
that they've seen him doing pills. He did have some
sort of a lots of recreational drugs, but as far
as like a multimillion dollar drug habit have never bought
that theory, not for a second. I believe his money
is overseas and we are starting to uncover little strings
with that. And it's really exciting because whereas the money
(27:28):
has been one of the biggest questions, he stole over
ten million dollars from these people and claims to be broke.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
So we get to the night of the murders, which
is sort of the big climax of this story. Will
you lay out what happened the night that Maggie and
Paul died?
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So June seventh, twenty twenty one, and this is how
all of these cases kind of collide. On June tenth,
Alex was anticipating a hearing in the boat crash law suit.
He would likely have not gone his way. He had
been avoiding lots of requests from the Beaches family's attorney
(28:10):
to reveal his financial records, and that he had been
fighting that for a very long time, and because he
had been saying I'm broke, I don't have any money,
don't sue me because I don't have any money, and
the Beaches lawyer was saying, I know you're rich, Alex,
you have money somewhere.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
Fork it over.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
So he had a hearing coming up, and he was
very nervous about this hearing because his finances are a
disaster and potentially if a judge took a look into
his finances, he would see that he had this entire
criminal operation happening. So he was facing that pressure. And
at the same time, on the morning of June seventh,
(28:51):
at PMPD, the law firm that Alex Murdoch worked for,
the CFO, Genie Seconder, approached him with a a major problem,
which was, we are missing seven hundred and ninety thousand
dollars from one of your lawsuits.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Where is it, Alex?
Speaker 2 (29:08):
And you've been messing around and you've been avoiding this
what is going on? And it was really the first
time his own law firm had put any sort of
real pressure on him, showing that they were somewhat aware
of his financial crimes. So Alex has a lot going
on that day and he goes back to Mozille, his
(29:32):
home in Callington County that's on a beautiful hunting estate,
and he has dinner with his wife, Maggie and his
son Paul, and after dinner they all go to the
dog kennels for some reason. We don't know why they
were down there, and Maggie and Paul are murdered while
(29:54):
they are down at those kennels. The probably biggest thing
as far as the evidence against Alex Murdoch is that
right before Maggie and Paul were murdered, Paul was taking
a video on his phone for his friend who he
was watching his dog, and there was something wrong with
the dog's tail. And because his friend was saying, what's
(30:17):
wrong with the dog, show it to me in a
video and I'll send it to you. And this is
just a few minutes before this happened, and Alex obviously
didn't realize it, but his voices in the background of
that video, and so Alex was at the murder scene
minutes before they were murdered, and immediately when police got
(30:40):
there that night light about it and said I wasn't
at the counts. Alex says that he goes to his parents'
house and to check on his mother. His father is dying.
His father ends up dying on June tenth, of cancer.
His father's anticipated death was also a part of the
pressure that was weighing on Alex time because his father
(31:02):
was the real power in that family, and as his
father was really the one who could pull strings. So
I think that all of these things combined in the pressure.
I believe in his mind he thought if he murdered
his wife and son, all of his problems, all of
his financial problems, would go away. People would stop looking
(31:23):
at him with a critical eye and just immediately feel
sorry for him, which most people did.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
It seemed to me like people thought that this was
something that was connected. This was a vengeance thing, you know,
something connected to the boat. Did you get a sense
that at any point early on local law enforcement thought
that this was a funny story and they suspected him,
or do you think kind of from the very beginning
(31:50):
with his brother coming down to the scene and you know,
all of the real skeezy things that happened in the
story that this was, you know, had the potential for
him to to actually get away with this.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
That's actually a really good question.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
I have text message is between me and Liz the
morning that we found out, and we both immediately said
it has to be somebody within the family, Is it Alex.
I've started to recently watch a lot of the videos
within their initial investigation, and while they are being extremely careful,
and I believed that they were being careful because the
(32:25):
prosecutor Duffy Stone, who was in charge over the entire investigation,
we have heard many times that he was telling SLED
agents and investigators to not look into Alex Murdoch and
that there's no way that he did anything with that.
But you could tell that SLED and investigators just gave
him a lot of grace and deference during the investigation,
(32:49):
but all signs were always pointing to him. I believe
in the first few days of the investigation, when SLED
started to understand who the Murdocks were in the kind
of power that they had, I think it was very
obvious it would be highly unlikely for somebody to sneak
on to the Murdoch's property and murder them with the
(33:11):
Murdoch's guns. That was probably the biggest sign. Maggie and
call were both killed with two different weapons, a shotgun
and a semi automatic rifle, and that was a crazy
part of the crime as well, because it's rare and
a double homicide for two people to be killed with
different weapons, and that was making a lot of people say, oh,
(33:31):
it had to be two different shooters. It was very
unlikely early on for people who understood the magnitude of
the Murdocks and the story that there would be anybody
brave enough to sneak onto that property and kill the
Murdoch family with their own guns. It's like you said,
it would be like killing the Kennedys in this area.
(33:52):
There were just so untouchable at the time and people
were so terrified of them.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
But yeah, in the.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Initial in those initial few first weeks, I was getting
really angry seeing a lot of coverage pointing at this
is a revenge killing for the boat crash, pointing at
everywhere else, and I felt horribly for those kids who
were involved in the boat crash. They were really trying
(34:20):
to move on with their lives and had the worst
thing ever happened to them when they were just nineteen
of their friend being killed in front of them, and
then their other friend is now dead and random people
in the media and on social media are all of
a sudden blaming them and saying that they had something
to do with this.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
And it was just really tough to watch.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
What is the biggest surprise to you that maybe someone
like me doesn't know up until this part of the story.
Is there something that you dug up or somebody told
you that you know, you've talked about in the book
or on the podcast, that it just seems fresh to you.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Gosh.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I mean, the book is filled with tiny details that
I think a lot of a lot of very loyal
podcast listeners really enjoyed it because it was so different
from the podcast. It was behind the scenes how I
got connected with my sources in this case, and how
(35:20):
I continue to push a lot of them for a
long time to really get the truth out, and just
the work that's involved in this kind of journalism. And
I think the people reading the book got an appreciation
for that because you just don't talk about those things.
I didn't talk about a lot of that and the
little details of how things came about. And I think
(35:43):
that this is going to be one of the most
overwritten and overcovered true crime.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
Stories of all time.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
And I knew that when I started working on my book,
and it just occurred to me, there's going to be
a million book report type books with this story that
are just this is what.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Happened, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
And so my book is the story behind the story
and specifically a lot of the women who helped expose
this dynasty and really took it down.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Well, let's talk about the end of the story, which
is back on a road, like a lonely, dusty road, right,
and something really dramatic happens that shocked even me. I
don't know I could be shocked anymore with this story.
Talk about kind of what the finale was of this
before he really goes on trial.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
I wish that was the finale. That was like the
beginning of the marathon. That was really when things spirallled
into another atmosphere in this story. It was covered in
national media, but not nearly to the same level. A
(36:56):
Labor Day weekend of twenty twenty one, so a few
months after the double homicide, there was no arrest being
made in the murders and Alex was still out free,
but we did not know behind the scenes, Led was
kind of closing in on him, on us as a
suspect and was not dismissing him and was not saying
you're clear, which was adding to the pressure and throughout
(37:19):
the summer, We've seen a numerous reports of Alex's financial
crimes and the problems that were occurring with that were
starting to rear their head again, and his law farm
was starting to question where this money was and it
was just a lot more pressure on him. And Alex
(37:42):
gets shot on the side of the road Laborty weekend
of September of twenty twenty one, which was just insane.
I remember where I was when I found out. I
remember the moment of looking at my phone and it's
just like Alex's Stott, alexis Stott, Alex's trot. Immediately right
off the bat, people started saying, but the story doesn't
(38:05):
add up.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
There's something weird here o.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Sources were saying that he was shot in the leg,
then shot in the head at different hospitals, and it
was just really weird. I'm used to getting kind of
a variety of different information and figuring out how to
verify it in these breaking news situations, but this was
just so different. If he was shot in the head,
(38:28):
that would be a completely different scenario than anything else,
and that would be very serious. So what happened here
and it turned out he was just nicked in the head.
I don't even think it was a bullet. I think
that he took a rock to his head personally and
then called the cops and said that he was shot.
A gun did go off, and he essentially staged this
(38:50):
roadside shooting incident and included his distant cousin buddy known
as cousin Eddie. And I don't believe that cousin Eddie
really had an idea of what was going on there.
I think Alex came up with a scenario to make
it look like his family was being targeted and that
(39:12):
his family was in danger so that Sled would get
off of him for the murders. And I also think
that his life was just collapsing in again. He didn't
know what to do, so again he chose violence, and
that's the pattern of Alex Murdock.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
So you don't think it was an intentional taking his
own life, but faking a murder so that Buster could
get the life insurance money, which is sort of the
story that goes around. Do you think it was different,
it's a sympathy thing.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I don't think he ever had an intention of killing himself.
In the initial hours after the Murdochs were found deb
After Maggie and Paul were found dead, I was on
the phone with one of their family members, because at
that time we didn't even know if it was murder suicide.
All we knew were Maggie and Paul were dead and
that was it. And I remember asking him do you
(40:01):
think it's murder suicide? And he said, nobody in this
family kills themselves. Wow, And that has always stuck with me.
It's the Murdoch attitude, the especially Alex. He's a classic narcissist.
I don't think he would ever take his own life
or even think about doing that. I think again, it
(40:23):
was a manipulation tactic for sympathy, which he has a
track record of doing.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Okay, so this does not work, this ploy, and he
ends up going to trial and we know the end
of this.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
He ends up going to prison.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
And yet the story continues to drain our lives.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
If you choose to dig into it. What do you
think the moral is for this story?
Speaker 3 (40:47):
And I already know you're going to say, there's a
gazillion of them, so pick your top. What do we
learn about us from the Murdoch dynasty in its fall?
Speaker 4 (40:57):
What do we learn.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
I think one of the biggest lessons in all of
this is that this is what happens when you don't
speak up against evil and just let it happen. Not
to place blame on people in Hampton County, but they
operated just in fear of this family for so long
and were just so terrified to say anything. And I
(41:21):
think if you see something, say something, speak up, get
it out there. The Murdochs had control over this entire
area for so long, but they did not know how
to fight social media.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
They weren't prepared for that.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
They weren't prepared for people speaking up and telling their
dirty secrets online. And I think that another oh a
million lessons in this. With Alex Murdoch, he was a
man who was just allowed to do things because of
the status of his family, and nobody ever questioned why.
(41:56):
And also no one ever questioned, or a few people
did his motives and intentions behind things. They just he
looked like a dad to everybody, so people and he
was very nice to everyone. He was very polite to everyone.
He was seen around town escorting old ladies with their
groceries or whatever like. He played the part of night
(42:19):
of a nice guy really well, and it fooled a
lot of people. So the lesson there that I've seen
is to really question how well you know someone and
why you think that they have a character willing to
stand up for Because a lot of people initially stood
up for Alex and said, no way he could have
done this, but we A big lesson is you don't
(42:40):
You really don't actually know. A lot of people are
and a lot of people, unfortunately are living double lives
in the ways that Alex Murdoch is. And I think
the biggest lesson is for people, especially journalists, to keep
digging at stories and what can happen if he just
keep trying and pulling its strings and they also this
(43:03):
is a story that shows how important journalism is and
how sacred our profession is, and how important it can be,
and how it can really change the course of so
many different things. When we first started investigating this, people
were constantly saying, well, the Murdocks get away with everything,
and that's just how the way that it always is. Well,
(43:25):
Alex Murdoch was convicted of murder and a lot has
changed in the low Country since the boat crash, and
so I think that it's important for people to know
that things can change and it doesn't have to say
the same.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
If you love historical true.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Crime stories, check out the audio versions of my books
The Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock
and Don't Forget. There are twelve seasons of my historical
true crime podcast, Tenfold More Wicked right here in this
podcast feed, scroll back and give them a listen if
you haven't already. This has been an exactly right production.
(44:12):
Our senior producer is Alexis a Morosi. Our associate producer
is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Curtis heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive
produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer. Follow
Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More Wicked and on
(44:33):
Facebook at Wicked Words Pod.
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
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