Sam Koslowski

And basically prosecutors argued that he killed his wife and son to try and distract from what he believed to be the imminent release of his financial crimes and his opioid addiction.

and that by killing his family he could buy himself some time to flee and to try and... Interesting motive.

This is a very, very complex and interesting human being and society, this kind of bubble in South Carolina.

Now, you have to also remember that it wasn't just the opioid addiction and the financial crimes, but his son was also facing a murder charge.

So his son... Surviving son?

The one who he had killed.

Paul.

So his son had been driving a speedboat in April of 2019...

He'd crashed that boat and killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach, one of his friends, and the allegation there was that he was driving the boat drunk.

And that case was months off going to trial as well, but Paul died before that happened.

And so essentially the picture that prosecutors painted here was a man whose life was crumbling on multiple fronts.

His own fraud was about to be exposed.

His son was about to go to trial.

And a family name that had dominated South Carolina and the halls of power in that state for nearly a century was basically all about to come crashing down.

There was so much physical evidence.

We're talking about phone data, security camera, surveillance footage, forensic evidence that placed Alex near the scene.

There was a video that was on Paul's phone that had Alex's voice in it from 15 minutes before Paul's death when Alex said that he was visiting his mother.

So there was a lot there, a lot that directly contradicted his account.

Now, Alex actually testified in this case, which is really unusual, especially in a US murder trial setting.

He admitted to lying to police about his location that night.