Chapter 1: What is the background of the Murdoch family and their influence in South Carolina?
There's no place to escape to. This is the last podcast. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. In memory of today's episode, in celebration of today's episode.
In memory.
Did today's episode die as well? Yes. Oh, my God, yes. We haven't even made it yet.
Is it dead already?
In the spirit of the ghost of this episode. Sure. I actually made a really important Fat Man discovery. Okay. That has changed my life. In a significant way, and I want to show you, Eddie, because I don't know if you know what I've done. Oh, no. What'd you do? I have solved my falling down pants problem. What? With... No. Fretless belts. Whoa! This is a free one.
This is a free one, fretless belts. No holes. No holes in the belt. Really? Completely threaded. Cute. make it as actually tight as you need it to be and not have to deal with the fucking garbage industry standards that they put the, I think they call them frets.
Don't tell me where my fucking holes are.
Yeah, don't tell me how big my waist is. You're wrong. You're always wrong. It's always between the holes. Don't fret. Get a belt that works. No frets. This is the Robert Fripp. I am playing Crimson King every day when I get up and I go to work. King Crimson.
You have her, Dan. That's the name of the fucking song.
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Chapter 2: How did Alec Murdoch's early life shape his future actions?
Fretless belt! I don't even need to know where it is, man. Again, Robert Fripp. I remember that.
Yeah, you do. How did you remember the guitarist from King Crimson, but you don't remember the name of the fucking band? I remember he had a fretless bass.
Yeah.
And we have the man who actually knows what he's talking about when it comes to music. I think it's Jaco Pastores.
That's Jaco Pastores. Robert Favre is a guitarist. He played the solo Babies on Fire for Brian Eno, as Larson is also here.
I am very excited for Henry's pants to fall down, because I know he can't put that belt back on while he's sitting down. So at the end of this episode, you will inevitably forget that you took your belt off, get up, pants will fall down on camera, and then that'll be beautiful for the home audience. Hopefully.
Today, we're starting off the year with a modern true crime saga. Just like last year, we started off with Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell. I miss them. I miss them, too. This year, we're starting off. No, they're really not. This year, we are starting off with, I think, I would say the second largest true crime story of this century so far.
Mr. Murdoch. How do you plead? I plead not guilty. I would be so excited for this. I would put this in the top. This is the 2020s first like big, big, big, big, big, big one.
Yeah. 2021. Right. Yeah. And could you before we get into the story, could you walk the audience a little bit through the voice that you were walking us through prior to this episode's recording?
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Chapter 3: What were the key events leading to the Murdoch family murders?
It's interesting you chose the word grounded because that's what would happen to the kids that wouldn't spend the night at Jackson's house.
And actually, that was the punishment because they couldn't leave.
On June 7th, 2021.
Before you get started, I'm looking at Chad Daybell. He looks so much like Alex Murda. It's so crazy. They're the same dude. Their DNA definitely kisses. Yeah.
Yeah. There's definitely. It's the tubby white man in America. There's not a whole lot of variety there. It's just different colors of hair.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, we're all cut from the same cheesecloth. No. Now, you and I, Eddie, we are saved by our European-ness. You and I are fully European in many ways, and these are unfortunate Americans.
On June 7th, 2021, a prominent Southern lawyer named Alec Murdoch shot and killed his wife and son outside of the dog kennels near their hunting lodge in South Carolina. Now, family annihilations are unfortunately fairly common here in America, but the Murdoch murders became one of the biggest crime cases of this century.
What people forget, though, is that it was not known that Alec Murdoch had committed these murders when the bodies were found. Instead, the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdoch captivated the nation in the beginning because of the multitude of suspicious deaths that have been surrounding this wealthy family for years beforehand.
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Chapter 4: What role did corruption play in the Murdoch family's legal practices?
They sent hundreds of people to prison and condemned well over a dozen men to the electric chair during their reign on the prosecutorial side of the courtroom.
And I think it should be understood that Dick Harpoolian, who we'll get to in probably the third episode.
Third episode, yeah. The guy that represented Alec Murdoch in the murder trial.
Also was a solicitor with the Murdos. Yeah. Yes, and just in a different county. So they'd known each other for all of time. It's all so dirty and weird. And they're all on the same team. I also find it very interesting that when we cover what we call a lot of times B-team Illuminatis, we've said these all the time, localized, regional Illuminatis.
One thing, those mistakes that those groups always make is when they want to go national. That's when they fall apart. That's always kind of when they can't do it. The reason why the Murdochs managed to concentrate power so well is because it's a small area and they kept it small.
Well, the Murdoch's lived by the principle that if you wanted to live above the law, you had to become the law. And while their family did not start out as a bunch of crooks, they are a case study in absolute power corrupting absolutely.
Now, it really can't be overstated that for all intents and purposes, the Murdoch's acting as solicitors were the law in South Carolina's low country for over a century. But as civil litigators as well, they also amassed power and wealth that was passed down to each successive generation of Murdoch.
By the time Alec Murdoch came of age, his patrilineal line had learned how to tamper with juries, lean on judges, and call in favors from governors to get whatever result they wanted in the courtroom. And if we're being honest, since it was all happening in the boonies of South Carolina, nobody on the outside really gave a fuck what was happening down there.
When was the last time you thought about South Carolina? When I had to go there for a funeral.
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Chapter 5: How did the Murdoch family's power dynamics affect their community?
As a result, each generation of Murdoch was more reckless, entitled, and violent than the one that came before. And as it often goes with these sorts of people in the South, people began dying as a result. Even before the shooting murders of Paul and Maggie Murdoch at Alec Murdoch's hand, three suspicious deaths were credibly linked to the Murdoch family between just the years of 2015 and 2019.
Specifically, those deaths were linked to murder victim Paul Murdoch, because when it comes to Paul, this is one of those rare true crime stories where the victim did not, quote, light up a room wherever they went.
Yeah, you never see a 48 Hours about the henchman from Nightmare Before Christmas. And he's one of those. He's really the most disgusting type of fucking southerner, dude.
He's every type of, if you grew up in the South or knew people from the South, he's the exact type of puffer vest wearing, do you know who my father is, bitch, that you could possibly imagine that was also extremely violent, misogynist, and a murderer. Yeah, it's so weird that they're all so violent while wearing pastels. Yeah. I know it's nice and shit, but he had bought hunting grounds.
That's a vacation spot that you go to relax by killing things in. I'll just never fully understand it.
And then he killed his family by the dogs who probably enjoyed the show.
I will say it must have been fun to finally really let that fucking automatic rifle go, like, full bore for the first time.
Well, Paul Murdoch, the person that Alec Murdoch killed, his son, Paul was definitely responsible for the death of a close friend in a drunken boating accident. He was probably responsible for the death of his family's housekeeper, and he was likely at least involved in the murder of a local gay teenager named Stephen Smith. All of this occurred before Paul was even 23 years old.
And that's in addition to the drunken physical beatings Paul doled out to his girlfriends, who all suffered the wrath of this eternally chaotic train wreck of alcohol and entitlement. All three investigations into these deaths, however, either went nowhere due to the concerted efforts of Paul's family and their connections, or they ended when Paul Murdoch was himself murdered by his own father.
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Chapter 6: What were the consequences of Alec Murdoch's actions on his family?
I mean, if he was the one selling the oxycodone, you'd think you'd call him Slow Eddie. I was going to say that. Actually, I was waiting for you to shut up so I could say that joke. Congratulations. Great job. I won.
But after the murders, when the rest of the country finally got a peek at how South Carolina's low country had been run by this bizarre collection of tubby, beady-eyed redheads for decades on end, the world that the Murdochs built for themselves over a century came crashing down within just a few short months.
On the 15 years that we've been doing the show, and in my life before this, I've seen a lot of horrible, horrible things. I've seen, I've pored over crime scenes over the years, pictures of the Holocaust, things going on, you know, Auschwitz, you know, Unit 731. Jonestown.
Jonestown.
I've seen all of the footage. And one of the scenes. Auschwitz. Yes. But truly, one of the worst single things I've ever seen is a picture of the Murdoch family on vacation.
No.
them in bathing suits just happy are one of the worst single sites i've ever seen their bodies legally should have been covered like there should have been a sharia law for hampton county for their family disgusting a ginger's nipples need to be cut off yeah they look like albino manatees he looks like It's just a white belly with two piercing red eyes like a skull with flaming coals in it.
And then they had faces.
You got the faces. We'll get to those later.
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Chapter 7: How did Alec Murdoch's drug addiction impact his life and career?
Rural, inland, and incredibly poor, Hampton County had been founded after the Civil War as a place where people could pretend like the South never lost. Aw, nice! The whites of Hampton could keep living the way they'd always lived, where the poor whites were kept under the boot heel of the rich and the black citizens lived second class at best. I love how their Hamptons suck.
And all of this could happen away from the scrutiny of the outside world. That's very important. This is very isolated. And to ensure this lifestyle was maintained, the local government built a literal fence around the entire county in the 1890s, as if, according to one historian, they were trying to literally fence out the oncoming 20th century.
Because of this deliberate isolation, no one ever left Hampton County, but no one moved to Hampton County either.
It's because I was reading a grimoire I found that African wizards are afraid of gates. Yes, the African wizard can be kept at bay with several planks of wood.
I'm glad they put the fence up personally. Yeah, you're like, yeah, you stay over there and take it.
Now, one of the families who I'm sure approved of that fence around the county was the Murdoch family, who had moved to Hampton County in the 1870s to join the ruling class of the Confederate Old Guard about a decade after the Civil War ended.
But while the Murdochs were indeed an influential family in the early days of Hampton County, their outsized influence on the Lowcountry did not truly begin until 1910, when the first Murdoch graduated from law school. That year, Randolph Murdoch, Alec Murdoch's great-grandfather, he earned a degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law. The Cox. Yeah, the Gamecocks.
After moving back to Hampton County, Randolph set up across the street from the county courthouse where he soon established himself as one of South Carolina's most gifted young lawyers.
I know it was harder to live then, but it is kind of amazing how, like, you could have just been, like, a Supreme Court judge if you just, like, built a house in the right place by the right building. Sure. You know what I mean? It's like one of those things where, like, when the country was beginning, you just had to be there.
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Chapter 8: What are the unresolved mysteries surrounding the Murdoch family?
Chimney sweep's still high above railroad workers, but, you know, I'd say podcaster's still below. Oh, yeah. Randy also represented the families of people who were hit and killed by trains, of which there were many, because in the early 20th century, very few railroads had even clear crossings, much less cross arms or warning lights.
But that's all to say that suing railroads on behalf of the working man, that made the Murdochs. And they were able to ride that reputation for defending those less fortunate than themselves for decades after. Now, it was still legal for lawyers to both practice civil cases and act as government prosecutors in South Carolina until the 1980s. So Randy Murdoch Sr.
was able to run for 14th Judicial Circuit Solicitor, a.k.a. District Attorney, without giving up his lucrative personal injury firm. Once elected in 1920, Randy Sr. became the chief lawman for 100 miles, standing in rank above sheriffs, deputies, jailers, and constables across five counties.
He was also chief detective across the Lowcountry, personally charged with investigating murders, an elected official... Investigating murder. I mean, it was just one guy. It's America. Yeah. But since this is the era before forensics, most of Randy's job as chief detective was vetting alibis and, quote unquote, assessing credibility. Meaning that if Randy Sr.
had a feeling that someone was guilty, he could make a conviction happen if he had a good enough line of bullshit. It also helped if he got the right jury, which he usually did. In Hampton County, jurors were chosen by a child who pulled names from a box filled with paper slips. But Randy Sr.
made sure that the box was filled only with the names of men who could be relied upon to give him the verdict he wanted.
It's like more that you kind of unpack it. It's more like, oh, it's like all he did was corruption in a way. Yeah. But because it was so localized and he knew everybody, it seemed to be like fine at the time.
I think what's important with the Murdochs to remember is that they were always unethical. But that's the thing. It also doesn't make them that much different than prosecutors across America.
Being a lawyer means this is what you do.
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