South Carolina Attorney shot in head months after wife and son shot dead

[BigDHornfan 6549]

it was good to see that fuck walk into court in a brown jumpsuit and orange prison crocs.

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

6 minutes ago, scottsins said:

who is representing himself.

[tejas60 3533]

14 hours ago, Nicole44 said:

Guilty!!!!! Fuck you Alec Murdock! 

Bert!

[Updawg 2268]

I had the verdict up on my laptop, and I swear to god after the judge wrapped up and they were walking murdaugh out of the court room they camera panned over the jury. Was that an overflow viewing area? Sure seemed like that’s the direction they were looking when speaking to the jury. 

It looked like they showed the jury to me as well

[HRSchenker 2271]

Life in prison!

[cabowabo 4491]

That Judge is a badass.

[Ojo Rojo 1966]

What a spectacular fall from grace.  Remind me to never fuck with opioids.

I know this, for myself and everyone else, if you get yourself in trouble, make some bad decisions, whatever - put down the shovel and stop digging your hole deeper.  Just admit you fucked up, commit to doing better and making amends. The sooner the better. Shit will suck for a little while, but you can ultimately get your life back and maybe better.

[Brisketexan 105160]

6 minutes ago, Ojo Rojo said:

What a spectacular fall from grace.  Remind me to never fuck with opioids.

I know this, for myself and everyone else, if you get yourself in trouble, make some bad decisions, whatever - put down the shovel and stop digging your hole deeper.  Just admit you fucked up, commit to doing better and making amends. The sooner the better. Shit will suck for a little while, but you can ultimately get your life back and maybe better.

Or, to paraphrase an old lawyer I knew: "We all make mistakes.  Never try to cover up a mistake with a crime."  Seems like really sound advice.

[Newdoc 3448]

It is beyond comprehension what this guy did to his family. How narcissistic are you to do this and not put a bullet in your own brain first?

[ClubWhatever 12151]

10 minutes ago, Newdoc said:

It is beyond comprehension what this guy did to his family. How narcissistic are you to do this and not put a bullet in your own brain first?

It seems some people want to blame drugs.  I have never been an addict so I can't speak to that, but the times I have been high I don't remember losing a conception of basic right and wrong. 

[Sandman 3403]

14 hours ago, Nicole44 said:

Y’all should really look up Mandy Matney. She moved to Islandton SC and was covering basically shark sightings and boat crashes until Mallory Beach was killed in the boat crash that if you haven’t seen any documentaries about this case lit the fuse. She’s a hero in my estimation. She’s been threatened and bullied since. 

I tried to listen back when she first started but I couldn't handle her horrible voice and delivery. Then she started bitching about people who made comments about her shitty voice. I gave up on her. 

[Augustus 3061]

14 minutes ago, ClubWhatever said:

It seems some people want to blame drugs.  I have never been an addict so I can't speak to that, but the times I have been high I don't remember losing a conception of basic right and wrong. 

 

I'm an alcoholic who also got addicted to opioids back in the early 00's and wound up on methadone for 7 years, which I discovered went really, really well when combined with booze and cocaine.

My point is, even a severe opioid addiction doesn't turn someone into a sociopath who murders his own child and the child's mom.  

Lots of addicts steal to support their habits.  But if you steal $9 million from your law firm and even more than that from clients who have been wronged/injured, and blow your son's head off with a shotgun and then gun down your wife, it's not because you're an addict.  It's because your a full blown psychopath whose schemes aren't working anymore.  The opioid addiction was used as gigantic straw man in this case. 

[Augustus 3061]

 

I wasn't feeling sure about how this case was gonna go, but once that other prosecutor dude did his closing rebuttal, that's when I posted that this verdict would happen quickly.

I saw a lot of comments here and on twitter/etc that were very critical of his performance, and then a lot of comments that were the opposite.  Whether you like him or not, his method was 100% effective with the jury, and more than anybody else in this case, he's the one who made it seem so obvious nobody else on earth could've killed Paul and Maggie.

His whole closing argument was one long segment of "C'mon, man!"

[Herpa Derpa 6126]

11 hours ago, Nicole44 said:

I really hope they treat the Stephen Smith case the same way. His death deserves a full investigation and trial.

Gay man killed on the side of the road in South Cackalacky? I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. Not to mention it was likely just Stephen, Paul, and/or Buster that night and two of them ain't talking anymore.

[Zepol87 9188]

Man just getting around to watching the HBO series on this. Holy shit this is crazy

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Does this mean he goes to regular prison or does he still get the posh prison for the well-heeled murdering types?

[Augustus 3061]

1 minute ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Does this mean he goes to regular prison or does he still get the posh prison for the well-heeled murdering types?

He's headed to Shawshank.

Had a chance at Club Fed if it was just the financial crimes.  Not anymore.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Augustus

[Augustus 3061]

Did the judge order Life without Parole or just Life?

Consecutive or concurrent?

[cabowabo 4491]

On the guns used, I know Paul had apparently had one stolen years ago (black and tan color).  Casings from the 300 Blackout rifle used matched casings found around the property.  Was this gun ever found and in evidence?  I know there was a 300 blackout in evidence.  Was that Buster's 300 blackout (black color one)?  As far as the shotgun, was that found and was it in evidence?  I keep hearing they were "family" guns used and the killer would have had to arrive at the scene which just so happened to have these guns available.   Aside from the 300 blackout casing, how did they know that "family" guns were used?

[Gatorubet 30246]

I sentence you to two terms of life in prison without the possibility of rape.

Wait! That’s wrong.  I meant without the possibility of parole. 

[jdhorn92 1552]

1 hour ago, Newdoc said:

It is beyond comprehension what this guy did to his family. How narcissistic are you to do this and not put a bullet in your own brain first?

Interestingly, he tried to have himself killed, but the attempt failed.  He paid his drug dealer to kill him (this was after the murders), so his surviving son could collect on life insurance.  But even that plan was shit and the bullet missed.  Kind of glad it missed personally, as that was the easy way out. Now he'll have to plan his own death, again, in the pokey.

https://apnews.com/article/homicide-dogs-crime-bd346695ea7a0386f86766e2aea27bdf

 

[T’Boo Ted Marshall 2732]

Wonder if he runs into any people he put in prison.

[Augustus 3061]

Are we 100% sure the plan was for cousin Eddie to kill him?

I'm wondering if the plan was just for Cousin Eddie to shoot "near" him to make it appear as if someone was trying to kill Alex, too, but the shooter screwed up and accidentally grazed his head.  

 

[Grade of D as in David 13253]

8 minutes ago, T’Boo Ted Marshall said:

Wonder if he runs into any people he put in prison.

He's going to get worked over worse than Ned Beatty in Deliverance.

[tx 3 putt 77107]

No death penalty is bs 

[conVINCEd 21469]

2 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

No death penalty is bs 

His life will be shorter and more painful in gen pop.

[Redneck Mutha 8006]

23 minutes ago, Grade of D as in David said:

He's going to get worked over worse than Ned Beatty in Deliverance.

[scottsins 1968]

I suspect you do know what you’re talking about, except that $90k (and some retirement match - lol) is not a lot of money.  My non-attorney contention is that a lot of these guys go private and make a lot more money. This affects the quality of attorney. My take is not controversial, and is shared by everyone I know - attorneys and nonattorneys alike. 

I agree with that premise. It was just the degree of disparity between the jobs.

[scottsins 1968]

Are we 100% sure the plan was for cousin Eddie to kill him?
I'm wondering if the plan was just for Cousin Eddie to shoot "near" him to make it appear as if someone was trying to kill Alex, too, but the shooter screwed up and accidentally grazed his head.  
 

Your take is definitely the one that buy into.

Did the judge order Life without Parole or just Life?
Consecutive or concurrent?

He stacked them (consecutive).

[tejas60 3533]

1 hour ago, Augustus said:

 

I'm an alcoholic who also got addicted to opioids back in the early 00's and wound up on methadone for 7 years, which I discovered went really, really well when combined with booze and cocaine.

My point is, even a severe opioid addiction doesn't turn someone into a sociopath who murders his own child and the child's mom.  

Lots of addicts steal to support their habits.  But if you steal $9 million from your law firm and even more than that from clients who have been wronged/injured, and blow your son's head off with a shotgun and then gun down your wife, it's not because you're an addict.  It's because your a full blown psychopath whose schemes aren't working anymore.  The opioid addiction was used as gigantic straw man in this case. 

[dcbc 14492]

14 hours ago, Nicole44 said:

 

[woohorn 1131]

Interestingly, he tried to have himself killed, but the attempt failed.  He paid his drug dealer to kill him (this was after the murders), so his surviving son could collect on life insurance. 
 

Are we 100% sure the plan was for cousin Eddie to kill him?
I'm wondering if the plan was just for Cousin Eddie to shoot "near" him to make it appear as if someone was trying to kill Alex, too, but the shooter screwed up and accidentally grazed his head.  
 

Thought speculation was that Alex tried to set cousin up and they struggled with a gun and Alex got grazed? Wasn't there evidence of $9,999 checks to cousin too?

[Augustus 3061]

The cousin is claiming that Alex was acting like he was gonna shoot himself, so Eddie grabbed for the gun and it went off, grazing Alex's head.

This is just Cousin Eddie denying that he shot at anybody.  Alex is claiming he hired Eddie to kill him so Buster could inherit 10 million from his life insurance policy.

I'm just wondering if they're both lying--Eddie for obvious reasons, he doesn't want to go to jail for actually shooting at someone, and actually nearly killing Alex with a head shot.  Alex, I believe, is lying because I suspect his real motive was just to make himself look like a target of the same "killers" who took out Paul and Maggie. 

I suppose it's possible Alex might've wanted to commit suicide but he strikes me as too narcissistic for self harm.

If I'm right about Alex's real motive, I'd have loved to have heard the conversation between Alex and Eddie after the bullet fractured his skull.  "You inbred hillbilly IDIOT YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING SHOT ME."

[Augustus 3061]

I've never really cared for the judges pontificating at length as a guy stands there pissing down his leg wondering how long he's going away for, but this judges comments prior to passing sentence were pretty moving.  

[HouTex 1884]

3 hours ago, Augustus said:

 

I wasn't feeling sure about how this case was gonna go, but once that other prosecutor dude did his closing rebuttal, that's when I posted that this verdict would happen quickly.

I saw a lot of comments here and on twitter/etc that were very critical of his performance, and then a lot of comments that were the opposite.  Whether you like him or not, his method was 100% effective with the jury, and more than anybody else in this case, he's the one who made it seem so obvious nobody else on earth could've killed Paul and Maggie.

His whole closing argument was one long segment of "C'mon, man!"

After the argument but before the verdict some of the talking heads (mostly lawyers) on cable were saying how brilliant the defense attorney was in his closing and how he identified so many ways for the jury to find reasonable doubt.  I always find it interesting that so-called experts can be so confident about something and be so wrong.  

[LW Goatman 1124]

1 hour ago, Augustus said:

I've never really cared for the judges pontificating at length as a guy stands there pissing down his leg wondering how long he's going away for, but this judges comments prior to passing sentence were pretty moving.  

They rarely pontificate at length unless its something gruesome like this. And if he was wondering what was coming, well he truly never will get it. 

[TwiceHorn 31506]

3 hours ago, Augustus said:

 

I'm an alcoholic who also got addicted to opioids back in the early 00's and wound up on methadone for 7 years, which I discovered went really, really well when combined with booze and cocaine.

My point is, even a severe opioid addiction doesn't turn someone into a sociopath who murders his own child and the child's mom.  

Lots of addicts steal to support their habits.  But if you steal $9 million from your law firm and even more than that from clients who have been wronged/injured, and blow your son's head off with a shotgun and then gun down your wife, it's not because you're an addict.  It's because your a full blown psychopath whose schemes aren't working anymore.  The opioid addiction was used as gigantic straw man in this case. 

I'll elaborate a little on this.

People don't necessarily do crimes because they're fucked up, although that doesn't help.  And it's a bit more complex than 'stealing to support your habit."

An addict first becomes afraid of experiencing withdrawal, then, their entire constitution, mind and body, cannot comprehend being sober.  In this state, they will compromise their values in order to protect their addiction.  Obviously, if they have no money to buy drugs, they'll steal drugs or money or both.  But they also do things to separate or distance themselves from people, places and things that they feel are a threat to their addiction, and sometimes to undermine those people so that their efforts to separate the addict from the drug are ineffective.

Your initial values as a non-addict are kind of a baseline from where the departure starts, and the depths and desperation of your addiction help define how far you'll depart from your basic values.  Maybe also some aspects of your character.  A fairly normal addict may convince herself she's just borrowing the money, at least at first, and so on and so forth until you get into an irretrievable situation of desperation.  If you're a piece of shit to begin with, you may blow right past the "borrowing pocket change" stage to major theft or embezzlement, or certainly get there a helluva lot quicker.  And, being intoxicated and impaired all the time doesn't help bring any clarity or judgment to the situation.

My theory is that Alex killed Paul and Maggie because they were a threat to his addiction and relatedly to his crimes that supported his addiction and permitted him to retain his standing and wealth.  It's not that common among addicts to do shit like this, but consider where Alex came from:  he was already pretty corrupt in many ways and had probably been exposed to murder-type corruption in his lifetime through his family.  So his addiction and addictive thinking are what propelled him toward murder, and his generally shittiness as a human of the Murdaugh subspecies, probably along with being boiled as an owl 95% of the time, is how he got to this place.

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

1 hour ago, Augustus said:

I've never really cared for the judges pontificating at length as a guy stands there pissing down his leg wondering how long he's going away for, but this judges comments prior to passing sentence were pretty moving.  

Just imagine all the crap the judge knew that never made it into the courtroom. He knew.

[Updawg 2268]

Just imagine all the crap the judge knew that never made it into the courtroom. He knew.

Definitely seems this way

[Nicole44 22064]

Dateline and 20/20 are both doing shows on the trial etc..at 8 pm central. I prefer Dateline’s to 20/20.

 

[MrBig 5416]

2 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

I'll elaborate a little on this.

People don't necessarily do crimes because they're fucked up, although that doesn't help.  And it's a bit more complex than 'stealing to support your habit."

An addict first becomes afraid of experiencing withdrawal, then, their entire constitution, mind and body, cannot comprehend being sober.  In this state, they will compromise their values in order to protect their addiction.  Obviously, if they have no money to buy drugs, they'll steal drugs or money or both.  But they also do things to separate or distance themselves from people, places and things that they feel are a threat to their addiction, and sometimes to undermine those people so that their efforts to separate the addict from the drug are ineffective.

Your initial values as a non-addict are kind of a baseline from where the departure starts, and the depths and desperation of your addiction help define how far you'll depart from your basic values.  Maybe also some aspects of your character.  A fairly normal addict may convince herself she's just borrowing the money, at least at first, and so on and so forth until you get into an irretrievable situation of desperation.  If you're a piece of shit to begin with, you may blow right past the "borrowing pocket change" stage to major theft or embezzlement, or certainly get there a helluva lot quicker.  And, being intoxicated and impaired all the time doesn't help bring any clarity or judgment to the situation.

My theory is that Alex killed Paul and Maggie because they were a threat to his addiction and relatedly to his crimes that supported his addiction and permitted him to retain his standing and wealth.  It's not that common among addicts to do shit like this, but consider where Alex came from:  he was already pretty corrupt in many ways and had probably been exposed to murder-type corruption in his lifetime through his family.  So his addiction and addictive thinking are what propelled him toward murder, and his generally shittiness as a human of the Murdaugh subspecies, probably along with being boiled as an owl 95% of the time, is how he got to this place.

All of this reminds me of this 

[T’Boo Ted Marshall 2732]

Someone else unthread did the math on the amount of drugs he bought and it was astounding.
I know little about opioids, so how did he function and how did it not impact his health?

[ClubWhatever 12151]

The alternate reality for this family where they act like regular rich hicks would have been so much easier and better for everyone.  It’s ok to be a small town lawyer who makes 250k and hunts and fishes and shoots stop signs but doesn’t cheat and steal or murder.   

[BachelorTrek 3050]

28 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

Dateline and 20/20 are both doing shows on the trial etc..at 8 pm central. I prefer Dateline’s to 20/20.

 

During Longhorn baseball playing at Cal-State-Fullerscrew?  Lulz.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

32 minutes ago, T’Boo Ted Marshall said:

Someone else unthread did the math on the amount of drugs he bought and it was astounding.
I know little about opioids, so how did he function and how did it not impact his health?

Oxycodone et al makes you constipated so he was impacted no matter what.

[RDCanecutter 26454]

7 hours ago, Sandman said:

I tried to listen back when she first started but I couldn't handle her horrible voice and delivery. Then she started bitching about people who made comments about her shitty voice. I gave up on her. 

In more recent episodes, the vocal fry is gone. At least something good came out of all this.

[TwiceHorn 31506]

1 hour ago, MrBig said:

All of this reminds me of this 

Right, addicts can talk themselves into any damn thing that keeps the drink or drug flowing.

 

[LTtxfan 49278]

18 hours ago, cabowabo said:

 I keep hearing they were "family" guns used and the killer would have had to arrive at the scene which just so happened to have these guns available.  Aside from the 300 blackout casing, how did they know that "family" guns were used?

Older casings from Murdaugh family guns were found from previous shootings on the property -- those older casings matched the shell casings used for the murders.  

Edited March 4, 2023 by LTtxfan

[LTtxfan 49278]

A sad story...

RIP MAGGIE & PAUL   🙏🙏🙏

[Nueces River Rat 5539]

20 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

No death penalty is bs 

Considering some appeals take decades in death penalty cases, he will likely be dead by then based on life expectancy.    Which may go down slightly when behind bars.    If you get cancer,  MD Anderson isn’t an option for you for the latest treatments and best Docs.