SC - Paul Murdaugh & mom Margaret Found Shot To Death - Alex Murdaugh Accused - Islandton #18
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arielilane
Justice for Liz Barraza
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It was desperation by Alex to deflect attention away from his crimes, to buy some time. And it did work! She said they set the issue aside for months after.
He tried it again later that year with the roadside shooting, but that time it did not work. Fool me once...
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Carolina Girl
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Marking another place. I am 10 pages behind on #17 thread! Thanks to all for the post and links. This should come in as it I believe is motive. Pau'ls boat wreck, Maggie visiting a divorce lawyer, The Firm on to him, he was desperate.
arielilane
Justice for Liz Barraza
Recess. Resume at 2:15 pm ET.
arielilane
Justice for Liz Barraza
Because they don’t want the state to stack on
more evidence that AM is a rotten person. Too prejudicial maybe?
arielilane
Justice for Liz Barraza
Trial 9:30 am ET - 1:15 pm ET
Court is back in session.
Judge Newman begins by explaining why he allowed the state to ask the final witness yesterday about the financial issues. He says Murdaugh's defense team opened that door by turning the previous witness, Rogan Gibson, into a "character witness" …
.. by asking him if he could think of any reason why Alex would kill Maggie and Paul. (Gibson said he couldn't think of any). Newman says that allowed the state to ask the next witness if the financial crimes could have provided that motive.
Newman now explains why he overruled Murdaugh's objection, when Griffin rose and said "totally inappropriate." "Totally inappropriate" is not a legal basis for an objection, Newman says. It's not an objection at all, he said.
Newman is now explaining prior case law regarding the admission of info about a defendant's other crimes. He says the test is whether the other criminality is logically related to the crime in question.
Defense attorney Jim Griffin stands. He disagrees with Judge Newman’s assertion that the defense “opened the door” for the financial crimes to come in by asking Rogan Gibson if he could think of any circumstance in which Alex Murdaugh would kill his wife and son.
Newman says he plans to have a separate hearing outside the jury's presence to discuss which financial evidence, if any, might be admitted.
Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters tells the judge we are getting to the point where the state’s witnesses are going to need to be asked about financial crimes. The previous 18, with the possible exception of the last two, have had no knowledge of them and no reason to be asked.
The state calls its 19th witness, Heidi Galore of Snap Corp. Her job is to respond to law enforcement issues for Snapchat, including responding to subpoenas and appearing in trials like this one to verify evidence from Snapchat.
The state has prioritized Galore's testimony because she has a flight to catch out of SC, Waters said earlier.
Galore testifies the Snapchat video Paul captured of Alex Murdaugh next to a flimsy tree was taken 6/7/21 (day of slayings) at 7:39 p.m. Paul sent it to his friends at 7:56 p.m. Again, the Snapchat video is separate from the 8:44 p.m. dog kennels video.
Defense attorney Phillip Barber is up now crossing Galore. He notes the metadata shows the video was actually recorded 7:38 p.m.
Barbera establishes SLED didn’t ask Snapchat for a list of Paul’s friends. Nor did they request Paul’s geolocation data from Snapchat. Galore steps down.
The state calls Jeanne Seckinger, chief financial officer of the Parker Law Group and former CFO of PMPED. Judge Newman excuses the jury. Looks like we're about to get into some financial stuff.
Seckinger testifies that law partners at PMPED were paid $125K base salaries, paid biweekly. Their legal fees went into a shared pot that was split up at the end of the year in bonuses based on the ratio of fees each brought in.
Seckinger testifies partners got most of their pay in the last week of the year in the form of bonuses. Partners got a huge lump sum and had to make that last over the next year until the next bonus. (In addition to their $125K salaries).
Seckinger testifies she has known Alex for 40 years and had worked with him since 1999. She testifies he made good money, sometimes getting 7-figure payouts when bonuses went out at the end of the year.
Seckinger testifies she had a conversation with Alex Murdaugh in late May 2021 when she saw he was trying to structure legal fees he had received from a case. Murdaugh told her he was “trying to put some money in Maggie’s name” to shield it from the 2019 boat crash lawsuit.
Seckinger testifies she didn’t think Alex was trying to steal money - just hide it. “That would be wrong, and we did not want any part of that.”
“At that point, it had been done, and I was trying to figure out how we were going to account for it on our books," Seckinger testifies.
Seckinger testifies about pestering Alex Murdaugh in early June about $792K in missing legal fees from a case that Murdaugh worked with Bamberg attorney Chris Wilson. The firm got the "expenses" check from that case but not the attorneys' fees. That was odd.
Seckinger testifies she went into Alex's second-floor PMPED office on the morning of 6/7/21 and demanded to see proof he or Chris Wilson still had that $792K and that it was accessible, as Alex claimed. She said she had reason to believe Alex had received that money directly.
Seckinger: Midway through that conversation, Alex got a phone call that his dad was in the hospital with a terminal diagnosis.
“That changed the mood of that conversation. We quit talking about business,” Seckinger said.
Seckinger testified the 6/7/21 murders stopped her inquiry in its tracks.
Reminder: All of this is happening with the jury excused from the room.
Seckinger testifies about PMPED's investigation. All the partners met on 9/3/21 and reviewed the documentation. It looked like Alex had stolen. His brother Randy, a law partner, agreed. They confronted Alex about it. He confessed, Seckinger says. "We made him resign.”
Seckinger testifies PMPED kept digging and found some strange payments to Palmetto State Bank. Funds were directed to the bank as if they were going to be held for the beneficiary. But then those checks were converted to Alex’s personal use, she says.
This deception was actually meant to mislead lawyers/accountants, etc. Not to mislead clients. The clients didn’t even know they had the money before Alex allegedly stole it.
Seckinger testifies Alex in one case reduced his normal 30-40% fee so more $ would go to his client. But then he stole that $ from his client via the fake Forge account. So he was actually cutting the amount that would go to the law firm and boosting what he could steal himself.
I am becoming concerned about the volume of financial evidence that might have to be admitted and double-testified about, if this process continues beyond just Seckinger.
Dick Harpootlian turned 74 on the first day of the trial. I just hope he is still 74 when it ends.
Seckinger testifies PMPED found a series of 2011-12 thefts Alex Murdaugh perpetrated from the Badger family after their mother, Donna Badger, was killed in a crash with a UPS truck. The recovery was $3.1M. Murdaugh took $1.24M in legal fees and then stole $1.325M more, she says.
Seckinger has verified a parade of disbursement sheets and other financial documents that prosecutor Waters has shown her. She testifies PMPED had to find clients Murdaugh had stolen from and pay them back.
Seckinger was in an unenviable position there. Ex-Palmetto State Bank CEO Russell Laffitte is Seckinger’s brother-in-law, married to her husband’s sister. She testified in his November federal trial, after which Laffitte was convicted of six charges tied to this saga.
Murdaugh defense attorney Jim Griffin begins cross-examining Seckinger. He establishes that Seckinger had stopped - at least temporarily - looking into the missing $792K in fees when she learned Alex’s father was in the hospital with a terminal diagnosis.
Griffin seems to be making the point that Alex had no need to further thwart or delay Seckinger’s inquiry by killing Maggie and Paul later that evening.
We seem to be trying Alex Murdaugh on the financial crimes now. Murdaugh defense attorney Jim Griffin asks questions seemingly designed to lay some blame with PMPED for Alex’s thefts.
He asks if Murdaugh’s “Forge” scheme was documented in PMPED’s financial system dating back to 2015. Seckinger: “They were. They didn’t catch our attention before that.”
Griffin: “The information had been at your fingertips? 2015, it was there. ‘16, it was there. ‘17, it was there?” Seckinger: “That’s right.”
I would describe this exchange between Seckinger and Griffin as "cool." It is trending toward “icy"
Randy Murdaugh is back with his family today. Sitting behind Alex with John Marvin, Buster, Buster’s girlfriend, and Lynn.
In one of the pretrial motions months ago, lead prosecutor described the Murdaugh case as a white-collar case with a double murder strapped onto it. And here we are.
Earlier, Judge Newman told the jury they would be excused through lunch.
State prosecutor Creighton Waters, on redirect, asks Seckinger if there is any possible legitimate explanation for money flowing out of PMPED's client trust account to Alex Murdaugh's personal account via the "fake Forge" dummy account. She says no.
Seckinger steps down.
Judge Newman asks prosecutor Waters what is next. Waters said he has Alex Murdaugh’s paralegal, Michael Gunn, principal at Forge Consulting; and Bamberg attorney Chris Wilson ready to testify about the financial stuff in this non-jury hearing.
Griffin argues that Seckinger's testimony alone shows that these financial crimes are not admissible in this murder case. Also says judicial rules are supposed to prevent undue delays. He says admitting all this financial evidence would add at least two weeks to the trial.
Waters said he will streamline the state's case on the financial crimes. “The state’s intent is not to try 100 white-collar cases in the context of this murder case.” It’s to explain “what was going on in his life that was all coming to a head on June 7.”
Newman is urging prosecutors and Murdaugh's attorneys to come to an agreement on how to admit financial evidence without drastically elongating the case or having a bunch of witnesses - like Seckinger - testify twice. “If you can’t, then I make a call,” Newman said.
Newman seems to be leaning toward admitting the evidence, siding with prosecutors, even as Griffin argues it is not relevant.
We are breaking for lunch until about 2:15 p.m. Judge Newman says the case will continue this afternoon with the state presenting non-financial witnesses. Newman says they will take up the fight over financial evidence later.
Court is back in session.
Judge Newman begins by explaining why he allowed the state to ask the final witness yesterday about the financial issues. He says Murdaugh's defense team opened that door by turning the previous witness, Rogan Gibson, into a "character witness" …
.. by asking him if he could think of any reason why Alex would kill Maggie and Paul. (Gibson said he couldn't think of any). Newman says that allowed the state to ask the next witness if the financial crimes could have provided that motive.
Newman now explains why he overruled Murdaugh's objection, when Griffin rose and said "totally inappropriate." "Totally inappropriate" is not a legal basis for an objection, Newman says. It's not an objection at all, he said.
Newman is now explaining prior case law regarding the admission of info about a defendant's other crimes. He says the test is whether the other criminality is logically related to the crime in question.
Defense attorney Jim Griffin stands. He disagrees with Judge Newman’s assertion that the defense “opened the door” for the financial crimes to come in by asking Rogan Gibson if he could think of any circumstance in which Alex Murdaugh would kill his wife and son.
Newman says he plans to have a separate hearing outside the jury's presence to discuss which financial evidence, if any, might be admitted.
Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters tells the judge we are getting to the point where the state’s witnesses are going to need to be asked about financial crimes. The previous 18, with the possible exception of the last two, have had no knowledge of them and no reason to be asked.
The state calls its 19th witness, Heidi Galore of Snap Corp. Her job is to respond to law enforcement issues for Snapchat, including responding to subpoenas and appearing in trials like this one to verify evidence from Snapchat.
The state has prioritized Galore's testimony because she has a flight to catch out of SC, Waters said earlier.
Galore testifies the Snapchat video Paul captured of Alex Murdaugh next to a flimsy tree was taken 6/7/21 (day of slayings) at 7:39 p.m. Paul sent it to his friends at 7:56 p.m. Again, the Snapchat video is separate from the 8:44 p.m. dog kennels video.
Defense attorney Phillip Barber is up now crossing Galore. He notes the metadata shows the video was actually recorded 7:38 p.m.
Barbera establishes SLED didn’t ask Snapchat for a list of Paul’s friends. Nor did they request Paul’s geolocation data from Snapchat. Galore steps down.
The state calls Jeanne Seckinger, chief financial officer of the Parker Law Group and former CFO of PMPED. Judge Newman excuses the jury. Looks like we're about to get into some financial stuff.
Seckinger testifies that law partners at PMPED were paid $125K base salaries, paid biweekly. Their legal fees went into a shared pot that was split up at the end of the year in bonuses based on the ratio of fees each brought in.
Seckinger testifies partners got most of their pay in the last week of the year in the form of bonuses. Partners got a huge lump sum and had to make that last over the next year until the next bonus. (In addition to their $125K salaries).
Seckinger testifies she has known Alex for 40 years and had worked with him since 1999. She testifies he made good money, sometimes getting 7-figure payouts when bonuses went out at the end of the year.
Seckinger testifies she had a conversation with Alex Murdaugh in late May 2021 when she saw he was trying to structure legal fees he had received from a case. Murdaugh told her he was “trying to put some money in Maggie’s name” to shield it from the 2019 boat crash lawsuit.
Seckinger testifies she didn’t think Alex was trying to steal money - just hide it. “That would be wrong, and we did not want any part of that.”
“At that point, it had been done, and I was trying to figure out how we were going to account for it on our books," Seckinger testifies.
Seckinger testifies about pestering Alex Murdaugh in early June about $792K in missing legal fees from a case that Murdaugh worked with Bamberg attorney Chris Wilson. The firm got the "expenses" check from that case but not the attorneys' fees. That was odd.
Seckinger testifies she went into Alex's second-floor PMPED office on the morning of 6/7/21 and demanded to see proof he or Chris Wilson still had that $792K and that it was accessible, as Alex claimed. She said she had reason to believe Alex had received that money directly.
Seckinger: Midway through that conversation, Alex got a phone call that his dad was in the hospital with a terminal diagnosis.
“That changed the mood of that conversation. We quit talking about business,” Seckinger said.
Seckinger testified the 6/7/21 murders stopped her inquiry in its tracks.
Reminder: All of this is happening with the jury excused from the room.
Seckinger testifies about PMPED's investigation. All the partners met on 9/3/21 and reviewed the documentation. It looked like Alex had stolen. His brother Randy, a law partner, agreed. They confronted Alex about it. He confessed, Seckinger says. "We made him resign.”
Seckinger testifies PMPED kept digging and found some strange payments to Palmetto State Bank. Funds were directed to the bank as if they were going to be held for the beneficiary. But then those checks were converted to Alex’s personal use, she says.
This deception was actually meant to mislead lawyers/accountants, etc. Not to mislead clients. The clients didn’t even know they had the money before Alex allegedly stole it.
Seckinger testifies Alex in one case reduced his normal 30-40% fee so more $ would go to his client. But then he stole that $ from his client via the fake Forge account. So he was actually cutting the amount that would go to the law firm and boosting what he could steal himself.
I am becoming concerned about the volume of financial evidence that might have to be admitted and double-testified about, if this process continues beyond just Seckinger.
Dick Harpootlian turned 74 on the first day of the trial. I just hope he is still 74 when it ends.
Seckinger testifies PMPED found a series of 2011-12 thefts Alex Murdaugh perpetrated from the Badger family after their mother, Donna Badger, was killed in a crash with a UPS truck. The recovery was $3.1M. Murdaugh took $1.24M in legal fees and then stole $1.325M more, she says.
Seckinger has verified a parade of disbursement sheets and other financial documents that prosecutor Waters has shown her. She testifies PMPED had to find clients Murdaugh had stolen from and pay them back.
Seckinger was in an unenviable position there. Ex-Palmetto State Bank CEO Russell Laffitte is Seckinger’s brother-in-law, married to her husband’s sister. She testified in his November federal trial, after which Laffitte was convicted of six charges tied to this saga.
Murdaugh defense attorney Jim Griffin begins cross-examining Seckinger. He establishes that Seckinger had stopped - at least temporarily - looking into the missing $792K in fees when she learned Alex’s father was in the hospital with a terminal diagnosis.
Griffin seems to be making the point that Alex had no need to further thwart or delay Seckinger’s inquiry by killing Maggie and Paul later that evening.
We seem to be trying Alex Murdaugh on the financial crimes now. Murdaugh defense attorney Jim Griffin asks questions seemingly designed to lay some blame with PMPED for Alex’s thefts.
He asks if Murdaugh’s “Forge” scheme was documented in PMPED’s financial system dating back to 2015. Seckinger: “They were. They didn’t catch our attention before that.”
Griffin: “The information had been at your fingertips? 2015, it was there. ‘16, it was there. ‘17, it was there?” Seckinger: “That’s right.”
I would describe this exchange between Seckinger and Griffin as "cool." It is trending toward “icy"
Randy Murdaugh is back with his family today. Sitting behind Alex with John Marvin, Buster, Buster’s girlfriend, and Lynn.
In one of the pretrial motions months ago, lead prosecutor described the Murdaugh case as a white-collar case with a double murder strapped onto it. And here we are.
Earlier, Judge Newman told the jury they would be excused through lunch.
State prosecutor Creighton Waters, on redirect, asks Seckinger if there is any possible legitimate explanation for money flowing out of PMPED's client trust account to Alex Murdaugh's personal account via the "fake Forge" dummy account. She says no.
Seckinger steps down.
Judge Newman asks prosecutor Waters what is next. Waters said he has Alex Murdaugh’s paralegal, Michael Gunn, principal at Forge Consulting; and Bamberg attorney Chris Wilson ready to testify about the financial stuff in this non-jury hearing.
Griffin argues that Seckinger's testimony alone shows that these financial crimes are not admissible in this murder case. Also says judicial rules are supposed to prevent undue delays. He says admitting all this financial evidence would add at least two weeks to the trial.
Waters said he will streamline the state's case on the financial crimes. “The state’s intent is not to try 100 white-collar cases in the context of this murder case.” It’s to explain “what was going on in his life that was all coming to a head on June 7.”
Newman is urging prosecutors and Murdaugh's attorneys to come to an agreement on how to admit financial evidence without drastically elongating the case or having a bunch of witnesses - like Seckinger - testify twice. “If you can’t, then I make a call,” Newman said.
Newman seems to be leaning toward admitting the evidence, siding with prosecutors, even as Griffin argues it is not relevant.
We are breaking for lunch until about 2:15 p.m. Judge Newman says the case will continue this afternoon with the state presenting non-financial witnesses. Newman says they will take up the fight over financial evidence later.
LetsSolvIt
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Part of what I am enjoying about this trial is hearing Judge Newman. It is so interesting to me to hear his legal thinking. He has a very ordered mind and seems to be so careful in his opinions and specific words. I have so much respect for him! MOO.
ASIDE: I hesitated to use the word “enjoy” as how can one enjoy an event — the trial — that is the result of two human beings being brutally murdered. The other part of “enjoyment” is watching the process of justice in our country.
ASIDE: I hesitated to use the word “enjoy” as how can one enjoy an event — the trial — that is the result of two human beings being brutally murdered. The other part of “enjoyment” is watching the process of justice in our country.
girlhasnoname
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Exactly, the Defense is arguing to keep out Alex's financial misdeeds out as they say they aren't relative to the crime and the State is pushing to admit them because 'all of the ends were meeting in the middle' as they say for Alex on the day Maggie and Paul were murdered.
Alex was confronted by the CFO the day of the murders. He was also going to be required to disclose his personal finances on June 10th, just a few days later, due to the upcoming criminal trial of the boat accident involving Paul.
When Paul died, the criminal case was dismissed, even thought the civil case continues.
The Judge will decide if the financial misdeeds are a valid part (probative) of motive without being too prejudicial to the defendant.
I say they absolutely must come in, this is exactly why Paul and Maggie are dead.
MOO
ElizB
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I struggled with this also. I think he was trying to buy time.
Edvis
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Still waiting to see if AM's dirty money tactic's will be allowed in front of the jury but getting this feeling it will. Watching the defenses reasons why it shouldn't be, to the point of begging IMO.
DeDee
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I am weeping like a widow with sorrow for the innocent survivors of all of the crimes AM allegedly committed. He crushed so many people that trusted him. May each and every one of them be richly blessed with mercy and kindness forevermore so they may be able to properly heal from the massive devastation.
You are right, Edvis, in that the world is hearing about the Fake Forge acct. and AM's fraudulent activities. It's such a shame, too, especially after learning how much money AM spent on those firearms for his sons for Christmas and also the replacement weapon that totalled over $10k; one of which was likely the murder weapon. Some folks in the area in and around Moselle, South Carolina don't make that much money in an entire year.
My precious mother raised her children by this motto: "If you'll lie; you'll steal. If you will steal, then you will kill."
If I were AM, I'd fake puking and passing out so I could be promptly removed from the courtroom.
MHOO MOO
The civil suit would continue and if that went to trial, as that's where it was headed after the failed mediation on June 4, 2021, 3 days before the murders of MM and PM. A trial in the wrongful death suit would bring up the financials and he was on borrowed time as to getting misappropriated monies back where they belonged before he was discovered. When his law firm's CFO spoke with him on June 7, the day of the murders, he knew his financial misdeeds had been discovered and he was basically out of time to get loans to cover the missing money. He also knew, IMO, that the discovery of the missing money would trigger a forensic audit and his previous misappropriations of funds would be brought to light. He was between a rock and a hard place.
meo
Ravenmoon
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AM was sinking. He was sinking FAST .
Enter the fatal boating accident.
Not only did that reflect badly on the Murdaugh family, it brought a liability , both financially and socially.
AM was overwhelmed and PM was causing him some extra burden.
PM was needing to go.
AM was the also funneling funds into MMs account. I assume if she were to become aware she TOO was way too much of a risk.
AMOO
Enter the fatal boating accident.
Not only did that reflect badly on the Murdaugh family, it brought a liability , both financially and socially.
AM was overwhelmed and PM was causing him some extra burden.
PM was needing to go.
AM was the also funneling funds into MMs account. I assume if she were to become aware she TOO was way too much of a risk.
AMOO
girlhasnoname
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This testimony is an on camera hearing in case the Judge rules it in the jury will have access by video and/or transcript. IINM
ObsessedNightOwl
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Excellent summary.....!
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