SC - Paul Murdaugh & mom Margaret Found Shot To Death - Alex Murdaugh Accused - Islandton #31

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For being wound up on oxy drugs AM sure was heavy! IMOO MM had enough of AM and felt happier at her E home. He had to always talk her to come to M home. Did she fall out of love with him because of drugs arguing etc. To save face she was lucky to have 2 homes and was looking at another? Maybe her reality or found out she was broke?
 
Elley Mae said:
I too had the same thought.
Iirc it was said that Alex could communicate with people on their level. He knows the area he is speaking to the jury the way they would understand what he is saying and how they will interpret it. I feel like he could hit a cord with one or 2. Deliberation’s will be probably be long and tedious and could come back hung.

Hoping for Waters to pull it all together.
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Yes, it's really all on CW to pull together the threads and weave the tale. I know he's been working on all the AM cases so has been immersed in the minutia of AM. I don't know how he is at closings but I'm hopeful he can do it well.

At heart it's a simple story and I don't personally see "reasonable" doubt. But I also feel like that courtroom is almost like a foreign country to me. I don't understand how anyone ever thought AM was great so I am concerned about how able the jurors are to see beneath the surface level "stuff" that seems so prevalent in that area where the Murdaughs were used to being treated as above the law. I personally find juries to be a wild card. If I were ever charged of a crime but was innocent I'd probably want a bench trial unless the Judge was substandard. I'd be more inclined to trust a Judge if I were innocent honestly.

For someone like AM, he wants common people as jurors. He's been pulling it over on people like that all his professional life. He still has confidence in his abilities
detectivewannab said:
Alex for the Grammy!
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Skigirl said:
The way I am thinking about the motive (to the extent that people even really need a great motive to kill) is (IMO):

- The pressure from the boat crash cases was mounting. Tinsley, the Beach family's attorney, had told him that he was going to have to pay a lot of money to settle the case. Alex told Tinsley that he was broke. Tinsley didn't believe it based on what he knew of Alex's caseload and was going to force Alex to turn over financial information. If his financial information came to light, it was going to become clear that he was stealing from clients. That would have gotten him disbarred and would have stopped him from making a legitimate living. Worse, it was going to turn off the spigot on his illegitimate income. Even worse, Alex would probably have to go to prison.
- If the boat crash case were to settle -- or go to trial -- he was going to lose everything, including Maggie's beloved beach house and Moselle, which was Paul's "absolute passion"
- Paul's criminal defense was costing a fortune and would have been making its way through the courts for years, which caused more financial pressure.
- Alex's usual modus operandi of tampering with the jury was not going to fly in the boat crash cases, because Tinsley told him that if he had even a hint of a whiff of tampering, Tinsley was going to immediately file new suits in Beaufort County -- where the Murdaugh family name isn't as powerful and Alex wouldn't be able to jury tamper -- naming Buster and Maggie. More financial pressure.
- Maggie was encouraging Alex to settle the suits, but Alex was backed into a corner and couldn't without all of the above consequences, which she did not know of.
- IMO, Maggie and Paul were becoming aware of financial issues through declined credit cards and bounced checks. Maybe Paul ("Little Detective") had even done some snooping and had unearthed some evidence of the ill-gotten gains.
- Maggie and Little Detective were putting pressure on him by finding drugs and confronting him. They were coming between him and opioids.
- IMO, Alex was having an affair and he also had to worry about that coming to light, because if Maggie divorced him, he would be financially ruined (I am basing my opinion about the possibility of an affair on Mushelle Smith's testimony that he had only been by at night to visit his mother a couple times in the years that she worked for Miss Libby coupled with testimony by Marian about how much time he spent there and Maggie's text saying that she was worried about Alex because he wasn't getting enough sleep due to all the time he was spending with his parents at night.)
- Alex's father, who was his protector and fixer for his entire life, was dying. There would be no daddy to help him soon.
- The above consequences -- becoming penniless and being found to be a thief and a liar and an addict -- would have ruined his social standing as a powerful Murdaugh.

Killing Maggie and Paul would remove several pressure points. The criminal boat case would be dismissed. Juries would be less likely to award big damages against him and maybe Tinsley would even drop the case. He wouldn't have to worry about letting down Maggie and Paul by being found out to be a con man and a thief and by losing Moselle and the beach house and the rest of the lifestyle they had become accustomed to. He would no longer have ...and it all came to a head with to worry about hiding things from Maggie and Little Detective. Maybe he would be able to find a way to replace some of the missing money before anyone became any the wiser, or at least before anyone made public accusations, enabling him to avoid prison.

Do I think these are great reasons for murder? No, of course not, but it doesn't matter what I think is a good reason -- these were good reasons to Alex. People have murdered for much, much less.
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I like this. In my experience people kill or get pushed to kill when their way of life is threatened with being taken away. It makes them feel threatened with death so to speak. So they kill in attempt to save their way of life. Maggie and Paul were threats (for different reasons) to his way of life and it all came to a head after that day at work. They were the most immediate remedy to buy him some time to save his way of life.


The only time I think he actually spoke the truth was when AM said the person who did this had been planning it for quite a while. Well yeah...he should know.
 
Sunshynn said:
I’m seeing that AM caught a misdemeanor charge today.
I wonder if it’s for some contraband drugs found? He seemed weird(er) today.
Moo
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Now we know why the Bailiff or Lawman stopped all and went to talk to the Judge in the midst of the trial. Letting him know. Maybe they found 'something ' in his cell, all I can think of.
 
jbc said:
I'm not an expert, but in my view, the prosecutor was a disaster. He let AM take control of the cross. Actually letting AM rephrase his own questions on very many occasions. How can that be??? It's like a photographic negative of the trial in My Cousin Vinnie. If there's a mistrial, the prosecution will have been hoodwinked. If the jury votes for conviction, it means that I don't understand bonk about this culture.
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Really? He let Alec incriminate himself. Wait until next week.

Although - I bet you may be accurately representing what the jury might be thinking.

I think if the jury doesn't find him guilty, it means that this county has its own justice system ("justice system.") But either way, it will still represent something of the local culture. AM's confident admission of SO many illegal acts will be interpreted differently than I would do.

The prosecution has not been hoodwinked. I believe most rational people who are disinterested jurors will find him guilty. But that might not be the case.

MOO.
 
auburnmomof2 said:
I'm starting to think the motive was pills. I think they had limited his access to pills and he lost it. Just my opinion
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After today's testimony from Alex, I'm thinking his pills may have played a bigger part than I thought before. I think there was some truth in what he was saying about his timing for going down to the kennels.

Alex said that Paul left while he and Maggie were finishing dinner. Then after they ate, Maggie asked Alex to go to the kennels with her. He said no because he didn't want to get hot after he'd just showered so Maggie went without him. Then he admitted that within minutes of Maggie leaving, he changed his mind and left for the kennels.

What if Maggie and/or Paul found a stash of pills while Alex was showering and removed them without him knowing. Then when Maggie left for the kennels, he went for his pills. Minutes later, when he realized they were missing, he went in to a rage, hopped on the golf cart and went to the kennels to get them back. He may have confronted Paul and killed him because he was furious his pills were missing. He was furious with Maggy too. That may explain why he admitted he tried to turn Paul over (because he was looking for his pills).

JMO
 
I'm watching the redirect right now, and they put up a text from Paul that says his feet are swollen and he wants an appointment. So isn't Alex lying about Paul resisting getting a doctor?

I think what Waters was trying to get at when asking what they talked about at supper, is that they may have well been talking about Alex's pill problem. But Alex wants to say they were only talking about Paul's feet.
 
Skigirl said:
The way I am thinking about the motive (to the extent that people even really need a great motive to kill) is (IMO):

- The pressure from the boat crash cases was mounting. Tinsley, the Beach family's attorney, had told him that he was going to have to pay a lot of money to settle the case. Alex told Tinsley that he was broke. Tinsley didn't believe it based on what he knew of Alex's caseload and was going to force Alex to turn over financial information. If his financial information came to light, it was going to become clear that he was stealing from clients. That would have gotten him disbarred and would have stopped him from making a legitimate living. Worse, it was going to turn off the spigot on his illegitimate income. Even worse, Alex would probably have to go to prison.
- If the boat crash case were to settle -- or go to trial -- he was going to lose everything, including Maggie's beloved beach house and Moselle, which was Paul's "absolute passion"
- Paul's criminal defense was costing a fortune and would have been making its way through the courts for years, which caused more financial pressure.
- Alex's usual modus operandi of tampering with the jury was not going to fly in the boat crash cases, because Tinsley told him that if he had even a hint of a whiff of tampering, Tinsley was going to immediately file new suits in Beaufort County -- where the Murdaugh family name isn't as powerful and Alex wouldn't be able to jury tamper -- naming Buster and Maggie. More financial pressure.
- Maggie was encouraging Alex to settle the suits, but Alex was backed into a corner and couldn't without all of the above consequences, which she did not know of.
- IMO, Maggie and Paul were becoming aware of financial issues through declined credit cards and bounced checks. Maybe Paul ("Little Detective") had even done some snooping and had unearthed some evidence of the ill-gotten gains.
- Maggie and Little Detective were putting pressure on him by finding drugs and confronting him. They were coming between him and opioids.
- IMO, Alex was having an affair and he also had to worry about that coming to light, because if Maggie divorced him, he would be financially ruined (I am basing my opinion about the possibility of an affair on Mushelle Smith's testimony that he had only been by at night to visit his mother a couple times in the years that she worked for Miss Libby coupled with testimony by Marian about how much time he spent there and Maggie's text saying that she was worried about Alex because he wasn't getting enough sleep due to all the time he was spending with his parents at night.)
- Alex's father, who was his protector and fixer for his entire life, was dying. There would be no daddy to help him soon.
- The above consequences -- becoming penniless and being found to be a thief and a liar and an addict -- would have ruined his social standing as a powerful Murdaugh.

Killing Maggie and Paul would remove several pressure points. The criminal boat case would be dismissed. Juries would be less likely to award big damages against him and maybe Tinsley would even drop the case. He wouldn't have to worry about letting down Maggie and Paul by being found out to be a con man and a thief and by losing Moselle and the beach house and the rest of the lifestyle they had become accustomed to. He would no longer have to worry about hiding things from Maggie and Little Detective. Maybe he would be able to find a way to replace some of the missing money before anyone became any the wiser, or at least before anyone made public accusations, enabling him to avoid prison.

Do I think these are great reasons for murder? No, of course not, but it doesn't matter what I think is a good reason -- these were good reasons to Alex. People have murdered for much, much less.
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These ARE reasons for murder! Alex got on the stand and lied yet again diminishing the impact that many of these were having on him on June 7th. Just because he said it wasn't a big deal doesn't mean it wasn't a big deal. I think you are right, he was pressed on all sides and we know the next time that happened in Sept of 2021 his reaction was drastic and over the top.. maybe just like June 7th when he found out his dad was dying, his finances were going to come to light, he was confronted by the CFO about his stealing, and he decided he had to make it all go away however he could..
 
justtrish said:
I'd also imagine that if Paul and Maggie were shot shortly before he left the house at 9:06 then those dogs would be barking like crazy due to strangers just having been there shooting 2 people dead.. Alex would have heard those dogs barking at 9:06 when he walked to his car..
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The house and kennels are over 3 football fields from one another.
 
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