I agree it's bizarre, I agree that it's possible that he was planning a murder/suicide and chickened out, but I disagree that Alex is highly intelligent. I think part of what makes the crime so difficult to understand is that it was really stupidly carried out. And I think the people who think there is more to the story are giving Alex too much credit. He's not playing three-dimensional chess, he is a good ole' boy whose family has been in control of the county for a hundred years, whose relationships with local law enforcement are very chummy, whose family has always gotten away with everything -- and he thought he could get away with it because of the cover afforded him by the family name, power, and money.
Things were coming to a head, his financial crimes would be exposed if the boat crash case went forward. Paul's criminal defense (with the same lawyers now defending Alex) was going to cost a fortune and leave him with nothing. Mark Tinsley, the Beachs' attorney, is a formidable adversary and Alex had recently been disabused of the notion that Tinsley would throw the case because they had a history. Mark was going to bankrupt him and expose his financial crimes, because the Beach family wasn't satisified with an insurance settlement -- they wanted the financial settlement to hurt and they were not going to be satisfied with a little hush money. Alex would lose Moselle and the beach house and have to face Maggie's feelings over that. He would be humiliated and end up in prison. The only way to stop things, at least for the time being, would be to have a death in the family that would buy him time to come up with a plan, and bring both sympathy and the dismissal of the boat case.
For what it's worth, I think he would take back Paul's murder if he could. I don't think it occurred to him that he would not be able to hide the financial crimes until he figured out some way to replenish the money or cover his tracks more thoroughly; now he's killed his son for nothing.
We mostly agree. But I do disagree on AMs IQ. I don't think anyone with any intelligence at all would even for a moment that killing their wife and son would buy them some sort of reprieve.
I do think Alex believed killing Paul would make that lawsuit go away. His criminal case would for sure and then his family name isn't tarnished with a conviction on (I think manslaughter or something similar related to DUI and someone dying). I think we can see where his thinking was by his words. Even though he's a lying liar that lies, he does sprinkle in some things that I think show where his head was. Immediately he's talking about the boat case.. He even on the stand says he thinks the murder is some person or people from the internet that read all the bad things about Paul and decided to kill him. So very odd.. not the kids in the boat or their families (can't blame those victims it would look really bad, but a total stranger from the internet was mad enough about what Paul did to just come out to kill him (and research enough to figure out where he would be when he wasn't even supposed to be there that night, know that guns would be laying around everywhere, the layout of the property, that they'd be at the kennel and Alex would be gone.. don't would be put up etc). Then he made a seperate statement about the only reason Paul is dead is because of the boat case and someone was really angry and hated Paul. Well I do think Alex was angry he had to deal with this boat case. Not only was Paul being sued, but he was.. his finanaces were at risk AND that would expose his financial crimes. Without the boat case looming he could have kept robbing one to pay another without having to disclose what he was doing.
I think he did believe that if he could convince others that Paul was shot because of the boat case, then the lawsuit would go away or they would settle for MUCH less than the 30 million number being talked about. It didn't happen that way but he believed he could manipulate that and talk his way out of the financial things he did. I 100% believe he thought he could get out of all the mess if they were dead. The firm backed off for 3 months so it clearly worked somewhat.
I don't think they backed off their lawsuit. The one lawyer said he was all set to go to court over at least one of the fraud cases.
Either way, this guy is screwed. I just think there are probably some other characters here that need to be brought to justice too.