Fletcher steps down. The state's 36th witness is Annette Griswold, a Hampton native who worked as Alex Murdaugh's paralegal. Lead prosecutor Creighton Waters is questioning her. She will speak to Murdaugh's alleged financial crimes and how they were discovered.
Griswold on Murdaugh's style, work habits: “Extremely intelligent when it comes to the law. I respected and admired” that greatly. He kept odd hours. We always joked he would show up right before 5 p.m. when we were ready to leave.
Griswold: “I sometimes referred to Alex as a Tasmanian devil.” He would come into the office loudly and talking to everyone.
“He was hard to sit still and get answers from," Griswold said. It got worse after the boating accident. He was rarely available, even when he was in the office. He was always on his phone. “He would come in lots of times, and he was not his normal self. It was just very tense.”
Griswold: “You could tell the boat crash was weighing heavily on him. It was consuming his life, almost.” Referred to him as having his “
on his shoulders.” “He just wasn’t himself with us anymore.” He didn’t treat us the same way he did before.Griswold testifies about how Murdaugh had her write checks out to "Forge." He corrected her when she tried to write them to the legitimate "Forge Consulting." Told her "Forge" was a subsidiary of that company. He never wanted those checks mailed to Forge Consulting, she said.
Griswold testifies Murdaugh would tell her he was going to meet with Michael Gunn of Forge Consulting or see him soon, and he would deliver the check himself. (In reality, Murdaugh was depositing the checks in his "fake Forge" Bank of America account. That was clients' money).
Griswold testifies about multiple instances where money - legal fees and client funds - from cases she was handling was routed to Murdaugh’s “fake Forge” account while she was out of the office. Murdaugh had another paralegal who was unfamiliar with the cases handle the payments
Waters: “Was the defendant using the opportunity of you being out of the office to push these things through?” Griswold: “Yes.” He would do it a few minutes before 5 p.m. on Fridays when it was less likely people would pay attention and ask questions.
Griswold testifies Murdaugh forged a client's signature on a disbursement sheet in which he stole $125K from a settlement that was owed to that client.
Griswold said she was shocked to learn in spring 2021 that Alex Murdaugh had gotten legal fees directly from a Mack Trucks case he worked with his buddy, Chris Wilson. Griswold figured Murdaugh had just lost the check, since he was so scattered all the time.
Griswold: “I assumed they gave Alex the checks and he’s lost them. They’re misplaced. They’re somewhere in his truck. They’re in a file folder.”
She asked Murdaugh about it. He said he never got the checks. So she started going back and forth between her boss and Chris Wilson’s law firm trying to find out what happened to the missing $792K in legal fees owed to PMPED. Eventually, Murdaugh told her Wilson had the money.
Griswold said she brought CFO Jeanne Seckinger into the loop. “She was instantly on high alert because it didn’t look good.” But they were hoping it was a misunderstanding or a one-off. “But we both had that nagging feeling of, ‘this is not good. Something is wrong.’”
Prosecutor Waters is doing a great job of walking Griswold through the story. It is clear the state has the financial portion of this case nailed down. But it still feels like a night and day difference from what we're seeing with the recent non-financial witnesses.
Griswold said she was hoping she was wrong as she looked into the possibility that Murdaugh had stolen the $792K Mack Trucks case legal fees. But she was really stressed out. Her daughter overheard her talking about the case and became really worried.
Griswold said her daughter urged her to update her resume. “Once you turn all this in, they may fire you,” she said.
Griswold testifies left the PMPED office at 5:15 p.m. Murdaugh was still at the office. She had her phone on silent. She woke up in the middle of the night, and her phone was full of messages and calls. Randy Murdaugh texted her to please call when she could. She did.
Griswold: When Randy answered, he was upset. She asked what was wrong. “It’s bad, Annette. It’s real bad.” She assumed it was about Randolph III. Randy said no, Maggie and Paul have been shot and murdered.
Griswold said she had “a million thoughts” running through her head. She was worried about Alex and Buster and the family’s safety. The firm was scared for the Murdaughs' safety. "We were in complete mama bear mode." They watched out for strange cars that drove by the office.
Griswold testifies the law firm rallied to the Murdaughs’ aid after the slayings. They stopped asking about the Mack Trucks fees. Griswold said she stopped thinking about it until September 2021.
Griswold testifies about walking into Murdaugh’s office on the afternoon of 9/2/21 to look for a file folder. As she found it, “a check from it floated like a feather to the ground.” She picked it up and saw that it was a March check from the Chris Wilson Mack Trucks case.
The check was to Alex Murdaugh. It was the money Murdaugh had claimed he had never received. “I found this check that supposedly did not exist.”
Griswold on what she thought at the time: “He’s been lying this whole time. He had these funds. He lied to me. That feeling in the back of my mind was correct. He did take these funds.”
Griswold testifies she brought the check to Jeanne Seckinger, who was doing her own review of Murdaugh’s fees and cases and was also suspicious. “He was fired the next day.”
Griswold is a super compelling and clear witness. She injects color and detail that isn't required, but that helps tell the story. The fact that the check "floated like a feather to the ground," for example, will probably end up in a lot of stories today.
