The Prosecutors podcast was doing a live recording about 404 evidence in the Murdaugh trial the other day. And one of them made this point multiple times:
They keep hearing people say they don't understand how the mounting financial and personal reputation pressures would be motive enough for Alex to kill his wife and child. And their response to that is: Good! If you can thoroughly understand it, we're worried about you. You don't understand it because none of you are in his situation and none of you (hopefully) are the kind of person he is.
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My thoughts to clarify those points to those who say they don't understand it/don't buy the motive:
This motive is only going to personally make sense to the doubters if all the following conditions apply:
1) Your family has dominated and manipulated the power, social, and legal structure in the area you live in for multiple generations going back.
2) Because of #1, your family and you have always escaped consequences for your bad actions--lying, cheating, stealing, etc.
3) But now the patriarch of this family dynasty, the one who is stronger than you or your brothers, is dying and will be dying VERY SOON. Your fixer will be gone.
4) You have been stealing MILLIONS of dollars from many clients and friends for YEARS and have hidden it by shuffling it around, always keeping money moving, always paying enough back when it looks like you might get busted to cover your



for a while longer. But you've gotten too greedy and have gotten too many balls in the air now. Your clients are actually starting to notice missing money/reduced money and are asking questions through lawyers and the legal system. You've taken too much and spent too much of it to be able to quickly shove money back where it's supposed to be so that people will only wag their finger at you and let you get away with a smack on the wrist.
5) You know the courts and juries in your area intimately, and you know that the death of Paul and/or Maggie will ensure that a jury won't rule against you (or won't rule against you as hard). For all the people who say that wasn't really possible or that Alex couldn't think that was an option--the lawyer who at that moment pressing him for his financials and who he know would doggedly pursue him LITERALLY TESTIFIED IN THIS TRIAL that once Maggie and Paul were killed he knew that no jury would award a huge multi million dollar settlement against Alex, and it changed his action in the case.
Most people aren't in category 1. Most people aren't in category 4. Almost no one is in category 1&4--so of course it doesn't make sense to you personally. We haven't grown up in his world. Most of us have never had a million dollars to our name.