Talking Dateline: The Murdaugh Murders: Inside the Investigation
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Hi everybody. I'm judge me whats and this is talking deadline and our guest today, craig.

Hi nk. Honor, honor to the answer.

Delighted here you've done this wonderful to our date line uh, about the murder case, which you know one of the biggest true crime case is to come along in a while. Uh, also joining us is one of the producers of that episode, the fabulous cargill high Carol.

Hey, friend.

how yes, it's so great to see you because Normally you know you're just a voice on a .

phone or we're divided by whole country yes.

Let me say now that if you have not seen this episode uh on the murdoch case or if you have not listened to IT in podcast form, IT is the podcast, uh ripe, allow this one on the list of podcasts um if you haven't seen IT or heard that, you can watch an TV or you can listen do IT in pod chest form. Uh, do that then come back here. Okay, uh, uh, let's talk date line.

This is a story and that this is kind of a chAllenge because a lot of times when you do stories on the line, the audience doesn't really know anything about IT. It's from a town that people don't go to all the time, and it's about people that they haven't heard of. But that's not this story. Lots of people know this, no doubt.

I mean, I I would maintain bank. That was one of the biggest chAllenges with this one. That was the case people who had been following IT from the beginning, which was, you know, more than two years ago. Now the people who've been following IT, we're familiar with all of the ins and out the twisting turns. So this time the goal was to, uh, lift the veil, if you will, pull back the curtain and take them inside the investigation and to do IT um we we talk to the folks on the front lines and you know these the lead investigator, the sled chief, forgetting mark KO, who who I I don't know he'd ever done a national T V interview um but but that was that was the goal this time .

uh and I thought that really worked. I mean, those cops generally don't talk.

I started out as a reporter in south CarOlina a and I have to tell you, in three decades, I have never known them to let you talk to them about any investigation that they have brought to trial, ever.

I do think, josh, I do think part of their motivation this time was they were acutely aware of the scrutiny. They did not fully appreciate the way that they were treated in in the media by sam and certainly during the course, the trial about the defense attorneys.

So I think part of their more motivation was to say, hey, guess we're really good at what we do um here's here's how we do IT here's how we did IT this time and and chief kill actually choked up when he talked about how proud was of his investigators I mean, the lead investigator in this case, you know, IT consumed them day and night and then on top of IT, he's dealing with his own personal loss. And so I think that was was part of the motivation IT wasn't to beat their test and say, oh my god, we're so great. Um I think IT was a sort of a belated response to some of the criticism that they're received before during even after the trial well .

and IT seems to be sort of a recognition that you know the criminal justice system now sort of involved by all parties are certain amount P R. I mean lawyers are expected to sort of sellers ly defend their clients not just in the court room but in front of the TV cameras on the court has helps. And then later on, in that one on one interview, you with you or or or with me or somebody like that.

And the enforcement for a long time has not played. They would ve not wanted to join that game in A A A slid, certainly in an example of that. And I think maybe this is a realization that like, look, you know, public opinion is getting cooked by the other side all the time.

It's such as the jury poll. It's also what people think of you after the fact and during the a pallet process. And I think I think opening up is uh uh a smart call.

You have to choose somebody that you trust is gone to tell the story. Fairly inaccurate, which I think you guys exactly did. Thank you, josh.

But now to be clear, josh, um a part of reason that they talk this and you've worked with you gay belong enough to know this. It's very difficult to say no to Carol gable and when she's asking you every every day for the Better part of eighteen months h to do something. So I do think yeah and .

if you figure out how to do that, could you like send me email?

But I think how to say think of them finally linked, just so cure would stop calling them so stop showing up at the.

you know, I think there's the termination. Now I have to tell you, I have one more interview in my sites on this story and I told that person yesterday that thank you off the work yeah .

you you .

to tell us so that is or that's a seker because you haven't booked .

I haven't quite booked IT.

It's probably .

well that goes without a fellow red head and thing you .

both have mentioned when this story broke, the message that started coming out uh, from the family and other people in the community was we are only talking to people from south CarOlina, which was this way of sort of, you know, given the houseman to the national press right?

And the problem is with that judge.

yeah, well, the problem for them was that we have a correspond that who worked in south korea and those as we are on, and we of you who is a you know like a cazot the .

most after description, I think I ve heard of me yeah a central .

end of .

the present right and will let .

go you know it's it's interesting .

just because you write to a certain extent there was a natural skepticism from the very beginning, as there frequently is in the south. There was A A reluctance to talk to folks who are not familiar with the ways of of of the south. But I also think know one of the things that helped us with the story, one of the things that continued to help us, you know, carroll has lived in south Carina and covered south CarOlina A A bit longer than I have um but I did have a bit of IT of working in columbia. And you a lot of the context that we both have, our people that we've known for twenty five, thirty years in a lot of the central players, in this case folks that I I ve hung out with and grew up with and once a summer camp with and and called on frequently as as a local reporter so you you know I mean, mak, you've been doing this long enough to know that um i'd say seventy five percent of of access and a good interview is just trust. If people trust you, they're more than willing to open up to you and perhaps tell you things that they wouldn't tell.

Other people are still concerned down here that they're going to have bench o music behind all the video and dripping mos. And here we go with terror all over the place. And I think they realized that cragin a actually our self killin's ans. And you know, we we certainly say beyond the stereotype, I don't know about you krag, but sometimes I get a little sensitive about, I must not have all my teeth or you know, other things like that .

no cause, no question. No is yes, there myself and my favorite is is he continues to, you're from south CarOlina. Where is your accent? You know, you don't have an access report, said I, where are you from how you there I, I can come down.

Well, I will say that was speaking of accents. And I was noticing IT as we were listening to an edited part of our story this week. The there are so many interesting and unique things about the low country, one of which is cragin interviewed a few people that have the true authentic low country accent, very few people that does that still survive? I think the cook family they have IT um someone you're hear about, you heard about in this story. Rogan gives an absolutely and everywhere you go, at first I was thinking to you, are you just have been I was telling me how old I am because people who kept saying, miss Carol and I go, i'm not your inner garden teacher and i'm not at eighty two years old but it's just a kind of respect and you will hear a lot of people to school of paul friends describe her is miss Maggie or miss Gloria the housekeeper um it's just a style and our respect that they have there.

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One of the things that emerged for me, something that I that I sort of wasn't aware of when the when the story broke in and then as IT kind of on sport tour trial was what a good or alemao was at least at the beginning, right? I mean, even in the first conversation with the cops, he's talking about his son, who's dead in the present tense, he says he's such a good boy. Mirrors frequently make that mistake and talk about the person in the past.

And because they're the ones that put them in the best dance, I thought that was. So this is guy is going to be very hard to crack. And one of the things that I own, the luxuries I think you had and telling the story was you didn't have to pretend we don't know who IT is by now we know.

So this is this is a story in which you're both explaining the story but also taking people inside. And that's something you usually don't get. You know, sometimes we'll give you some details, but the like in the front seat of the car where the actual interview is conducted, you know yeah is great. And I love the idea that like these cars are, you know they're they are they're on air conditioning in a very humid climate or or of its raining, there's some shelter there and they're like the perfect little portable interrogation room .

yeah it's a mobile interrogation unit but you know it's it's fascinating bank and I lad, you brought IT up because I think that's one of the things that people have found most compelling about the story from the beginning.

There are uh and have been so many unique characters um alex murdoch as as as sinister as as he has proven to be ungeniality ly the most unique of the characters but but I I think that that people from the very beginning found IT hard to wrap their head around the that someone who has achieved so much in a professional success, material wealth, uh, generation success, if you will, that someone like that would not just be capable of of committing crimes, just mirror ad crimes, but someone like that could be capable of and the authority general of south CarOlina said this, kill your wife okay, we've seen that before. That's not but someone like that to to kill their son, the wind that he did, even the die hard true crime bus from the very beginning and like, no way, not possible. We've gotten be missing something, not a guy like that and is is layer after layer peel back you're left .

you're left with the obvious answer like IT IT couldn't be anybody else is hard though what was to believe impossible yeah part of that I think is the same reason why people are sort of fascinated um by crimes involving celebrities because know we have this like belief that like the rich and famous and all the the murder may not have been famous. They certainly seem to be rich you know they're Better than we are.

They are really they're are not they're not shallow and venal like the rest of us. They're not capable these horrible things that we do to each other. Well, they're not.

They're just like everybody else and there and they're fully capable of the kind of horrific conduct that other people are. That said, killing your family to avoid, uh, embarrassment is a is astonishing. IT is absolutely astonishing.

The matter who you are IT is astonishing. And one thing that we have in this particular program is we are able to show how close they came not to solving the case that paul cell phone and at neve her that said that paul essentially solve his own murder, but that cell phone was mud as well, have been a grenade. If you touched IT the wrong way, IT would crash and you'd never get anything out of IT. And so when they decide did not try a lot of passwords because they did know how many tries they had before IT would explode, had that happen, the attorney general told that might have .

been hard to even charge. L e've. Ask was the, you know, the extent to which this really was solved, uh, by sort of this combination of shoe leather detective or and the digital work that was done, I mean crack in a cell phone but also not just his phone but but you know um alex phone, the sensation of activity on their phones which are able to to give investigators the time of death. The the data from a from A G M. So much of the evidence here was supplied not by you know freezing information out of people in little interrogation rooms or the front seat of cars but by you know digital information that was recoverable um after a lot of hard work kind of makes you wonder .

care if this is a crown that would have been sold twenty twenty .

five years ago. Well IT does and the Walker part as you know, the um court the court proceedings were broadcast around the world and there is surreal moment where G M. They double up, write the middle, the trial, I think we've got something you might be interested in and IT was huge. Then they could track exactly how faster, slow, I like murder was driving that night.

But if they had to pull that all nighter during the trial, I mean, they had a weekend to make that data make sense, which is again, it's a fascinating part of the story.

which is a huge part of uh of sort of forensic law enforcement now because it's not just getting somebody's phone and and getting all the records and then time consumingly, you know, figuring out which which cone of the tower the phone was talking to, but it's also presenting that in a way that can make sense to a jury because, you know, juries are not for an exciting. And so you gotta explain that in a way that makes makes IT clear to people, which they really did .

in this case.

you god, the jury is because that's also A A big part of this big part of this episode. We we get to to actually pick the brains of a few of them after the verdict. And I I found that most interesting, that all of the evidence that we've been talking about, all of that was obviously very important.

But the jurors that we talk to that said they would lean the heavily on alec murdoch's one testimony on the stand, his demining. They know how we look yeah all that all that fancy time line stuff was great in the GPS that IT was wonderful. But we just we smell them and he didn't smell right us, right? And that's the same what they said.

And the flip side of that is that in trials in which the defendant is more persuasive than the murdoch was at his, sometimes that can overwhelm forensic data and and and forensic testimony. Sometimes you, if if you've got a, you ve got a persuasive story to tell, or if you're good at telling your funny story, sometimes that makes a big difference. They never found the murder weapon. You were talking about how, you know, if if they hadn't cracked the digital devices, alex murdoch might still be walking around. Murder weapon never appeared anywhere.

Yeah, no, listen. And and that was something that prosecutors, in fact, the etern general talk about that that was something that that did concern them not only were they not able to find um the weapons, there was no blood evidence that directly tied murdoch a to the murders that they were able to on his clothes .

or anything like right .

not anything that they were able to establish completely I have found that part of the case fascinating um because we're by the way, we're not talking about one weapon. We're talking about two separate weapons there. Two different guns used to kill magan paul um but we're also talking about seventeen hundred acre s we're also talking about someone who was intimately familiar with the geography of hanton county um and you knew IT well so I you could make the argument that if if anyone was going to be able to get rid of two family guns IT would have been another murder.

No allegation at anytime somebody might have helped him move the move your disposal evidence?

no. The prosecutors never said that to us. Bank law enforcement never said that to us. But during the course of and over the last two years that I have talked to a number of people associated with the case who do find that hard to believe with regard to the financial crime, specifically and explicitly for the purposes of this conversation, a number of a folks in law enforcement have said to pull off what he pulled off for as long as he did, likely would have require more assistance from from folks exceeding the number of people who been charged.

Maybe may be the wilful ignorance of other people.

correct? A lot of folks tend to look away when everyone's making money.

All that money he stole, not recoverable and not able to be brought, backed anybody.

That, sir, is the question. I have probably asked more people in more interviews over the last two years. And I I asked the attn general, south CarOlina that very question because, you know, to your point, literally millions of dollars gone missing, dollars that have been stolen from clients, dollars that have not turned up in in any of of murdoch's accounts. That's that's the biggest question for me.

I mean, some some of clearly used to live on, right, I am.

but the math math doesn't add up, right?

So there is unlikely we're going to come up with some bank account with all that money sitting in IT.

Highly unlikely they.

say.

I'm Cindy loppy. My surround was all over even on my scale, which may mean four times the risk for sorry at a cost rides. But cosmetics works on both cosmetics .

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There has been one big piece of news just just as we're recording this. So let's let's talk about that involving the judge that you that you interviewed clifton new man who has been .

on the bench in south china more than twenty years, a fascinating back story himself by the way um and his daughter is also a judge in self time but yes but I was a reveal that judge newman is recusing himself from a any of the hearings moving forward but only those hearings that pertained to the double murder trial h it's also important to note here that the judge is retiring at the end of the year is well but at the fact that he is recusing himself um it's a big deal. It's a big deal. As you know, it's the not appeal the allegations of of jury tampering one of the reasons cited a for his recusal is, uh, he will likely be called as a witness and in the jury tamp oring case because .

the allegation by murdoch's defense is the court coller r, who would have worked very closely with the judge uh, said something to the jurors urging them to to convict and that the judge presume probably could have known that or could heard IT or couldn't a witness to that so that's why stepping back.

one of the reasons that he is he is stepping back. Yes.

I loved, by the way, when you said, is there a lot of pressure on this and he's like, now got, now got IT. This is what I do for a living.

It's fine. You know what folks to follow the trial. I think a lot of them were sort of taken a back by how how cool and calm and reserved he was um but again, in full disclosure, you know I I used to spend a lot of time hanging out with the judges son um and his nephew and his knees have known the judge for years that kind of how is always been like it's hard to even father him raising his voice.

He's always been just right here in terms of temple mature and there other there been other uh, high profile trials said that he's conducted as well. But no no I don't think he was um he was legitimately surprised initially by the amount of attention the case was getting and and he was also surprised after the trial of the amount of attention that he personally um was getting. And he's not the kind of guy .

that likes attention. Okay, interesting. So let's talk a little bit about blanca. I'm guessing he was maybe just as difficult to persuade as the as the investigators .

what he was very shy and very uh, concerned because he had become a target in some ways for social media and you know had some pretty disturbing things said about her, not based on fact at all but I mean just having your name batted about was off putting to her. And I think as um we got to know her more, I think there was a feeling that some of the people involved in the case and around IT had sort of treated her even though he was the housekeepers is being invisible when he had a lot to say and he saw um many things and could add a dimension that um he thought and I think we believe was very a valuable I thought .

IT was great, although I got ta say when he said they treated me like family. My first thought was this is a family where you don't want them to try you like family.

It's a fair point. It's a fair point. I that consider that, you know, what do I will say?

There are not a lot of sympathetic characters in this story placa I because he makes a good point and it's a point that I did not consider until I talk to her SHE kick at another job. Every, every one knows he was. He was the murdoch housekeeper. I mean, she's like a beside show at the circus. And and it's really frustrating for because SHE did nothing wrong.

didn't do anything wrong, never charged any crime, never considered any kind of suspect, but just a no diety .

yeah and you don't really think about that part of the story. Sometimes in cases like this, when there there are people who become victims um not not not victims of of of of violence but but but victims in another sense, victims in the sense that their lives are never the same through no fall of their own.

Yeah and we see IT in a couple of other store is I mean, not not not not just this one, but other stories which have ve gotten some national attention in which sort of the trAiling edge of public interest ended up making public figures out of people who really weren't involved in the story. But you know, we're accused on social media or are sadly, I started being talked about a certain way.

And the next thing you know, you you are known by people who you have no association with at all, and they're making their own judgments about who you are, how you live your life and your possible guilt, innocence one. In fact, there was never any allegation of anything correct. Blanka has buba now yeah, I know that's a question a lot of people had. You .

know, it's funny. I I didn't know that until maybe about a month ago and not to give a way to assume people who listen the podcast probabilities in the episode, but I love the way that the genius producers and deadline decided to in the piece. Um IT was IT was just such A A fitting tribute to arg, to the only people in the whole story, a worthy of of celebrating.

Yeah, no, I was great.

I thought that works. And baba, of course, was Maggies dog. And having him around all the time is, I think, very comforting to her.

Here's a thing a throughout the trial and throughout your entire to our episode, people said alex, some people said alex, right? Some people say murdoch. Some people say murdoch. Um is that a southern thing?

What's going on? Let me answer that because it's taken me and a half years, I think, to get to the bottom correct pronunciation. And it's hard to do if you're really not from the low country if you pronounced alec murdo's name correctly as they do down there. Instead of alex is alex, and instead of murder, it's murder like murder. But no r.

So josh, what i've done for the purposes broadcast to a national audience is I have taken the low country pronunciation and the fanatics spelling slash pronunciation. And I have tried to sort of create a happy medium um but it's funny because the the executive producer of the today show get in tom mazur I he is a good friend. Shortly after the trial started, he calls me up one day.

He's okay trying to follow this trial. Can you explain that? Keep in mind, you know, he really left to five, his new york through and through. He he said, crank, what does nobody down there go by their real names? Everyone's got a nickname.

Even the dog is his real name bubble and and is he's like, I am, have a hard time following the case between pop on alec and eggs and bubbles. I don't even know who the characters are. A fair point math. It's a fair point.

Confusing conquer.

conquer fusing point was actually the alternate title for .

talking date line.

I want to thank uh, Carol gable for joining us and this rare camel appearance. H craig, I know you're going to be back for other daylight episodes and of course also would see you all the time on the today show. Uh, thank you guys for joining us on talking date line.

I'm Cindy loppy my surrounding all over even on my scale, which may mean four times the risk for sorry at a cost rides. But cosmetics works on both cosmetics .

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