Murdaugh and Seckinger, a lawyer in a client fraud scheme, were confronted on June 7, 2021 by a Judge in Newman
Two investigations in particular that could have exposed Murdaugh’s alleged wrongdoing were coming to a head at the time of the murders. For one, the chief financial officer of his law firm testified she had confronted Murdaugh about missing funds on the morning of June 7, 2021, hours before the killings. After the murders, the internal investigation into the funds took a back seat.
The testimony of Jeanne Seckinger, CFO of the firm formerly known as PMPED, was heard Thursday morning without the jury present as Judge Clifton Newman weighs whether to allow the admission of evidence about Murdaugh’s purported schemes, for which he faces 99 charges separate from the murder case.
In the bizarre incident, Murdaugh was shot in the head on the side of a road a day after he was forced to resign from his law firm. He initially told police an unknown man shot him, but he later admitted he conspired with a former client to kill him as part of a fraud scheme so that his only surviving son could collect a life insurance payout, according to the indictment.
Seckinger and other members of the firm realized that they had not received a fee check stemming from a settlement signed in a case Murdaugh shared with another attorney, Chris Wilson.
Seckinger testified she confronted Murdaugh on June 7 and told him she had reason to believe he had received the funds himself and that he needed to prove to her he had not.
The family of the teen who died when a boat, owned by Murdaugh and allegedly driven by Paul, struck a bridge piling sued Murdaugh for wrongful death, at the time.
Prosecutors’ pretrial motion contended “the murders served as Murdaugh’s means to shift the focus away from himself and buy some additional time to try and prevent his financial crimes from being uncovered, which, if revealed, would have resulted in personal legal and financial ruin for Murdaugh.”According to that filing, the missing $792,000 had already been spent.
The firm canceled the June 10 hearing and didn’t confront Murdaugh about the missing money after the deaths of Maggie and Paul.
“Alex was distraught and upset and not in the office much” after the killings, Seckinger said. We had to clear it up after a few months because nobody wanted to bother him about what we thought was missing. So we were not going to harass him at that point in time.”
Murdaugh and a friend of Paul, a lawyer for a Florida man who was not at the murder site in June, 2006
March 16: The attorney general says that a scheme to defraud multiple insurance companies has resulted in four additional criminal charges against Murdaugh.
Prosecutors said investigations into that wrongdoing were the motive for the murders and were relevant to this case. However, the defense argument was that the fraud accusations were unfair to Murdaugh.
The 14th Circuit Solicitor has been a member of the Murdaugh family for three generations and has led prosecutions in the southern part of South Carolina.
“There are two things very temporally connected with this particular crime. Waters said that the confrontation occurred over missing fees that had been accruing for a while. The pending hearing in the boat case is number two.
“The defense asked the question, can you think of any reason?” Waters was referring to the defense cross-examination of a friend of Paul who was asked if he could imagine why Murdaugh would do something like that. He could not according to the friend.
A stellar series of events like no other have ever been seen in his life. “It is certainly relevant for the jury to consider when they consider the perfect storm that was arriving for this man on June the 7th.”
A video clip that claimed that Murdaugh was not at the murder site played a huge part in the case, according to prosecutors.
Waters took the CFO of the law firm through a long list of instances where he allegedly misappropriated funds from the settlements in cases he handled. Seckinger verified documents from case to case on the stand and testified Murdaugh stole money from the clients and the law firm. She said that the firm was responsible for paying back the money Murdaugh stole.
Curtis Edward Smith, 61, in the Murdaugh case: A voice of his wife, Julia, and Alex, as identified in a video clip
Seckinger said the firm decided not to announce the resignation until the beginning of the following week because Alex admitted it and it was decided he would resign.
Curtis Edward Smith, 61, who allegedly shot Murdaugh, was charged with assisted suicide, assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, pointing and presenting a firearm, insurance fraud and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, according to SLED.
The jury returned a guilty verdict in the double murder trial of Alex Murdaugh, finding him guilty of killing his wife and son, the most serious allegation against him.
That’s because the prosecution pointed to a huge question throughout the trial that he had to answer: multiple witnesses identified Murdaugh’s voice in a video clip filmed at the family’s dog kennels, which authorities say was recorded shortly before the killings and near where the bodies were found.
Murdaugh then testified the voice was his – and that he’d lied to investigators about his whereabouts because he grew paranoid, which he blamed on his addiction to opioid painkillers.
Upon returning home to the family’s sprawling estate, he told investigators, he found the bodies of his wife and son on the ground by their dog kennels and called 911.
On Friday, Richard Harvey, the first witness for the defense, said he thought Paul and Margaret died at 9 pm on June 7, 2021.
January 23: Alex Murdaugh said that he was not at the scene of the murders, but Prosecutors played video of his voice being heard in the background.
An almost minute-long video filmed on Paul’s phone beginning at 8:44 p.m. shows one of the family dogs and appears to have been taken at the kennels, Lt. David Dove was a supervisor in the computer crimes center.
Paul Murdaugh and the murder of his wife and son: Indicted on charges of boating under the influence and killing a 19-year-old man in South Carolina
But he changed his story on the stand last week, acknowledged his voice is heard in the clip and admitted to jurors he lied about his whereabouts on the night of the killings. Murdaugh maintained that he did not shoot his wife and son.
The case has brought national attention to Murdaugh, his family’s former personal injury attorney who served as prosecutors for a portion of southern South Carolina from 1920 to 2006
The family has been linked to a murder-for-hire plot to get millions of dollars in life insurance, allegations of theft and a bloody tragedy.
Duffie Stone was the first non-Murdaugh to serve as the 14th Circuit Solicitor. He has been elected to the position four times since, most recently in 2020, according to the solicitor’s website.
Law enforcement officials in South Carolina got permission from Gloria Satterfield’s family to exhume her remains.
A boat crashes at a bridge near Parris Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, on February 24, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach, according to the South Carolina Attorney General in documents obtained by CNN.
Paul Murdaugh is indicted in April on charges of boating under the influence (BUI) causing great bodily harm and causing death in connection to the crash, court records show. He is guilty of something.
July 22: SLED releases redacted audio of Alex Murdaugh’s 911 call the night of the killings. In the audio, a distraught Murdaugh advises dispatchers his wife and son had been shot, are on the ground and are not breathing.
A family statement points out that Alex Murdaugh was seriously injured and the injury was more serious than a superficial wound. The person who was blamed was not known.
On June 22, 2015, the body of 19-year-old Stephen Smith, a man from Virginia, was found on the side of the road in Hampton County. The probe is being reopened because of information that was gathered in the investigation of the deaths of the Murdaughs.
Stone wrote a letter to the Attorney General of South Carolina stating that he wouldn’t be involved in the Murdaugh death investigations, WCSC-TV reported.
According to a SLED spokesman, Murdaugh called the police and said he had been shot on a road in Hampton County. He was taken to a hospital in Savannah, Georgia, where he was treated for a “superficial gunshot wound to the head,” the statement said.
September 7: The law firm says Murdaugh resigned “after the discovery by PMPED that Alex misappropriated funds in violation of PMPED standards and policies.”
A State Law Enforcement Investigation into the alleged Misappropriation of Funds at a Jacksonville Law Firm by Murdaugh and the Family of Gloria Satterfield
“Alex pulled over after seeing a low tire indicator light. A male driver in a blue pickup asked him if he had car troubles, as soon as Alex replied, he was shot,” the statement said.
September 13: SLED releases a statement announcing it has opened an investigation into Alex Murdaugh for allegedly misappropriating funds at his law firm.
October 16: A pair of affidavits are released that allege Alex Murdaugh coordinated with the family of Gloria Satterfield, his former housekeeper, to sue himself for insurance money that he then pocketed for himself.
According to court filings, Murdaugh refused to respond to allegations that he converted firm and client money to his own personal use.
The indictments include four counts of breach of trust with fraudulent intent; seven counts of obtaining signature or property by false pretenses; seven counts of money laundering; eight counts of computer crimes; and one count of forgery.
December 14: The family of Gloria Satterfield will receive a settlement of $4.3 million from Murdaugh, according to Eric Bland.
In June 2022, South Carolina law enforcement officials announced they sought and received permission to exhume her remains. The state law enforcement division began an investigation into Satterfield’s death after aHampton County Coroner requested his body be exhumed.
An autopsy was not performed, nor was the death reported to the Coroner. The manner of death was ruled natural on the death certificate and it was unclear if injuries sustained in a trip and fall accident was a factor.
The jury heard from Murdaugh after he testified that he was taking 800 milligrams a day during a drug spree
He said there were many factors which contributed to his paranoid thinking that led to him lying to investigators, including his distrust of SLED, his wife’s relationship with him and the fact that he owned a pocket full of money. The police interview is videotaped by the prosecution.
When asked if he was trying to manufacture an alibi after he heard about the killings of his mother and son, Murdaugh denied. Waters asked about what he was doing for about four minutes before leaving to go to his mom’s house.
According to Murdaugh, he would take “maybe 1,000 milligrams or 1,200 milligrams on a day I didn’t take as much or didn’t have as much, up to, I mean — there were days, many days, a lot of days, most days were more than that, and many days would be … more than 2,000 milligrams a day.” It is virtually unheard of for a doctor to prescribe a patient more than 100 milligrams of oxycodone a day for even the most severe acute or chronic pain.
After hearing from dozens of witnesses in the high-profile murder trial of Alex Murdaugh, a South Carolina jury last week heard from the man himself after he took the stand – a move legal experts say was risky but could have helped his case.
Mark Eiglarsh, a criminal defense attorney who was a prosecutor for 20 years, told us that a lawyer who has been in the courtroom for many years and has lied for 20 years is the one we want on the stand. It takes just one juror to connect with him.
Several attorneys told CNN that Murdaugh had to testify in order to get a fair trial.
“They convicted him with conviction,” criminal defense attorney Sara Azari said. “I really thought there was going to be somewhat of a struggle in this jury room. I think the lie about the kennel video made them not get past it.
It was an opportunity for jurors to empathize with him while he appeared to put it all on the line, confessing to his drug addiction and repeated lies during financial schemes and the murder investigation, the experts said. The jury did not think Murdaugh was credible.
“They’re trying to use it for a very positive effect, to show that he had a problem (with addiction), he is sympathetic for trying to wrestle with it and that that may have made him paranoid and caused him to distrust the police and telling them this lie about not being there,” defense attorney Shan Wu said.
If he was addled by theaddiction, he might have acted irrationally at the time, and the jury might believe that he went off into a paranoid frenzy and massacred his own family. It is a double-edged sword.
He is a cheat and can not be trusted, so you should not take whatever he has to say at face value, according to criminal defense attorney and CNN Legal analyst Joey Jackson.
Alex Murdaugh: A model witness in the 2021 killings of his wife and son, Margaret, in Islandton, South Carolina
In many ways, Murdaugh was a model witness, experts said. When he spoke, he looked straight at the jurors, and spoke about his slain wife and son with passion and emotion. He called his son “Paul-Paul,” during testimony, and often referred to his wife as “Mags.”
The main sticking point for the prosecution in this trial is if he really did it, says a law professor at Cardozo School of Law. He admitted to a lot of crimes, but would he actually kill his wife and son?
Monday’s testimony was headlined by an expert in crime scene reconstruction and blood spatter analysis who testified that the evidence suggests two shooters carried out the killings of Margaret and Paul Murdaugh in June 2021.
Timothy Palmbach, a former professor of forensic science at the University of New Haven, was hired by Alex Murdaugh’s defense to review the case and analyze the crime scene.
He said that Paul and Margaret were both shot by a shotgun and that the two shooter theory was justified. He determined that the shooting of Paul came first and that the shooter would be stunned by the violence.
He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges in the fatal shootings at the dog kennels of their family estate in Islandton, South Carolina, on June 7, 2021. He separately faces 99 charges for alleged financial crimes that will be adjudicated at a future date.
The Alex Murdaugh Trial: A Matter of Truth in the Structural Response of a Murderer to his Killing Father
The prosecution, which featured 61 witnesses over three weeks of testimony, said they plan to seek testimony from four or five rebuttal witnesses on Tuesday. Judge Newman decided that jurors would be allowed to go to the family’s estate after rebuttal witnesses.
In the 14th and final defense witness, John Marvin Murdaugh, the brother of the murderer, said law enforcement let the crime scene go back to the family without making sure the corpse was taken care of.
It had not been cleaned up. He testified through tears, saying that he saw blood, brains, and pieces of skull. “For some reason I thought it was something that I needed to do for Paul to clean it up. It felt like it was the right thing to do. I felt like I had to take care of him. No parent or family member will ever have to see or do what I did that day.
The defense also worked to show that investigators had done a shoddy job with the case, particularly in securing the crime scene. Mark Ball, one of Murdaugh’s law firm colleagues, testified there were no barricades or police tape blocking the entrance to the property and said Paul’s remains were still there after investigators left.
They tried to prove he was at the crime scene that evening and painted a picture of the fraudster who killed his wife and child in a desperate bid to distract from his actions.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/us/alex-murdaugh-murder-trial-monday/index.html
The First Day of the Trial of a CFO, Jeanne Seckinger, a Long-Lived Financial Officer, for a Charge of Murder
“We weren’t going to go in there and harass him about money when we were worried about his mental state and the fact that his family had been killed,” the CFO, Jeanne Seckinger, testified.
After his shooting, he was in and out of rehabilitation for drug addiction, he was disbarred, and he was charged with murder.
“They have a lot more evidence relating to financial malfeasance than they have related to murder and guilt in a murder case,” defense lawyer Jim said at the time.
The trial resumed after 9:30 a.m., more than a month after the court heard opening statements.
The prosecution will make a response after the defense presents its closing argument. After the judge gives final instructions to the jury, he will charge them with coming to a verdict.
If he’s found guilty of murder and other charges, he could face life in prison. He’s being tried at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, S.C.
His defense team has sought to sow doubt about the work by police and forensics teams, saying they fell far short of preserving evidence from the crime scene and the hunting estate’s main house.
The Strange-than-fiction Case of Alex Murdaugh: Is It Really That He Was Fooling Anyone, And Why He Didn’t Tell Me?
As Thursday’s court session began, Judge Clifton Newman announced that a juror is being replaced on the panel. A juror in a case was accused of talking to people who were not involved with the case.
Newman thanked the woman for her attentive and positive attitude throughout the case, and the investment of her time. He said that she would be replaced so that the trial’s integrity could not be compromised.
The juror needed her purse, along with a dozen eggs that another juror had brought in for everyone on the panel, before she left.
The trial is winding down one week after Murdaugh admitted he lied multiple times to investigators when he said he wasn’t with his wife and son.
“This defendant … has fooled everyone, everyone, everyone who thought they were close to him,” prosecutor Creighton Waters told the jury. “Everyone who thought they knew who he was, he’s fooled them all. He fooled Maggie and Paul, too, and they paid for it with their lives. Don’t let him fool you, too.”
A lawyer representing alleged financial crime victims of Murdaugh also was surprised by the speed of the verdict, he said. When Justin Bamberg heard a verdict had been reached less than three hours after deliberations started, he suspected Murdaugh would be convicted, he said.
“I find it offensive that the defense … is claiming law enforcement didn’t do their job, while he is withholding and obstructing justice by not saying ‘I was down at the kennels.’ ”
The stranger-than-fiction case has brought national attention – including Netflix and HBO Max documentaries – on Alex Murdaugh, the former personal injury attorney and member of a dynastic family in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, where his father, grandfather and great-grandfather served as the local prosecutor consecutively from 1920 to 2006.
Murdaugh and Waters were convicted of two life sentences for the murders of a 17-year-old woman and a man with a stolen identity
The agency failed to take fingerprints, examine footwear and tire impressions, or investigate hair found in Murdaugh’s wife’s hand.
This is what addicted people do. Addicts lie,” Griffin said. “He lied because he had a closet full of skeletons, and he didn’t want any more scrutiny on him.”
Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole Friday for the murders of his wife and grown son – another chapter in the downfall of the disgraced attorney whose dynastic family had significant legal reach for decades in parts of South Carolina’s Lowcountry.
I was surprised to see you testify that it was just another ordinary day. My wife and son were out having fun. Not credible. Not believable. It is possible to convince yourself about it. but obviously you have the inability to convince anyone else about that,” Judge Clifton Newman said moments before handing down two consecutive life sentences.
It is important to see Paul andMaggie when you are trying to go to sleep. The judge in the courtroom told Murdaugh that he was certain they would visit him.
Typically, sentencing hearings include victim impact statements. There were no on Friday. The judge thought that Murdaugh’s defense was “an assault on the integrity of the judicial system”, but the hearing stood out because of Newman’s direct exchanges with him.
“But as I sit here in this courtroom and look around (at) the many portraits of judges and other court officials and reflect on the fact that over the past century your family, including you, have been prosecuting people here in this courtroom and many have received a death penalty probably for lesser conduct.”
When will it stop, the question? Newman said. “When will it end? The jury concluded that you lied throughout your testimony and that is what ended this.
“Justice was done today,” lead prosecutor Creighton Waters said in a Thursday night news conference. No matter who your family is, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, or people think you have. How prominent you are don’t matter.
The defense after the verdict asked for a mistrial, but Newman denied it, saying the jury had gotten enough time to consider the evidence – and the evidence of guilt was “overwhelming.”
He said the jury’s first vote was guilty, adding that it was two not guilty and one not sure.
The verdict of Alex Murdaugh: A jury verdict in the murder of his ex-wife, Paul, was convicted of financial malfeasance
The video, recorded by Paul near the family’s dog kennels shortly before the time prosecutors say they were killed, captured Alex Murdaugh’s voice in the background, nearly a dozen friends and family members testified.
Dave Aronberg, the state attorney for Florida’s Palm Beach County, told CNN that it was the victim who solved the murder of Paul Murdaugh.
The former law firm that renamed itself after Murdaugh called the verdict a step in the right direction. The members of the law group testified.
Alex Murdaugh’s actions are shocking to us all. Tonight’s verdict, which was rendered after a thorough and fair trial, brings justice and some closure to this awful matter,” the firm said on Facebook. We may never fully comprehend the sudden and tragic death ofMaggie and Paul. They were much beloved, and we will forever mourn their loss.”
“The one thing you can clearly take away from this was, he had been lying to a lot of people that he loved for a long time, and so he had obviously gotten to be pretty good at it,” Bill Nettles told CNN.
He would likely have been found not guilty if he went into that place and they believed him. It is difficult to get over the decision to decide that he is willing to put himself out there and they do not believe him.
He told CNN that the jury had concluded that he was lying to them as well.
“Every single person who’s been victimized by Alex has wanted one thing: complete accountability,” he said. Today’s jury verdict was the beginning of complete accountability.
An appeal on his murder conviction and whether the judge was too circumspect in allowing evidence of his financial malfeasance and lies is pending.
“I took money that was not mine and I shouldn’t have done it,” he testified. “I hate the fact that I did it. I am embarrassed by it. I’m embarrassed for my son. I’m embarrassed for my family.”
An appeal would likely focus on the question of whether Judge Clifton Newman ruled appropriately in allowing the prosecution to present evidence about Murdaugh’s extensive financial wrongdoing.
Prior to deliberations, Newman instructed the jury to only consider the evidence of financial crimes insofar as it fit the motive, but not as to how it reflected on Murdaugh.
The jury had to think that he is a thief and a liar after they got his character information, defense attorney Dick Harpoonlian said. It was not about motive, it was about character.
He stated that after listening to what the monster is, you won’t be inclined to defend him.
The outcome of their decision is not great because the guy is going to jail, he has been in jail, so is the outcome of our decision changing for him? A person said no. I think that was a problem in the jury deliberations. That is why it didn’t get as serious as we expected.
“I’m certainly not going to speak for the state Supreme Court, but Judge Newman considered all of that and issued a very detailed and well-thought-out ruling, so we’re confident that will be upheld,” he said.