Murdaugh Murder Trial Part 2 - Did Alex Murder His Wife & Son?

0:01 Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. It's said that money is the root of all evil. I think that you have to be the master of the money and the money can't master you. And there are people that do things for money. And To be nice about it, you can say people sell things, people create things. But then you've got those people that do things for money where they are classified as mercenary. And today we're going to talk about a case or cases that have had new life breathed into them as a result of a mercenary act on the part of a key individual. in these ongoing cases. We're going to revisit the Murdoch murders. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Well, Dave, I gotta say, I hope old Becky's happy with herself.

1:19 Oh my goodness. Hey, one thing, as long as we're going to throw out the old root of all evil thing.

1:24 Yeah.

1:25 If you want to look it up, friends, it is 1 Timothy 6, verse 10, where it says the love of money is the root of all evil. And I will tell you, there are a lot of people who have money, have wealth. And then there are people who are truly greedy. I was an adult before I ever knew what greedy really was, before I ever saw it.

1:47 And I will tell you this. When you see greedy, you recognize it for the evil that it is. It doesn't hide. It truly is evil.

1:55 Yeah, it is.

1:56 It will shake you, you know?

1:59 Yeah, they'll do anything. You know, people will compromise their principles. I've actually known several. I'll put it to you in very broad terms. See, how can I do this tactfully? I've known several scientific professionals. That will offer up an opinion based upon the amount of duckies they're receiving. Gotcha.

2:31 You know, the check, you know, that they're going to receive.

2:34 Buying the expert for court.

2:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I used to hate that. They used to use a term called forensic prostitution. And it was... And it would float around at meetings and you'd hear sort of, and I always say, you know, part of me takes offense to that. And God, I hate to use the word offense. I'm offended. I take exception to it because I think that everybody is entitled to make a living and a good living if they have the ability and the skill set to do it and how to apply that. But there are just certain things that you should not cross over, you know, cross over that veil, if you will, to get into because then it diminishes you and it invalidates you. Because let's just look at it this way. If you're willing to do something for

3:26 money and you're given profession and you're given profession, one of the big points of validity for you is to be able to interact with the courts and go to the court, and that they know that what you're going to say is the truth, okay, all of a sudden, that draws into question everything you've done in the past. Well, how much of this other stuff have you either handled in court where it was to your benefit, you know, to receive some kind of income from it, or you offered up testimony and you're a mercenary and you would essentially color your opinion so that you can serve those that are paying you the big bucks. That's a really distasteful position to be in, Dave. And I got to tell you, that's kind of where we are over in

4:25 South Carolina now, isn't it?

4:27 It's unbelievable that the fact that That we're talking about Murdaugh, you know, the murders of Maggie and Paul. And that's what we're really talking about. Now, to be very clear here, when Alec Murdaugh went on trial for the murder of Maggie and Paul, a lot of us watched it. A lot of us covered it on. We did with Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. We were both involved in the coverage of it leading up to it. I remember when the murders happened and all the way through the investigation.

4:59 You know, if you remember. When the murders first happened, it was Alec Murdoch, this family dynasty of law in South Carolina.

5:07 If I hear the word scion one more time by one of these lazy journalists, this upcoming thing, I hate that word. I got to the point where every time I would hear it, it would, you know, like this because they couldn't get off the word scion. I actually had to go look it up. It became so irritating.

5:26 Well, the bottom line on it was that, you know, this well-known family of legal beagles and the law firm and all that. Well, when Maggie and Paul were murdered, all of a sudden, a number of other deaths occurred. came to the forefront because unless you lived in South Carolina, if you lived in the geography where a lot of these things took place, you might not. I'd never heard of the Murdoch before. We had the death of Mallory Beach.

5:52 I remember covering that because it was a boat wreck, you know, and it was just shocking and still is to this day. But then there were other deaths. I don't call them murders, but there were other deaths associated with Murdaugh. And these didn't come out at first. They didn't all rush to the forefront. The first thing was, to be honest with you, Alec Murdaugh returned home and found his wife and son murdered in his yard of their hunting mansion, whatever you want to call it. And it might have had something to do with the Mallory Beach death in the boat that Paul was drunkenly piloting when the wreck occurred, causing Mallory's death. Matter of fact, in the 911 calls and to police on scene, Alec

6:40 Murdoch mentioned it.

6:42 He suggested it.

6:42 Yeah, he did.

6:43 Yeah, reflectively, you know, reflecting back. You know, what is it that our friend Nancy always says, you know, you don't have to prove motive, but when you're looking at something like this, And you're trying to make sense of it. You know, what was the motivation behind, you know, someone eradicating these two people in a very violent way, by the way. There's been a number of other cases, too, that I think the one that really stands out for me is the housekeeper in particular.

7:22 Well, yeah. Sound right.

7:24 Yeah. And she had. And who was present for that? Well, that was Paul and Maggie, you know, that were there during that period of time.

7:33 But it was Alec who actually gave a statement to everybody about what took place, even though he wasn't there. But the thing is, is that Joe, when this first started, we didn't know about her yet. We didn't know about Gloria. We didn't even know about the young teen who was killed on the road. We didn't know about any of that.

7:51 That all came out afterwards. And so when the Murdoch murders came up, We were really dealing with just this. I mean, horrible. Alec Murdoch, after he was found guilty in the murder of his wife and son.

8:07 Yeah.

8:08 The financial crimes came to the forefront during the investigation into the murders. Now it goes back to motive. Trying to figure out why are these people dead when they shouldn't be. And that's where. Everyone, everyone being the media, we all found out about Alec Murdoch was accused of financial wrongdoing within the law firm founded by his family, that he was on the outs with said law firm had been kicked to the curb because he was been he had been ripping off things. We started finding out all these financial wrongdoing. And to be honest with you, at first, it's like anything else.

8:43 You're on. Wait a minute.

8:44 The guy, we've got his wife and son dead. And now we have all these other peripheral stories. Well, those peripheral stories came to the forefront and were mentioned during the trial because it goes to the character of Alec Murdaugh. And the crimes, financially speaking, went back decades. It went back a long time. So after the murder trial was over, then there was the financial crimes. It's state and federal crimes.

9:09 And Alec ended up negotiating deals with those that put him in prison. the serving on the federal level was 40 years, state level 27. And you don't get to add those together. They're not, it's not how it's done. The way that those were set up to be served were concurrent sentences. So you're looking at a 40-year prison term on the financial charges. The man's in his 50s. Okay, if he were to beat this crime, the murders, Joe, which he was sentenced to life without parole, now that's been kicked out and gonna have a new trial because the collating clerk did the one thing you're never supposed to do she broke her trust with the public she tried to sway the election, you know? And she did it because she was writing a book. And that just, look, man,

10:09 it's bad enough that you're dealing with the murder of a woman and her son. Throw out everything else. But you're the clerk of court. And you're breaking the law for your own self-interest?

10:24 Really?

10:24 Yeah.

10:25 Where's your soul? Yeah, I know. Exactly. Where is your soul? And it's, you know, for folks down that area, you know, the low country, as they refer to in South Carolina, you have to consider there are were and are a lot of other people that didn't have the political connection and the depth of the roots, maybe, you know, familial that go back generations that existed in this jurisdiction. You have a lot of other people that, you know, may have grown up poor, maybe middle class, whatever the case might be. You really wonder, you know, and they don't have any power before the court, however, How was their life touched in such a way by virtue of charges that have been brought up against them in the past?

11:21 And they didn't get a pass. They didn't get a second shot. You know, they didn't get a double homicide conviction overturned. It's been a long time since I've heard of cases like this. And so, you know, my thought is, as horrible as it is that Mackie and Paul are gone... I begin to think about people like Gloria. She didn't have a hoot's chance in hell getting her voice heard.

11:53 I mean, it's been a struggle for all of her kinfolks throughout this whole thing. The young man that was killed on the road, Smith, again, trying to get his story out, trying to understand what happened with that. The young woman that was killed in the boat, well, she had a tenacious family. you know, in this, and they were not going to let, and they were not scared of, you know, the scion here. You know, they went full force into this thing. But, you know, you think about all the other people that these lives, you know, this is a power family, right? And it's deep Southern culture.

12:34 It's deep Southern culture in the sense that I'm very proud of my Southern culture and I'm very proud of my family roots in the South. However, there's a real dark side. There's a dark side to just about anything in this world. And you never know whose life you're going to impact. But it goes much deeper, you know, kind of like the roots of, say, a live oak tree that is hung with Spanish moss. And it's quite beautiful.

13:02 To see, and it's something you might want to linger under. You might want to appreciate the shade that it offers and the heat of the deep south. You might like to hear the leaves as they're being moved by that heavy southern wind. But here's the trouble. You don't know how that tree is rooted. You don't know how far and how deep those roots extend. And when it comes to corruption, it can get dark really, really quick. Music Dave, you know, when I was first approached about this case, and I know when it was, it was actually Court TV and Vinny Palatant. I wound up doing, starting off with him covering this case. As a matter of fact, I covered it so much with him that I was actually on air with the with Vinny when he was

14:01 doing remote at the trial in a, in a coffee shop, they, they, Court TV had gone in and they'd set up, you know, uh, they'd gone to the restaurant. There ain't, ain't too many restaurants around them parts and went in there and, you know, and set up a, they do a nightly show from, you know, from this location. And, um, but the thing that stood out to me the most from a forensics standpoint was the fact that, um, This case cases involved two shoulder fired arms or long arms, as we refer to them, that were utilized by single individual.

14:44 Hey, Joe, let's.

14:45 Go ahead and set this up for those of you who weren't there, because this was five years ago, June 7th, 2021. All right. The victims are Maggie Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh, the wife of Alec Murdaugh and the son, the younger son.

15:00 Alec Murdaugh.

15:01 It happened near the dog kennels on the Murdaugh property. They call it the Moselle hunting property. They had these dog kennels, hunting dogs that they had on their property. And the murders took place down near the kennels, actually in the kennel, it was all. And the way it happened, the way it was reported is that Alec Murdaugh had been there earlier, but he left to go check on his ailing mother and father. And when he returned a little after 10 o'clock at night, he found the bodies of Maggie and Paul dead and calls 911. And I remember in covering this on Crime Stories, Joe, that we listened to the 911 call that Alec made. And it was like he's there was something wrong for them to listen to that, you know, because he's back and forth

15:49 between the bodies and the road. And yeah, there's right away, you know, there's problems just so you know. It was during this investigation that began with the murders on June 7th that you mentioned Stephen Smith a minute ago, the teen who was also killed. Well, that case happened in 2015. It had already been put to bed, even though Stephen Smith's mother had been begging for there to be another investigation into the death of her son. It was after the murders of Maggie and Paul when police were investigating that one that within the days, in days after the murder of Maggie and Paul, they reopened the investigation into the Stephen Smith death. So that's how big this was at this time in June of 2021 with Alec Murdoch. Now,

16:35 the story he told, Joe, of arriving back to Moselle and finding his wife and son dead, that's the.

16:42 Story he told.

16:43 What do we really know about the scene of the crime and the forensics that go along with it?

16:49 Well, when Paul was found, he had sustained to what they call gunshot wounds. I don't like to say that term. I'd rather say shotgun wounds.

16:59 Okay.

17:00 Because that was what was perpetrated on Paul. So you're talking about a shoulder-fired weapon that involves two different types of ammunition just from the shotgun, Dave. So injury one, when he is shot, he essentially takes that blast to the chest. And the way the pathologist describes it is that when he is shot, his hands were hanging at his side, almost like it's unexpected. So when he takes that blast, he takes that blast and it doesn't penetrate his chest wall. Just imagine that.

17:51 Yeah.

17:52 So he shot it. It hits the chest. He's hit full force. Matter of fact, it's a survivable injury. The reason it is a survivable injury is that he was shot with birdshot first.

18:06 Okay.

18:06 Birdshot is like if you're going after small game, like you're going quail hunting, dove hunting, squirrel hunting, rabbit hunting, you know, you would probably use birdshot. And If anyone has ever seen a BB, you know, like from a BB gun, Daisy BB gun, that's what these are loaded with, okay? They're loaded with these tiny BBs. And so when that firing pattern disperses out, the closer you are to the muzzle of the shotgun, which, by the way, is smoothbore.

18:39 It's not rifled. So you've essentially got these rounds going down a smooth tube as opposed to a spiraling effect that you have. The further away you get from that muzzle, that BB pattern spreads like this. Okay. And the more it spreads, the less effective it is. Okay. So it's beginning to spread. And he struck in the chest. The doctor says this is actually a survivable injury.

19:07 Does that mean it just got like the flesh and bone and all that, but it did not?

19:11 But it didn't go into, yeah, it didn't go into the chest vault.

19:14 Wow.

19:14 You know, where you would expect it to be. And this is actually the pathologist, Ellen Reamer, that is relating this on the stand.

19:27 So Paul was facing his killer.

19:29 Yeah, he shot in the chest.

19:31 So he knows.

19:32 Who shot him in the chest because he ain't dead.

19:34 Wow. And what appears to have happened, this is a semi-automatic weapon. Okay, so when you're firing shotguns, in order to get it to cycle like you do with other semi-automatic weapons. the birdshot shell, these are called shells, is ejected, okay? Some people will actually call it a hull. Down the south, they call them hulls. That's the empty, the empty round.

20:05 So spent cartridge round or casing goes flying out. And it is then reloaded as a result of the carriage going forward and slamming in another live round. Well, this is what's kind of odd about it. When he loaded this weapon, he stacked these rounds, these different rounds with different types of ammo. So Paul gets popped with birdshot.

20:34 And birdshot can be lethal. I mean, I've had a number of self-inflicted wounds over the course of my career. You know, I've had homicides that have been perpetrated with birdshot. But generally, you have to have some kind of close proximity, right? But the next round that's chambered is buckshot.

20:52 Okay?

20:53 And so, it's called buckshot for a reason. It's like you can, within certain parameters, take a weapon, 12 gauge shotgun loaded with buckshot in order to take out a full grown deer, male deer, a buck. Okay. So that's where that comes from. So when these, when buckshot goes down range, don't think of it as, don't think of it as BBs. Think of it as, um, as tiny ball bearings okay and as a matter of fact they are the equivalent in diameter to a 32 caliber pistol round so if you're if you've got buckshot that is loaded i don't know let's say it's got eight eight of these little projectiles in there um you've now got these highly destructive rounds going down range and it's like being shot by say for instance a 32 caliber pistol

21:59 Not once, but eight times at one time. Wow. Okay, so that's going to... So he's... These rounds are kind of stacked on top of one another. So the first one that he's hit with is actually birdshot. The second one is actually buckshot. And that round.

22:16 But shot from the same gun.

22:17 Yeah.

22:18 Yeah.

22:18 Okay. And so that's coming... They're saying that this round actually entered his left shoulder. And in fact... traversed through his neck and then entered his neck and exited out the top of his cranial vault. So it knocked the top of his skull out. And we've heard a lot about the scene there and the deposition. You know, some people said that, you know, people always say things like this, that his entire brain, you know, is laying there. And that's not always the case. I have had entire brains, but it's the exception, not the norm. What is important to remember here is that this is the coup de grace because it actually takes out the brain stem. Okay, so when you get into that primal lizard brain down

23:08 there that, you know, tells your heart to beat, tells you to breathe, all these other functions that it handles, it's curtains, man. I mean, you're out for the count.

23:19 So we've got two different rounds, buckshot and birdshot, that are used on Paul. Now, When Paul is shot the first time in the chest, and the second, I'm assuming straight on, second time he's shot and it goes through his left shoulder and up, it's going an upward trajectory, right?

23:37 Yes, it is. So he would have to have been in a position that has either spun him around to the point, but you've got a from below to above position.

23:55 So I'm thinking somebody on their knee shooting him? Probably front.

23:58 Oh, my God.

23:59 Yeah, front.

24:00 Probably from front to back because they're talking about it taking out the brain stem and traversing through his neck at this point in time. So, you know, Dave Sled, who is the state law enforcement agency there in South Carolina. Fine bunch of folks, by the way. They do not have that shotgun. Right. But based upon the ballistic evidence that they recovered, certainly at the autopsy, they know that it was, in fact, a 12-gauge shotgun. And it wouldn't be...

24:34 Just so folks understand that don't know a lot about guns, you're talking about a hunting lodge out here. Well, one of the things they did, this family, they were bird hunters. So a 12-gauge shotgun, you could have... an entire you know vault of these things out there and it'd be easily explained hey yeah i've got this browning or i've got this winchester i've got this remington or i've got this beretta you choose the one you want to use and we'll load you up with ammo and we'll all go out we'll take the dogs out we'll walk the fields you know we'll try to flush some birds it's not it's not unheard of okay.

25:11 Something that was fascinating about this case joe was when um one of the uh One of the people that was covering the story, you know, we had a lot of different journalists, some online, some legit. But one of the guys had a drone. He was flying up as in the days following the murders where the family of Alec Murdoch was unloading weapons. They were seen carrying weapons out of the house, loading them into a truck and leaving.

25:40 these were not weapons that were ever found by law enforcement. And again, the Murdoch family got a lot of leeway back in the day because of their standing in the community for decades as the legal.

25:54 Sigh on.

25:55 Don't say it.

25:56 As the family who... Everybody knew them as the lawyers, the legal family. So anyway, there's video of them removing weapons from the house. I'm not saying that they removed it. I'm not saying anything.

26:07 I'm just saying that.

26:10 I'm not saying they removed the murder weapon. I'm not saying that at all. I don't know what they removed. It was just a shotgun. It was a long rifle, but anyway.

26:20 Well, I got to tell you, one of the most difficult things to kind of peg down ballistically, if you're looking at trying to do a ballistic examination on a firearm, one of the toughest groups is going to be shotguns. Because what did I say earlier? Shotguns are smooth bore. Yeah, you're right. They don't leave behind rifling. The one thing that you would look for are what are referred to as extractor marks, where it's only if you envision kind of like a claw grabbing. Do you see the rim of that base? Grabbing it, pulling it back, and then an ejector mark where it actually pushes it out. Now, we can have linkage effects. As a matter of fact, we've covered a couple of cases dealing with handguns, with

27:11 extractor marks, ejector marks, that sort of stuff. But on the business end of this, where these projectiles are coming out, there's no rifling markings on here. So there's nothing within the barrel because there's a couple of really– and if folks want to check this out, I urge you to so that you can kind of get an idea as to what we're saying here. You can– You can search smoothbore versus riflebore comparison image, and it will show you.

27:43 And when you look down the barrel of, say, a shotgun, it looks like glass. I mean, it's just it's smooth. Now, there is pitting in there and that sort of thing. But when you look at the rifle barrel, you'll see the spiral going down there. Well, that leaves marks that are distinctive to that particular weapon. Ain't got that with a shotgun, dude. I mean, it's just it doesn't happen.

28:04 It's not something that you're going to seek out. So what does that mean relative to if you get on the scene pretty, pretty quickly? You know what you need to do if you got a suspect or somebody may have found them? GSR testing on them. You see what they've got left on their hands. But, you know, we've got another weapon involved here because we've also got another decedent at scene, which is Maggie, right, Dave?

28:31 And the sad part about this is that, again, Maggie and Alec had been having a tough time in their marriage. As a matter of fact, Maggie was requested to come to the Moselle property. She was at their property along the coast. She wasn't at Moselle when this happened. She was actually... asked by Alec to come that night. It was a special thing because Maggie was done with Alec. Now, at the time the murders took place, we didn't know this.

29:00 You know, there's rumors, but we didn't know the facts of the relationship. We found out later on. When Maggie was murdered on June 7th, 2021, she was down by the kennels with Paul, but Her body was found away from Paul and she was shot with.

29:23 A totally different weapon.

29:26 And Joe, we already have Paul getting shot with two different types of ammunition. Yeah. And now we have Maggie being shot with a totally different gun.

29:37 And we have to, well, we don't have to assume, but. you assume you.

29:41 Got bodies they're both shot by the same person with the same weapon and we don't have that so joe does this mean there has to be two shooters.

29:49 It doesn't necessarily mean that however it it is significant enough that it is grounds for reasonable doubt i think on the part of the defense when they go to you know try to We're going down this road again, whether y'all like it or not. This is going back to trial. We're going to be talking about this again.

30:08 And so now I think there, because weapons have been mentioned in a lot of the pretrial stuff that we've heard to this point. And look, let me frame it to you this way from the perspective of law enforcement and the military. If you're talking about weapons packages, you do not commonly see A cop or someone in the military, particularly those that are involved in tactical things, you don't see them carrying two long arms. OK, they're not going to carry a long arm. And oh, and by the way, I'm going to pick up another long arm. That's something you see in the movie where somebody is going to grab multiple weapons and go running out the door with them to have some. That's not the way that's normally done.

30:57 And so it it really. it's a driver for me to try to understand if Alec Murdoch did this. Okay. Which the first trial said that he did was, how did this go down? Did he have the shotgun down there waiting for Paul? And then, he had this other weapon, this rifle down there as well as like a backup. And how did Maggie wind up down there? That's always been a big question because I've had several people say, was she reacting to the shot that she heard fired at Paul? And she comes down to the, you know, was she actually there at that point in time? Was she not? And then to go to another, to trans, and this is what, like, if you talk to people that are in tactical operations, they'll say, I'm transitioning to

31:52 another weapon. That's kind of the, Nice way to put it, and otherwise, in other words, I've got a jam or a malfunction on one weapon, I'm gonna transition generally to the sidearm, which is pistol and holster on your side, and they're gonna take it out and be able to put that into the game. That's what's so bizarre from a ballistic standpoint and from a crime scene standpoint about this case is that you've got two weapons platforms here, which is really bizarre. We think about Maggie now. Maggie is dead down there, isn't she, Dave? And she's not in the kennel itself, though, right? No.

32:40 And, you know, this is interesting, Joe, because it's interesting. Now, boy, I hate when I say something like that because it just sounds like I'm not talking about human beings. And I don't want anybody to think that I'm being callous. In the crime, we have to separate what we learned at the first trial. That might not have been part of the case before, you know. So here's what we know or what is thought of. They never actually proved what order these murders took place. However, based on the scene, you've got Paul who was down close to the kennel in the kennel area. And Maggie was some distance away, but still not all the way back at the house, which is a bit of a hike. So the suggestion is that possibly Maggie heard the first shot on Paul.

33:26 and turned, saw what was happening, and either took off running or was far enough away and tried coming back towards Paul. Either way, the thought is that Maggie was away from Paul at the time and returned or took off based on the second shot. Now, we mentioned Paul being shot with a shotgun, but two different types of ammunition. Meanwhile, you just... You've said some things about what happened to Maggie that it's diabolical, whoever the murderer was, because Maggie's a woman in her 50s, and she's no threat to anyone, man.

34:14 No, I can't. Yeah, I know. That's one of the things that's really dark about this, brother.

34:21 Yeah.

34:22 I mean, she's a threat in the sense that Well, potential name suspect in this is going to take him for everything he's worth. That's the threat that she is. And if there's any, you know, allegedly now, if there's any hint that this could go sideways for him.

34:40 Do we have to do that now?

34:42 I have no idea. And I was just, listen, I was just having that inner monologue with myself among all my other crazies up here. I'm thinking, now, let me get this straight. Are we going to have to go back and insert allegedly everything here? You know, because now, yeah, is it that it's that didn't happen and we have to pretend that it didn't happen? Because now, you know, it's been by virtue of our buddy Becky, you know, all this has been thrown out. Right. Literally, just let that sink in for a second. A double homicide conviction has been thrown out.

35:26 Unbelievable.

35:27 For those listening, we're not saying he's a killer. We're saying he was convicted of murdering his wife and his young son. But because of Becky, the clerk of Colleton County, he is now getting a new trial on the murders.

35:40 Yeah, yeah. So here we go. So this is and look, at the end of the day, this is all we're going to have to deal with forensically. I mean, you know, you have to go back. You have to revisit these injuries. You have to look at Paul's injuries that he sustained relative to the shotgun blast, too. And that one literally takes the top of his head off. And then we've got to look at these injuries that Maggie sustained outside of the kennel. She is shot. with what's called a 300 blackout. Now, if you'll just allow me, permit me just a second.

36:17 You're going to have to explain, because I sat through the trials and everything else, Joe, and yet, well, I've learned things about the shotgun today that I didn't know before, and now we're talking about this 300 blackout round, and I'm thinking, I'm not a gun guy. I'm not against guns. I'm just not a person who knows a lot about guns, so talk to me about What gun shoots this type of ammunition and what type of ammunition is a blackout?

36:43 Okay. I'm going to give you some scales here just so that everybody understands. So I'm going to hold up a 300, a live 300 blackout round. Now, this is what Maggie was shot with. Okay. So here's the round. That's a nickel.

36:59 Holy free holies.

37:00 All right. So this is the round. Now, hang on. I got another scale for you. This is a casing. This is a casing from the Charlie Kirk. 30- 06, okay? Blackout round. That's a spent casing from a.

37:18 30- 06.

37:19 Wow.

37:20 Okay?

37:21 You see the difference? I got one more for you. This is a blackout round,. 300, okay?. 300 blackout. This is the round that President Kennedy was allegedly shot with, a 6.5.

37:36 Wow.

37:38 Yeah.

37:41 That's the Kennedy round. That's the blackout round. Okay? Yeah, so these rounds all kind of approximate. 30, all right? 300 blackout certainly does. 30 out of 6 does if it was a. 308. When you talk about Maggie being shot, she's being shot by a very robust round.

38:05 Now, she was shot five times by the same ammunition? Yes.

38:09 Yeah.

38:09 What damage was done? What order were they in? I mean, I'm curious as to why it would require five shots to take her down and kill her.

38:20 Well, part of it, I think, is there's something about firing a shoulder firearm if you don't have the same discipline as somebody that runs rounds through a barrel all the time like somebody in the military, right? Because it's so simple to do. It's all you need right here. Just pull that trigger. And in a split second, you can have five rounds downrange. Now, if you've already knocked somebody down anyway with the first round, they have an awareness.

38:52 You're getting hit by a 300 blackout. You're going to know it pretty quickly. And when it takes you down, then you're bent on killing them. You shoot somebody five times with a 300 blackout. And I think that as these shots are being fired, the person operating the weapon is advancing on the target, continuing to fire until there's a coup de grace.

39:21 So he shoots, and does she go down with the first shot?

39:25 I think she probably does or staggers at least.

39:27 And then the shooter then continues.

39:30 Advancing on her. Yeah.

39:31 Shooting as he walks. You got four shots on her as he arrives at her body. And where is the fifth shot, Joe?

39:38 Well, the fifth shot is going to be to the back of the head and it's going to be on the right side. This is an execution shot. Okay, just... Wow. frame that out just for a second and so when she shot this actually goes through her skull through her brain stem through her cerebellum which you know we have two hemispheres of our cerebellum and um and then it that's the that's the fatal fatal wound now she's also shot She shot in the head and the torso. She's got injuries to the left wrist, the left thigh. Who really knows about the dynamics of the twisting and turning as you're shot and how these are being interpreted? Are they through and through wounds? Do they communicate with one another?

40:36 You know, you've got torso, left breast, jaw, ear, skull, brain, wrist, thigh, abdomen, lower back. And then you've got this fatal injury to the back of the head. So some of these things are going to be through and through. This is a very powerful round. So if you raise your hand, you know, you can actually, and I've had this before where people raise their hand, raise their wrist, and you'll have a round that actually goes through an appendage and then it winds up striking you anyway. Now I might slow it down. It, it's not going to, it might not have the same level of lethality. You have to think that it doesn't, you know, um, like a round that doesn't pass for an intermediate target, which is what we refer to these

41:21 things as, um, you know, it's problematic.

41:24 So she shot four times and not dead, right? She's alive. And then the kill shot takes her out. Well, yeah.

41:30 Um, Yeah, yeah. That's the way I would frame it, probably. And this happened in pretty quick succession. The kill shot in and of itself is to literally ensure that she's down for the count, that nobody's going to be around to tell the tale.

41:50 All right, so we've got Paul, first victim shot, different ammo, but the same shotgun. And then we've got Maggie being shot with a totally different gun.

41:59 I mean, the planning that had to.

42:03 So if there's not two separate killers, you know, which isn't that a possibility that one killer has a shotgun, the other killer has this other long rifle.

42:13 Yeah, that's what, that's, you know, because I got to tell you, Dave, when I first heard about this case and I heard about the weapons are the things that stood out to me the most in this whole thing. Because who shows up with two separate weapons? I don't want to keep on, you know, beating a dead horse here, but it's just, It's just odd. It's outside of what the norm would be. Here's the thing, though. Talking about the ballistics evidence, you know, as we said, they don't have shotgun. Guess what else they don't have? They don't have 300 blackout. They know that he owned one. But SLED went out, and when they worked that scene out there, they had like a little firing range. They recovered spent

42:54 casings out there from a blackout out there, you know. And of course, anytime you go to a firing range, there's what we call spent brass everywhere. If you don't police up your brass and pick it up, it's like anything else. You're just going to acquire it out there. But they did find 300 blackout rounds out there.

43:16 So as it heads into a trial, a new trial, we have Alec Murdaugh, who. All the financial stuff that was brought up during the first murder trial, you know, that was a surprise to many now is no surprise because he's already been, you know, he's already in prison for that as well as the murder. So we take the murders out and now we're going to sit a new jury that is going to hear.

43:41 And by the way, nothing to lose here other than South Carolina does have the death penalty, correct? Yeah.

43:48 Yeah, they do. Matter of fact, it's a firing squad.

43:51 So it could be put right there on the table and say, OK, you know what? Alec, you might've, uh, might've dodged a bullet the first time, but the second time we're putting, uh, we're putting this on the table cause you're not getting out of prison as it is. You're in there on the financial crimes for the rest of your life.

44:09 Yeah. We're going to go after.

44:11 Yeah.

44:12 There's one more piece to this day that we have to mention that I think is pretty doggone significant. All right. Maggie's fingernails. Uh, she's got DNA under those fingernails and, uh, One of the things that is being allowed in these hearings, and that's what they're chatting about right now, is this testing that is going to be done now. The judge is allowing it for this testing and to find out who exactly this foreign DNA is attached to. And look, we've said this before about DNA. I think we recently had a conversation about it, brother, but you can pick up DNA from Anywhere, right? However, it's one thing for you and I to be passing each other in a crowd and I brush up against you and I transfer

45:07 some touch DNA to you or you vice versa. It's completely the other thing if you've got a point of contact like fingernails. You know, what's the source of that? And this is going to be something that is going to be talked about in this trial, like it or not. You know, I mean, it's going to appear. I just, I sit back at this and I'm, you know, part of me is just in wonder that this is happening again.

45:43 I'm going to get my popcorn ready because I'm going to be watching this thing. How about you? I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.