MAJOR Ruling in Luigi Mangione Case, Harvey Weinstein’s Mistrial, and Alternative Theory on Murdaugh Murders, with James Lasdun

>> Welcome to the MK True Crime Show. I'm Ashley Merchant, Criminal Defense Attorney from Atlanta, Georgia. Today I'm joined by my friend and co-host, Phil Holloway. He is a criminal defense lawyer, a former prosecutor, and a police officer. Hey Phil, how are you?

>> I'm doing great, actually, always happy to be here with you.

>> Good to see you. So let's talk about what we have on the Docket today. We have a lot of big stories coming out. We have a major ruling that we just got in the case of Luigi Manjoni. He is the accused killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

We'll tell you what the evidence will come in and what will not be allowed in his state trial. >> Yeah, and actually we also have Harvey Weinstein news. Back to New York, we've got Harvey Weinstein who scored a victory in court last Friday. We'll discuss the mistrial ruling handed down by the court.

“And what comes next for the three times accuser, Jessica Man?”

>> And joining us later, we have authored James Lazzden. He is going to share his thoughts on Alex Murdoz recently overturned murder convictions and his new book, The Family Man, Blood and Betrayal in the House of Murdoch. Can't wait for that. But let's start with Luigi Manjoni news.

So what's going on with Luigi? >> Yeah, all right, so we got quite a lot. So by way of background, folks will of course, remember, unless they've been living under Iraq. Luigi Manjoni 27 years old is accused of murdering Brian Thompson, who was the CEO of United Healthcare.

Thompson was shot and he was killed in what law enforcement says was a targeted attack outside the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan on December 4th of 2024. We've got some video surveillance footage of that that we can show our viewers on YouTube. Manjoni, of course, faces state and federal charges. He's pleaded not guilty to all those.

The state charges actually include second degree murder.

He's facing 25 years to lie on that and criminal possession of a weapon. Federal charges include interstate travel on electronic communication for stalking in the use of firearm during a crime of violence. Actually, we've got some big news though, because we've got some different evidence coming into each case what's going on.

>> Yeah, Phil, we got a big ruling today. So I'm just going to kind of catch our viewers up on what happened recently in the state court case. And then I know we have a lot to talk about with comparing the difference with the federal court and the state court and why the ruling seemed to be a little bit different.

But what's happening right now is five months ago, people may remember there was a hearing that examined whether or not the police obtained certain evidence from him and the judge just ruled on that.

New York State court, Judge Caro, just ruled on the evidence that was actually found on

Luigi's body at the time of arrest.

“And so he had a backpack, y'all may remember that he was at a McDonald's when he was arrested.”

And there was a backpack that was with him, but it wasn't on him. So it was when I say on, I mean, around him, but it wasn't physically on him. So it wasn't within arm free, which is what we like to talk about in the legal community. Arm's reach means you can grab it. So it wasn't.

And his defense had argued that this evidence should actually be suppressed, meaning that it shouldn't come in in front of the jury and that the state shouldn't be allowed to present any evidence that the state found in that backpack search. So there's two sets of evidence. There was the things that they found in the backpack.

And then the things that they found later on, actually, the police precinct when they did what they call an inventory search. So what we have in the state court is we have a ruling where the judge says the stuff you found at the scene in his backpack, not coming in. The stuff you found later on at the precinct when you did what's called an inventory

search, search, that is coming in. The New York state judge has sort of split those two. We're in federal court.

“It's definitely different because the federal judge said, you know what?”

It can all come in. So it's a very different ruling. And I want to talk to you a little bit, Phil, about why that might happen, why the judge in federal court might find that this is admissible where the judge in state court said, not so much.

Well, that's, you know, you're, this is great subject for this show and for this program because it's an opportunity for our viewers and our listeners to, if they don't already know, to learn a little bit about how the federal and state courts do things very differently sometimes. In fact, before we get into that, let's do a head and call for sought one A, which should

be the judge issuing his ruling in court on Monday. To find that the search of the backpack at the McDonald's was improper warrant this search, that the backpack is not within the meeting control or gripable area of the defendant and further than people failed to demonstrate extreme circumstances. Therefore, those items found in the backpack during the search at the McDonald's will be

suppressed. However, the people have established that these subsequent search of the backpack

station will not be suppressed.

So as to the Huntley issue, I find that the defendant was not in custody until about 947 AM. So any statements before that will not be suppressed. However, as Miranda warnings were not given until some seconds after 948 in the morning, those statements made shortly before that in response to improper custodial questions that were not merely a request for pedagling information, it will be suppressed.

The remaining statements will not be suppressed as they were either spontaneous or a request of pedagree or safety related questions. So those statements will be permitted. So this is pretty significant, I mean, this is a big win, but I thought it was interesting

when I talk about arms reach, that's really what this ruling is about.

I was going to ask you that, so it seems like this judge is ruling, so it's like folks cannot understand that these decisions are made and I don't necessarily agree with every point the judge made, but so let's just say that he's 100% right on this. Notice how it's based on this granular details, very specific details. He said he's in custody at 947, so whether someone's in custody or not makes a huge

legal difference and things that are outside your wingspan or your arms reach can make a big difference.

“Yeah, and really it's because of officer safety, so that's what it comes down to, because”

officers are allowed to search things like you hear about pat down searches, what's a pat down search. The officer is saying, is there anything that's going to stick me hurt me, they're looking for weapons, that's what they're looking for, and so we allow searches when it involves officer safety, because that's our utmost goal, you know what I'm going to call our officers.

I have a question for that, so don't be interrupted, but look, if we're talking about officer safety, so we know that the item, so this backpack was that issue, right? And so the officers apparently did sort of a partial search on this before they officially took him down to the station and all that, and they were saying that because this was not in his arms reach, because it didn't qualify for any exception to the search warrant requirement,

but my question then is, what if there were a bomb in there, I mean, if it's outside your arms reach, of course, you can't access a firearm or a knife or anything like that, but what if there's a, what if there's a explosive device in there, it doesn't have to be in his arms reach to, to do harm? No, it doesn't have to, but at the same time, you can't just search a backpack, if I just

leave a backpack somewhere, and you don't have any probable cause to search that backpack, you don't have any reason to believe that I have a bomb in that backpack, you can't just go and search it, and you know, it's a fine line what you're talking about makes a lot of sense, because a lot of times people want searches done for safety of everyone. I mean, it would be great if we could know if there's a bomb in a bag and we can search

that bag, but we have a very fine line with our fourth amendment against search and seizure when it's unreasonable, and what the court said here is that is unreasonable. There was no evidence that he might have a bomb, and it wasn't on his person, and so for office or safety, they didn't need to actually search him.

“But what I think is really interesting for our viewers is the difference between federal”

court and state court fill, because there's a different result in federal court, right? Yes, there is, and the federal judge, you know, look, we've got different legal systems. You've got the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution is grounded in reasonableness. It says that you shall not be subject to unreasonable search and seizure, and for reasons that I'm going to get into a little bit in more detail at my closing at the end of the

program, we'll point out that if there's not a warrant, then the evidence is presumably illegally obtained. So there's a presumption that it's going to be suppressed. Now there's lots of exceptions that have been carved out by the U.S. Supreme Court, over time in a lot of states, follow those exceptions in lockstep, and follow the federal jurisprudence

on this issue. But a lot of states, and we can see this in New York, actually, they do their own thing. And I want to dive more into that.

“But before we do, I think it might make sense to go ahead and take a look at Sot 1, which”

is man-gione, who identifies himself as Mark Rosario on body cam footage.

So we can see what this judge's ruling is basically turning on.

This is the incident here. , it's a, there you go.

What is it? Mark? Mark, what? Sorry.

So it's interesting, Phil, some of those statements are going to be admissible, but we actually

don't have a ruling yet, in the federal case, as to whether or not those statements are all going to be admissible. So let's, let's itemize here. Our producers did a good job here. Thank you, a wonderful crack producer team, because we have it broken down.

“So there's certain evidence that's allowed in both trials, okay?”

The, the gun, and the silencer. And by the way, that was a big victory for prosecutors getting that in. There's a notebook, which prosecutors are calling a manifesto and the defense is calling a diary. There's a USB drive. Now, that's evidence that's going to be allowed in both case.

Now, what is suppressed at the state trial, but is also allowed at the federal trial are

the following things. There's an ammunition magazine, commonly referred to as a clip or just a mag. We have a cell phone, a passport, a wallet, and a computer chip. And all this was found in that backpack. Now we have pre Miranda statements to police that will mostly be allowed in the state trial

with the limited exceptions. I either false identification, and as you mentioned that federal ruling is unknown at present. But that's sort of the breakdown on it, and, you know, it's just so granular in how the judge

“made his analysis actually, it's worth, I think, pointing out and please correct me if I'm wrong.”

But, you know, New York doesn't really have this idea of inevitable discovery. In other words, the federal system, let's just say that there's some mistake and police are not acting in bad faith, and they take something that is maybe, you know, would be otherwise suppressable, but if it's something that would be inevitably located or found anyway, courts will let it in.

And so I've always wondered, okay, is this stuff that was located at the police station

wouldn't it be subject to an inevitable discovery type analysis, but they don't recognize that exception in New York? Right, I think it's really interesting, and I think it actually tells a lot politically about the state, you know, different states that I practice in, you can tell if they are more of a liberal leaning state or a more of a conservative leaning state, and this is when

you can tell it. So here in Georgia, we have inevitable discovery. This would probably have been admitted in the federal system. They have inevitable discovery, but in New York, which the judges tend to be more left leaning more liberal, and the legislature is more liberal, then you've got this, this

rule that says, "Oh, nope, you can't say it's just inevitably be discovered and be admissible." And what that really means for our viewers is if the law thinks, if the judge thinks that the police will find it inevitably, so like a backpack that's just sitting there, are they going to inevitably find it, then they're saying that there's no harm, because there

is no fourth amendment violation, no search and seizure violations, and so, "Hey, because we're inevitably going to find it, we'll let it in." And it's kind of a catch-all, and so New York is a lot more strict. They hold their police to a higher standard and say, "We're not going to let this in just because you claim you'll what-a-founded eventually."

So our audience needs to understand, actually, is really a, you know, she's a search and seizure dollar. She's one of the leading experts that I know on this subject, and I feel like I know it pretty well, but actually, why was this not something that would all fall into the search incident to a lawful arrest?

That being one of the numerous exceptions to the, well, we call it the fourth amendment, which would be the federal standard, but of course, you know, the state states have their own constitutions that have different levels of protection against, let's just say, unreasonable or warrantless, let's just say, warrantless searches and seizures. Right.

I think that- I would say it's not a search incident to an arrest or something for officer safety.

“I think that is the perfect question, because I thought that was a very fine line and”

the judge might go there, and I actually looked at the judge's ruling, and what the judge said was that the initial backpack search did not meet the requirements for a warrantless search, and the reason was there was no concern of a weapon. So your point about there being a bomb or something was an interesting point, but what the judge found was there was no concern that he could actually get a weapon.

So we allow these searches incident to arrest, but only for officer safety.

That means can the- can the suspect pull out a knife and cut you?

“Can they, you know, get a- break a bottle and cut you?”

Do they have a gun? Do they have something like that? Do they have a gun in their bag? They have a bomb in their bag. And because there was no evidence that he actually could reach this and get a weapon, there

was no allegation, the government was not allowed to say this is a search incident to arrest, because it wasn't on him. It was located near him, but it wasn't actually on him. So he wasn't able to grab it and pull a gun on this officer, so that was really their big distinction.

And you know, Phil, as you know, from doing these, a lot of it just depends on the judge.

I mean, one judge down the hall might rule completely differently on this.

And we see it every day. It usually is upheld on appeal, because it's within the judge's discretion, but that's why the judge matters, because every judge in a courthouse could rule very differently on this. And it could really affect the outcome.

Somebody, I was tweeting, or posting on X about this, and someone raised the question, you know, is this can the prosecution appeal? And I, you know, theoretically, they can try, but they're not going to because they got so much in, and they're still a significant amount of evidence on this. I don't think they're going to appeal, but let me just put my cop hat on for a minute,

because I did that before I went to law school. And so I go in this place, and I had a pretty good idea who I'm dealing with here. I'm going to search that bag. I don't care if it's not in arms reach, because I want to make sure that he can't lunge for it, even if it's out of arms reach, maybe he can lunge for it.

Maybe there's an explosive device in there.

“I'm going to do then and there on scene in that moment, what I think it's going to take,”

not only to keep me safe, but to keep the public at large safe around me. And you know what, I'm going to talk more about the exclusionary rule, which is the rule that excludes evidence that's unlawfully seized. But I think that under the totality of the circumstances, searching that bag was reasonable. I think it was objectively reasonable.

I think they would have found the stuff anyway, and for the, for the safety of everyone involved, that bag needed to be checked. And I will, you know, whether or not it violates the Constitution in New York. Remember, these weren't New York police officers. Right.

Right. But they have to apply New York law because it's a New York case. You know, it's, it might surprise you, but I don't necessarily disagree with you. I actually thought the bigger problem was going to be with the search back at the station, because I thought the inventory search was done and should have had a warrant to actually open things up.

So, I mean, this is one of the things that I'm sure our viewers can figure out that even legal minds can disagree on debate. We can come up with different analysis.

“It's really, I mean, it's a case by case analysis.”

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It's Harvey Weinstein. You're a verdict, not a verdict. Third time to try them, nope. So Harvey Weinstein, to catch everyone up, he was tried for the third time. The first time, if you were called, the state won, but they cheated.

And so the appeals court said, "Sorry, you cheated. You didn't win." Second time, they won on some of the victims, but not on Ms. Man, who was on trial here. So this is the third time. So it was just Ms. Man, who was the alleged victim here, who testified. And the jury said, "No, not enough."

But the problem is, they didn't say unanimously, no.

And they didn't say unanimously, yes, for guilt. They said, "We can't decide. There are some of us that are 100%. No, 100% not guilty." And some of us that are 100% guilty. And so we just, we can't reach a verdict.

And so the judge had to actually declare a mis trial. You know, the media has been, they've been saying a lot of things about this case. But one thing that they've definitely been pointing out every time you look is that, they say this was a majority male jury, but look, they've not been convicted.

So this is, I think this is a case not so much with the composition of the jury, but with the quality and the nature of the evidence. Our friend, Lauren Conland, who with LA Magazine, who's appeared on this program, friend of our show has provided some video. We got sought too, which is a juror who breaks down the jury's doubts in this latest trial.

But you were an actual juror deliberating. I just learned that it was nine to three, nine votes for not guilty, three for guilty. How did you feel about the prosecution's case?

“Did you feel like they proved it beyond a reasonable doubt?”

No. You did that. A lot of us did not feel they proved it beyond reasonable doubt. You also get the evidence.

Ultimately, it just came down.

Like all of the evidence we felt wasn't in support of just the command, except for two things. It was just her testimony. And also Dr. Rocchio, the expert witness. That kind of explained the way a lot of our doubts,

but not the ultimate doubt of a lot of us felt that. We found a lot of holes in her, a cross-examination versus a direct. So, that was like the main deciding factor. Yeah, and can you tell me the gender split was it?

Yeah, it was nine not guilty, which was, and then three guilty in those all men. Three men thought guilty. Every all the women thought not guilty men. This is an interesting phenomenon.

We talk all the time about picking juries. And I mean, half the time I feel like we're trying to decide what's the model jury for a case. And a lot of folks get this wrong. They think that you don't want women on your jury in a sexual assault case. And I can tell you, you don't want women who have unfortunately been victimized previously.

But women are hard on women. You know, they are really hard on women historically. And so, you know, this is pretty typical that the women on this jury were all saying we don't believe her. And I think that's pretty common.

We see that a lot, right, Phil? Yeah, we do. And, you know, this, I'm so glad that Lauren took that video.

Because that particular juror who was interviewed basically just blue,

the media, part of the media narrative out of the water. When they point out, you know, this is a majority male jury. The, the three votes for guilty were men.

“And all men, it was like the women were not convinced, okay?”

And she was one of them, and she, you heard it right there from the horse's mouth. The women were not convinced. So, by the way, our producer Michelle asks the question, is it unusual in this type of sexual assault trial to have a majority male? And the answer to that is, well, maybe it's, it literally depends on

random selection. How many people will get put in the potential pool of jurors, right? So, we, we basically deselect jurors. We don't actually select. So, it depends on what the random randomization is of men versus women who are in

the early portions of the jury. So, like a potential juror.

So, if you're in, like, say the first 25, it depends on how the pool of

potential jurors is made up of whether it's mostly men, mostly women, where they're seated in that sort of thing. But you really can't draw any conclusions from that. And I think the assumptions that underlie this media narrative are just false. You just, to your point, you just can't, you can't just assume that

males are going to vote with men and vice versa. Yeah, you can't. And I thought it was interesting because one of the male jurors actually did speak to the media. And this juror said that it started out as friendly, but it became very tense as a trial

went on.

“But I think this was the most interesting thing.”

He said that several jurors were somewhat suspicious that man could remember everything the prosecution asked her about, but that her memory often failed her on cross examination. And I will tell you, from my experience, I have heard so many jurors comment on that.

And a lot of times it happens with law enforcement officers, where they're very forthcoming with the state, when they're asking questions, but when I ask questions, it's like they can't even agree on the definition of what an interview is. And, you know, they're just very obstinate. And jurors see that, jurors notice that and they don't like that.

So, I thought it was interesting that they picked up on this and this man. And at this point, she's almost a professional witness. I mean, God, think about how many times she's specified. So, you know, she should know better. Well, so, three is Jessica Mann describing her experience when she testified in her first trial.

Let's have a listen. Mann spent three days on the witness stand and faced a grueling cross examination from Weinstein Defense Attorney Donna Routino. What is that like? It's absolutely terrifying.

It's the most stressful thing you can ever do. You're on the hook for everything that comes out of your mouth. You're relying on 12 people to hear your perspective

and make a fair judgment. Mann says she completely broke down on the witness stand when it came out in court that she had been sexually assaulted when she was younger. She left the courtroom and could be heard screaming from a back room. And some question whether her emotional collapse would affect the trial.

I was just brutally stretched in every way on that stand. And I just hit a breaking point. And I went into tremendous flashbacks. And we actually have her testifying five days this trial, so I initially testified three days previously.

“But I think we've got another thought where they're talking about her actual extensive cross examination,”

which is when she really fell apart. Thursday, marking Mann's fourth day on the witness stand now, under cross examination, Weinstein's attorney picked at her account that a friend says that they had a four year relationship and everything that happened was consensual. Mann disputes that saying that she consented approximately 10 times

and three specific sexual experiences were unwanted. Back in the witness box, Mann testifying saying that she's stressed. It's not that I don't recall. It's that I'm being very spacey right now. It's hard. This happened. And this is stressful.

After that, this afternoon, the judge called for a 10 minute break. And then it happened again because Mann said that she was stressed again when she came back.

Ultimately, the judge decided to call it quits early for the day.

“Actually, there was, so we had this new call at the note evidence, right?”

So Harvey Weinstein's defense team asked her to review something that was referred to as a reflective note that she apparently wrote herself two days after the alleged assault. And she was talking about that and she wrote about conflicted feelings toward an unnamed man. And their non-exclusive relationship, she said, "Do I love him or the idea of him?" If he is not there in the future, what will I have?

And when asked why the note did not mention the alleged assault, she said, "I don't have to write that down." So it just seems to me because she kind of conceded that it was about him. But that's not really the kind of thing that you would, I think, say about someone who had assaulted you like that.

You wouldn't, second thoughts, second guesses are not rape.

It's not sexual assault.

“I think that's what these jurors saw that she is essentially having doubts and second guessing what she did voluntarily.”

And that's not enough. I mean, even though he's serving other prison sentences, it's not enough to convict someone of rape which can take away their entire life when all you've had really is second guesses. Well, so we've got real quick, let's go ahead and run SOT 5, which is CBS New York, had a package on her 2026 testimony.

Manan D.A. Alvin, Bragg, listened in as the prosecutor questioned the actress and hairdresser who said she moved to LA in hopes of pursuing acting full time and met Weinstein at a party when she was 27 and he was around 60. Man testified, he told me that I was really pretty, like prettier than Natalie Portman. I thought I just got discovered. Man said after they initially met the two had dinner at the peninsula hotel in LA, but Weinstein was annoyed by fan attention and said we're going upstairs. It was like a command.

In the room, she said she gave him a massage because he kept pushing me to try to do it. I think this legal team can do a good job. I'm showing that it's not quite what she says. She detailed another time Weinstein invited her and a friend to his hotel room allegedly to show them a script for the movie Vampire Academy. Man said Weinstein took her into another room very aggressively and claims he forced oral sex on her even though she told him unless I'm in a relationship with someone I'm not doing sexual activity.

Well, D.A. Alvin Bragg has told us that he is not sure if he's going to try Harvey Weinstein a fourth time, but we will keep everyone posted on the latest. And next up, we have award-winning author James Lassen and he is joining us to dive deep into the Murach murders. Stay tuned. This show is sponsored by Q-Color, the only FDA cleared device in its category designed to help protect the brain from sports related impacts.

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Once again, that's q300.com/mk for a free sleeve. Available in 15 colors now with your order. Welcome back to the mk True Crime Show. I'm Phil Holloway joined today by my co-host Ashley Merchant. We're very excited because joining us now on the program is author James Lassen. He's going to discuss his latest book, The Family Man, Blood and Betrayal in the House of Murdock.

And of course, we're talking about the Alex Murdock trial. And of course, the recent news that we're going to have a new trial. Welcome to the program, sir. Before we get into this book, which, by the way, has to be one of the most thorough breakdowns of the Murdock story that is available. Let's start with a quick update. Now that the murder convictions have been overturned, prosecutors have vowed to retry Murdock for the murders of his wife Maggie and his son Paul.

“They've even said, I think dubiously, that the death penalty may be back on the table for the disgrace to attorney Alex Blaine, why we think it's dubious with Ashley here shortly.”

But James, welcome very much to the program. Let's start with your reaction to this news that we're going to do this trial all over again. I mean, it was both stunning, but also not a total surprise. The Supreme Court's hearing on the appeal was made it clear that they took it pretty seriously these allegations of jury tampering.

So when they came back finally with a reversal, it wasn't a total surprise, although it is a staggering piece of news.

Yes, I think we all think they did the right thing, and it's going to be interesting to get to watch it again. I mean, and we know, he's serving 40 years on federal charges and 27 years on state charges. So the big question is, are they going to really retry him? And if they do, are they actually going to try to seek the death penalty, which, you know, the gentleman who is the elected district attorney there, Alan Wilson, he is apparently running for governor and I can't help but wonder if that has some influence in his decision on how to handle this and the media.

I don't know, did you get to know him at all or, you know, talk to folks that knew him for your book? I didn't get to know him. I tried, but he wasn't very convenient. Was it possible? Not to me. I mean, it's, I don't totally understand the law here, but I mean, Dick har put in the defense chief defense attorney at his news conference today.

Said that he said that you're not allowed to, that it's not lawful to suddenly bring in a death penalty for what appears to be sort of addictive reasons. I guess this will play out. He did accuse Wilson of being political rather than legal. So we'll see.

“So there's a speaking to you, to your point about the death penalty, there's a case where I think it's 1969, US versus Pierce, I believe it is.”

And basically it stands for the idea that you can't punish someone for exercising their right to an appeal.

Now, it's a debatable presumption that doing so would be vindictive. So the burden that would be necessary for prosecutors to prove is that it must be based on objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding. So you tell me, unless I've missed something, we haven't heard or seen anything about any identifiable bad conduct by Murdoch since the date of his conviction. Not that I'm aware of. You know, there were possible attempts to hide money, but that was before he was even entitled for murder.

It was while he was in prison talking to his son and things like that. But no, I don't think this any grounds for for that for saying that at all. So on that same vein, I mean, they're saying that they want to seek the death penalty and you talked about in your book and what I like to call residual doubt, but you were talking a little bit about, let's see what you called it.

And to me, that really plays into this decision whether or not to seek the death penalty because one of the most common reasons that jurors reject a death sentence is residual doubt.

So if you and you seem pretty convinced from your book that Murdoch is guilty, but still have these flashes of doubt. It almost seems like a waste of time and money and, you know, litigation to for them to even seek the death penalty because this wasn't circumstantial case.

“I honestly, I'd be surprised if they do in the end, but who knows, they might.”

I might be just politically expedient to do that, but I would be surprised, I mean, I did.

I had doubts and I think a lot of people had doubts, a smaller amount of doubt. After the after they verdict, I asked a lot of people how they felt about it and surprising numbers said, you know, yeah, they probably got it right, but I have like a 5% uncertainty. That's pretty much what I felt and I so I did spend a lot of, I mean, there were holes in the case and there was I had some really deep resistance to leaving that this guy who's not in any obvious way kind of completely nuts.

“Wood have just cold bloodedly killed his son in particular, I mean, people do kill their spouses, unfortunately quite often, but it's a very unusual to kill your own offspring.”

Just in a hopes of sort of stabbing off exposure, this for his investments, this looming storm theory. I had a lot of trouble just getting my head around that psychologically. Then also there were some holes in the case in the story that the prosecutors told that was sort of unexplained tire tracks that was just bone evidence that sort of tilted just as easily in favor of mud arc as it tilted against him. So, you know, I was predicting a hung jury, I thought someone was not going to be able to cross that line.

Yeah, 45 minute verdict as I recall. So, on Monday, the 18th of May, which is the day we are recording this program, the Murdoch Defense team has stated that he will never take a plea deal for these murders and of course he's taken some plea deals, but he will not, he says he will not take any plea deal.

“And honestly, I don't think one is going to be on the table, and parenthetically, I think that the talk about the death penalty being on the table is just bluster.”

I don't think they're actually going to do that. I think the law is pretty clearly against that being something that could even be on the table. But, you know, you talk about something in the book that I want to hear more about, which is the idea that there's this family annihilator motive, right? So, you talk about that throughout the book, so can you explain what that means and how it may apply to this particular case?

This was a term I had never heard before, creating orders turned to Alex Murdoch and said, "Are you a family annihilator?"

And he didn't explain what he meant by it then, he did say the phrase again later on in the trial, but he never really went into the background. And, you know, it peaked my curiosity and there is a certain amount of literature on this criminal logical category of the family annihilator. So, I looked into that. I mean, the purpose in writing the book was pretty single-mindedly to try to understand Alex Murdoch, who he was, or the internal processes that drove him to this terrible crime where, as well as what the kind of external things that enabled him.

And, in the course of that, I did look into the literature on this kind of crime, the family annihilation. And there are ways in which he obviously, you know, is part of that pattern. He does resemble other family annihilators who are the men. You mentioned John List in your book. Well, the person I was following, most closely, was his French guy, John Claude Romond, who, like many of these people, was a sort of middle-aged outwardly successful guy who was actually leading a double life. One that involved photory, embezzlement theft. And, over time, the jeopardy of these, that he was incurring over with these embezzlement escalates to the point where the whole picture come is, is about to come crashing down. And at that point, these men take their families alive.

Right, and so what I think there was nothing, why do you think there was, there wasn't that, or I mean, was there some evidence of that, some evidence of suicidal thoughts with him, because that does seem to fit the profile that you're talking about. And I mean, there are a couple of cases where that didn't happen and where the killers were more like, what, I can sense that they were doing it for more sort of out of, out of a more kind of self-interested motive that they would, they would kind of leave their families or leave their wives for another woman or something like that.

You know, there was that episode three months later on the old Salkahatchi Road, which is still somewhat mystifying, and was it was there some element of attempted self, I mean attempted suicide that I ultimately, I don't think so, I think all of it. Is that the cousin Eddie incident? Yes, he claimed that he had hired his, oh, he'd asked his cousin Eddie to shoot him in the back of the head, shoot him in the head to shoot him dead, so that his surviving song Buster could claim the life insurance.

“I, I don't believe that that's what happened.”

I think he's just, well, it is still a bit mysterious, but I think what really what was going on is that he, he had set up the original murders to look as if the Jalantris had come to Mosale, this is why he uses two weapons. And police, I think it initially sort of believed that, I mean, whole was getting threats because of the boat crash, there were these two weapons, but by the time I set timber, which was the old Salkahatchi Road episode, that scenario is beginning to fall apart, and he knew that police were looking at him as the real suspect, and so I think what he was doing on the old Salkahatchi Road was trying to revive that scenario, because the first thing that happens,

the first story that arises is, he's been taken to ambulance, taken to the hospital in an ambulance, covered in blood, and he's telling police that somebody drove past him and took a shot at him.

And that immediately reinforced the kind of vigilante scenario, yeah, it looked like somebody really did have it in for this family. That story fell apart after less than a day, I think, and his next story was, okay, what I was really doing was, I was in such despair, I felt it would be better for me to be gone, and for my family, and I wanted my son Buster to be able to claim to $10 million in insurance, and I didn't realize that there's a suicide exclusion policy on my doors on my policy.

“I had to make it look like murder, and so I got my cousin Eddie to come and take a shot at me, and that's what he did, but he missed.”

The problem with that aside from the fact that Eddie vehemently denies it, that's what happened, is he does have a bullet wound in his head, it's a very superficial one, but you know, there's a shot there, there's an entry wound and an exit wound. And Eddie was there, Eddie told me and told others that he took the gun, I mean, he claimed that he wrestled with Alex Alex was trying to shoot himself, and that he wrestled the gun away from Alex, I don't think Alex was trying to shoot himself, but I don't know, I mean, honestly, it's pretty unfathomable.

What actually happened there, although I do think that fundamentally what it was about was reinforcing, reviving that vigilantes shooter scenario.

I want to back up just a minute to the actual, you know, murders themselves, so you talk in your book about what the trigger was for these alleged murders.

“So you mentioned a moment ago in your answer to Ashley's question, you talked about the, the boat crash, and by that, you're referring to the 2019 boat crash that killed Paul's friend named Mallory Beach, and so there was a lawsuit, right?”

So you point out in your book that there was a scheduled hearing on June the 10th of 2021 regarding financial matters, and at that hearing, there was going to be full disclosure of Murdoch's finances.

And of course, as we now know, the finances were a big mess, and a lot of whatever finances he had, or money that he had may have been, you know, a result of theft and other malfeasance. And so you say that that looming hearing might have been the trigger for the murders which occurred on June 7th, three days prior in 2021.

Well, that's not my theory, that's the prosecution theory, that's part of that theory.

There were two, they had this thing, this theory that they called the theory of the looming storm and the looming storm consisted of that. Impending financial hearing, which they claimed would have laid open his finances. In fact, the defense was able to make a pretty good case that it would not have done that, it would have, it would have advanced that process, but it would by no means have immediately laid it open.

“I think it would have been certainly laid it open at on the 10th, three days after the killing the way that the prosecution was saying much more compelling was the other part of their looming storm theory, which was that.”

On on the seventh on the very day of the murders, his law firm, Alex is law firm.

The criminal officer, Jenny Seconder, confronted Alex over some missing fees that she believed he was hiding from them. And he vehemently denied to her that he was hiding them from her. In fact, he had stolen them.

“Conversation like this confrontation miraculously for him or not miraculously or horrendously, if you want to depending on how you look at it, the conversation got interrupted by a phone call.”

And Alex was able to sort of get away without continuing that conversation with Jenny Seconder, but he knew that she was on to him about this stolen money that he had stolen from his law firm.

And he knew that he was going to have that if he wasn't going to be exposed by Jenny Seconder, he would have to get the money back where it was supposed to be, and that was going to take some time. He did get it back, but he needed that time and he would not have had that time had there not been this murder that very night. So to me, that's a much more compelling piece of the prosecution story. And I think it's true. I mean, I 100% believe that that was what was going on. I mean, it had been building for a few days with that very afternoon. It looked like it was coming to a head. I think he knew he had to do that something had to happen. So I'm big diversion had to occur.

I mean, I didn't mean to kill them. Like if there's some diversion, I mean, he's a diversion. And I think that's a very interesting story. And I think that's a very interesting story. I think that's a very interesting story.

“I'm going to say, you positive in your book, let me get to that point. I think this is where you're going. The theory that Alex may have been attempting to stage a near miss to garnish sympathy, right?”

Like he did with Uncle Eddie, right? Yeah, things just got all fucked up. That's what Alex told Eddie and you, you put a positive in the theory and others have had this too that Maggie and Paul were unintentionally killed. Now, considering the brutality of these murders, I don't know that I could get behind that. But you said you haven't abandoned that theory that they were not supposed to die. Could you explain? I mean, as he said, cousin Eddie told me and told it on Netflix that after the murders, Alex told him, he asked Alex, what happened at Mosell and Alex told him things got all fucked up.

When he told me that, you know, I didn't think much of it. I'd heard him say it on Netflix. But then I started wondering, well, what things got fucked up and how would they have gone if they hadn't got fucked up?

We did it on the by his own admission on the old soccer hatchy road. He seems to have done it at the murder scene by using the two weapons and all the rest of it. This is how his mind works. It seems to be a little bit of a family tradition his grandfather did similar things.

“He's great grandfather, rather. And so I thought, well, what might he have done? And of course, it's it's not very difficult to think of it. He might very well have thought that night after genie secondary had confronted him.”

You know, what if someone came and took a shot or threatened or, you know, took a shot at Paul and Maggie after all Paul had been threatened. So it would seem credible.

And if if I can call into the police and say someone is just, you know, taking a shot of my wife and son, they're okay, but you know, this is bad. There would have been a similar effect, I think, to what actually happened after the after the murder. So, you know, my theory is that that's what he was perhaps trying to do set up a staged attempted murder in exactly the way he did three months later on the old soccer hatchy road. And that something went wrong. It got fucked up. I totally see that as possible.

“The idea that he's got a propensity to stage elaborate scenes. I've never actually thought about that and I found that fascinating. I'm going to give that some more thought.”

But I just keep going back to how brutal and horrifying these murders are, I mean, you try to shot gun killings, right? The amount of just physical damage that's inflicted by shot guns on the victims is extreme. And so I just I have to understand more about how if if that theory is correct. How you would get from staging like a near miss to to actually what happened.

James, I want to give you about the, oh, sorry, finish.

Well, Mr. answer your question. I mean, Alex motor was in touch with some very sketchy people.

“People on the day of the murders he was in touch with people with with records from drugs and robbery. We don't know why. The police emitted those texts from the from the condensed timeline that they gave juror.”

But we can see them on the complete timeline that's led made public. He was with he was also in touch with people from the Cowboys gang, which is a very violent gang in Walterborough that seems to have been supplying him with some of his opioid pills. My hypothesis I suppose is that he gets some people who are willing to do this kind of thing and take their kinds of risks involved. Perhaps he was offering to pay them. Perhaps he had some hold over them. He had a whole level of kinds of people. They came all the harm. Paul Murdock is not someone you would easily count on being able to take a shot out without getting yourself into trouble. I mean, this was a very tough young man 22 year old being threatened.

Sell them out of reach of a loaded weapon. It's not hard to imagine something going wrong and whoever comes along, whoever came along to do this fake murder or whatever murder attempt or whatever it was.

Deciding that I didn't want to leave any witnesses. Now, you know, as I say, I'm 95% convinced that Alex did it did it alone and did it for the reasons and in the manner that the prosecution laid out.

The five percent of me that doubts goes to that other scenario and I've yet to I've run this by you know, lawyers connected to the case who are very much convinced of Alex guilt. And no one has yet been able to point out any serious kind of flaws of it. That's interesting. So I want to ask you about the the ultimate thing that got the jury verdict overturned Becky Hill, the county court clerk. So as we know, she improperly influenced the jury. She was accused of making comments biased comments against him and apparently there are some rumors that she got a juror removed who was leaning to the side of the defense based on a Facebook post.

I mean, it's hard to, yeah, it's hard to imagine that she was so driven. I think she, I mean, I think it's clear that she was part she did want a guilty verdict to sell books she spoke openly about that she wanted to buy a house on the lake and all the rest of it.

I think she was also in her own mind.

She was playing a role in some kind of biblical battle of good and versus evil. I mean, there's a lot of religious stuff that's around this story. She was sort of praying with the jurors. So everyone surprised me if she thought she was doing the right thing, you know, spiritually morally whatever.

“But I also think that you have to ask the question, you know, why was she, and to me, this is the more interesting question is it, okay, she won't for whatever reason she wanted a guilty verdict. Why was she not confident of getting one.”

And so on confident that she felt the need to sort of tip the scales and she, I think it's very clear that she was responsible for the removal of the one hold out that known hold out on the juror. I mean, there is so many foreign affidavits now that point to this. I find it, you know, completely convincing that she targeted this so-called egg juror, Mara Crosby.

And first of all, try to sort of get a thrown off for some Facebook postings that claims she'd been gossiping about the trial.

These postings seem to be completely fabricated. When that didn't work suddenly, there's an anonymous email to the court saying that Becky had talked to a couple of her rental tenants. That that that that that that Mara Crosby had talked to one of her that the juror had talked to one of her to two of her rental tenants. And all this is happening in the last hours of the trial, the last couple of days.

“And I think there was a there was a real worry on the prosecution side that the case was not going to go the way they wanted it to.”

It only takes one juror to hang a jury.

Becky had repeatedly asked Mara Crosby whether she was whether she'd made up her mind.

The judge himself asked her the day before the end of the trial, whether she had made up her mind. I think he was only doing that to make sure that I mean, I think you're not supposed to make up your mind until you deliberate. So I don't think there's anything to walk necessarily in the judge asking, but Becky Hills should not have been asking. But anyway, they have been here on the scales of justice. Yeah.

Well James London we have to leave it there.

“I think we can all agree that that Becky Hill did a extreme disservice to the idea of fairness in the court system.”

Before let you go, tell folks what your website is and remind us of the name of your book and where we can find it. My, I have a website, James last in dot com. My book is called the Family Man. And I think we all can agree on that. Thank you so much for being with us here on the program and up next folks, we have our closing arguments. Pick it up.

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Once again, that's veracity. V-E-R-A-C-I-T-Y health.co for up to 65% off and make sure you use our promo code MK. So they know we sent you. Welcome back to the MK True Crime Show. Now it's time for our closing arguments.

Phil, take it away.

Well, thanks, Ashley, I appreciate it very much. You know, we spent a lot of time here today on the program.

Talking about the exclusionary rule and how it applies to keep evidence out of a trial in a way from the side of a jury, right, when they're trying to decide somebody's fate.

“So I want to talk about, well, what is this exclusionary rule?”

And why it's a good thing to have actually in our system of justice. The exclusionary rule is a rule that bars the use of evidence that is obtained somehow illegally, typically in an unconstitutional means in a criminal proceeding.

So this rule is grounded in important public policies.

We call this a prophylactic rule when it's out there and it exists so that cops can know it and sort of understand it. But it actually is kind of convoluted in practice. But these things are supposed to protect our system of justice. So I think after all we can agree that evidence seized by law enforcement that's not reasonably seized and not, if it's an unreasonable search and seizure, we all can agree that that would violate the fourth amendment.

So these things are presumed to be unconstitutional and therefore not admissible and court. Now this is a, it's a rebuttable presumption. Okay, so if there is a recognized exception to the requirement of a search warrant, then the evidence would therefore become admissible notwithstanding the absence of a search warrant. The primary basis for the exclusionary rule though is to deter police misconduct.

“So when I say it's a prophylactic rule, that's what I'm talking about because excluding illegally gathered evidence.”

In theory, discourages discourages law enforcement from violating the fourth amendment or the state search and seizure laws, whatever the case may be. So knowing that this evidence would be suppressed or excluded from the trial. The idea is that this would motivate law enforcement to respect the constitutional and legal bounds rather than to cut corners simply to obtain and secure convictions. So this promotes accountability and it prevents the rewarding of unauthorized unconstitutional or illegal behavior.

So another basis though is that of judicial integrity. So the idea here is that courts must not admit evidence that is the product of any kind of government wrongdoing. And I use that word kind of loosely, I'm not saying that all evidence that might run a foul of search and seizure laws is necessarily wrongdoing. Because as we've seen in the case today in New York, we had law enforcement that was trying to keep themselves in the public safe. But at the same time the judge said it violates the admissibility rules and therefore should be suppressed.

So anyway to allow this evidence though to be used generally would would make the judiciary sort of complicit in compounding constitutional or legal violations. And to do otherwise of course would erode public confidence in the fairness of trials and would undermine the courts role as guardians of the laws and guardians of the Constitution. Not only of the United States, but of the various states in the United States. This rule also protects individual rights by providing a remedy for violations and ensuring the government does not profit if you will from its own illegal or unconstitutional acts.

And it upholds the principle that no one is above the law. So in short, the exclusionary rule is indispensable for balancing effective law enforcement with the preservation of liberty and the rule of law in our criminal justice system. Actually that's it. That's my rant. That's my closing.

“Thank you so much Phil. That was awesome because we were talking about that today and it's really important.”

And I'm actually going to talk about an issue that was something that we were talking about today and it was whether or not the death penalty can be imposed a second, you know, the second retrial essentially for Alex Murdoch. And you know, one of the reasons that this was prompted was I would know there were some back and forth the prosecutors saying that they can that they can seek this on retrial and you know, I tend to agree with you that they can't. But I did a little bit of research on it and there's no definitive law and except for the one that you mentioned earlier in our show.

So the case you talked about earlier, Phil, it's a 1969 case North Carolina versus Pierce and essentially it says that for due process the law requires vindictiveness against a defendant winning an appeal to get around that vindictiveness. The defendant has to be free from retaliatory motivation on the part of the sentencing court. What does that mean? That's a lot of gobbling look. That means that if you win on appeal, you can't get a higher sentence just because you won on appeal. And that's kind of what it sounds like here. So the reason for this imposition of a higher sentence after retrial, like the death penalty, if it's going to be a more severe sentence, it has to be based on some kind of conduct and has to be affirmatively identifiable.

After the appeal. So you asked that question earlier, Phil, and you're right. I don't believe that they can seek the death penalty on appeal, but I do think that they are going to have to litigate this issue if they want to try. So I think that if they really want to try to seek the death penalty, they're going to spend years trying to litigate this issue because we really just don't have any appellate opinions on this specific instance.

“But what I think is actually more important is why would they want to seek the death penalty at this point in time. And tying into what, you know, our guests talked about a lot today. There's this concept of residual doubt.”

But before I talk about it, I think it's important to explain to all of our listeners that a death penalty case is not what a lot of people realize until they're actually sitting there watching it.

We've got a little bit with the Tanner Horner trial, but we only saw the end of it. So when someone seeks the death penalty, it doesn't just change the possible sentence that can come out of it. It actually changes the entire framework of a trial. It changes everything. One of the most significant things that it changes is how a jury is selected.

“The jury is different in a death penalty case. And I think that is the single most important factor when you're considering whether or not the state of South Carolina is going to seek the death penalty.”

In this case, the questions are different. They you ask the jurors, the weight in the room feels different. And in this case, where the prosecution is saying that they originally chose not to seek the death penalty. But now all of a sudden, they're going to seek the death penalty. I think they're going to have a really hard time actually getting a death verdict if they're even allowed to because it's the same evidence. Nothing has changed and the jury's going to know that. So any good defense lawyer is going to harp on the fact that nothing has changed.

It is just a different ask. And why are we making this different ask? Because we're sour grapes that the first trial was unconstitutionally biased and influenced by this county clerk.

“But what I want to talk about with the jury is death qualifying. That's what it's called death qualifying a jury means that you remove people from the entire jury selection process who could not vote to execute sound.”

So that's important. Think about that again. People who are not for the death penalty. I'm not for the death penalty generally. I would probably be removed before I even get there. So it sounds reasonable, but what you really do when you filter out all of those folks is you get a pro prosecution jury. I mean, it makes sense. You get a pro prosecution jury. They're going to be pro prosecution on guilt and they're going to be pro prosecution on punishment. But what I think they're underestimating in this case is the fact that there was residual doubt. We heard it from our guests today. We heard it from jurors. I think there was a lot of residual doubt.

It's not usually the worst of the worst. It's usually the slam dunkest of the slam dunks. It is proven that most jurors who vote against the death penalty do so because of what's called residual doubt.

And this case is got residual doubt printed all over it. So if you have a death qualified jury, they're going to expect an airtight case and they're not going to expect residual doubt.

I really can't help but think it's going to backfire on the state of South Carolina if they do seek the death penalty. But I want to thank Phil, my co-host and I also want to thank our guest today, James Lassen, talking about the Murdoch trial, which I'm sure we'll be talking about a lot more in the future. And thank you all for joining us. We hope you have a great rest of your week.