Alex Murdaugh Crimes, Jodi Arias Trial, "Bad Vegan" Deep Dive - Megyn's "True Crime" Mega-Episode

Hey everyone, it's me Megan Kelly and welcome to today's true crime mega episode. We are diving into three wild stories.

“The shocking criminal history of Alec Murdoch?”

Unbelievable case. The Saudi area's trial over the murder of her boyfriend Travis Alexander and did you watch Bad Vegan on Netflix? We talked to the woman at the center of that entire bizarre drama. Love the true crime shows.

Enjoy and we'll see you Monday.

Today we are diving deep into the case of Alec Murdoch and there are updates in this incredible case.

This story begins much earlier than the crimes that made national headlines over the past few years. And no one has covered the story quite like the Wall Street Journal's Valerie Borline, who wrote the book The Devil at his elbow. We get into everything from Murdoch's family history to the details of his downfall and the new info. Valerie, welcome.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Okay, so this is also fascinating and one of the most eye opening things I read was about Alec Murdoch's background. His, his, it comes from a long line of deeply ethically problematic people, which I did not know.

I all you ever heard about him was that he came from this very storied family. They were life-long solicitors or like the prosecutors in their town in South Carolina. Very well respected.

They controlled everything.

It was far more nefarious than that. Can you take us back? Oh, it absolutely was.

“I mean, I think one of the biggest surprises I had researching this book was that every crime that”

Alec was eventually convicted of had some echo in the past. And that includes like violence gets women or overtures of violence gets women. That includes insurance fraud like by the side of the road. There was an active insurance fraud that started the family dynasty. Stealing from clients drug trafficking.

There were, there were echoes in the past for every single crime. We're talking about even a boat wreck that caused really a traumatic injury. So that was, that surprised me too. It wasn't, it wasn't just Alec. It was the history going back to 1920 of this family.

Yes, I mean, it really does show you. You know, if you have a family, a father, a grandfather who are committing crimes and teaching you, either explicitly or implicitly, that that's okay. Your odds of becoming a criminal are obviously much higher. But hello, women of the world pay attention to your, your spouse, the, the, the,

The guys you're dating, it can work the other way around too.

“And what they come from, who they come from.”

So this, his great grandfather Randolph Murdoch senior.

Basically committed suicide and insurance fraud at the same time.

That's right. And I was in Hampton just last week. I actually was standing at the train tracks, just south of Alameda where, Alex, the homeplace that, like, went the night of the homicides. His great grandfather Randolph senior was a very prominent man.

I mean, every meal he ate was front page news. Like, where was he now? He was the district attorney for four counties in the low country of South Carolina. He was, he was very sick. He was 53 years old.

He was, um, he was dying. He was at the end of his life. He had kidney failure at a time when they're just, you didn't, there was no cure. Right? There was no dialysis.

He was broke. He had been a big investor in a bank and then the bank failed. And through the depression, he was just, I found documents down at the courthouse in Hampton. Where he just would say, there's no chance I can ever pay these people back. So he was broke.

He was dying. And he knew how to do one thing incredibly well, which was, sue the railroad, which at that time in 1940 was one of the only entities worth suing. So what happened was he was driving back from a poker game and Yamasi, a little town right on the Hampton County line.

At one in the morning, hottest day of the summer, 90 some degrees. He holes, he stopped short of his home and turns on to a deserted train tracks. And right, and is at the base of it. And as the train is coming, and if, y'all, if you grew up in a small town near a railroad, you know what time the train comes through.

The train is coming north and you can hear it for miles. It's coming north, it's bearing down on this train tracks. He speeds up onto the tracks themselves. And they're blowing the whistle. They're flashing the light.

It's a clear movement night. And they see, he sees them. And instead of like driving off, he waves at them. And what happens is there's a corner's jury and the corner, of course, was a protege of Randolph Senior.

There was an inquest the next morning. And guess what?

“The local corner's jury found that in spite of the testimony of the engineer and others,”

it was an accident. And it cleared the way for Randolph Murdock Jr. Alex grandfather to sue the railroad for the equivalent of millions of dollars. Which is what he did successfully. Is Randolph Murdock Jr.

Buster? Randolph Murdock Jr. is old Buster. And old Buster was a real force to be reckoned with. He was solicitor from 1940 when he was 25 years old to 1986. So Roosevelt to Reagan.

And he even stayed in that office beyond that time.

The legislature finally essentially forced him.

They created a rule that essentially forced him to retire. But he kept going into the office as a volunteer solicitor. So he was a Randolph Murdock Jr. Old Buster, Elit Murdock idolized him. He told many people that he wished he'd been born in Old Buster's day.

Because in those days what you said was what the truth was. And Old Buster was he ruled with an iron fist. He was one of those guys that would rather be feared than locked. And he also continued fraud and potential violence against women. So Old Buster, I was able to pull 900 pages from the National Archives of the records

from his trial. His federal trial, the feds charged him with bootlegging. Actually running the largest bootlegging ring in the south. He was the ring later. They charged 2,000 people.

Old Buster, Elit's grandfather, was charged with leading this entire ring in college and county. And he was a accused of taking a cash bribe in the hallway of the Colton County Court House, which is the hallway that we went in and out every day of Elix Murdock trial.

He was accused of intimidating witnesses, buying off witnesses, and eventually of tampering with the jury by buying off the foreman. And he was one of the only people in that entire week's long federal trial that was acquitted. So there was a history of, you know, Elit Murdock was convicted of drug trafficking.

His grandfather was credibly accused and narrowly escaped being convicted of bootlegging. So again, it could have happened. Tell us about the mistress who got on the wrong side of Elit Murdock's grandfather.

“So there was testimony in Elix, that Elix trial, as you remember,”

there was testimony that Elix was somewhat of a flanderer. And that certainly is a history in the family going back generations. His grandfather, Old Buster, had a mistress, several, but one in particular, who he was in touch with for many, many years. And her name was Ruth Fox.

And Ruth Fox was married to a local, like a Northern Baron, who came down about a plantation. And she was from one of the nation's first families, or really impressive woman in her own right. And she was had been in the Navy during World War II,

like training pilots, which is kind of wild to think about what kind of woman was doing that in the 40s. And she met Buster and asked for his help in getting out of her obligations. He's like, "I know everybody, I'll know all of you as senators. I'll help you get out of this bind." They got to know each other.

And what you know, a year later, she is pregnant with his child.

She goes to, it's just such an incredible story.

She goes to the house. And we're talking about the same house that Elik went to the night of the homicides in Brazil. She goes to the house, not just in the door. Speaks to Elik's grandmother and says, "You have a son. I have a son, these boys should need."

And the grandmother says, "Don't let my name come out of your mouth. They ever again go away." And it was a stunning thing because she had survived, essentially, when she had told, "Oh, Buster, that she was pregnant." He had tried to have her killed.

He had a fixer. The story goes. He had a fixer of what if many who laid, laid and weight, underneath her porch one night and got a little bit too drunk and fell asleep and didn't kill her.

So there was just like this incredible incredible echoes throughout the story.

Isn't it amazing? Yes, it is amazing.

“I mean, I cannot, you must have been just slack jawed when you read up about the direct line from which he came.”

And it makes sense of everything. So it didn't stop there. It didn't even skip a generation. Alex Father also had a history of paying people off to cover up a boat accident, which, of course, would set off Alex's own story with a different boat accident as well.

Well, there was certainly a terrible boat accident in 1998 from the same island, like Murdoch Island where you'll remember the tragic boat wreck that killed Mallory Beach.

which is called Murdoch Island.

“Back in 1998, Alex younger brother was having a party on Murdoch Island.”

There was a boat there and it's incredible.

I couldn't believe it when I saw the documents. It had been seized in a drug raid by the solicitor's office, so by Old Buster. And he liked the boat. So he kept it for his own use at the island.

Sure. And everyone, the family used it. So it's late at night. There's some guests there that wanted to take the boat home, rather than the roads because they didn't want to get in trouble.

They've been drinking for many hours. And these young men set off on a boat ride home. And it's tricky. We know from what happened with the wreck that killed Mallory Beach.

It's a very shallow waters in places.

They hit a shell and stopped and then immediately started that up. And didn't realize that one of the guests had fallen overboard, and it got run over by the motor and sustained a traumatic brain injury. And you know, I've got hundreds of pages of documents from the state that show the Murdoch's were involved in trying to make that wreck go away.

Even some of the same DNR, the natural resources officers. Even some of the same officers who were involved in the Mallory Beach wreck were. And they were working that night as well. So the echoes in the past are just, just, sometimes I couldn't believe it.

I really was God's Mac many times in a row. Yes, same. I'm having the same reaction just sitting here. So then, of course, we get to Alec. And this whole thing that we watched this double murder trial,

in which he was found guilty of killing his wife and his own son, was set off by that boating accident.

The second one, not the one you discussed where the woman was run over.

But more recently, with the younger generation while Alec was out on a boat, was drinking, and they had an accident. And Mallory Beach was thrown from the boat and wasn't found for some time later, and she was dead. And that old Murdoch instinct to cover it up,

run cover for those involved, or especially for Alec. Kicked in and would set off a chain of events that would ultimately destroy the Murdoch family. And it's so important to look at pictures of Mallory. She was 19 years old when she died.

She was just full of life. I've gotten to know her family over the course of reporting this story. And it was, it was Alec's boat, but it was his son, Paul Murdoch, who was 19 at the time, who was driving.

“I mean, I think the fact is established that he was driving.”

He was criminally charged with it. And so he is incredibly drunk. He drank a lot. I talked with people that knew the family. He had been sneaking beer since he was eight years old.

And a certain point, not even sneaking them. So he was very, very drunk. He had 19 drinks that night. His BAC when he got to the hospital was 0.286. But he was a person, even at 19, who had been drinking for a number of years.

And had been driving drunk for a number of years, according to people. I talked to her involved in wrecks with him before. But so he gets angry at his girlfriend, who is one of the, one of the passengers on the boat. Conference her, she says, "You're too drunk to drive. Give everybody the keys.

Slaps her. Spits in her face. Goes back to the wheel of the boat and floors it. The equivalent of 28 miles an hour. And they're going through a very narrow, very shallow path and a hit a bridge.

That fast and Mallory is thrown overboard. I never resurfaces. And what, all the evidence, I've got thousands of pages of documents. Some of them, public, many of them, not, not many of them. That had not been reviewed before.

That just showed that there was, when Ellic got to the hospital that night, where these young people had been on the boat was. He went room to room to room to room, trying to get everyone on the same page. He had his grandfather, old busters badge outside of his pocket. Pretending to be a law enforcement officer.

And I have his cell phone records and have tracked his path that night.

“Do you remember when he testified that he put blue rights, blue lights, and siren on the suburb in the new driving?”

Yes. It was almost physically impossible for him to get from Mozilla, where he and Maggie were living at the time. He went to the hospital unless he was going fabulously fast. 80 or 90 miles an hour.

And I think it stands to reason and I argue this in the boat that he almost certainly used lights to get to the hospital before the other families and get everyone on the same page. But it really was his, his undoing. The reason that he said he wanted to live an old busters time is that, you know, there was so much evidence in the video cameras in the hospital that night. So many statements.

And in the end, that night in his actions, the night of the boat wreck,

“really with the beginning of the end of the family.”

For a long other reasons, he was then sued by the beach family. And that, in the course of that lawsuit, he would have to produce discovery, speaking to his economic status, his financial data, and so on. And he was, we know separately now running a massive fraud stealing from his law firm. Had a massive drug problem or so he testified and was very worried.

This is all going to come out. He would be exposed. And at the same time, his law firm was this coincidental. Was this coincidental Valerie that like the law firm started an investigation of Alec at the same time for possible ethical breaches or were those two things related.

The lawsuit and the law firm getting interested in him. Well, it's all kind of woven together. And what happened in the immediate aftermath of the boat wreck is that Mallory's family was having a tough time finding a lawyer to represent their interest. And Renee Beach Mallory's mom tells the story of being down at the landing

where the boat had come to rest. And wanting to go down there and see where her daughter was, where she was the last time she was spotted. And the police were very, very kind, but said, I'm sorry you can't go down there. Here's the case of water for you and your family.

Why you wait? And there was a moment where Randolph murdered the third LX dad. And Maggie, his wife came down in their pickup truck. And he waves at the officer and waves him through. And Renee Beach realized then, oh my gosh, this is not a vigil.

I thought I was at a vigil morning my daughter. This is a crime scene. And the family that's been the law in this area for a hundred years is in charge of it. I need a lawyer.

And she made a critical decision, which was to hire a lawyer to represent the family's interest.

And that lawyer was a key player. And a big character in this book, and it seems marked tinsley. And there's no enemy like your former friend. He was very close to LX, he knew the playbook. He had a card key to get in and out of the Murdoch law firm at Will.

And he recognized those relationships. He's like, oh, I know he knows these particular officers because of my own personal information. And once he decided to take the case, take the beaches case. He was relentless in showing that that LX and potentially the officers who were involved in protecting the scene were really, really protecting Paul from charges. And so he filed a lawsuit in very short order. And that lawsuit sought, like you said, all of LX financial records.

“It's just a standard part of a civil lawsuit to say, how much insurance do you have?”

What do what resources could you potentially pay if there was a judgment? And an LX knew more than anyone else that he had been robbing his personal injury clients. The poorest of the poor for more than a decade. And he knew what any serious inquiry would do. And so he had to stay that off.

And in the end, it was his undoing. So he killed his own wife and his son Paul who had been at the helm for that voting accident. And it was an attempt to garner sympathy, like to make him a sympathetic character so that his law firm would. Moeway would stop investigating him. And so that the lawsuit involving Paul would be less strong because, you know, the main culprit would be gone. And who would put this poor man now through the torture of seeing a civil lawsuit through.

It was an effort to just change his own financial and reputational fortunes.

“Now, I think the prosecution argued that very effectively. And one of the things that I think that Martin Tinsley said on the stand is, you know, personal injury lawyers don't think like other people.”

They, their, their gift, their understanding of a successful one is, is understanding emotion. Like what motive, what might motivate a jury to, to pay blood money and a lot of it in a case. They understand what makes people tick. And he knew that, you know, the day of the homicide students 7th of 2021 and I'm sure we'll talk about this. He had been confronted over some of that missing money that he had been stealing 792 thousand dollars, not a small amount. He knew that the law firm was on to him.

And he, he knew also that his father was dying, the, the patriarch of this family who had also loaned him a million dollars over time.

And who he had just been texting with his, his buddy at the bank, oh, I'm going to get another loan from my dad for some money he was short. And he was dad was dying. He knew this, this, this lawsuit was pending about his financials he had been confronted over the missing money.

I mean, sadly, and he rest in peace.

Paul's actions, drug and actions did not cease with a boat wreck. There was, there's testimony and, and that even just 10 days before he was killed, he was on a boat drinking, taking some people out. And, and he had to call his father to get out of it. So Paul's behavior was, and was not de-escalating, if anything, his, his behavior is getting worse.

“So, yes, I think that's, the state made a really effective argument that he needed to do something to become instead of the object of suspicion.”

An object of sympathy. And what more would do that, except becoming instead of, instead of somebody, a fee, a potential thief, a grieving father, a grieving husband. Someone who was the victim of a horrible crime. And, and for months, he was right. It completely changed the subject. And he had prior to getting arrested.

Uh, done what I guess it was his great grandfather did, which was attempt to create a suicide situation that would lead to an insurance payout.

I mean, now it's like kind of all connecting.

It's all connecting, and it really is extraordinary. So, so over the course of the summer of 2021, he did almost get away with the murder of Maggie and Paul. He really did, and he almost got away with the thefts that he's now admitted to dozens and dozens of people, millions and millions of dollars. By, you know, getting, borrowing more money, borrowing money from his best friend, Chris Wilson, borrowing money from, from the, getting, getting front of money and trying to repay the $792,000 back back to the law firm.

Which he did, and they stopped, they kind of let, let it go. Um, and that goes in July and in August, until the, the Thursday before Labor Day weekend, his parent legal is in his office looking for some paperwork, which she knows he doesn't like, but she really needed it. She lifts up this folder, finds the check that was missing, that prove that he had been stealing.

So, what happens then is the gig is up. Um, Alex confronted by his brother, his law partner, and many other law partners,

“and they say, you've been stealing, we've got evidence, you've been stealing from the firm, you have to go.”

So, he gets fired that Friday of Labor Day weekend, and what happens next morning? Saturday morning he tries to fake his own death on the side of the road, and what he said was an insurance fraud attempt to get money for his surviving son, buster, but what really looks like another way to change the subject, just like he had done back June 7th with the homicides of his wife and son.

It really is stranger than stranger than fiction. Do we think he did not intend to die then when that guy who was next to homeless? I mean, that guy seemed, you know, not like a sophisticated character. When he got him to quote, "shoot him," but it just grazed his head.

That was always so confusing to me, you know, like, was this some sort of a sharp shooter?

How did the guy manage to actually barely connect with him to the point where it looked like he actually had been shot at, but not so much that he actually killed him? Yeah. No, there are many theories about what happened actually at the side of the road, but the man you're talking about, Curtis Eddie Smith will tell you,

and he said it, he was like, "If I'd shot him, he'd have been dead." So that what he believes happened is there was a struggle, there was a struggle over the gun, and he has said he thinks that Ella was trying to frame him, that they were struggling over the gun and maybe Ella was going to, you know, like, was going to, you know, Ella was bigger, like, six-bore, 200 pounds.

“Can he overpower this, this, in Curtis Eddie Smith?”

This is, because an Eddie is a smaller guy. He's been out on disability for a number of years. Ella was a disability lawyer, and then frame him. And you remember when Dick Arpulian and Jim Griffin, Alex Lawyers, they said in court filings are like, you know, the real killer is Eddie Smith.

He was the one who killed Maggie and Paul, and so one of the theories, is that Ella may have been trying to kill Eddie, and then say, "See, he was coming after me to kill me the same way that he killed my wife and son." And it's strange. I don't know if you remember, but he was paying Eddie was caching a lot of checks

for Ella over a number of years, and the checks accelerated that summer. That hundreds of thousands of dollars that Ella was effectively paying Eddie in a way. So was he going to say he was blackmailing me, look at these payments. There are multiple ways to look at what actually happened there. But one of them is that if you look at the photos and the defense release,

the photos, they signed a hyper release and released all the photos, there are people locally that say, "That's not a cut in his head. He fell, and that's the gravel on the side of the road that's caused him to be cut." But one thing I should have done is that he's actually a cousin. I could not believe it,

Ella's great-great-grandfather, so Randolph Senior's father,

“was an officer in the Southern Army, and so was Eddie's great-great-grandfather.”

And they were brothers. All-great-great-grandfather was named Lazarus Murdoch. He was, he was what they call a fire reader. So he was an especially virulent anti-union.

He made these incredible speeches that got picked up by National Media,

and actually were read by Abraham Lincoln. So Eddie says he's like, "I'm half Murdoch, and he's right." He's welcome. Wow. Do we know?

Sorry. I'm going to figure out, by the way, just for the audience, I'm talking today to Valerie Boraline. She wrote the book The Devil at his elbow, Alex Murdoch, and the ball of a Southern dynasty. Do we know where all the money went? This is one of the mysteries, right?

It just seemed like Alex was taking in so much money via fraud from the law firm, the clients, and so on. Yeah. And where'd he go? Like, it seemed like he claimed he just spent it on drugs,

but the conclusion by many was always how many drugs could he possibly have taken?

He took in more than he could ever have spent. Was the layperson conclusion on the funding?

“No, and I think one of the key voices in the book is Blanca Simpson,”

who was the housekeeper at Mozilla for many years. And I think the evidence establishes that Alex was using drugs. But I think there's no evidence that he was using the amount of drugs, and opioids, in particular, that he says he was. And I had the benefit of ten years of spending.

I could see his through some federal exhibits. I could see what he and Maggie spent over the course of ten years down to like, when they would go to the Honeybick ham store at Thanksgiving. You could see what that expenditure was. And what it was so shocking about it,

and I think we probably know people like this in our own lives. As soon as money came in the door, it went out. He was over-drawn, tens of thousands of dollars, multiple times in a year. Maggie would have to call him and say, "Can you call the bank? I need to be able to catch this chain to be able to pay for my groceries."

What was this business? You know, it's extraordinary. It was, you know, they would take a private plane to a USC bowl game when instead of flying first class or, you know, they block a told me. And there's a farm equipment out on Mozilla, which is 1,700 acres.

A huge, huge property twice the size and central park. And rather than fix, you know, a big piece of heavy equipment, they would just put gallons of oil in it every day. So he was spending hundreds of dollars on oil. It's just, it's hard to even understand where the money was going.

But there is missing money, you know, millions of dollars, the feds say, that's still missing. So he spent a lot of it, he spent some of it on drugs.

“I think there is, I do subscribe to the idea that he buried some of it.”

At Mozilla and PVC pipes, I've talked with people who've been there. Wow. When those pipes had been dug up, but that you can't, I mean, cash is tough. It's tough to bury, you know, millions of dollars in, in dirt over time. There is a theory, and I think the feds have been pursuing it,

that some of the money is offshore. And what's he going to run that summer is, is one of the ideas,

but there's, there's, there's the feds say about six million dollars

that's still missing. So that, that makes more sense that, that we've got millions missing, then that he spent it all on the drugs. All right, so then we go to trial. He, he does wind up arrested.

This all comes out. There is the moment he has found guilty. Actually, we have that. Let's just watch that. It's not 51.

The state of South Carolina County of Colton, in the court of general sessions, the July term of 2022, the state versus Richard Alexander Murdoch defendant, indictment from murder,

S.E. Code 16-3-0010, CDR Code 01-16, verdict guilty, signed by the four lady. Okay, and that's interesting for a few reasons. One, he was found guilty. Two, old Becky Hill, reading the verdict,

would come to play a major role in this story, which no one knew at the time, but Becky almost got this verdict thrown out. Because of her behavior behind the scenes with the jurors. And could it still,

her behavior get this verdict thrown out? Is that totally settled? I know that we had a hearing in which a different judge said, no, I'm not throwing out the verdict, but could that be reversed on appeal?

I imagine Alex lawyers are taking that out.

I was sitting there that night and I was leaning forward

“on the edge of my seat, just listening to it,”

because I remember that emotion, and all of the docket numbers and numbers were like, but what's the answer? Sorry, it's been up. But we had been in that courtroom.

It's very tight corners. It's the soaring ceiling. It was built and it was designed in the 1820s. But very tight corners. And we had been in there every day for six weeks.

And by we, I mean, the lawyers, the law enforcement officers, the jury, the Murdox. They were across the aisle from me. I could, you know, exchange pleasantries every day. And so it was an extraordinary result to be there that night

and listen to the verdict read by Becky. And Becky was really like the den mother of the courtroom. Because the clerk of court makes sure the jury has lunch. Make sure that the press has the credentials or, you know, do they, there's so many people

“in downtown Walterboro didn't have places to eat.”

What about food trucks, which they ultimately bought in. She was sort of the, the principle of an elementary school. What it felt like a little bit. So it's surreal for Becky to be the center of so much scrutiny. But what that scrutiny is about is her relationships

and potential talking out of school with members of the jury. Many of whom she knew beforehand. And many of the jurors knew each other. It's a small tale.

I always, you know, I'm from, I'm from a relatively small tale myself

and the South. And, you know, if you had a hundred people in church the day before jury selection, you know, five of them would have gotten a jury summons. So, you know, people knew each other.

And the jury wasn't sequestered everybody in town knew who they were. And Becky, you know, knew a lot of them personally. And so the question was, did she talk to them out of school and did she say things that would prejudice prejudice against L.A. particularly when he took the stand?

And your jurors come forward to say yes. To say one of them said she influenced my verdict. And it is, it is a small town. And we talked a little bit about the bootleg in case involving Old Buster. You know, it's extraordinary, but Becky's grandmother and grandfather

and her uncle, who was a teenager, were charged. Federally charged with felonies in that bootleg ring.

They were on Buster's payroll.

And she is convicted. Everybody's connected there. But to your question, Megan,

“I think that we did have a first answer.”

There was a hearing back in January where the former Chief Justice of this Supreme Court Jean told was asked by her former colleagues on Supreme Court to take a listen to this request for a new trial. She denied it. But the defense is appealing it back to the Supreme Court.

They've agreed to hear it, even though it seems unlikely. They will overturn their own special, the person that they trusted with this decision. And then also they're very close allies with Judge Newman, who presided over the initial proceeding.

He's very tight with the Chief Justice Don Bady. So I spoke with Dick. I saw him recently in Columbia, Dick Harputley, and they see their best chance at a new trial at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. Just a little bit further removed from South Carolina,

which is such a small state. And getting fresh years at this idea of not just did Becky Hill say things to the jurors that were prejudicial, but also did the state apply the wrong standard. It was a degree, it's a measure of degrees.

Yes, we acknowledged that she talked with the jury, but did it move the needle. And so what they hope is that the federal court will apply a different standard. Yeah, that they were going to argue they were held

to too high a burden of proof to put a jury tampering. And that a lower standard should have been applied, which would have allowed them to prove jury tampering, which would allow him to get a new trial. The Justice toll was great when she came in

and held that hearing over Becky Hill. The allegations against Becky Hill just got longer. And Justice toll, I will say was, I'm sorry. She's just such an extraordinary figure in South Carolina history. I used to cover South Carolina politics when I was a reporter

at the state newspaper in Columbia, and she was the Chief Justice at the time. Former Speaker of the House. She's been in public life there for 60 years. And it was a young lawyer, and this is so extraordinary to me,

it was a young lawyer in a time when women weren't even allowed to serve in a jury until 1960. And so she was... Yes, she's talking about jury. When she was up there, I say this lovingly,

she seemed like a tough old broad in the best sense. You know, she wasn't going to tell her about this. She knew the Murdoch. She knew the Murdoch. And she had actually both in the legislature.

I talked with her about this. Both in the legislature and on the bench had pushed for laws that would kind of all back some of the power that they were using inappropriately in her view.

She made the comment about Becky Hill,

that would become very well known. Here it is, at 52. I find that the clerk of court is not completely credible as a witness. Ms. Hill was attracted by the siren call of celebrity.

She wanted to write a book about the trial and express that as early as November 2022, along before the trial began. And that led the bad behavior by Becky Hill, which got this whole thing, you know, mocked up.

But do you remember, can you, I'm just, it's been a while since we've covered this. But she also has a son who worked in the courthouse. And there was an allegation about him wiping his phone and wiping her phone on the day that they were supposed to turn them over for an internal ethics investigation.

It's meld to high heaven.

“You know, it is, I think it's, if you're not from a small town”

in the rural south, maybe it just, it boggles the mind. But her son was the information technology director for the county. And that was, you know, she's an elected official.

She is, she is, but she's also, you know, politically powerful.

And some of those jobs are patronage shops. And he was, he was in that role. And is, you know, accused of tapping the phone of an a minute county administrator that was communicating with the state. Ethics Board to try to find out what was going on in the investigation with his mother.

There were all sorts of wiping the phone, which, you know, his, the lawyers will tell you as a fairly standard move in some defense cases. But highly, highly irregular to a layperson. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because it's such a big case. It captivated so much attention that the sinner ring of the circus

is really elegant and the trial. But we're, there's so many outer rings with the, with the Mallory Beach case, for example, there's another case that's ongoing about whether the convenience store or Paul bought beer, whether the owner of that convenience store has been trying to harass the beach family over the years.

That's been going on for several years. Becky is, is facing an investigation into her behavior. And that's been going on. So we're in multiple layers of drama with this story. And it's just incredible.

Like the layers.

“I remember sitting in court and watching Ellic at during a break.”

He was, you know, six feet away from me. And he's the center of the, he's the eye of this hurricane. And there's so much swirling around him that one person can serve so much chaos is really amazing. So now here we are where he's appealing.

He's going to argue Becky Hill mocked up the trial to the point where he gets to the center of the trial.

We don't love the chances, but one never knows.

And in the meantime, the wrongful death lawsuit that Mallory Beach's family brought against Ellic, is that totally resolved? That was, the, the, the, the remnants of that were resolved this week with a $500,000 payment from her from the, from Ellic's insurer that have been tied up.

And that was paid to the lawyers as past the paper was filed this past Monday. So that case is pretty well wrapped up.

“Did the family, did the family get a payment to?”

The family did. It's not this past summer, but summer of 22. They, I'm sorry, summer of 23, they received a payment. Largely from Parker's convenience store, this, this convenience store where Paul bought beer on the order of $14 million.

So it was a significant civil judgment that, and, and, and, and, and, I learned a lot about personal injury law in the course of this, of reporting this book. But, you know, the, the, the, the person, this was considered, you know, what is, what was Mallory's life worth? It is blood money.

And so it was, it's, it's, it's a, it's a difficult fact of personal injury law that the more money that you get paid is a reflection of what, you know, a jury might think your, your, your, your, your, your, your loved one thought is worth. I'm sure it's a, it's a special form of sentencing for you, because every time you get into the car that money bought or the bed that money paid for, it's got to make you feel awful.

And, and they will tell you, and they will, and they will tell you, Mrs., you know, Pamela Pintney Hacking. Pintney's mother Hacking was the, the peer plegic teenager who, um, who died in a nursing home was robbed by Elit Murdoch twice. She would tell you, she would give back all of it for, for, for time with her son.

It's just, it's this, it's the, the proxy we have in our judicial system to, to, to make a family as whole as possible knowing that nothing really ever will. So what, if anything is happening with the other piece of this story, which is

There's only one other piece.

“By, by Buster Al Paul's older brother of a young gay classmate who was killed on the road,”

but there's just only speculation that it was Buster Murdoch, not actual proof, and they were going to reopen that investigation in the wake of all of this. Where does that stand? Well, you know, you, you mentioned that the missing money, there's also the question and the missing guns and the homicide, but the biggest unanswered question is what happened

to Steven Smith? He was the, he was a 19-year-old young man who has found in the middle of a road in the summer of 2015. In the, the course of the investigation, the Murdoch name came up 40 different times. People would say, one of the boys or another was involved somehow. But I should be clear, there is no evidence that Buster or Paul, there's no,

there's no proof that either one of them had anything to do with the death of this young man.

“Buster has gone so far to say, you know, to, that there's, he had nothing to do with it.”

He wasn't close to it. It wasn't there that evening, and he's even sued some of the documentary filmmakers who have, who he alleges have, have, have said that he had a role in some way. They certainly have these bread crumbs. But it is, yeah, you can go through that, you know, it's 90 some pages of a, of a police report

where the name comes up over and over again in very, in very strange ways.

So there's always been a rumor that the Murdoch's were involved somehow in his death

or in making it impossible to find out who was, who killed him. But I can tell you that the state grand jury has been still been meeting over this case and taking and trying and, is eager to figure it out. It is one, but is, it still haunts, it hasn't been county. So we, we may never know, but it won't be for lack of interviews and lack of trying

because they're actively working the case from what I understand. So in the time we have left, what's, what life like right now for Buster Murdoch, the one who the son who's entire family has, has been killed, there is now in jail and for Alec Murdoch who was living this life of excess and now is convicted of double homicide not to mention all the fraud charges that were brought against him separately, which he was also found guilty on.

No, it's very poignant. I mentioned I was in Hampton last week and went by the cemetery and I saw, it took a while but Maggie and Paul's gravestones have been put up and people leave flowers there. There's a ceramic dog that looks like Bubba, the yellow lab that belonged to the family that's there. And most pointed of all, it's, you know, on, on Maggie's headstone it says,

you know, Margaret Brandstetter Murdoch mother and on Paul's, it says Paul Terry Murdoch son. And it's, it's incredible that that is how you be defined, but the person I was with said,

“what happens to Alec? You know, where is he in this picture?”

So will he be remembered as father? Will he be remembered as the person that killed them? But he's in prison in the upstate. He has acclimated to prison life, well, according to when I'm told. And by that I mean, he has, Alec Murdoch is the type of a person who works the system. And he has, he has relationships, he does, he's a disparate lawyer, but he knows the law and he helps other inmates with their questions. He's, he's, he's using his notoriety to, to, to his benefit.

He, he was, you know, accused by, or, you know, the, the prison system of prisons found that he had been, you know, essentially, bribing other inmates to let him use their pin number to make phone calls.

He sees figuring things out on the inside, but he will never ever see the light of day.

Even if there's another trial in the homicide case, the state is effectively got an insurance policy. You remember back in November when he pled guilty to those dozens of financial crimes. And they got a sentence that will take him, keep him in prison until he's roughly 80 years old. So the regardless of whether the homicide is ever turned. As for buster, um, my understanding is, you know, he's, he's living in Bluffton, the community just, you know,

adjacent to but for with his, his fiance is a woman who was in court with him every day. His, his girlfriend from law school, who is a lawyer. He got a substantial settlement from his mother's estate, roughly $500,000. There's a payment, a document, the book where he participated in a documentary. And, and got several hundred thousand dollars from that.

So he has a small amount, not a, sorry, not a small bit. But, you know, a significant amount of money to, um, to, you know, start a life. Although it is difficult to see how he does the separate from his family because his last name is Murdoch.

Mm-hmm. You'd have to go someplace else. I mean, there's a brother, Alex brother, seemed non-associopathic.

Perhaps there's some hope there, I don't know, raised by that man with that family lineage. Well, and you're right about his brothers, his, his older brother, Randy and his younger brother, John Marvin are still in the community as well. But I was, I went by the law firm the other day and his brother is older brother Randy is a partner there and is actively working cases. His younger brother, John Marvin, one runs a heavy equipment business and as you go down the main drag from linking Hampton and Barnville, you see Murdoch rentals right there.

So they're still in the community and, and, and, um, and, you know, well, regarded to a degree.

“But I think that everything's changed with, with, um, with a downfall.”

Is anyone living at the estate? Where it happened?

So Moselle is the estate where it happened. It actually has been sold and it's been sold in two pieces.

That, the house itself was sold along with roughly 20 acres to, um, to an out-of-state buyer that was, whose name was not revealed. And the, the Delta, the other acreage was sold to an, a neighboring landowner who wanted, who wanted the land. And, you know, it is, I went by there the other day too, just to, to take a look. I had been on to the property during the trial. I had accompanied the jury on their, their visit to see the place.

It still fills, um, it still seems like a, there's a heaviness in the air out there. It is still, um, haunted place really. The departmentally and said so and, and I, you know, and I felt it as well.

Always will be. Well, great reporting Valerie. Thank you. It's, her name is Valerie Borline.

And the book, again, is the devil at his elbow, Alex Murdock, and the fall of a southern dynasty. Google it, check it out, devil at his elbow. Thank you so much for coming on and telling us the story and the updates. Thank you so much for having me. All the best.

Today, a deep dive into the Jodi area's case. This month marks 15 years since Travis Alexander was viciously murdered by his ex-girlfriend Jodi areas. We revisit the case with criminal defense attorney and long time Kelly's court contributor Mark Eiglarsh. We'll take a look back at the events leading up to Travis's murder.

“What Jodi's life is like in prison today, and Mark will dissect the defense and prosecution in a way that only Mark can.”

[Music] I'm going to kick it off with a little walk down memory lane because used to come on Kelly's court back then as now. This one doesn't involve you. This Kelly's court doesn't involve you, but it's a scene setter. Now, we're 10 years post verdict right now. Here's a little flashback to I was on the air. We got the guilty verdict and covered it with the court then, which was Mercedes call in that day in Jonas Billboard.

Look at this sweet delivery. She's so concerned about their happiness and their peace now. Listen. I hope that now that a verdict has been rendered that they're able to find peace. Some sense of peace. That's great, and the Oscar goes to, because this is a woman who stabbed him 27 times in the heart as well, then shot him and look at the bloody sink. I'm not to be sensationalist, but prosecutors say the man was standing at the sink watching himself get stabbed to death.

Watching himself get murdered and bleed out over the sink. Oh, but Mercedes, she's so concerned about the family's peace. Give me a break.

“Okay, a very pregnant Megan Kelly in that clip, but that gets to it, right?”

I mean, the thing, because I've been asked myself Mark, what is it about the Jodi area's case that kept people so riveted? And in part, it's this mousey little woman who committed one of the most heinous murders that ever came before the national eye. You left out one thing, which is obvious, and maybe you intentionally did it, but Americans like pretty packages, okay, if she wasn't pretty. And I put that in quotations. I mean, it's not how I feel, but there is some type of objective, you know, and Hollywood, what people look for.

People found that she was attractive, and if she wasn't, and she looked differently, I don't know if people would have been as interested. So let's bring that out. That's, that's got to be something that you can see, right? And the sex, I mean, it was like an R rated trial. It was like cinimax back in the day. Oh, yeah. No, there was a lot of that. Yes. And, and she really threw punches.

So, whether it be, you know, allegations of him being involved in Kitty porn, which he can't defend, or, or, or him wanting to do, which really was documented,

because you heard those horrible audio tapes of him, you know, some of the things he would do to her, which weren't meant for public viewing. It was just horrible. All right. So let's start, let's start at the beginning.

“These two meet in 2008. I think it was 2008 at a business convention.”

And 2006, sorry, to September, these two meet in September 2006 at a work conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jody Areas and Travis Alexander. And, well, then they started dating out a few months after that. As far as I can tell, Mark, they were only dating for like four months. They continued to, she wanted to sleep with each other. Yeah. It sounds like it became very physical, very quickly.

And, you know, she's the manipulative time, right? So I can't imagine this was pure love.

I think this was lost. I think this was her, you know, playing the angles, looking to manipulate him.

And she jumped all in real quick. Did we have any evidence that prior to that relationship? I think she was like 28. He was a couple years older than that. That she was some sort of a psycho, that she had, you know, problems with other partners, in turning into a stalker or any other criminal health of a history.

I don't remember hearing anything like that. I heard little stories, but, you know, everybody comes out of the woodwork on high profile cases. Nothing that I attributed as credible and believable.

“So he was a Mormon, and she wasn't until after she met him, right?”

Right. Right. She became a drive through Mormon. You know, all of a sudden, I'll convert.

I'm sure that was, you know, again, to somehow take one step further into his good graces.

So they meet, uh, yeah, here she is getting her, you know, I don't know. Is it a baptism into the Mormon face? I'm not exactly sure how we would refer to this. But they date from February of 2007 to June 2007, and then they break up with maintain a physical relationship. One year later, one year later, she appears to stage a burglary

at her grandparents' house. This would become important because it was one week before the murder, and what happened in that burglary. Yeah. Next level stuff. She's thinking, okay, they stole a gun from my grandparents. So that gun's out there in the criminal world.

So that's the gun, however, she'd like to use to potentially execute her boy. This is relevant because she would later claim, which was on trial, a bunch of different things, intruders, accident, self-defense, and if she intentionally staged a burglary at her parent, her grandparents' house all week before the murder, then it's very clearly a premeditated act. Absolutely. The best she's got is, well, I brought it with me for protection.

I was going on the road, whatever. And me to kill him, I had it with me. It doesn't necessarily mean she wanted to kill him, but it's strong evidence of it. But I got to go back, there's something that's bothering me and it'll bother me tonight, Megan. I had brought out that she has a pretty shell to many people.

“Did you can see that? Is she what you would call attractive?”

And I'm not talking about her soul. Well, I'm just saying, don't you think that that played a role in why people cared so much about the media? Yeah. Oh, sure. I think she was pretty or when things started, and then when she took the stand, when she was at trial,

she tried to make herself look very plain, jeannie, mousey. But the blonde, the naked pictures obviously, she's got a very good body. All those things play into, whoa, what's happening there? What's that kind of a person? All right, I got what I needed. You could move along.

I got it. I just need to go there. Okay, so the date of that burglary was May 28th, 2008. June 2nd, 2008, which is now two days before the murder, she rented a vehicle from budget rent a car in Reading, California. And then on June 4th, 2008, Travis Alexander was killed in Mesa, Arizona.

So, I mean, to me, this does all look like premeditation. She looks like a jilted lover who became a stalker who became obsessed with him. We're told that in April, right before the fake burglary at her grandparents' house, he was going to go with her on some trip. That.

Right. And then he bailed. Cancun. Everybody wants to go to Cancun, baby. And then she thought she was in the money. She was going to go with him.

He's going to be romantic. He picked another girl. That was it. And that really can be the catalyst for a lunatic.

You never know what's going to set some crazy stalker off.

To the point any normal gal who has strong feelings for someone for whatever reason. But when you take someone who's got 51 cards and isn't all there, that can really amp it up. Yes. That's as near as we can tell, like one of the last final acts he does that gets in her head somehow. But they had men on again off again with the sex after break up.

So, you know, who knows how this exactly files in? June 4th, 2008. That's the day of the murder. And we'll get to what happened that day. But weirdly, his body was not found for another five days.

“Why? Do we know why that was like, did you not have a job?”

Did you not have friends? How do you sit in your, you know, how is it that a body's five days in the apartment without anybody noticing? Yeah, it was like that. I'm trying to think of the specifics, but they, he was supposed to be somewhere and then they checked in on him. I think a friend did.

Finally wasn't there. But yeah, I don't think he had any place that he had to be. He didn't have roommates. He didn't have nosy, you know, parents coming around. So yeah, just happened. Wow.

All right. So the day of the murder, June 4th, what happened? She, she goes over there and what happened? Well, I don't know. Meaning, you know, we have what was alleged by the prosecution. The jury found her guilty.

You never really know exactly what took place.

But what it looked like was she had a plan to execute him. And that's exactly what happened. She tried to defend with he was attacking me and that was Milwaukee. Initially, though, I think she was on inside addition and told a few people, I wasn't there.

I was framed like the Mona Lisa and nothing to do with it. And then when the evidence comes out, like most of my clients do, they go, Oh, wait, you got that evidence? Okay, okay, okay, okay. I was there. But that's what happened.

So initially, you know, the murder happens on June 4th. She leaves. We know, I mean, she winds up confessing on the stand. We know she did this crime now. But she left the crime scene.

No one finds Travis until his friends realize like he's not showing up at events, et cetera.

And they go to his house. They, the friends, find his body in a crumpled heap in his shower. An incredibly bloody crime scene and call 911. Here's a bit of that call. Hi, so what's going on?

He's dead. He's been his bedroom in the shower. Okay, how did this happen? Do you have any idea? We have no idea. Everyone's been wondering about him for a few days. She said that there's blood. So is it coming from his head?

Did he come? No, it's all over the place. Hmm. And right away, Mark, the friends suspected her. They described her to the authorities as a potential stalker.

“And that's what Travis had been saying about her.”

But they did have sex that day, right? I mean, like it appears that they had hours and hours of some sort of sexual interlude prior to the murder. That's what's so unusual. Listen, you know, this guy clearly was a guy with strong emotions, which is a nice thing I can say about him in terms of that.

And, you know, they went at it. And my guess is there were some discussions. Maybe that was her way of trying to convince him to pick her and replace the guilty. Did select for Cancun to go, I don't know. But something happened and she snapped.

If, if she didn't plan on doing this anyway, no matter what. Because you have hours. And we know this because they found a camera that the two had been taking pictures of sexual acts. There's pictures of her posing totally nude for the camera. I mean, very consensually does not look like a forced situation on either end.

So for sure. It looks like it went on for hours. What do you make of that? In other words, I want to know what you think. Why are they having sex in next minute?

She's executing him in a horrible, horrible tragic way, which we're going to get to. But what do you think? What's the sex about? What do you think?

“I think it was like a goodbye gift from her to him, though he didn't realize that's what it was.”

I think he thought it was just genuine hook up. I think she had this whole thing planned. She went there two murder him. And this was her farewell, you know, send off to the guy. I do.

That's why she's a sick effort. And so I think she had the whole thing planned out. And this was, there's no other reason. Okay. That is just cold as ice, baby.

That's her. That's what's interesting about her. I mean, from that.

You know, that's I never thought of that perspective.

Like, why is infected my mind? I couldn't wrap my head around that theory. And so I then thought, okay, she's got it just in case whatever. And then things go awry. And then she kills him.

Either second agree or she just said, okay, it's part of my plan. And I'm now going to implement and she had time to think about it when she's there. And she does it. But I don't know, man. You think she knew she was going to kill him.

Prior to having sex with him? Yes. I do. I think the whole thing was planned out in great detail. But she's a bad murderer.

I mean, she's she was effective at committing the murder.

But very bad at covering up her tracks. And she should have said more, more time in the planning and the lying phase. Because she turned out to be a disaster at that. Now, she, very shortly thereafter, gets arrested. The friends are like, it was, it was Jodi area.

She's a stalker. I mean, while the day after the murder, she went and saw another love interest. Some guy named Ryan Burns, a former coworker of her of his hers in Utah. That guy, I think he also took the stand.

“It's like, that's how cold she is, Mark.”

Like, she, now at this point, there's no doubt she committed this brutal murder. The day before she goes off to see another lover. Oh, no problem. I'm like, yeah, come on. I still don't know what to be saying.

Like, to be able to have sex with with this guy before she kills him.

You know, there's Travis already said, she seems to just manipulate. This is also what I know after the fact. I'm jumping ahead of how she manipulates everybody in prison and stuff like that. But that seems to be her MO. I don't know that type of person.

But someone who can't have an honest relationship and it's all about manipulation. So she probably had numerous fellows in her life, including the guy you just mentioned, where, okay, on to him, what do I need from him? Let me manipulate him to get it. And they tend to be narcissistic personalities, right?

It's all about them. You only matter to the extent you reflect off of them. You cannot leave them. You certainly cannot dump them. The way Travis did with Jody.

“And that's why you can't process it as a normal person because we normal people don't react that way when they get dumped.”

It's sad, but we don't kill anybody. So she goes to see Ryanburn. Let me tell you this. That type of person gets very misunderstood because the average juror who's arguably like you and me. You know, who's got sensibilities, the right moral compass who goes to work every day.

Kids, family, normal. They come in and they're trying to analyze the actions of some of these people. And a lot of times like, oh, wait, that doesn't make sense. I wouldn't do that. There's no way that happened.

I couldn't have done that. He put the Murdoch trial to this day. I know he killed his wife and kid and O.J. killed. It's hard for me to actually see it because it's so foreign to me and what I would do. And what the average juror can wrap their heads around. Well, that plays into the brutality of the crime because you look at this beautiful, tiny woman.

And you do not think she would be capable of this. You know, you see like too big, musally men with the tats in the prison in their background. And you think, oh, okay. You're just like, yeah, tattoos. Yeah, tattoos.

You see Jody Eris, you think, no, because the level of violence that went down at this crime scene was unbelievable. Twenty-seven stab wounds. A slip throat and a gunshot to his face and the medical examiner testified that the actual like slicing was extremely deep, three to four inches deep into his neck. Trying to find the exact description of it.

But it was absolutely merciless. She nearly decapitated him while he was in that shower. She clearly went in there while he was showering and nearly decapitated him. Stabbed in 27 times and then the medical examiner said after that shot him in the face.

“So, I mean, the level of anger behind that marks speaks to what?”

I mean, I don't know. What do we, what do we glean from the level of violence? It goes back to what I keep trying to do in my head. Maybe as a defense lawyer or as a compassionate soul. So believe that something went down before that happened that he said something that set her off.

I find it hard to believe, although I'm not relating to this type of person that she, and this is probably what she did, that she had the whole plan. And this was, as you say, her goodbye love session. And then I'm going to get him in the shower and she did. It just seems more consistent with someone who is set off by some words or...

How can that be? Okay, but how can that be? Because we've seen the crime photos and among the photos that they found on the camera,

There are photos of Travis in that shower. And it appears to be after the love making, you know, he's in the shower. He's not wearing his clothing. And that's, of course, we know where he was killed. And he's okay.

There are photos of him in the shower, he's okay. So you don't have a fight, I mean, like an errands word from the shower as she was photographing him naked after their love making. That doesn't make sense. My theory makes much more sense.

No, it might. Again, I'm, listen, I'm not defending this woman at all. I'm just opening up and telling you how it's still hard for me to wrap my head around what she did. It's so challenging.

And it's hard to understand how she this life-fin little thing could kill him, could kill a man. He wasn't overly large, but he was bigger than she was. Sure. And how do you stab a man 27?

I mean, he was in the shower, I guess. So he's vulnerable and he's not expecting it. But I mean, if that, if that slice across the neck was number one, then that would bend the end of it. And it probably wasn't.

“I think the medical examiner said that those defensive wounds on his hands likely”

came first, which would make sense.

He's caught off guard. He goes like this. She continues to stab. But you just said it. He's off guard.

He doesn't expect it. He's vulnerable. He's got nothing to defend himself except the bar. So, you know, what do you do? She knew what she was doing.

And she's passionate and aggressive and wanted it done. And then to shoot him after the fact is that Emmy said that he didn't see a brain hemorrhage from the bullet in Travis's head. And he said there would be if the bullet had gone in there while he was alive. And his blood was pumping.

So she shot him. She just made sure, you know, he was 100% dead. She wanted this guy dead. She was very angry with him, which again, suggests. I think my theory.

You know, she was angry. She was dumped. She was angry. She wasn't going to can't cune.

“You don't dump somebody who's a narcissistic sociopath like Jody Areas.”

And the whole thing was a set up. That's, you know, that seems to be what the evidence suggests. I agree. I just cannot relate. It's going to take me some time to process.

Probably tonight is laying down right at my gratefuls. Wait a second. She had sex with him as a goodbye. Megan said that. And I trust Megan.

I believe her. And then execute him in the most violent manner. In other words, after stab number 16, that apparently wasn't enough for her. You know, it required another few jobs.

Right now we're at 21, 22. Still not enough. I need about six more. And then I'm going to slash this throat and shoot him. You really do have to think about what she actually did to appreciate how hard this was.

My God. And then, and then leave his crumpled dead body in the shower like he was trash. Um, she did get arrested a month and a couple of days after the act. Uh, then more bizarre behavior came out. I'll get to the interrogation room,

but she gave an interview to inside addition. Well, Mark's number one advice to all of his clients. Do not talk. Shut up. Let me do the talking if there's going to be any talking.

She talks.

The fish who kept this mouse shut never got caught.

Right. That's right. That's right. And I'm not saying that certain interviews aren't beneficial. We, I've done it in many cases.

But that's after you know what the evidence is. You know the parameters. You know how you can and can't get hurt. What she did was just reckless. So she gives an interview to inside addition,

which actually makes some sense knowing her in the way we do. She did. She wasn't our sister. She's going to be a star. She cared about how she looked, how people were perceiving her.

“Um, I think she was seeing an opportunity to like see her name in lights as opposed to just like,”

"Oh, my God, keep yourself out of bars." Yeah. Um, here is a bit of what she told inside addition. This is well before the trial after she just been placed in jail. Did you kill Travis Alexander?

Hey, absolutely did not kill Travis Alexander. I had nothing to do with his murder. I didn't harm him in any way. I witnessed, um, Travis being attacked by two other individuals. Who?

I don't know who they were. I couldn't pick them out in a police line up. So what happened? Um, they came into his home and attacked us both. You did not shoot Travis.

No, I've never even shot a real gun.

You did not stab him 27 times. That's, that's heinous. Or slit his throat from here to here. I can't imagine slitting anyone's throat. No jury is going to convict me.

Why not? Because I'm innocent. And you can mark my words on that one. No jury will convict me. Oh, man.

Oh, man. So we could, we could have, we could do an hour just on that. There is so much there. Right. So wait, all right.

So let me just go. First of all, the one thing she asked for was for make up prior to her mug shot.

I'm not thinking about a life of having to never take a shower ever again in a jail or prison

because, you know, I'm too pretty. She's worried about her mug shot. She needs to, to make, there we go. And it is a nice mug shot.

“So we're going to like point how she's so narcissistic.”

She wants the world to love her and and believe that she's, you know, snow white. But look at the way she acted. This is why you never know anyone. You just know how they want you to see them. Because she looks believable.

If you don't know nothing about the facts of the case and you look at it. You go. Yeah, how could she have done that? So beware if you never really. I watched that interview Mark and all I can think of is Phil Houston, the human lie detector.

CIA guy who invented the deception detection method that still used there. Who's that CIA for 25 years. And what he talks about, I'll set it up for you. I'll play it again. But listen to how, okay, she does a couple of the things convincing behavior.

If I say to you, Mark, did you kill this guy?

You say, no, you don't try to convince me you would never kill anybody.

That's that's not what a normal non killer does. So the convincing behavior, the deflecting behavior, the qualifying statements, the trying to convince you, she's a good person. Listen to it again, understanding those are signs of deception. Did you kill Travis Alexander?

Hey, absolutely did not kill Travis Alexander. I had nothing to do with this murder. I didn't harm him in any way. I witnessed Travis being attacked by two other individuals. Who?

I don't know who they were. I couldn't pick them out in a police line up. So what happened? They came into his home and attacked us both. You did not shoot Travis?

No, I've never even shot a real gun. You did not stab him to protect us seven times. That's heinous. Or slit his throat from here to here. I can't imagine slitting anyone's throat.

No jury is going to convict me. Why not? Because I'm innocent. And you can mark my words on that one. No jury.

Well, convict me. Classic. That's heinous. That's convincing. I can't imagine ever slitting.

Who says that? You wouldn't say that. You'd say no. No, I didn't do it. Period.

Listen. In retrospect, you see all these signs. You don't really see it up front. But you know, listen, there's one thing that she did say that really bothers me. I know it's probably for other cases.

But when I can't stand when people blame other people for their crimes and worse, I actually think there should be an enhancement, a penalty enhancement when you pick somebody of a certain race.

Oh, it's always like a black man case.

It is. Two Latino women who did this or was two black males who I can't stand that. All right, I'm done. Yeah. No, it happens all the time.

Yeah. Two Latino women. That was the blonde lady, the wife who staged her own disappearance. Yeah. What's your name?

You're now thinking about this.

“So how many, how many Hispanic Latino women are stopped and questioned and harassed in that area?”

Because of what she said, right? I can't stand it. Well, I couldn't pick him out of line up. Like, don't bother. Don't worry.

We won. Sherry Papini. Sherry Papini was the one they said. She said the two are placing precious judicial and law enforcement resources on her trying to identify a someone, give her credit for this.

Yes. Okay. So she gives that BS interview. I mean, so weird and you can take it right now. I'm not going to be convicted.

What the hell? This is not a sports game. Like, just this is a crazy person sitting there, though not legally. But I'm the subject of craziness. There was video of her in the interrogation room at the police station doing a headstand.

And I want to ask you why, why did she do this? They left her alone in the interrogation room. The policeening audience, she goes down. Headstand, legs up against the wall. She's got no shoes on.

She's in civilian clothes. She holds it for 30 seconds. They said she then began to walk around the little interrogation room and sing a Dito song and search through the trash. So Mark, what's that about?

Well, whenever I've done that, Megan, I know I did it. I said, no, what that means? That's a nut job. Well, she going for an insanity thing. That's my first thought was that she trying to look like a nut case.

The most serious of circumstances. She's doing headstands. No, no, no, no. I eliminate that. Listen, all your theories.

That one I don't like because that would mean this narcissist who has consistently said that it wasn't her. She wasn't there. I was afraid like the Mona Lisa. She's not going to then say, I'm nutty.

I'm crazy. I did it. But I did it because I'm, you know, I don't know right from wrong. I'm going to have a mental illness or defect.

“There's no way that that's what she was doing.”

So could it just be she's been in there for hours and somehow in her apartment.

I don't know. There's women who do headstands like that for some purpose. I think, right? Is that part of some. Yeah.

Well, I mean, it could have been a stress. I don't know. I don't know. It could have been a stress stress. Sure.

She was stressed. Um, you heard in that interview with Inside Edition, she claimed for the first time to intruders kill Travis and that she was there as well.

The ones she would never be able to pick out of a lineup.

Um, she continued to claim a home invasion. And that we'd been there having a consensual sexual interlude using the camera before the intruders got there. The camera is one of the most interesting things about the whole day. Yeah. They took pictures of each other.

She took pictures of him. Post injury like post. At least one picture they say of was of him in the shower. Like while he was being attacked. And so we have crime scene photos that the police took that show is actually what happened to him.

But the reporting was that there was at least one photo post initial injury. How does this person leave the camera there?

“And I think they eventually found it like in the washing machine.”

Some glad you said that. I was getting that vibe. It was either washing machine gum thinking back all these years.

It was either washing machine or dryer.

I think it was the washing. And somehow the, um, I don't know, the little disk or whatever they use was still good. And they were able to get those photos. And again, once that evidence came in, that's it. She's done all our story.

I don't get it, Mark. She leaves. She's got all the time in the world. She leaves. They don't find the body for five days.

She knows there's a camera with all these photos of her. Of her at a minimum with him moments before he dies. Now, why? Why? Why?

Why? Why would she watch? She's by by. That's what I think happened. Why wouldn't she just take it with her?

I don't get it. It's too stupid. Is she a moron? She left a lot of clues. And she's serving a life sentence.

I wouldn't put her up there with Einstein. Yeah. She gets arrested. She goes on trial. Once she takes the stamp and was it a surprise?

“Do you remember because the prosecution went on for two weeks before the defense had to offer its side?”

Was it a shock when she took the stamp? I don't think I was shocked. No. In fact, type of person that she was very outspoken, very passionate. I think she needed to.

I think that she, I think it was expected. I don't think I was shocked. Okay. Because somebody's going to have to say what happened inside of that room. And she's going to have to admit she was there.

Now, thanks to the photographic evidence. Yeah. And also, any time there's any element of self defense, which is pretty much what she was saying, that she was attacked and then she, you know, had to do something. That can't be brought up by a lawyer.

You got to put them up there. Okay. Because she started with intruders to inside addition. She continued with home invasion. And, you know, I was in an instant victim that saw him, you know, get attacked.

And then she switched, she switched to Travis attacked me. And I killed him in self defense. She, and August of 2010, she submitted a request to the court to have letters allegedly from Travis Alexander admitted into evidence. The letters were meant to help prove her new theory of self defense. The prosecution objected saying the defendant argues that the letters are relevant to her claim of self defense

and that she was a victim of previous sexual and physical abuse by Mr. Alexander. But they denied that. And they said that these letters should not be allowed. Her new theory was that Travis Alexander became angry when she dropped his camera. And she was forced to kill him in self defense.

That was ultimately mark what she did claim in front of the jury.

Was it not? That's all that was left. In other words, okay, the two intruder theory didn't work. Then you're left with all right on there. I can either do insanity, which works in a fraction of one percent of the cases.

And in this case with all the planning and all the lies after the fact would absolutely not work. So by the same way I took the bar exam, I might not have known the answer.

“But I eliminate those that definitely aren't the right answer and what's left is the only thing I got to go with.”

So that's what happened. She starts to try to demonize Travis. He abused me. He sexually pressured me. He treated me like I was a sexual play thing. I didn't enjoy it. He was this Mormon who, you know, made me do dirty things that I didn't want to do because whatever he had some beliefs that he didn't want to cross. Here's some of that. Okay, we have, first of all, she accuses of being a pedophile just to set the jury's expectation of him.

You know, where she wanted it. Right, absolutely no proof of that whatsoever other than her weird word here that is sought for.

And I've got really nervous.

It was a picture of a little boy.

“Oh, five, five, six. I'm not a good judge of age.”

He was dressed in underwear, like briefs. I was frozen there for a minute, and I just ran. I didn't stay. I felt nauseated, ran inside and threw up in the bathroom. That's a clip from HLM, which is why there's music over the weird testimony. But yeah, so she tries to condemn her as a pedophile before she gets started.

And had Spider-Man pajamas ordered to the house like she was very specific. She's dangerous because she's not an idiot. I mean, she's dumb, but she's not an idiot. I don't know what that means.

But you know what I'm saying? She's very cunning. She's not a criminal mastermind.

What's that? I said she's not a criminal mastermind, but that doesn't mean she's not smart. She's correct. She's creative. She's, you know, cunning. She plans these things out. She had plenty of time to plan how she was going to lower him in the eyes of the jury. And you dig from the pedophile card deck. That's about as low as you go. That was the work.

Yeah. So then she tries to say that she had to give him certain forms of sex because he was a Mormon. And this is what he required of her. I'll let her tell it. This is salt five. Sex is sex. They're just different ways to have sex. And it seemed like it seemed like Travis was kind of...

I don't know how to put it on, but it just seemed like he sort of had like the Bill Clinton version. Whereas over here, it seemed like, you know, oral and anal sex. We're also sex to me, but not for him. So now she's joked in the librarian, right? She's got her little glasses on.

“You made me do it this way in the other way of spedophile, right?”

So she, this is the defense. And this is one of the reasons why America was riveted. So transparent what she's doing to me anyway. And I think to the jurors also, but you still got to do it. You know, you adult the cards that you have. You got to play them. And you have a horrible defendant, but there's no other way to advance that ridiculous self-defense theory.

Well, is that true? I mean, if you had been her defense attorney, what would you have done? Not right, a tell-all book, get to Spard, we'll get to that. What would I do? Probably what happened here? It would be obvious, painfully to me that my client is guilty as they come.

And I would say to that person, first of all, there might be offering you life.

You might want to take that instead of risking the death penalty, try to persuade her that her chances are very low of prevailing. She, the narcissist would say, I'm not going to be convicted, so I'd go and I'd say, okay. And then to myself professionally, I'd say winning is defined by doing everything I can to achieve the best possible outcome for this client. Whether they say guilty or not guilty is not in my control. And so testifying is her option. She wants to testify, she testifies.

In other words, yeah, I might lose this case. And you know what, I'm fine with that. This is the problem. I mean, basically, you try to cut a deal with a client like this because there's just no question that jurors are going to find her guilty. One Martinez was the prosecution. And one thing I do remember is you did not like him. You did not like the way he behaves.

Listen, the main reason why I accept the tributation is because I get another crack at talking about his cross-examination. Okay, so let's set it up before we play the sound bite of that. He had two weeks to present his case. It's kind of open and shut.

“What should he have done? What would you have preferred to see a prosecutor do?”

Okay, I'm talking to the Murdoch prosecutors. Everybody gives both one Martinez and those guys such accolades. And they did good things. I'll give him credit for that. I'm merely talking about cross-examination, which is an art form. I have taught my students that you don't wing it.

You carefully craft every single question that you're going to ask. Knowing that it could go this way or this way. And then you are ready with the follow up. Isn't the fact that on such and such a day you said this? And you boom, boom, boom, boom.

And it's a lean filet mignon. You don't present a big fatty steak wandering around. Hey, Mr. Martinez, your ego is not your amigo. You don't get up there and make it about you.

You don't, you know, try to grandstand like you did.

I thought his cross-examination was horrible. And people are going to say, "Oh, your jealous, this and that. I'm not. I don't care. I wish him well." I'm simply saying that it was a de-minus on the scale. And I'm telling you this, don't go by the outcome.

This case could have been one by by rookie prosecutors. I'm talking about how he did on cross. Both he and the Murdoch prosecutors sucked in cross-examination. Yes, I've said it publicly, again. I know. I agree with you.

And now I have to tell you. I listen to some of these friends of the Murdoch prosecutors on their little podcast. And they're like, "Oh, people just didn't get it. They just didn't get how brilliant that cross was." It's like, "No. People know how to do a proper cross-examination."

And it would have been over and done with how they'd done it properly. They let him go on. There was a chance the jury could have bonded with the guy. They took unnecessary risks in that cross-examination. I agree with you.

You don't take credit because you don't die either the guy or in this case, Jody looked bad. Oh, look at me. I made a look bad. She would have looked just as bad without the opportunity to then explain humanized go on and on. There's no need for that. There's no reason to take a risk on a single question.

Good lawyers carefully craft everything we think about everything we're doing. These guys look like they were winking it and they were that's unacceptable. And you're saying control the whole time. You're the one who's speaking. Witnesses just there to say yes or no.

That's it. You are the one who's telling the jury the story. They're really listening to the prosecutor with limited exceptions. When I know no matter what they do or say they're handing themselves. So every now and then I'll throw that in just to switch it up. Because I know there's not a single answer that's going to score points for them.

Well, here's let the audience get a flavor of Juan Martinez. Here is the prosecutor Juan trying to have Jody demonstrate Travis is alleged attack because she's claiming I dropped his camera.

“Then he came for me. He chased me. That's why I had to kill him.”

Here's just a little bit of that exchange and then I'll play the fights to your one. And show me the posture of the Australian examiner immediately before he rushed you according to you. He got there. He went like that and he turned his head and he got my waist. Just like that, correct?

Pretty much. I can't say it's just like that, but that's what I'm pretty much not just. I want without talking to show me the pose. He got down like that. Take that.

All right, go ahead and have a seat there. He's already annoying. Megan, let me add him.

Okay, first of all, nobody likes a bully.

And I'm telling you, I've actually during jury selection. Excuse jurors, one woman I saw when I was speaking. Because I was like, you know, I turned this woman. I said, you know, you said you could be fair to my client. But I'm really wondering, ma'am, I get a sense that and I really questioned her very firmly.

Because I really wanted her out if she wasn't going to be on board with the plan of being fair. It was a tear that fell down from her eye.

“And I realized in that moment, I asked her to go, is everything okay?”

She goes, I don't know, it's just your energy. Like, I feel like you're, and I realized, oh my god, I'm too much for people at certain times. Similarly, what one Martinez is doing is being so overly aggressive, unnecessarily, that that has to turn certain jurors off. There's no reason to be that way in a case like this.

That's the first criticism.

I've got more with what I just saw. Okay, there's more coming. I'll play another sound bite, then you can resume. There was this tense moment where she got after him for his style. You know, you got to the point where she actually had to call him out.

Here's a little bit of that on SOT7. What factors influence your having a memory problem? Usually when men like you are screaming at me or grilling me or someone like Travis studying the same. So that affects your memory problem, right? It makes my brain scramble.

So you're saying that it's basically what you're saying is, Mr. Martinez is involved. That you can't remember things that are going on. It's not your phone. I'm not saying that. You're saying that, isn't it? No, I'm not saying that.

“Is there something about a certain decibel of the voice that creates problems?”

Decisable tone content. Sort of a combination of perspectives.

God, it's so horrible.

“And the public doesn't understand because they don't see great cross examinations when they're watching these high profile cases.”

I haven't seen it recently.

There's been some examples. There's some exceptions. None that come to mind, right? Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp's lawyer with his heart.

What's that? Which one? Johnny Depp's lawyer. Cross-examining Amber heard. Very effective.

Probably. I'm trying to remember. I can't remember her name. She became a star. She's now an NBC contributor.

Which she did it exactly the way we're discussing. It was textbook market. It was isn't this true. Isn't that true? And then you did this.

Isn't that true, Miss Heard? You're on our please direct the witness to answer my question and not to go on like this. She controlled the witness. What's her name, Steve? Camille Vasquez.

Yeah. She was good. She was solid. I agree. So two things.

One. In the first clip that you played. You're asking the defendant now to give her version. Again, giving her another opportunity to then display for the jurors. Why?

She's not guilty. I would never do that. I'd just make fun of it. And the second clip you look at him. He doesn't have those questions prepared.

He's just winning it.

“That's what a rookie lawyer does or someone who doesn't do Cross-examination.”

It's not to say there's not room for spontaneity. But I plan my spontaneity. I know that sounds like a contradiction. But that's what I see. You tell it.

You're great. Like a great person hanging out with for a wife.

I'm not always talking about not in the bedroom in the courtroom.

Come on. And on three. Okay. Let's talk about the fact that your friend, one Martinez, in addition to the defense lawyer, have both been disbarred since then.

They both lost their law licenses. Yeah. Yeah. Different reasons. But can we back up a little bit?

Yeah. We left out one of the biggest things in the trial. Well, yeah. I'm not done with the trial. But I do think it's interesting that your friend loss his law license.

And I think when people look at that Cross-examination, very interesting to know, quoting out on the AP. That Martinez was accused later. This is why he lost his law license of leaking the identity of one of the other.

He leaked the identity to a blogger with whom he was having a sexual relationship. Then lied to investigators about it. That's what he was accused of. And of sexually harassing a bunch of female law clerks in his office. He chose not to defend the charges and consented to disbarment.

And what's happening? What are you doing? You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop.

You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop.

You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop.

You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop.

You're not going to be a cop. You're not going to be a cop. The lawyer, too, is in a fog. As he was sexually erasing all the female walklers to the point where they were. They had to run.

He was staring at the chest of some female employees in the county prosecutors office. Look them up and down as they walked away. Some female employees would hide in the bathroom. Duck into cubicles or engage in busy work to avoid encountering Martinez. He got fired after 32 years as a prosecutor.

Then lost his law license. That's the man. I'm going to have to say tip of the hat. Your instincts were dead on. An unsuddled pig.

You know, I read that to my wife. She's like, ah, what a horrible. And I looked at it from her perspective. And women don't like that. You know, an terrible place to be.

You know, we're all day long. You have this guy staring at you. He's not subtle. And it's just horrible, you know. I know.

It's creepy.

“Well, so you, I mean, I think your instincts were dead on.”

You understood this is not a good lawyer. And this is not a good man. And you had a revolt in watching him that was well placed. But the evidence was so strong against her. It didn't wind up hurting his case.

He did, ultimately, get a confession on the stand, which was rather helpful.

I mean, we knew that she killed him because she was claiming self defense by that point. But here is the moment of confession on the stand when she breaks down. I mean, would you agree that you're the person who actually slipped Mr. Alexander's throat from ear to ear?

Would you also agree that you're the individual that stabbed him in the upper torso? Yes. And you're doing all of this to, according to your version of events.

“You're doing to this individual after you have already shot it, right?”

Yes. What do you make of that? Get it spread it again. Megan, that was her whole theory. She was admitting that she did the apparent acts for which she's accused.

If anything, he could have artfully said, all right, just so these jurors are crystal clear.

The first stab that went into his body.

You did that, not to strangers that you initially said these two intruders, right? Then another jab. And then another jab. This went over here by the heart. That was you, not somebody else.

And then he could have gone on and on and on about every stab that she did. And then it's a really highlight the brutality, especially since he's going for the death penalty after. So you really want to highlight it. The best he had was you stabbed him in the torso. Yes.

Yes. No, 27 times. And then you did this or whatever order he wants. That was you're giving him credit. And yeah, okay, he did that.

“But again, it was wasn't the most effective.”

Just a huge opportunity. That's a good point. Drive it home.

And I found the medical examiner's testimony that I was looking for earlier.

Kevin Horn testified about the stab wounds and said the slash wound to Travis's throat was three to four inches deep. And went to the spinal cord in the back of the neck had two major vessels that had been sliced. He would have lost a great deal of blood very quickly. And then lost consciousness within seconds and died a few minutes later. And then, of course, she shot him as well.

But he talked about the wounds and Travis's hands that must have been before the fatal injury. So the guy fought for his life. He must have been terrified. This person he trusted, who was, you know, he was undressed with had had this interlude with surprises him in this place that's supposed to be, you know, in violet, the shower, my God.

So you're right. And his failure to bring home the brutality did come back to hunt him at the penalty phase. Yeah, I'm still actually thinking of ways that I would have done this differently. I was said, I'm sorry, Miss Arias. I see that you're crying.

Do you need a moment? And by the way, Miss Arias, were you crying? Stab number seven. Were tears running down your eyes then? When you did this?

Were you crying then? Okay, do you need time? I'll ask the judge. If you need a few minutes, but I'm not going to let her hide her face in that tissue and put on that act. Miss Arias, can you look at me?

I'm asking you some questions. If you need time, I'll give you some time. She's hiding her face. The jurors need to judge her credibility, your honor, assuming the judge wouldn't allow me to control her that way. And go side by and say, judge, they're judging.

She's hiding her face. I want them to see her face. She needs time. I'll give her time. But I'm not going to let her bury her face.

When I'm asking her to talk about the most intimate of brutality that she committed. No way. That's a good point. Does anyone have a scrunchie? Who's got a scrunchie?

Let's get that hair back. You know, you're right. That was clearly a tactic. Well, the jury didn't buy it because after she'd been on the stand for it, they say 18 days, 18 days between direct and cross examination.

Many felt that was a tactic by her defense lawyer to create a bond between Jody and the jury to where they could not vote for death. Do you agree that was a strategy? 100% and let me just say this, I just finished a federal trial, my client want to take the witness stand. My direct was extremely long. Number one, I'm humanizing my client.

Number two, there was a lot to talk about, right? Number three, it is difficult when they don't know who your client is.

The prosecutors will always call them the defendant.

I'm here to humanize my client.

“And yes, in that case, they want to slaughter her, they want to kill her, right?”

The ultimate sanction. So that serves a purpose. Cudos for the defense lawyer and on the prosecutor. The defense lawyer, I felt care how long he takes as long as it's productive and it's routine. They've rehearsed it all.

It's choreographed. She could look great undirect long, long, long, long. Cross, not the same. What do you mean? Cross needs to be tight.

It needs to be planned out. It shouldn't go for more than a day and certainly within that day. I'd say a few hours, you could make your points. That's it. Okay.

You don't want to print one Martinez show. This isn't about you, dude. Stop making it about you.

So then the defense lawyer did on the direct. All right.

“The jury gets the case. Ultimately, the jury was read in court.”

Here's sound by nine. State of Arizona versus Jodi and areas, verdict count one. We the jury, duly and paneled in sworn. And the public had the action. Upon our oaths, do find the defendant as the count one.

First degree murder guilty.

Five jurors find premeditated. Zero find felony murder. Seven find both premeditated and felony. Signed for a person. Is this your true verdict?

So say you want to know. I mean, it wasn't a shock. She actually looks kind of surprised to hear the verdict. It wasn't a shock to anybody. Don't credit her with having real emotion and equating whatever she just did to how you and I.

She's in a whole different area code psychologically. I don't know what that was. I don't. Right. We don't.

There's more acting. Well, then then we moved on to the penalty phase. Will she get life in prison or will she get the death penalty? And that is in Arizona is up to the jury.

At least on the initial go round.

And so that the jury had to wrestle with that. She got to say how she felt about the death penalty in an interview with Fox 10 Phoenix. The week she was found guilty. Listen to this. I believe death is the ultimate freedom.

So I'd rather just have my freedom soon as soon as I can get it. So you're saying you actually prefer getting the death penalty to being in prison for life. Yes. And here she is. Brilliant.

Wait, addressing the jury. Yeah, go ahead. No, no, no. Megan. Come on.

That was brilliant. Do you like it? It's in manipulation.

“That's what Nicholas Cruz should have done.”

I want death.

You know, for killing all those kids at Marjorie Stomendouglas.

Again, it's reverse psychology. She doesn't want to die. She doesn't want to death row. She's going to be the queen in prison. She wants to live out her life.

And so she just does the twist. That's the ultimate manipulation for that. I'm sure. So she, she did it with the jury as well. Here's a couple of soundbites have heard addressing them.

This is not 12. This is the worst mistake of my life. It's the worst thing I've ever done. You think? It's the worst thing I ever couldn't see myself doing.

In fact, I couldn't have seen myself doing it. Before that day, I wouldn't even want to harm a spider. I'd get out of them up and cut some of them outside. To this day, I can hardly believe I was capable with such violence. But I know that I was.

And for that, I'm going to be sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life.

I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life.

I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life.

I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life.

I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life.

I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life.

I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life.

I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life.

I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life. I'm so sorry for the rest of my life.

“I left perspective until very recently I could not have imagined standing before you while I'm asking you to give me life.”

To me life in prison was the most unappealing outcome I could possibly think of. I thought I'd rather die. But as I stand here now I can and good conscience ask you to sentence me to death. Because of them. I forget this can to not pursue a side.

Either way I'm going to spend the rest of my life in prison. It'll like I be shortened or not. She was funny to her parents when she said because of them.

Yeah, how convenient. I just, that's just a silly element. I think to say, I think I've said it already. Immunipulated. This person is a household name.

I mean, think about that. This woman is a household and most people in America know who Jody areas is. Because the media took to this case like Mods to a flame. She was the star. She's a sociopath.

You can see it's fascinating to see the mind in, you know, working. Like doing its manipulation.

And you know what it worked because the jury ultimately did not sentence her to death.

They were, it was a hung jury. And then they brought in another jury to try to decide. And they too could not decide on giving her death. And without any unanimous vote for it, you don't get it.

“And that's why she got life in prison without the possibility of parole where she is right now.”

What we don't know is the split, right? Was it one lone juror? Was it a few? Like Lee was a few because, you know, there was a lot of mitigators. I didn't see any of that testimony.

But, you know, the lack of priors. I don't want to start naming them because it'll look like I'm being sympathetic. But whatever the defense said, there was stuff to work with here. You know, the crime was especially heinous atrocious and cruel. And coal calculated and very premeditated.

The state had that going for them.

You know, everything else, you know, the mitigators. It was probably a couple of minutes ago. She should get life instead. And then that said, they only needed a few there. I mean, is it true that generally they don't like to give you the death penalty if it's just one murder

as opposed to a serial killer or like the guy who takes out his family, you know, something like that? There's that.

“Statistically, you know, how many women actually get the death penalty?”

You know, it's very rare. And don't you tell me that looks don't matter and how she acts. People consider that. They just do. So we talked about the fact that prosecutors now just barred and you mentioned it in passing.

Her lawyer, too, is now dispared. What did he do? Dispottersman. Another reason why I was I was looking forward to doing this. This really bothers me.

So he writes a book, a tell all and included in that book are intimate details that she shared with him while he was representing her. He then writes this book and, you know, she's objecting to it naturally and apparently they knew about it. The bar did and said, listen, you're either going to for putting this out there. Your idea of two options.

One will suspend you for four years, but you cannot then put this book out there. Or you can lose your law license forever. Give it up. And then, you know, obviously, then you'll be free to publish that book. He chose option number two, and I'm not going to out anybody in my wife who said good for him.

For putting that out there, because I'm sure many people feel that way.

“And I was so upset about that because, yeah, do I care that Jody areas is thoughts are put out there?”

No, because I don't like Jody areas, but it's so much bigger than that. He is eroding the attorney client privilege where now either my clients or other future clients feel like, wait, is this going to be the lawyer who like that guy that Nimrod? You're just going to put it out there and some book to capitalize. And then that doesn't give any confidence when anybody goes to speak to an attorney.

I'm really bothered by it. Yeah.

I mean, it's amazing that two of the main characters in this cast wound up dispared.

And the third, the true star is behind bars for the rest of her life without the possibility of parole. There have been some reports that behind bars, she's an immediate security prison. She's been making friends and lovers and tattooing her name on her jail cell mates. Lifetime is actually just now 10 years later coming out with a doc you drama about Jody areas. And in the case, and gets into some of that like her life in jail.

We managed to pull a clip Mark Eiglarge for the entertainment of the US. Entertainment of the audience here's a bit. A lifetime original movie, ripped from the headline. "Body area killed Travis, Alexander." "Body area."

"Body area." "Body area." "I'm Jody." "You know her name." It's worth doing whatever it takes to get your mom's freedom.

There's a worse idea what we have to do. But not this story. When you get out, maybe you can help me get the word out of that, my innocence." Sure, whenever you need it. I thank God for you and you came into my life for a reason.

Based on a true story. There is no question. Jody Kail Travis, Alexander. This January. Everything he said it was a lie.

I'm sorry that I told you what really happened. But who's he? It's in the past now, and I love you. I can't defend you. Did you believe she was innocent?

Yes.

Hell no. I feel like you betrayed me. I...if you... That feeling borne, Jody Errius. Bad, behind bars.

She's manipulating after jail. Social media posts. All sorts of bad stuff. Good casting.

“I mean, you know, I was like, "Hey, that looks like her."”

No? What...what happened? What's it a medium security prison? How are you able to make friends and, you know, tattoo one another and do social media?

Yes, she's probably living a pretty damn good life. Number one, medium security. She wasn't high. They brought her down to medium. So that's much better for her.

Orange is a new black, you know. And then secondly, she didn't kill any children. You know, in the pecking order, she killed a man that many think might have done something bad to her, at least that was her story. So in prison, you know, she's at the top of the pecking order

and with her manipulation and beauty, she's probably living large. And when I say beauty, I use that in quotations. I'm talking about objectively to others. I know she's using that for her own benefit. Is it...is it possible to have a co-ed prison

because this is where I get confused? They said, she met somebody named Donovan Baring while serving time. Donovan was serving time for accessory to arson in the Maricopa County jail where they were sellmates for six months.

Other both girls.

“Okay, then this duo became really close and stayed in touch”

afterward. Donovan, who I guess is a girl and Jodi. They stayed tight. Then they were at Estrella, another prison, where this other gal Tracy met Donovan for the first time.

They got romantically involved. They then say by their own admission, Jodi used her good looks and sexuality to get what she wanted and inserted herself into their union as well.

Although they never engaged in actual sex acts together,

she wants to live at a strip tease with Tracy for Donovan and then often refused to leave their cell when they wanted alone time together from getting them to manage her social media accounts. Again, why does she have them?

To ultimately officiating their wedding ceremony. She did it all for a couple, quoting from the CinemaHallek.com. So all of this is documented. Aninonicos Mark once a master manipulator always a master.

And she has nothing but time on her hands. She's playing all those games. And I too, by the way, found a confusing person, like Donovan. She would do how that happened. No, donovan's a female and then you played along

and you figure out what happened. I think as an aside, I read, she's got something going on with a guy on the outside. And that's easy to do because there's not jobs out there. Sending letters, wanting to be with her, phone privileges,

and then eventually she's looking to get married to get the conjugal visits. That's all going to happen. We saw that with Lyle and the other menendez. That's what they do.

It just goes to show you though. The media still obsessed with this case. I mean, here we are 10 years later.

You don't always do a 10 year retrospective in every case.

But I remember coming in this all the time that America was into it. And wanted more, more, more, more and more. And here we are 10 years later. And she's still providing material from behind bars.

So what's our takeaway? When you look back and you say, "Okay, what lessons can be learned from this case?" Anything coming in? Okay.

So number one, you never really know anyone. Do not judge someone based upon how they look. And even when you think that you're a good judge, a character, you never know. You gotta look at the evidence.

So once you get the evidence, that speaks volumes. Don't judge somebody based upon their demeanor, what they say, and how they look, which quits it and only is exactly what courts are about.

“And that's why they get it wrong all the time.”

But the court of public opinion, wait, listen to all the evidence, and then you can decide. But we don't do that.

The second takeaway I got is,

I can't say enough about this prosecutor. Again, he won the case. Good for him. And by winning, I mean, he got the guilty verdict that anyone would have gotten.

But his cross examination to this day still is, was horrible. I don't even want to put it in the same category as the Murdoch, a prosecutor. His was not great.

But Martinez was to be offensive. You know, that he took a case that was a slam dunk, and just took days and days and days to do this. Harble, badgering, bullying, cross. So prosecutors beware.

I'm available. You want to reach out to me. We'll make arrangements to make sure that in a very important case, that you prepare and all the questions are right there, and you thought him out,

that's what matters. You've got to prepare. Those are two thoughts on the top. You know, that rule is that the jury's supposed to like, you, more than the defendant.

You know, that's your goal. When you cross examining somebody that they will like,

and that the way to get there is not usually to berate them, to shout at them, to telegraph with every question that you have nothing, but dripping to stain for them. They know that.

They know that if you're the prosecutor. This is going to be deep, and you're going to say it's flaky and hokey,

“but I think first, for you to be liked by a jury,”

or anyone, you've got to thoroughly and unconditionally like yourself, and I don't know that one Martinez did. Hmm. Well, it's interesting that he did turn out to be a bad guy. You know, he did such a bad job,

and he wasn't likable in there.

And it's just always interesting,

when like the outward persona winds up matching with what's going on behind closed doors. It's sort of a, it is an affirmation that maybe you can sometimes trust your instincts. I don't believe you can't ever get ever know somebody.

My God, Doug, we need to talk. I have to wait to see the evidence. I, I love Doug too, but I love what Doug has shown me Doug to be. Doug's got stuff inside of Doug,

and so do you, and so do I. That's, we've never let out, not necessarily consciously, but sometimes subconsciously. So again, all we're seeing,

and I adore my wife, I love her, but I love what I know about her. There's stuff I don't know about her, and I love her for that too,

and I love her unconditionally. But again, all we know is what we know. That's it. Turn back on the fog. The fog, the fog needs to go back.

Mark, I got it.

It's always a pleasure, my friend.

Thank you. Thank you, Megan. Thank you. My guest today built one of the most successful vegan food empires in the Big Apple,

but her dramatic rise and fall would become the focus of the hit Netflix quote, documentary or so they call it, bad vegan. A series she says got major parts of her story wrong.

By the way, this always happens on Netflix. It is called the girl with a duct tattoo. In it, she aims to set the record straight by laying out what she says is the real story behind the fame, the manipulation, and the fallout of her unbelievable saga.

Some of the high, thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. Well, I'm sorry that you had an unfortunate experience with Netflix, but you are not alone.

We've covered so many of these cases on Netflix.

“Were they lure you in and they really do sell a documentary?”

And it's nothing of the kind. It's a mockumentary. It's a docu drama. It's something that is not committed to journalistic fact-based reporting. So I will give you that right off the top.

But I'm super interested to find out what is true. As I, I'm just like to give a two line encapsulation of your story to the audience as I understand it. You're very well educated. You went to Wharton.

You worked at Bear Stearns, being capital. Then you went to the French Culinary Institute. You learned how to be a serious chef. You opened up this banger of a restaurant with raw food, pure food and wine. Everyone in New York loved it.

It was going really well. And then you met this man. This man who came into your life who was somewhat sketchy. And notwithstanding your sophistication bit by bit. He eroded your sense of self, your understanding of what was real.

And before you knew it, you had lost everything. Is that a fair summation of how this thing went down? Yeah, that was an incredible summation. That was, you know, better than I can do it in a concise way. But yeah, that's what happened.

And what I've learned is that my story was an extreme version of something that happens to people a lot more than people realize. And I know this now from all the messages I've gotten in my DMs since the show came out and since it became much more public. But this type of manipulation can happen a lot more than people realize. And it also can happen to men and women alike. And so part of my telling of the story is to, you know, is to really help educate people how it happened.

And that was the most important part that the show on Netflix left out.

And that the filmmakers left out is any explanation of how this happens, which is what would allow people to help protect themselves. And which is so unsatisfying because what's most interesting about the story to many of us is how someone as sophisticated and what sophisticated and well educated and successful as you would fall for this guy's lies.

“Yeah. That's what we all want to know, right?”

Because in our heads, we want to say, oh, I would never, but I mean, I have covered enough of these stories to know.

For some reason, these common go for the sophisticated smart types. Yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, the similar with cults, you know, they, they actually need somebody who's got a certain level of intelligence. Because it's almost like you can't train a, you know, you need somebody who's got a certain level of intelligence to be able to pull off this long slow manipulation.

And I mean, I've spoken to people who have PhDs and clinical psychology attorneys, even who've been had their world turned upside down in a way that they never expected.

“And so again, that's what I write about in my book is really taking the reader along with me through this sort of nightmarish journey about getting manipulated over time and really trying to.”

And, you know, as honestly as I could, even in places where I felt it didn't reflect well on me to help people understand how this happens and also the psychology behind it. And that's really also what was left out of the show.

Do you have you ever, have you ever heard the story of, I'm going to mess up, is it Anderson Benita is her first name NBC journalist who got lured in by this doctor.

He figured out a way to do prosthetic, uh, Benita Alexander to do prosthetic, uh, tracheas on people and long story short he was a big fraud and he convinced her that they were going to go and be married in Rome by the Pope even though she was divorced.

“And also she, if she's a newswoman, you can't find more cynical mophos than news producers and she got lured in and what she said at the end.”

So I'm a something that you of our interview, you might relate to which was because she's also very smart.

He needed her to be smart because that's where the Jones came from like it wasn't going to be fun for him.

If she were to be a mark. Yes, I mean, part of what I think part of why this can happen is because. Certainly, you know, whether it's my wiring or whatever it is, but I almost couldn't, it's like I couldn't fathom that somebody could be so diabolical and also his motivation, it wasn't that clear because. So it's not like in the end of this, he walked away with all of this money that he took from me. He just, you know, spent it gambled it away. That wasn't the point for him, the point for him was the thrill that he and people like this get from the takedown.

You know, because not a psychologist, but when you're wired a certain way and you don't have empathy and you go around in this world.

“It's like life is a game and to manipulate people is, I think, what gives people like this arise. And so, you know, again, the bigger the takedown, the bigger the high they get, I suppose. And that's really the point of it is is the destruction.”

Well, and I want people to remember this. I want people to remember Benita again, a hard news NBC journalist who was doing journalism at the, you know, the toughest levels he can. And who was convinced by this fraudster that the Pope was going to marry them in the Vatican. That was standing the fact that she was divorced. And that Bill Clinton was going to go and Barack Obama was going to go. And the only reason she found out it was all a lie is a friend at NBC was like, Bonita, we checked the president's schedule. He's not going even the Pope's not even going to be in Rome on the date of your wedding.

And sort of the mask finally started coming off and she started realizing she'd been totally manipulated. So the point is simply, while the lies may sound so obviously outrageous to those of us on the outside. These fraudsters build slowly to gain your trust and control over you before they really start with the huge woppers to where, you know, you're really believing what looks like to the outside world. Obviously not sense, but when you're in it, you're so far removed from your original self. It can happen. So okay, let's talk about how it happened to you. So you're, you did the corporate stuff using your warden degree, and then like everybody you decided you hated that.

You go to culinary school, you open up this raw restaurant and it's a hit. It's like doing really well in Manhattan. This is what the early odds. Yeah, it opened in 2004 and it was a beautiful restaurant. What I was so proud of is that it wasn't a restaurant for, you know, it was a raw vegan restaurant. It wasn't a restaurant for vegans. It was a restaurant for everybody. And, you know, the food that we made now I realized, kind of how ahead of it's time it was because this was 15 years ago and it really was about clean ingredients. So there were no fake meat. There was no processed food whatsoever. So, you know, and there were no, you know, 15 years ago there were no seed oil. So it was really about showing people how incredibly good, really truly clean, nutritionally dense food can be.

And, you know, it was a beloved restaurant because people came there and there was, you know, it was very important to me that there was zero judgment. We weren't dogmatic about anything. So half the staff or more probably weren't vegan. Most of our, you know, half our customers. It wasn't like that. There was no, you know, we weren't like a knowingly dogmatic about it. There was no judgment whatsoever. It was just sort of showing people how good this can be.

And, you know, we were doing great with it. And, and I had all these opportunities to expand and take it global and open another locations.

But I was running it on my own in a way and very overwhelmed. And I now understand more about my psychological wiring too that, you know, I just, I always needed a trusted partner to help me grow the business. And I didn't have that and I was overwhelmed. And then also went through a painful breakup and was at a particularly vulnerable moment when this man slid into my DMs. They can smell it. They can smell vulnerability. They absolutely know how to avoid it. Women who are down. And it can go the other way, too. But it's, in this case, it's a man taking advantage of a woman. All right. So, right, you're just out of a relationship that didn't work out.

You're growing your business. But that's tough. It's challenging on any individual. And, but it's succeeding. And there's a little bit of this. I'm going to show some Netflix clips because it's just interesting how they documented some of the, we can see the be-roll of the restaurant and so on. Let's take a look at, sought 51, which is about the beginning of your career. My undergrad major was economics. And I feel like I got there by process of elimination. So, I went to you Penn, Warton, and Philadelphia.

“I think what happened is when I was there, it was like, what is everybody else doing? Everybody's gunning to go work and invest in banking.”

I got hired by Bear Storms. Somebody that I'd worked with said to me, do you really like this work? I mean, is this what you really want to do? And my first thought was, do you like it?

I don't do people like it. He sort of confronted me on that. Nobody else had really done that. He said, you seem to be interested in food. People that I worked with had subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal, and I had a subscription to gourmet magazine and food and wine that might have been a clue. I wasn't going into the right field. I left after a year and a half. At that time, I wasn't under any pressure to get a job financially, so I went to culinary school. I finished at the French Culinary Institute in '99, and then focused on working in food.

“Now, I understand you don't love this clip. What is it about this that's off?”

Well, that clip I didn't have any issues with. It was the parts that I had issues with were mostly what they left out of the series, including any explanation of the psychology of it. And then they misused a call at the end, and they moved, they actually moved through my words around. Hold on, because the audience isn't ready for that yet. We will definitely get there. Okay, so there you are. You're making the restaurant, the documentary quasi-tension, the fact that Tom Brady, Giselle, Alec Baldwin came in,

and actually wound up hitting on you, but you weren't really in a place where you thought you could do that. This is before Larry, at least was like, there was some sort of a vibe going there. It was potentially an option, but didn't happen. I mean, he's got his own issues, but they're not quite as bad as the one you, the man you wound up with. So then enters the guy who is kind of the other star of the Netflix documentary, who was going by Shane Fox.

“But actually has a different name, Anthony, is it bragolis?”

No, his name was Anthony Stranger. He's since changed it to Anthony Stranger.

Yeah, he's changed it to Anthony Knight, which I always point out just because if anybody out there comes across a dude that a very large dude named Anthony Knight,

he legally changed his name. I think to try to be wide further. Yeah. How did you meet him? What was his name when you met him? Well, he said his name was Shane Fox, and I met him through Alec Baldwin through our Twitter conversations, which is part of why, you know, I write about Alec and my book and our relationship, and then how oddly enough, I met it was just through DMs and Twitter, Alec had just joined Twitter, and I think that this guy just got lucky enough that he got there early,

I don't know, legit, so I wasn't quite as suspicious as I might have been otherwise,

and that's something that people like this always look for is any kind of sort of validation that they can get.

And how did he explain to you that his name wasn't Shane Fox? Well, that came out later, but he crafted this whole sort of persona that he worked in these clandestine operations, which of course is the perfect cover of somebody's account artist, because, you know, they have an immediate excuse to not explain anything. And so eventually I found out it was real name, but when that happened, by the time that happened, I was already ensnared. And, and also by that time, it was as if, you know, well, of course, that's not my real name.

So I have to have, you know, different identities because of what I do or whatnot.

“I mean, a load of crap, but at the time, I, I was sorry, did he love bomb you, because usually that's what these guys do.”

Yes, in my case, it wasn't how much love bombing as it was more like validation bombing, because what this man did, it wasn't that I was so in love with him, or it was about some sort of romantic delusion. It was more that he knew he had clocked me as somebody where what meant the most to me in the world was this business and what I wanted it to do for the world. And, and then at the same time, he figured out what all of my weaknesses and vulnerabilities were.

And so what people do like this, and I think cult leaders do this as well, is they present to you your goals and ideals and the best version of you and what you want to be ultimately.

And, and then somehow attach themselves to it as if the only way to get there is through them. So I would say in my case, it was more of like, I don't know, like a validation bombing, like sort of overwhelming me with. Feeling like he recognized and understood what I wanted to do and understood all of my hopes and dreams and my frustrations and that he would be able to remove all of those frustrations and enable me to grow my business into the business that I wanted it to be without.

“You know, the influence of sort of unsavory investors or because I was in a position where a lot of people wanted to come help me expand the business, but.”

They were not the right people or they were predatory in one way or another. The restaurant industry is is notoriously sketchy and you don't know who to trust. Yes. So I can see how it would be difficult to understand like, is this somebody who's money I want, is this somebody who's partnership I want. Yeah, enters this guy who's charming, you didn't then know about his criminal history or what he'd done to another woman.

So I get it, you're, you know, kind of willfully blind to some of these things about him. Many women go through this when they're, you know, first coupling with a man who may be the answer to their problems. But you married him, which was not a good decision. The, the Netflix documentary covers that a bit. Here's a little bit in sort 52.

Anthony would tell me that that $2 million debt that I'd taken on to buy the restaurant.

That's like nothing. He could just take care of that. I make that go away. So he would be there with me and help, you know, support me to do all the things that I wanted to do. You know, it would be protected at least in one significant way financially. And I remember thinking that would be like some sort of dream come true.

“I remember asking the accountant would he be able to just give me that money or would that be taxable and how could we do that?”

Um, he took jokingly, but half seriously said, well, you should just marry him and then he can give you the money without he, without it being taxable and taxable situation. And very quickly, it was like the next day we went and got the license, they have to wait 24 hours and it was like boom 24 hours, we didn't got married. We got married in November of 2012. So it was a close to a year that I'd known him. Oh, so you're married now. Yeah, and this was one of the parts where they edited it. I mean, there was a whole there was two totally different parts of the interview. So it wasn't that the accountant said that and then 24 hours later what we were married.

What I had said was that he had later subsequently really pressured me and baddured me to marry him saying that I would be protected and it would make everything easier. And it was a whole different part of the interview where I and then I made the point that so I finally agreed like fine all marry you and we went to city hall to get the license and then 24 hours later we were married.

So the audience because it made it seem like I just married him for the money that I thought he had when in reality it was later on and he really baddured me to marry him for for other reasons.

What did you think he did for a living? I mean, that's a good question.

“I write about it in my in the memoir how you know what he did was always vague and anytime I asked him questions I would always get vague answers and what he did was drop you know him to say things in a very word salinity way.”

So you get an answer, but it's not a real answer and you're almost left to connect the dots and figure it out on your own.

So I know that sounds weird, but that's kind of how he addressed every question that I had about everything. So you know and again later on what he did was almost irrelevant because you know he spun the delusion to such a extent that you know he kind of had me believing that there's parallel reality is and nothing is real anyway. So yeah, what he did was almost irrelevant. So he kind of spun a bunch of bull and but like how long into the relationship did he start asking you for money because he definitely said he was very very wealthy and that you know you were going to be super wealthy too.

But the money only ever went one way from you to him.

“So how early on in the relationship did that start?”

It took a while before he ever asked me for money and the first time it was as if it was an emergency like some last minute thing. And there would be dire consequences and he needed my help and so I you know again on the type of person where you need my help and I can do it all do it.

And in retrospect it was a way of getting me tethered because then he never paid me back and then you know he would it was another way of for him to get me.

You know what what the show didn't cover adequately too is that this took a really long time and multiple times after I first got to know him I thought alright well this is it you know something feels off about this guy.

“And my gut was telling me something feels off about this guy and so I tell myself I'm going to cut off communication or I won't see him again.”

But once he borrowed that money it was like a tether so then he would say well I'm going to pay you back so you know let me come back and see this weekend because he didn't live in New York so he always when he came it keeps coming from out of town. Let me come back I'll pay you back and so I'd agree and then he do whatever you know mind sorcery he did that somehow by the end of the weekend I'd have loaned him more money. And over time I just got in deeper and deeper and you know he always had these ever changing stories about how he was he had money but he didn't have access to it or he was going to have it and again it just got deeper and deeper.

When you had given him I mean the final numbers a lot bigger than this but when you realize you'd given him more than a million dollars to the light bulb go off like was there any point when the numbers got huge that you were like what am I. The biggest the numbers got the more terrifying the whole thing was and again part of what these people do is they they weaponize fear and so. The deeper in the whole I am the more I need him to get me out or the way that he's promising he's going to get me out of it and so it's almost like.

You know it's a terrible analogy because I'm not a gambler but it's like if you think that if you just keep going it's all going to be absolved and you'll get out of it if you just keep going that's part of how they you know he got me trapped is I just. I mean how and by that point I couldn't even explain what happened so if I had walked away from him and gone and ran to somebody and said look I need help I you know I'm in a bad situation. And they said well what's going on what happened I wouldn't even know how to explain it and that's that's the part that.

You know it it takes it almost takes having been through something like this to really understand how it happens so again this you know why I'm writing why I've written this book is try to help people understand so they can hopefully avoid it or. But potentially recognize if it's happening to somebody that they care about or I loved one and and be able to help them sooner because people around me knew that something was wrong but they didn't know what was wrong. I'd love to believe that your book can do that and that this segment can do that I have my doubts I think people make their own mistakes for all sorts of deep psychological reasons they need to.

How he was really you in you know like when I talked to Benita she talked a lot about how this doctor was just over the top with like the rose petals and the gifts and she had tape of him like my love my love and she thought he was this world class doctor saving lives with this.

“Brand new breakthrough technology and so you could kind of see how you know any young woman to be like it's a pretty good catch saying it out with the Clintons and the Obama's allegedly.”

But I remain somewhat mystified about what this guy had to recommend him like how he mind warmed into your psyche.

Well a couple of things one is that because I met him through Twitter now X DM's there was at least a month or more before I saw him in person so he was able to sort of do a number on me before I even met him which was smart on his part because if I had met him. A lot of things in my intuition might have told me that he wasn't right but by that time he'd gotten me sort of hooked on this fantasy and and what he really did was weaponize my ambitions because I really believed in my business and what we were doing for the world and he.

Effectively love bombed me with validation and knew what I wanted to hear and saying that he believed in me and that you know that my business was so important to helping the world and helping to heal people and helping to change the way people eat and that's really what that's really what got me and making me believe that he would help me be able to realize those dreams.

Forgive me for the psycho analysis but when you look back at how you were when you were a little girl.

Have you in retrospect been able to like explain your susceptibility to that kind of you know you're you're need for that kind of outside flattery and and I don't know building you up.

“Yeah absolutely I mean I've done a lot of my own psycho analysis to try to figure these things out and I would tell people the most important work that you can do is this.”

This deep self reflection and looking at your childhood and whatever your specific wounds are because even if you grew up and had good parents who weren't you know abusive or.

Cruel in any way shape or form you know perhaps they're you know emotionally unavailable in some way or you're not getting the validation you want or you know for whatever reason I grew up. I know I might present a certain way but I really was also probably deeply insecure in a lot of ways and. Needed that sort of validation and then on the other side of the show one of the things that happened on the other side of the show coming out is that people. Embarded me asking me if I'd ever had an autism diagnosis and I thought like that had never occurred to me and so I went and got an evaluation and ended up getting a diagnosis used to be called as burgers and now they call it autism one for whatever reason.

But that's another thing that shed a lot of light on whatever it is about my particular wiring that makes me. You know that sort of allows for that paradox of being objectively reasonably intelligent yet also unable to see certain things that other people might have seen. And right it's almost like a social I don't know as a handicap but like a social struggle that when you have as burgers social does not come easy to you.

“Yeah absolutely I mean and I can again and women I think are better at masking so people don't see it as easily you know I can I can go out there and talk to people and nobody would necessarily think oh she has as burgers but yet certain things.”

I don't clock people's intentions as well as other people might or it takes me a little bit longer sometimes to process things and I just walk into interactions and. Default setting that I trust people and that I assume that they would. I have the same deficiency in some way so I can understand yeah and I mean I it this wasn't an isolated event this has happened to me there's like that saying you know fool me once shame on you but for me it's like. I have to take responsibility for the fact that this has happened to me over and over and over again and so I really have had to do a lot of deep analysis on understanding the how and the why.

I mean that they do it all the time over on Netflix. Yeah I mean in this case the filmmakers made the show and then sold it to Netflix but Netflix and they're.

I don't know what they're like I'm sick of this because Netflix is someone who even I know it's a pattern do not believe the word documentary when Netflix laughs it on any film it's always going to be docu drama that I will never believe them when they say documentary ever get just given what I've seen. That's actually the the fraud because news I can tell he was taking all this money from you and he was telling you like he needed it for an emergency and he talked about like they're being kind of like another side there's some sort of family that sounded more like an ethereal family not like a mob family not like a family of origin.

“Family that was evaluating you and you had to pass these tests and this was after he had ratcheted up the trust factor he didn't just drop that on you on email one.”

Eventually he got you believing that your sweet dog Leon a pit who you adopted who was absolutely beautiful and very sweet and who you were in love with.

That he could somehow provide immortality for for Leon here is so 54 from the Netflix show what eventually happens is that Anthony promises her that if she just followed along with the program he was suggesting kept going along with what was instructed he is going to make both sarma and her dog immortal just like Anthony is. There was some magical force in play here and he's already in this special ethereal world because he's passed through the tests into this new state of being. It's like some fantastical magical future where my dog is going to live forever and like this reality didn't really matter because it all be reset to some sort of utopia.

“Is happily ever after but he always referred to. Now when people watching this say oh come on right like that would be a bridge too far. Everyone knows there's no such thing as immortality. How do you explain that well what I would say is that.”

You know I think unless you've been through the effects of things like cognitive dissonance and over time ratcheting up level of dissociation it's not that it's not that I believed things he told me necessarily but they were things that you can't disprove and so I did not believe him I just didn't know what to believe and again he he had. Got me and so deep that I didn't see a way out and so you start to cling to whatever solutions and fantasy that they operate you because by this point you're desperate.

So again it wasn't so over that he said you know leons going to live forever my dog but it was all things that he implied and and I think that the more afraid I got the more I dissociated and wanted to believe that none of this was real because I was in so deep. Financially I mean the the most painful part is that this wasn't my money it's not like I had this money saved and he got it that would have been grew you know for me. Comparatively that would have been great if that was the only consequence the most painful part is that this was money that came from the business which ended up destroying it and you know all of these other people that were hurt through me was the most.

“Painful growing part of this whole situation because you had investors you had employees.”

Yeah, and yeah, you were not the only one who would go down as a result. Right, and you got money out of my mother your company had to close twice not one twice one time because of all the money he sold and he reopened. And then I happen to second time and that second time was the last time. Yeah, well and because he took me away so when he took me away from the city. I mean when I was arrested a year almost a year later nine months later if you had told me that people had stepped in and the restaurant was still running I would have.

I would have been relieved but the point is that the entire time that I was away I never googled what happened or.

You know whether or not the restaurant had closed or what happened after I left. And you know again that was something I go into detail and in the books so people can better understand how it happened. Because eventually as and by the way we should cover this do we believe that he was taking all those you know 10,000 100,000 14,000 dollar checks you were sending him and eventually your mom was sending him and just gambling it.

I think the point was the take down and in some ways it almost feels like the point was to destroy me to absolutely obliterate me and to.

“You know beyond just the financial side of it but it's almost as if he wanted me to be so utterly humiliated and broken and to have burned all of my bridges so that any chance for me to recover and come back and rebuild would be.”

I'm still trying to do that but he made sure it would be as difficult as humanly possible. Because not only did he destroy your business but he destroyed your reputation and no no investment investors going to give you money you say this in the documentary now and employees are going to have a.

A care or two about taking a job with you yeah well I mean with your employees though I know you want to add something about I guess did you pay the employees back there their back pay.

Yeah so I agreed to participate in the show. I said I just wanted enough money to repay my employees so as a condition of participating I got the amount of money that the employees were owed which was. But just about 75 grand and all of it went to them because that's the part that weighed on me the heaviest because you know of course that they are not getting paid. It is more significant than you know maybe a wealthy investor being out some of their money I mean that weighs on me as well but what happened with my employees weighed the heaviest and.

All of those people that work there the ones who are available want to come back if I can reopen you know I'm I'm in contact with so they forget them. Yeah because they knew I mean the people that work there and the people who were long time customers of the brand they knew me they knew that whatever happened.

They knew something really crazy happened but they knew that I would never ever ever heard that business or the people who work there it's the other way around I would have sacrificed myself.

So they knew that it didn't make sense. So then eventually this this I am still unclear even having watched the show. This guy gets you to go kind of on on the run with him. You leave New York for ten months you guys are down in like Tennessee for some of it by dolly wood you changed your name when that legally but you started to go by Emma. Instead of Sarma and he he changed his name you covered up your tattoo that had the name of your secondary restaurant on it.

So what did you think during those times did you think I'm on the lamb from the law? No I had no idea that I was that you know I was being sought after and at the time I wouldn't even you know of course. The what happened with the money was incredibly unfortunate but I would have thought it's more of a civil matter not criminal because.

“You know again you think that to to be a criminal you have to have criminal intent and I had the opposite of criminal intent in the situation so I didn't think that.”

You know I I wasn't aware of being sought after by by the police but what I write about in my book and what really didn't come through is that by the time you took me away. I was so broken that there's a scene where he drives me away and I'm screening in the car and by seeing I mean I write about this part of the book because it's almost the last memory I have is being in the car and when he tells me we're driving away. I was screening my head off which is very unlike me but like almost like a wild animal just screaming and he just let me scream and then I wore myself out and it's as if that was the moment when I just slid into a deep deep level of dissociation and from then on was in a sort of auto pilot and so if you saw me during that time.

I could function I could you know talk to a barista Starbucks but it's like I wasn't there and that's the part that again it's really hard to know how that might feel unless you've been through it.

“And so to answer the question what I was what was I thinking or what was I feeling I wasn't thinking and I wasn't feeling it's like that's what dissociation is you're thinking and you're feeling is detached.”

So you're just like almost like a zombie on auto pilot and then the really gut-wrenching part is when I get when I finally was arrested and I write in my book that it took a getting arrested to set me free.

Back up into a level of sanity and coming back into the real world to me it's it's like breaking a horse.

Yeah, it's like once the horse is broke it does stop bucking it stops it out of the crowd like or it's a different horse. Yeah or like the elephant that you know they don't realize that they've been set free they've just been so trained to walk in this one area that they don't or they don't realize that they could break away. You know it is it is like breaking an animal in that way.

So what was he getting out of having you in this condition and just with him during these 10 months on the lamb because you were out of money now.

I know your mom started to get he started to hit her up for don and she did it because she was so worried about you but what was why keep you in other words once like you were kind of bankrupt and I have the same question.

“I think more to get like you would think that by that point he would have just I mean he could have just dumped me somewhere and he could have gotten on a plane and left the country and and nobody would have ever probably gone after him.”

But he didn't and so you know I don't I don't know the answer that question. I do know that he was you know when he took me away he then also took full control he had access before but he took full control of my phone my devices my email. So I was unaware of him using my phone to text people and using my email to reach out to people and ask for money which is incredibly humiliating when I eventually got back into my email.

“So you know nine months later however long it was so he was still able to get some money out of people through me and I think that in the end he realized that somehow the game was over and I can't really explain this but I think he.”

Almost as if I think he might have gotten us arrested intentionally which I know seems like it doesn't make any sense but I my gut tells me that that's what happened because he said to me either the day before or even that morning he said to me there's going to be one more gut shot and I. was terrified because I didn't know what he meant by that but he it's as if he was telling me you're going to have to endure one more really painful thing before this is over and then boom you know we were arrested and.

You know which reminds me of speaking of things he made me endure there's a whole sexual abuse component of the story that they asked me about and I spoke about in my very long interviews for the for the series but they left it out which.

really strange to me I didn't understand it at first but I think had they left it in then the audience would have.

“That's the nature of the alleged abuse. Well, I think that you might have spoken to people in the next game called in the past on your show and so the similar thing happened with key to an area and.”

You know they create this dynamic where it's almost as if they make you believe that this sexual stuff is necessary and something that you have to endure for your own benefit it's really twisted and hard to explain but I go into. I was so repulsed by this man this is another thing that people didn't understand and that didn't come through in the stories I was so repulsed by him the last thing the world I want to do is have sex with this guy who by the way just by which point. I mean it happened over time but it was reasonably at some you know certainly when we got married it wasn't like we were married couple and having sex it by that point I'm sure I had stopped wanting to have sex with him and I think that happened pretty quickly but he.

So eventually it was something that he started to force me to do in a really disgusting manipulative cruel way and it was. I mean it was incredibly painful but it's something that cult leaders do as well and I think it's another. I mean I haven't read the book I only saw the documentary so I wasn't aware of that but what can you provide any color on that like what what what what was so awful about I mean I accepted sexual abuse is awful but if you could just help us understand what you're talking about.

Yeah well um you know he basically told me that I had to do things I mean there's a there's a chapter of my book that goes into gross detail about this where I come home you know I'm exhausted working my.

I was pulling away a bit where maybe I sensed at that point I could get away from him and so he needed a way to exert even more dominance over me and so you know there's he told me to bring a bottle of wine home from the restaurant one night and I didn't know why because. And he wanted me to drink because he told me that he was going to have to force me to do stuff and it was for my own good and you know he had this whole long explanation which I don't even necessarily recall but.

By that point it was you know he had created this dynamic where I have to do what he tells me to do otherwise there's going to be horrible consequences.

“You know again what what what what didn't come through in the show and what people don't understand about situations like this is fear there is so much fear that you feel like you have to do what these people tell you to do so it's as if he.”

It's as if somebody said I'm going to have to you know I don't know I feel like sometimes if you use the the are word it's screws with the TV been sick somebody says I'm going to have to now sexually abused you when you have to let you have to let me and so that's you know that's what happened and that's what I described in the book did. Did you get a response to that allegation when you published the book from him? I mean I haven't gotten any response from. I can't even imagine he's he's off doing what he did to me to somebody else right now there was a show called toxic that was on discovery HBO.

But I ended up I didn't want to participate at first but I did participate once I learned that they were trying to track him down and figure out where he is to potentially hold an accountable because.

At that point we knew that he was doing this to other people and so they do track him down and he is doing what he did to me to somebody else and he'll continue to do that he always.

The most prison time I should make clear these are allegations we do not have the proof of that as right independent broadcaster either of the sexual abuse or that he's doing to somebody else but these are summer's allegations.

“He's already been to prison because at the end of this nine ten months tint and Tennessee you did get arrested.”

It made headlines that it was after ordering dominoes. I mean the short form of this as I recall was like she's not even a vegan they ordered chicken wings and a pizza from dominoes. Like she's the whole thing is a fraud she's a fraud that's where your critics went with it.

Yeah well I want to speak to the dominoes.

That was a tabloid narrative and I'll point out that even the lovely detectives who arrested me who again I feel very warmly towards. They pointed out to taboids that were calling him that I was in a different hotel room than him I didn't even know about the pizza I wasn't in the same room as the pizza.

“And so you know even knowing that information it's sort of too juicy a headline for taboids to claim that you know this New York City vegan was arrested because of a pizza again I didn't even know that a pizza.”

It didn't go a girl in jail when I was in the holding cell in Tennessee and she had seen me on a news program she came into the holding cell after me and said. Ain't you that girl that was on TV you know you got arrested because of the pizza and I was like. Pizza I didn't know anything about it so. Again that was just a way that the taboids want to make a story juicier for attention. Yeah some of the abuse not sexual but verbal is captured in the Netflix film we have some of the.

The language he used over the phone with you captured in the following sound right here so 55. This isn't real this is a real. I don't get what the fucking cause. I don't get what was going on. I don't get fucking me.

You're fucking strong a car you're fucking common. Who's kicking on this fucking threats tell me this and as you're going to go do this and you're going to go do that. Because I want to talk to you. Who's threatening who. Yeah.

Yeah. I got chills. I haven't listened to that in a long time so hearing his voice and yeah I mean I've like goosebumps right now.

It's it's there's something about it where it's like they get you under a spell and in my case.

“One another paradoxical element about this whole situation is that I was I kept pushing back on him and yet he ended up dragging me in and overpowering me over and over again.”

But he was not intimidated by your pushback. Yeah and by the way there's an x-wife. In the documentary or whatever we're calling it on Netflix who says he did this to her too except she had a baby. Yes and she claims in the film that he said to her you know if you give a baby salt. It will die and it won't be detectable in an autopsy.

And she said I never let him be alone with a baby after that.

I mean like again we don't know whether that is drugs and allegation by an x.

“But if so then this guy's got a dangerous pattern here and one might argue you should consider yourself lucky to have just escaped with”

debt, the loss of your business, self-esteem, some anger from employers and investors and a short stint in prison. I mean honestly this could be the lucky outcome. Yeah I mean there I you know I say this in all seriousness there were times where I wished that he had killed me because when I came out of the other side of this, the consequences and everything being destroyed I just felt like what what is there left for me to live for and. Yeah and he wasn't ever held accountable for what he did to me he spent a year in jail and I ended up having to go serve four months after he was released.

So he was out free clean slate and I had to go in and do four months. And that's the only get a year for all of this he stole $1.7 million minimum from you. Yeah I mean I saw you know the ultimate damages were higher than that but like how does he only get a year in jail for that. That's a good question you know I I was prosecuted aggressively he was it's almost like he was an afterthought because the prosecution focused on the business loss.

And but there was no he was never charged for what he did to me or to my mother and this happened.

You know this was 2016 so. I would think that perhaps if it happened now it might be different on the other side of for example key for an area getting prosecuted for what he did.

“And the way he was able to manipulate people I think maybe now it would have been different or had it been a different prosecutor just different circumstances.”

Did he did he plead guilty to something or was he found guilty of anything? Um well he he pled guilty we both pled guilty there was never any trial or anything like that. I mean you know I think anybody has been through the criminal justice system knows that. And so I think that's a good question. The trial and you know perhaps things not being admitted into evidence and you end up with even more time and not to mention not being able to afford a trial.

So you know I ended up pleading guilty which was really painful because however they made it well I'm a deeply honest person and so to stand there in court and have to plead guilty to something that I had no intention of ever doing. You know what did you think guilty to? I've almost like blacked it out but you know the words fraud and grand larceny were involved and that's not me.

I mean I'm like the goody two shoes who never got in trouble in school you know respects authority does the right thing you know my we ran the restaurant.

I had an accountant once who I was talking to about doing our taxes and he said well how many of your employees are on versus off the books and I said well they're all on he said not really tell me how many are off. But no they're all on the books like we did everything by the book and that's kind of just the person that I am. And so to well the thing that's strange about it is normally if you're committing larceny you take the money and then you get again with it you do something I lost everything that will help your life for you know.

I don't know help someone you love but what happened here was you were taking money that he was demanding a giving it to him which he appears to have gambled away which you do not appear to have benefited from at all in fact it was at great. Cost to you and the things that you cared about you know like there's that they don't have some rolex watch right that you you got or some house that you got you weren't taking this money and lining your own pocket with it you were giving it to him. Yeah and even so I mean people know me know that that kind of stuff doesn't matter to me what mattered to me was the business and.

And wanting to protect it so yeah I mean he he's the only one who benefited I didn't.

I believe you I've seen this happen with enough people I believe. I really appreciate that and you know. I at least was lucky enough to recover enough of my communications with him that.

“I have all the backup you know it's like I naively thought that with my prosecution the more evidence they dug up and the more they were able to recover.”

But it would help me they recovered a journal of mine where I was writing about what was going on and when I was given a copy of it I thought okay finally like this exonerates me because surely they wouldn't think that. You know nothing logically made sense why would I have torched my own life and but you know that's not. He's got a long criminal record of impersonating police officers like a very extensive criminal record and I was completely the opposite. But I just got very unlucky with the the prosecution of my case.

So sorry to bring this up but is Leon still alive. Oh no he passed away a year and a half ago I was with him when it happened and you know he had a long life he was a pit bull and.

“He was 14 and a half when he passed away but at least I got to be with him and yeah that's him.”

But it was here in this part yet yet another I mean obviously no but like the deluded version of you chose to believe that maybe he could save your beloved pet forever. And of course it's yet another lie that he told you and so now where where are you and where is he you think he's still doing this to yet another person because he's out of prison. I would imagine the Netflix film would make that a little tough for him but who knows women do what they're going to do and and what about you what are you now what for you.

Good question I was moved back here to New York which was you know where what I always felt was home to reopen the business in the same location and then.

What I said before about you know I have to take responsibility for somebody that unfortunately makes a good target and is able to be deceived by some dishonest people has happened. And again and so I've been a bit reeling on how to move forward but I still have some things in the works and I you know one of the things that people look for in a good target is somebody that won't give up and and we'll keep going and that is something about my personality is that I will keep getting up and I will keep going and keep trying and.

And what I wanted to build the first time around and so I may be able to pull it off for it to happen again. And and maybe not learn if you personally can earn enough money to fund yourself.

“No one can stop you I mean that would be a great outcome here even if you have to do catering whatever like do something to use your skills to earn enough money to open something up even if it's not Manhattan.”

That could be yeah and I think you know another going forward now in my my mission always was around food and clean eating and.

Healthy living but I think also on the other side of this it's really meaningful to me to be to have my story be as useful as possible through my book and through speaking out about. And this type of manipulation that again a lot of people don't realize that it could happen to them and hopefully so that they might also recognize if it's happening to somebody to a loved one or somebody that they care about and be able to intervene and. Help prevent somebody going through as extensive as a nightmare as this.

Alec Baldwin needs to help you Alec Baldwin. I don't know. I don't think so she control the finances but he why not he was like kind of played an early role on this in a way he was responsible for eating this guy. Me a lot of money. He met a lawyer and my restaurant so. I mean, I ended up getting I adopted my dog because of him and so that's another story that's in the book, but there there's a weird connection there and it's not. You know, it's it's a lot of things just need to go right, but for me it's a matter of finding the right partnership and people that I can trust because.

You know, it's not that I necessarily would need somebody else to oversee the money it's that I need I need guard right else I need people that are trustworthy and. Honest and forthright and that I could work collaboratively with and move forward so that also so that I'm well, I think it's not it's not for you that you need somebody to control the finances it's that anybody who is going to be associated with the restaurant is going to want to see that it's not you controlling the finance.

Yeah, for this next phase out, you know, maybe when you're at this for 10 years and everybody sees you're you're good.

“You don't need that, but I think that's all part of rebuilding trust and telegrafting to the world that you know what happened and you acknowledge it and but you're going to earn back trust I think that would be a great start anyway.”

I'm a text Alec Baldwin, I'm telling you now, but I do think he should help you and if not then you help yourself and you you're you're very capable you're well educated you are a lot of skills.

I think you're you can earn money and help give yourself the next big start you need.

“I hope you do it. Thank you for telling your story. I'm sorry. This happened to you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it being here.”

All the best and we'll see you again. Thank you, Sarah.

Wow, unbelievable, right? Like what a crazy story.

“The book, again, that she mentioned is called the girl with the duck tattoo and that's where Sarma aims to set the record straight by laying out what she says is the real story.”

One note for you, the Megan Kelly show reached out to Anthony Strangus for comment regarding these sexual assault allegations made by Sarma as if now we have not received a response. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show, no BS, no agenda and no fear.