The Devil at His Elbow, page 35
“I would never hurt Maggie. Ever.”
“Would you tell the jury about Paul, please?”
Paul had a sweetness to him, Alex said. He doted on his grandparents and took care of his friends.
“To be such a tough person, he would get all his buddies and get on a boat and go watch a sunset,” he said, sniffling. “Any twenty-two-year-old people you know do stuff like that? I mean, he was such a special boy.”
Aware that his testimony was being beamed out to the world, he leaned into the microphone.
“I would challenge you right now,” he said. “Go find somebody, somebody that knew Pau Pau, and really knew him, that did not have an ulterior motive, that would say something negative about him. And I challenge everybody who can hear me now to do that.
“It hurt Paul so bad when Mallory died,” he said. “But how many twenty-two-year-olds do you know that think that way? ‘Be present. Appreciate things around you.’ At twenty-two years old.”
Griffin cut in, trying to avoid further lionization of a troubled young man. Paul had been the victim of a violent senseless death, but so had Mallory Beach.
“Alex,” the lawyer said, “do you love Paul?”
“Did I love him? Like no other. He and Buster.”
“Do you love Maggie?”
“More than anything.”
“Did you kill Maggie?”
“No. I did not kill Maggie. I did not kill Paul. I would never hurt Maggie. And I would never hurt Paul ever. Under any circumstances.”
Chapter Forty-One
Creighton Waters had spent two years becoming the world’s foremost student of Alex Murdaugh, starting long before the homicides, ever since he’d first heard the phrase “the boat case.”
The defense lawyers could say whatever they wanted: that it was a game-time decision, that they’d advised against it, that they hadn’t been sure Alex would go through with it. But Waters had always known Alex would take the stand. He wouldn’t have been able to help himself, not with the lure of a jury at his knees and a microphone to the world.
The direct examination of Alex by the defense had stretched into midafternoon, making for an unusually late 2:30 p.m. lunch break. That meant the biggest cross-examination of Waters’s career would begin in the late afternoon. Waters ate two Kind energy bars as he finalized his opening questions in the attorney general’s makeshift headquarters in a trailer next to the food trucks. It had been weeks since he’d sat down for a proper meal. His colleagues would often walk to the Cracker Barrel for fried chicken and Bud Light, but every minute spent waiting for food or making small talk was time better spent preparing for this cross. He had lost ten pounds over the course of the trial, lost most of his voice to a cold, and slept four or five hours on a good night. He’d be getting Alex on the witness stand just before 4 p.m. Waters didn’t want to get too confrontational too fast, since he’d inevitably have to continue his questions the next morning. Waters, as tactical a lawyer as Alex was an intuitive one, opted to start out as the good cop, seeking Alex’s buy-in on key facts of the state’s case, a legal strategy known as the constructive cross.
* * *
—
Waters could feel Alex’s eyes on him as he put his papers on the lectern. He spoke for the first time to a man he felt he knew very well.
“Mr. Murdaugh,” he said. “Let’s start with a few things we agree on.”
“All right, sir.”
“You agree that the most important part of your testimony here today is explaining your lie for a year and a half that you were never down at those kennels at eight-forty-four. Would you agree with that?”
“I, I think all of my testimony is important, Mr. Waters.”
Waters asked whether it was accurate to say that the first time prosecutors or law enforcement heard Alex admit he was at the kennels was earlier that day on the witness stand.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. All this time later, this is the first time you’ve ever said that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you would agree with me that for years you were stealing money from clients?”
“Yes, sir, I agree with that.”
“And that you were stealing from your law firm.”
“Yes, sir, I agree with that.”
Waters moved on. “Let’s talk first about your family’s legacy here in the legal profession, okay?”
“Talk about anything you want to.”
“Tell me about your great-grandfather.”
Alex said his great-grandfather was Randolph Murdaugh Sr., who’d served as solicitor for twenty years.
“Did you ever get to know him?”
“Oh, no, sir. He got killed in 1940.”
What about your grandfather, Waters asked.
Alex said his grandfather’s name was Randolph Murdaugh Jr., though he went by Buster. He told how his grandfather took over as solicitor after his great-grandfather died and then served from 1940 to 1986, the longest-serving prosecutor in the country.
“I knew him extremely well and loved him dearly,” Alex said.
Waters knew Alex had not just loved Old Buster but had wanted to be him. Alex had told colleagues he was born a generation too late because he would have thrived in Buster’s era.
“Idolized him, did you not?”
“Yes.”
Alex said his grandfather had retired because you weren’t allowed to be solicitor after age seventy-two. His father, Randolph Murdaugh III, took over and filled Buster’s unexpired term, serving from 1986 to 2006.
“I actually worked a case with him,” Waters said.
“He’s a fine, fine, fine man,” Alex said. “An excellent lawyer.”
“That’s a big part of your family legacy and your heritage that’s so ingrained around here,” Waters said, “that history of being the chief prosecutor and being a central part of the legal community, is that correct? Would you agree with that?”
“That my family’s been a central part of the legal community? Yes, sir, I agree with that.”
“And not only just a central part of the legal community, but the chief prosecutor for this area since 1910, I think? Up until 2006.”
Alex corrected him. “1920,” he said. “1910 is when my great-grandfather started the law firm.”
Waters was not just establishing the dominance of the Murdaugh family. He was inviting Alex to showcase the precision of Alex’s memory. Other witnesses had described it as almost photographic. Waters needed the jury to see how keen the witness’s recall was, so perhaps they’d question why he was so fuzzy on details from the night of the murder.
Alex went on to say he had gone to law school, just like the Murdaugh men before him. He graduated in 1994 and worked in Beaufort for a few years before coming home to the family firm in Hampton.
“And then you went to the law firm that doesn’t exist anymore,” Waters said, “that started in 1910, but it doesn’t exist anymore because of your activities, correct?”
Alex scowled. “That’s correct.”
“You were a trial lawyer, correct?” Waters asked. “Successful trial lawyer.”
“I—I don’t know about your adjective. But—I was, you know—I—I guess so, yes, sir.”
“Did you make millions of dollars in legal fees?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you won’t tell this jury that’s successful?”
If the criterion was money, Alex allowed he’d been successful.
Waters asked whether Alex had done jury trials, looking jurors in the eyes and making arguments. Alex said yes, he’d worked a lot of jury trials as a plaintiffs’ lawyer, primarily representing people involved in wrecks. He’d even served as head of the state trial lawyers’ association.
“So can we agree now on successful?” Waters asked.
They parried over the degree to which Alex was successful, a surreal argument in a place where Alex made more money in a year than most people earned in a lifetime and where Murdaugh was a household name. Then they haggled over whether he and his family were prominent.
“I never thought of myself as prominent.”
Waters said he wasn’t asking what Alex thought. Did others see him and his family as prominent?
“I mean, like a big shot? No, sir, I don’t think that.”
“What about your family?”
“That my family thought we were big shots? No, sir.”
“That people viewed…”
“I definitely don’t think that.”
“…your family as prominent in this community.”
“Prominent?”
“Yeah.”
“As in…”
“It’s not a hard question.”
“Well, I—I’m just not sure, you know, I think my family was very well thought of. I think my family was respected. I think my family helped a lot of people.”
“I’m not challenging you on any of that. I’m just getting you to agree with what seems to be a basic fact.”
Waters had to rein in his impulse to go harder at Alex. He also made a point of slipping back and forth in the chronology, circling with one line of questions and then shifting to another to make it harder for the witness to settle into a rhythm. All of the prosecutor’s questions were designed to expose Alex’s capacity for lying about every aspect of his life. Waters needed to harness Alex’s desire to explain himself, knowing that once Alex started talking, he wouldn’t stop. And the more he talked, the more his ego would trip him up, and the more he would reveal himself.
The prosecutor turned to the Murdaugh family’s ties to law enforcement. Would it be fair to say the Murdaughs had close relationships, given their dual roles in the solicitor’s office and their civil practice specializing in wrecks? Alex said he supposed so. Would it be fair to say the family cultivated friendships with law enforcement officers, too? Well, Alex said, it’s not like the firm sponsored events for law enforcement, more like the lawyers themselves may have had friends they hung out with.
“It’s a simple point,” Waters said. “You had a lot of friends in law enforcement. Your family and you had a long association with the law enforcement community in this circuit. Is that correct?”
“Association being friendships and working relationships? Absolutely.”
As for Alex’s own experiences in the solicitor’s office, Alex said he took five cases to trial over the years, mostly as a way to spend time with his father. He’d had a badge since 1998.
“You actually had two badges, right?”
Yes, Alex said, he’d inherited his grandfather’s badge when Old Buster died.
Waters picked up what looked like a brown paper lunch bag tucked in a stack of file folders. Alex worked his jaw forward and back while Waters walked over to the defense table and pulled out two thin leather wallets for Jim Griffin to inspect. He then brought the bag to the witness stand and asked Alex to identify the badge tucked in the first wallet. Alex donned his reading glasses and said the first badge was #571, the one he was given when he joined the solicitor’s office. The second was badge #570, which had belonged to his grandfather Buster near the end of his career, after he retired as the solicitor and kept working as an assistant prosecutor.
Waters asked where he typically kept his grandfather’s badge, and Alex said no particular place.
“Would you dispute if it was recovered out of the Mercedes you were driving on September fourth, the day of the side of the road incident?”
“No, I believe that.”
Waters took the wallet back from him and placed it faceup on the overhead projector, where the jury could see the brass badge against the black leather. There was an eagle, arms outstretched, clutching a banner with the words Ass’t Solicitor. Below was the glossy enamel of the state seal, with South Carolina’s dual mottos in Latin: Animis Opibusque Parati (“Prepared in mind and resources”) and Dum Spiro Spero (“While I breathe, I hope”).
Waters asked where he kept his own badge, #570. Again, Alex said nowhere in particular, sometimes on the front seat, sometimes in the cupholder, and occasionally on the dashboard.
Really? Waters said. There was no rhyme or reason to where Alex kept the badge?
Alex said he might occasionally put it in the cupholder or on the dash if he got pulled over so an officer could see it. He said it so matter-of-factly, it wasn’t clear whether his legendary power to read jurors’ minds momentarily failed or he simply had no choice but to cop to this shocking display of privilege.
“Now why would you do that?” Waters asked. “Why would you have it in the cupholder? You’re not sayin’ you were on official business, are you?”
No, Alex said.
Well, why, then? Waters asked.
Alex’s face became hard. He looked at Waters out of the side of his eye. “Because,” he said. “I found that law enforcement oftentimes is friendlier when you’re in law enforcement.”
“When you’re law enforcement,” Waters said. “So you considered yourself law enforcement?”
“No, sir. I, I can’t say that I considered myself law enforcement.”
Waters took a beat. He repeated Alex’s words back to him. So you’d sometimes drive with the badge faceup on the dashboard? Yes, Alex said. And you don’t consider yourself law enforcement? Correct, he said.
“All right, so you were just using this badge to your advantage and taking license with it. Is that correct?”
“I—I guess in some circumstances, that is accurate.”
To get better treatment, right?
That was probably fair to say, Alex said.
At the defense table, Harpootlian held his mouth in a thin line for most of the exchange, then pulled at his ear like a third base coach signaling his runner not to try to steal.
Waters put Alex’s badge on the overhead alongside his grandfather’s. The contrast was clear, the badge of a fake lawman beside the badge of a real one. Buster, in spite of his subversion of his role, had been a public servant. He’d put in the work. Alex hadn’t even pretended. The previous generations had gathered entitlements to themselves by virtue of carrying this badge, but Alex took the spoils without the sacrifice.
“Did you ever have lights in your vehicle?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
Alex said he’d had them installed in the SUV provided by his law firm, the one he’d had for five years prior to the Suburban. Alex said he sought permission from three sheriffs in the Fourteenth Circuit, including Andy Strickland, the former sheriff in Colleton County.
Waters knew all about Strickland. He’d run him out of office on public corruption charges less than a year before the homicides.
“You said, ‘Hey, I’m going to get some blue lights installed in my vehicle.’ And he said, ‘That’s cool.’ Or words to that effect?”
“I mean, that doesn’t sound like the words that he would’ve used or I would’ve used. But I certainly asked him and he certainly said it was okay.”
Waters showed Alex a picture taken on the night of the homicides with Alex’s badge facing up on the dashboard of the Suburban. Alex said he didn’t remember putting it there but didn’t dispute that he might have.
Waters said he wanted to change the subject a bit and talk about the boat case. Alex asked whether he meant the civil lawsuit or the criminal charges the state brought against Pau Pau.
“Pau Pau,” Waters said. “That was your nickname for Paul?”
“Yeah, I called him Pau Pau. Maggie called him Pau Pau. Bus calls him Pau Pau.”
Alex had given three lengthy statements to police about the homicides, all of which had been played for the jury. Waters pointed out that in all those hours of interviews, Alex had never referred to his son as Pau Pau. Alex said he’d call him Paul if that’s what the prosecutor wanted.
“No, you can call him whatever you want. I’m just asking you if you ever called him that during the course of that entire investigation. Or is that also the first time today, at least publicly?”
Alex said he commonly called his son Pau Pau, similar to the way he used Ro Ro as the nickname for his neighbor Rogan Gibson. Waters turned back to the boat case.
“And we’ve talked a little bit about your badge. Did you have your badge with you on the night of the boat wreck?”
Alex’s eyes widened and he lifted his chin—whether in surprise or recognition wasn’t clear. He repeated the prosecutor’s question out loud, buying time, then said he didn’t believe he’d had the badge at Beaufort Memorial. When Waters asked whether he was acting in any official capacity that night, Alex again repeated the question, then said no, he hadn’t been.
Waters walked over to the prosecution table, picked up a picture, and handed it to Alex. He asked him to identify the man on the right, standing in the emergency room hallway, the tall man in the white fishing tournament T-shirt.
“Is that you?” the prosecutor asked.
“Yeah, it looks like me.”
“All right. What’s hanging out of your pocket in plain view?”
“Looks like a badge.”
“Did you generally walk around with your badge hanging out your pocket?”
“Generally speaking, no, sir, I did not.”
“Or only when you wanted some advantage from it?”
“Did I…did I…”
“Did you want some advantage from wearing it like that?”
“Did I hang it out my pocket when I wanted an advantage?”
“Yes.”
“I certainly may have.”
Waters walked back to the lectern a few paces in front of Alex and leaned over it, his weight on his crossed arms. Alex was staring him down, no longer the sniffling and crying defendant of earlier that afternoon but the Alex of old, nice until he was not. Waters stared back over the top of his glasses.
