The Re-Trial Of Alex Murdaugh

The defense team says other suspects committed these murders. Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson — twenty years inside the Murdaugh household, a key prosecution witness at the first trial — agrees that other people were involved. And her agreement is the worst thing the defense could hear. Because Blanca isn’t saying someone else did it. She’s saying Alex always used someone else to do everything — and the murders fit the same pattern.
Blanca’s theory is specific. She believes Alex had a Plan A that involved another person being at Moselle the night Maggie and Paul were killed. When that plan fell apart...

The woman now overseeing Alex Murdaugh’s retrial reportedly rented office space from his defense attorney and named him under oath as a lawyer who shaped her career. Judge Debra McCaslin was handed exclusive jurisdiction over every Murdaugh proceeding by the South Carolina Supreme Court — the same court that reversed his murder convictions and ordered a new trial in the killings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh. Nobody has filed a motion to remove her.
Defense attorney and former felony prosecutor Eric Faddis examines whether McCaslin’s reported connection to Dick Harpootlian is a genuine problem or a headline, what h...

Years before the South Carolina Supreme Court handed her the most closely watched murder retrial in the state's history, Judge Debra McCaslin stood before legislators and named the lawyers who left a mark on her career. One of them was Dick Harpootlian — the man who will stand at Alex Murdaugh's side when his double murder case goes back to trial for the killings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.
The connection runs deeper than a compliment on the record. McCaslin reportedly rented office space from Harpootlian when she was building her practice. They collaborated on a class-action involving video po...

The Murdaugh retrial doesn't just affect Alex. It touches every case, every family, and every unresolved question connected to the Murdaugh name. Eric Bland represents the Satterfield sons whose testimony the Supreme Court dismissed. He represents Sandy Smith whose son's homicide investigation was reopened because of the Murdaugh murders. And he built the financial crimes case that prosecutors are now being told to scale back.

In this full-length interview, Bland takes the long view. He covers the ruling — what it means for his clients and whether the court got it right. He covers the retrial — whether the stat...

The Murdaugh name appeared more than forty times in the original investigation of Stephen Smith's death in 2015. Stephen was a former classmate of Buster Murdaugh. He was found dead on a road miles from the Murdaugh family's hunting property. When SLED reopened the case six years later, they said it was because of evidence found during the Murdaugh murder investigation. They never revealed what that evidence was.

Eric Bland has said publicly that he has no evidence the Murdaugh family was directly involved in Stephen's death — but that they may have known something. That's a specific claim fr...

Jim Griffin went on national television after the Supreme Court ruling and said the defense has evidence nobody's seen — including an unknown male DNA profile found under Maggie Murdaugh's fingernails. He said it wasn't properly investigated. He said it changes the case. And now the defense walks into retrial with subpoena power and the ability to build a full third-party culprit strategy around it.

Eric Bland has seen more of this case's financial discovery than almost anyone outside the AG's office. He's been watching the defense signal its strategy for weeks — the DNA claim, Harpootlian's argument that SLED...

Becky Hill wanted to sell books. Alex Murdaugh's murder convictions are gone. And the financial crime victims who sat on that witness stand are now being told by the state's highest court that some of their testimony had "zero probative value." Eric Bland represented those victims. He's the attorney who exposed the financial schemes that prosecutors used as their entire theory of motive. And he's furious.

The Supreme Court's ruling turned on Hill's conduct — the improper comments to jurors, the pressure to convict, the book deal that allegedly motivated her interference. Hill has since pleaded guilty to ob...

Alex Murdaugh finished law school at the University of South Carolina in 1994. The judge who now holds his future finished at the same school in 1993. Twelve months apart, same building, same degree — and two lives that could not have run in more opposite directions. He walked into a family firm with a century of Lowcountry power behind it. She walked out with law books other people had to buy for her, opened a solo practice, and spent twenty-five years grinding before the General Assembly ever put her on the bench. Now those two paths collide in the biggest retrial th...

For everyone who has followed the Murdaugh case with their heart in their throat — waiting, again, for a verdict that finally holds for Maggie and Paul — here is what we actually know about the woman now in charge.

Judge Debra McCaslin was handed the entire Alex Murdaugh case by the South Carolina Supreme Court: every motion, every ruling, and the retrial itself. And while the internet fixates on her reported history with defense attorney Dick Harpootlian — the office she once rented from him, the praise she reportedly offered during her rise to the bench — her record tells a differ...

Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson spent twenty years watching Alex Murdaugh use other people to do his work. Curtis Eddie Smith cashed four hundred thirty-seven checks totaling roughly $2.4 million. A network of enablers kept the financial machine running for years. Alex moved money through other people's hands. He used relationships as cover. He built deniability into every arrangement. He never did anything alone.

So when the defense says "other suspects," Blanca doesn't flinch. She has her own theory — and it doesn't point away from Alex. She believes he had a Plan A that involved someone else being at Moselle th...

When the Supreme Court erased Alex Murdaugh's murder convictions, Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson didn't call anyone. She drove straight to Maggie's grave. Twenty years inside that household. Not staff — family. The person Maggie cried to when Alex's financial world was caving in and nobody would tell her why. Blanca fixed Alex's collar the morning of June 7th. She remembered the shirt. She found the wet towel by the shower the next day. She gave every detail to a jury that convicted in three hours. Then Becky Hill — a court clerk who was writing a book about the trial while it was...

The prosecution should fear Blanca Simpson because she knows things they never asked about — and three years of processing the case has given her clarity they might not be ready for. The defense should fear her because she spent twenty years watching Alex Murdaugh operate, and the version of events they're selling doesn't match the man she knew.Blanca Turrubiate-Simpson is not a neutral party and she's never pretended to be. She loved Maggie. She cared for Paul. She believes Alex killed them. She said it in her book and she's said it on camera. But she's also someone wh...

Four hundred thirty-seven checks. Roughly two point four million dollars. All flowing from Alex Murdaugh to Curtis Eddie Smith over eight years. That's just one relationship in Alex's network. Add the law partners who didn't ask questions. The bankers who processed the transactions. The people who enabled the opioid pipeline. The man who agreed to shoot Alex on the side of the road for an insurance payout. Alex Murdaugh built an entire ecosystem of people who did things for him.Blanca Simpson watched that ecosystem operate from inside the household. She saw who had access. Who showed up at...

The Supreme Court gave prosecutors a clear signal: scale back the financial crimes evidence. The first trial spent twelve and a half hours on stolen money, defrauded clients, and broken lives. The justices called it excessive and said the state could have made its case in a fraction of that time.That changes the entire architecture of round two. And it elevates one witness above almost every other: Blanca Simpson.Blanca didn't see the murders. She didn't process the crime scene. What she did was spend twenty years learning the exact rhythms of the Murdaugh household — and then walk th...

Blanca Simpson has said it publicly: she believes Alex Murdaugh killed Maggie and Paul. She wrote it in her book. She said it on camera. She reached that conclusion after years of processing what she saw inside that house — the wet towel, the folded pajamas, the shirt that vanished, the moment Alex tried to rewrite her memory months after the murders.And when the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously threw out the conviction that her testimony helped secure, she said something that most people on either side of this case would never say: she respects the decision.That tension is...

It's easy to forget, with all the legal noise, that this case has two victims with names: Maggie Murdaugh and her son Paul. They were killed at the family's dog kennels in June of 2021, and for the people who've followed this story closely, the news that Alex Murdaugh's convictions were overturned landed hard — because it means the question of who answers for their deaths is open all over again.

Former FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer sits down with Tony Brueski to talk about where this leaves the people who loved Maggie and Paul. We talk honestly about wh...

Alex Murdaugh is 57. He's serving 40 years federal. He's never getting out. So why spend millions on a retrial?

Because Maggie Murdaugh was 52. Paul Murdaugh was 22. They were shot to death on their family's property. And right now, nobody stands convicted of killing them. The guilty verdicts are erased. The life sentences are vacated. Not because the evidence wasn't there — because an elected court clerk corrupted the process. A financial crimes sentence is not a murder conviction by proxy. Accepting it as one tells the families of Maggie and Paul that the question of who killed them doesn't ma...

Unknown male DNA was found under Maggie Murdaugh's fingernails. It was never run through CODIS. Jim Griffin said it at the press conference like he'd been waiting to — physical evidence from the person who was fatally shot, collected by investigators, documented in the case file, and never matched through the federal database. The defense has plans for it. They're not hiding that.

But untested DNA is only one piece. The defense laid out a list of alleged SLED failures that got buried under twelve hours of financial crimes testimony the first time. Tire tracks never processed. GPS da...

Alex Murdaugh's defense team just filed a federal lawsuit against Becky Hill — and the point isn't money. It's answers. The Section 1983 civil rights claim alleges Hill deprived Murdaugh of a fair trial before an untampered jury. The Supreme Court already found her conduct warranted throwing out the conviction. Now the defense wants to use civil discovery — depositions, subpoenas, sworn testimony — to find out everything the state never bothered to investigate.

Jim Griffin put it plainly at the press conference: was Becky Hill a lone wolf? Or did someone else know what was happening during those deliberations? The co...

The first jury had twelve hours of stolen-money testimony making Alex Murdaugh look like a desperate man capable of anything. The Supreme Court stripped that away. Now the case has to stand on what SLED actually found at Moselle — and what they didn't bother to chase.

Blanca Simpson, the Murdaugh housekeeper, told investigators about a suspicious white vehicle parked near the property close to where Paul kept firearms on the day of the killings. She reported it that day. She later gave more specific details in private interviews than she ever shared on the stand. SLED reportedly di...

Buster Murdaugh sat behind his father every single day of that first trial. He took the stand and told a jury Alex wasn't capable of this. Then Alex got convicted — and Buster disappeared. Three years of barely any prison calls. A quiet marriage. A life built as far from the Murdaugh name as he could manage. Now the convictions have been reversed and the retrial is coming, and sources say Buster isn't grateful. He's reportedly furious. He allegedly called Alex a "selfish old man."

That's the son who was supposed to be the defense's emotional anchor. If...

Two conversations about Alex Murdaugh, and both of them keep coming back to what Maggie was carrying in those final months.

She had reportedly retained a divorce attorney. She was living apart from Alex. On June 7, 2021, she did not want to go to Moselle. Two witnesses testified to that. She went anyway. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott — who writes about separation danger on her Substack, Spotlight on Psychology — explains what happens inside a controlling partner when they sense the door is closing. Why instincts get overridden after years of keeping the peace. Why the window between deciding to leave and...

Myra Crosby sat through six weeks of testimony. The judge praised her as an excellent juror. She was undecided. And on the morning deliberations were set to begin, she was removed based on allegations that now appear to have been fabricated. Three years later, the Supreme Court confirmed what Crosby has been saying all along: Becky Hill misrepresented information to the court to get her off the panel.But this episode goes deeper than Hill. I follow the anonymous email that triggered Crosby’s removal to its alleged source — someone reportedly connected to the Murdaugh Murders podcast network and atto...

Here's what doesn't add up. The state prosecutor who handled Becky Hill's criminal case told the court there wasn't enough evidence to charge her with jury tampering. Four months later, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Hill engaged in "shocking jury interference" and placed "her fingers on the scales of justice." She'd already pleaded guilty to misconduct, obstruction, and perjury. But the tampering charge — the one that actually describes what the Supreme Court says she did — was never filed.

Eric Faddis spent years as a prosecutor and now practices defense. He explains how that gap happ...

Alex Murdaugh is 57 years old serving 40 years in federal prison. He’s never getting out. So the question people keep asking is: why bother with a murder retrial? This episode of the Murdaugh channel answers that question, and the answer starts with two names: Maggie and Paul.

Maggie Murdaugh was 52. Paul was 22. They were killed on their family’s property. The Supreme Court’s ruling erased the murder convictions and the life sentences. The legal record says no one has been convicted of their deaths. That’s a reality that cannot stand without an answer. The state has a le...

Time is a weapon in Alex Murdaugh’s retrial, and both sides know exactly how to use it. The AG promised speed — retry aggressively, as soon as possible. That urgency is strategic. Wilson’s office built the first case and has institutional knowledge of every witness and every vulnerability. That asset expires when Wilson leaves office in January 2027.

This Murdaugh channel episode maps the pre-trial chess match that could determine the outcome before a jury is ever seated. The defense has every incentive to slow things down. Pre-trial motions on financial evidence, venue change arguments, expert witness disput...

The Murdaugh retrial isn’t going to look anything like the first one. The defense now holds weapons they didn’t have before, and the prosecution just lost something it can never get back. That shift changes everything about what happens next.

Eight thousand pages of sworn testimony from every state witness now sit in the defense’s hands. That’s a full impeachment roadmap — every inconsistency, every contradiction, every place where what somebody said on the stand doesn’t line up with the evidence. The prosecution can’t take it back and can’t un-say it. In the first tri...

The defense team covered more ground in one press conference than most legal teams cover in a month. Here is everything they revealed — the federal lawsuit, the confrontation with the Attorney General, and the retrial roadmap that changes the picture of this case.

They filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Becky Hill under Section 1983. The claim: she deprived Murdaugh of his right to a fair trial by tampering with the jury. The strategy: use civil discovery to investigate what the state never examined. Griffin asked whether Hill was a lone wolf. The lawsuit is designed to fi...

The defense did not hedge. They did not leave room for interpretation. There will never be a plea deal in the Alex Murdaugh case. Not under any circumstances. The question was asked, and the answer was absolute.

Understanding why they are so certain requires understanding what they revealed about the retrial itself. Start with the DNA. Unknown male DNA was found under Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernails and was never run through CODIS. The defense confirmed they intend to make that evidence central to the retrial. When you have physical evidence that was collected and then apparently ignored, it...

The SC Supreme Court gave Alex Murdaugh’s defense team something rare in criminal law — a ruling that identifies exactly where the prosecution crossed the line and signals to the next judge how to prevent it from happening again. Harpootlian and Griffin don’t walk into Trial 2 hoping for a different outcome. They walk in with a specific plan built on advantages the court created for them.

This Murdaugh channel episode traces each advantage. The financial evidence firewall lets the defense challenge every piece of financial testimony using the court’s own published skepticism. The corruption narrative — a convicte...

Dick Harpootlian looked into the cameras and sent a message directly to Attorney General Alan Wilson: stop playing politics with this case and do your job. It was the most pointed moment of the entire press conference.

The context is the death penalty. Wilson announced his intent to seek it against Alex Murdaugh at the retrial — something he did not do the first time around. Harpootlian called the decision vindictive prosecution, arguing that the only reason for the escalation is that Murdaugh successfully appealed his conviction. Not new evidence. Not new facts. Just a defendant who won an...

Jim Griffin stood at the podium and asked the question that has been hanging over this case since the Supreme Court ruling: did Becky Hill act alone?

The defense is not leaving it to speculation. They filed a federal civil rights lawsuit — a Section 1983 claim — against the former Colleton County Clerk, alleging she stripped Alex Murdaugh of his right to a fair trial. The court already agreed the trial was compromised. What the lawsuit wants to determine is how it was compromised, by whom, and whether Hill had help.

Civil discovery gives the defense something the...

One week after the Supreme Court overturned his conviction, Alex Murdaugh’s retrial is already surrounded by more chaos than the first trial. The AG is threatening the death penalty while running for governor. His own son reportedly won’t speak to him. And his lawyers just told the country they have leads on “third parties.”

Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke combine every thread from their listener-driven conversation into one comprehensive analysis. Robin’s FBI behavioral lens ties together what looks like three separate stories into one picture: a retrial being shaped by political ambition, family collapse, and defens...

The defense went on national television and said they have information about “third parties and potential motives.” They said the Supreme Court reversal gives them subpoena power. They wouldn’t elaborate. And they haven’t filed a single motion about any of it.

Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke answer the listener question that connects the dots: If Harpootlian and Griffin have genuine evidence of another person involved in the murders, why announce it on a morning show instead of in a courtroom? Is this a legal strategy preview or a pretrial narrative campaign?

Robin examines both pos...

The SC Supreme Court used language it has never applied to a South Carolina court official: unprecedented, breathtaking, disgraceful. All directed at Becky Hill, the elected Clerk of Court in Colleton County who was supposed to protect the integrity of Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial. Instead, she weaponized her authority over the jury to push toward a guilty verdict — because she was writing a book and needed a dramatic conviction to sell it.

This episode traces Hill’s conduct from the courtroom to the criminal courtroom where she pled guilty. The Supreme Court found she told jurors...

Three years ago, Buster Murdaugh looked a jury in the eye and said he didn’t believe his father could hurt Maggie and Paul. That testimony mattered. It put a human face on the defense.

Now sources say Buster is furious about the retrial, hasn’t been to see his father, and someone in his circle has called Alex selfish for pursuing a second trial. The question for the defense isn’t whether they want Buster on the stand—of course they do. The question is whether Buster wants to be there. And what it means if he doesn...

The death penalty was never part of trial one. Creighton Waters didn’t ask for it. The state didn’t seek it. The jury was never given that option. Now Alan Wilson says everything is on the table for round two—and he’s saying it while campaigning for governor.

Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke answer listener questions about the practical impact of the AG’s statement. A death-penalty-eligible case changes jury selection completely. It changes pretrial motions. It changes the defense’s strategy. And it changes the pressure on every person in the prosecution’s office who knows thei...

The SC Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling didn’t just overturn Alex Murdaugh’s double murder conviction — it imposed constraints on the retrial that fundamentally change the prosecution’s approach. The court said the state spent far too long on financial crimes testimony and could have established motive with a fraction of the evidence it presented. That’s not a suggestion. That’s the state’s highest court drawing a box around what the prosecution can do in Trial 2.

The motive framework survives in compressed form. The CFO confrontation, the looming hearing, the collapsing financial empire — those facts still come i...

Twelve hours of financial crimes testimony. A parade of defrauded clients. A pattern of lies so relentless the jury convicted in under three hours. That was the first trial. The Supreme Court just erased it.

Now Creighton Waters has to build a murder case on physical evidence alone, and SLED’s investigation is about to face the kind of scrutiny it avoided the first time. The crime scene was rained on, walked through, and no murder weapon was ever found. Alex Murdaugh’s DNA wasn’t recovered from the scene. And a longtime housekeeper says she flagged a susp...

Buster Murdaugh told a jury his father wasn’t capable of killing Maggie and Paul. That was three years ago. Since then, he’s barely spoken to Alex, got married without the Murdaugh spectacle, and built a life that looks like someone trying to put distance between himself and a last name that carries nothing but wreckage.

The conviction just got overturned. A retrial is coming. And the person both legal teams need most isn’t a forensic expert or a new witness — it’s Buster. Sources say he’s not relieved. He’s reportedly furious, calling his father a “...