← Crime & Justice with Donna Rotunno
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Marvel Television's Wonder man, an eight episode series now streaming on Disney. A superhero remake.
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Not exactly what we'd expect from an Oscar winning director.
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Action Simon Williams audition for Wonder Man.
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I'm gonna need you to sign this. Assuming you don't have superpowers.
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I'll never work again. If anyone found out.
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My lips are sealed.
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Marvel Television's Wonder man, all eight episodes now streaming only on Disney. Welcome to crime and just Donna Rotuno. Alex Murdaugh is back in the news regarding the murders of his wife and his son. The Supreme Court has recently listened to arguments about whether or not he should get a new trial. Joining me today is Valerie Borlein, investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Valerie, thank you again for coming back and joining me.
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B
Thanks for having me back.
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A
Thrilled to talk about this case too. I mean, I know we recently spoke about the Camp Swamp Road murders and now I have you back to talk about Alex Murdaugh, which in some ways, in your perspective, they're a little bit linked just because you're investigating the Murdoch cases while you ended up finding out about Camp Swamp Road. So I'm, I'm just really thrilled to have you back to talk to me about this. You wrote a book about this case. Tell me about it and let's talk about what kind of inspired you to write the book and then we'll get into a bunch of different things regarding the murders here.
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B
No, I wrote a book about it called the Devil at His Elbow, Alec Murdoch and the Fall of the Southern Dynasty. And you know, I've been at the journal for 20 years, based in the south. And I've covered the south my entire career and I covered South Carolina. And so I followed the news there very closely and have a lot of long term sources there. So I was just following out of interest this double murder of Maggie and Paul Murdoch Back on June 7th of 2021, when my editor, the top of the masthead, it was actually Matt Murray, who's now at the Washington Post, pinged me, you know, on a summer night. And he's like, val, are you following this homicide, double homicide in South Carolina? And I said I was. And he's like, I'm going to call you. And he was interested because he'd met the CEO of the gas station where Paul Murdoch had bought a lot of beer as a 19 year old the night that he crashed his family boat. And a young woman named Mallory beach was killed. And that was the domino that fell that sort of led up to, we now know this homicide and it was just an interesting legal issue about the culpability of the CEO or his company for selling this beer underage. But. So there was a legal story there. But he's like. And I asked him, I said, well, what does the Wall Street Journal, where I work, what do we have to add to this case? And he said, val, sometimes a good story is just a good story. Why don't you go down there? And I did. And his hunch was right, because it turns out to be this sprawling, classic Wall Street Journal story about the themes we care about. Money, power, how power works, interesting places. And so I spent from 2021 until 2024 covering the case essentially full time, and published this book about it and was in court every day. I know you watched the trial, but I was in court, in the courtroom
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every day for the trial I did, which is. Which is always better to be. To be there alive and see what's happening. You can really pick up on a lot of nuance and a lot of interaction between people. And the thing that I found most fascinating about this story from the beginning was this was not an isolated incident in the sense that this happened. It was a family, and everybody kind of moved on. This is a family that is ingrained into the fabric of this low country area of South Carolina. And for decades, the power that they had, the institutions that they ran, the political ramifications and things that they were a part of, and the amount of money that they were earning, it really was.
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B
You know, Craig Melvin, who is from. The journalist who's from North South Carolina, he calls it the redneck Yellowstone. And in some regards, it really is a generational story about this family. And I think, you know, I grew up in a. In a smallish town, but people that are from small towns, they'll tell you, oh, there was a family like that in my town, and in a lot of places there are. But this was several levels deeper than that because this was a family that had had an immense amount of power through their law firm. They represented their, you know, personal injury attorneys in a very poor community. They represented everyone in that town. But for 100 years, the better part of 100 years, they ran the prosecutor's office for five rural counties. So that meant they were the. One of the family members was the district attorney for 100 mile radius. And when you have the ability to work both levers of power, I mean, you got to think about it, like, if you're a prosecutor and there's a DUI and you're like, oh, you can look at your jury roster, who's coming up in your civil cases, and that person's cousin's coming up in a couple weeks. Does the DUI go away? Will the cousin ever forget it? So many of these, the family's power was their relationships in that community. And over time, the Hampton County, South Carolina, where their home base was the kind of the epicenter of those five counties, became labeled as one of the biggest judicial helpholds in the country because the verdicts were so outsized. And so Alec Murdoch was the inheritor of that hundred year dynasty, the fourth generation to fulfill it and ultimately bring it crashing down, which is usually right
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around the time that happens, right. Fourth or fifth generation, where they just can't keep it together.
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B
You remember the homicides were in June 7th of 2021. Ellic wasn't charged with those homicides until July of 22. So I had a year to think about the dynastic nature of what was happening here. And you're exactly right in it. You can look in the Old Testament or Chinese dynasties or, you know, the Ford family, it doesn't. It holds true that you just can't. The weight, if the, if the, if it starts to rot from the inside, the weight just can't hold. And that's exactly what happened here.
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A
So what finally caused law enforcement to charge him? What was, what was the thing that made it happen, given the fact that it took so long for them to make a decision to charge for these double murders?
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B
It's a very simple, very simple answer. And it is the kennel video. Y' all remember that? You know, it was a. There was a circumstantial case. No eyewitnesses. They couldn't find the guns. Ellie was, you know, a grieving father. There were a lot of things that made that happen on a. A really remote area, the middle of nowhere, on a property that's, you know, that's as big as Central Park. I mean, it just was. It was a very tough case to crack. But what happened was in the spring of 2022, the law enforcement was finally able to open Paul Murdoch's phone. Who was. Who the. Who was the son who was so tragically killed? He was very private, like a lot of 22 year olds are, and nobody knew his passcode. And that law enforcement was scared. You know, if you got an iPhone, you don't want it to lock. And they finally tried his birth date, you know, eight months after the homicides. And it opened.
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And the first day, first I would
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maybe try David Owen the lead sled agent has said to me many times. He's like, I begged them to try the birth date. He's like, at the time, mine was my birthday. But don't, don't worry, I've changed it now. But finally they did, and the first thing they found was the kennel video, which, which was a video that Paul had recorded on his phone minutes before he was killed. And it was just documentary documenting Cash. This, this dog, he was pet sitting for a friend who had a wound on his tail, and he was trying to get him to sit still. And in the background, you hear a couple things. Clearly you hear Maggie Murdoch, who's down there with her dog, Bubba. You hear the dog running around, and she said, he's got a bird in his mouth. And Paul says. And she said, it's a guinea. And Paul says, it's a chicken. And then in the very end, you hear Alec Murdoch's voice. He's got a very distinct voice, and he says, you know, bubba, come here. And, and, and it just cracked the case because he, he, his, his alibi was that he wasn't there. But if you're not there, why's your voice on this video? And the jurors I talked to, that's the reason that was. It boiled down to something as simple as that.
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A
Well, and sometimes there is one piece of evidence in these cases that just you can't reconcile, Right? There may be a bunch of pieces of evidence that you think, okay, I can't overlook this, and I can't overlook that, and maybe this raises doubt. But then there's that one piece of evidence that you say, no matter what else, I think about everything else, this is the one thing that tells me this is why this has to be a guilty. And I think that you're right. I think that is, that is what happened here. Now, obviously, we know, you know, people have talked about this, written about it, listened to podcasts and stories about this for years now, and this has been a story that kind of captured the world, frankly. And now it's back in court and we don't have to kind of rehash the trial because everybody knows what happened. He was found guilty. He was sentenced to life sentences, and now there is an appeal. And the appeal is based on two major points. One, one being the fact that they allowed all of the financial wrongdoings in that his attorneys are citing should not have been allowed into the trial. And two, the fact that the clerk in the case, Ms. Hill, made and had inappropriate contact and made inappropriate Comments about the case, the trial and Alex testimony to the jurors. And so those are the main issues. And for me as a lawyer, and I want to go through both of those with you, for, for me as a practicing lawyer, the issue involving the clerk bothers me most. And as we get into it, I'll talk to you a little bit about why. But why don't you tell us a little bit about where this is in terms of what was argued. I know you were there, I know you wrote a long piece on it for the Wall Street Journal, but tell me where we are. I know we're waiting for the appellate court to make a decision, but kind of walk us through what those issues are and what your perception was as you sat and listened to what happened here.
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B
Well, we're here in mid March and it was in mid February that the state supreme court held oral arguments about the appeal. And essentially you had. It was almost like old home week, right? So Dick Harpootlean's at the defense table. He's going, where's Creighton Waters? Creighton Waters, the lead prosecutor comes in, they shake hands and then each of them makes brief remarks to the court, the five justices there, about why. And they're arguing what they are. And I mean brief, like 4 minutes, 5 minutes. And then the justices ask questions. And the tenor of the questions from the word go was there was one, one justice who came in with a marked up transcript, which is thousands and thousands of pages, a six week transcript marked up. You could tell that it had post its all through it. His first question was about the egg lady juror, a juror who was disqualified the day the deliberations began. There's questions about the circumstances under which she was disqualified. And then most of the questions were around how the jurors, how in the appeal so far, what a previous judge had decided, whose testimony to give credit to and who's not to. They were very concerned that some jurors accounts seemed to matter more than others. And it was, it was during the trial itself. There were many moments in my. We weren't allowed to have phones. There are many moments in my notebook I'll write, is this really happening during the trial? But even sitting there, I was just watching them and I was like so surprised how concerned they were about the sanctity of that jury room and whether the clerk of court, Becky Hill, who has since pleaded guilty to some felonies for, for her, her behavior as clerk, whether she put her thumb on the scale with some of the ones she knew.
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And let's talk about that a little bit just in case there's some people that are listening who kind of tuned out after he was found guilty and haven't paid attention to this. Becky Hill was the court clerk. So she sat in the courtroom during the trial the entire time. And as you've stated, this is a small town. Everyone knew each other. This was not a place where there's a lot of strangers. People are always connected. Talk to me about what the allegations are in terms of what she actually did. And I know the trial judge felt that it wasn't enough to change the outcome of the trial, but obviously this is what is now, you know, on issue for appeal. But tell me what the allegations are in terms of what she actually did. That's now up for debate. Join FOX in supporting our troops from daily needs to global emergencies. Help us be there for those who serve. Visit Go Fox Redcross to donate to service to the armed forces today.
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B
And Becky Hill was a clerk of court there in Colleton county where the courthouse was. And she was well loved during the trial by the courtroom personnel, I mean, Dick Harpootlean and Creighton Waters both got up and said laudatory things about her work. And so I think a lot of us are very surprised to even be having this conversation. But it came to light in the months after the verdict that Becky Hill, in addition, you know, that's town of 5,000 people, she was Ms. Walterborough as a young woman, popularly elected Republican, very well known in the community. And in six weeks, you get a little bit of Stockholm syndrome when you're in that same room and together. And it came out in the fall of 23. After the verdict was reached in March of 23, it started to come out that Becky may have said things to the jurors, like the day that Alec testified, for example, you know, don't be deceived. Watch what you know, watch how he acts, don't not what he says, things of that nature. And the defense was the one who got some affidavits and started arguing this. And gradually it came to light that Becky had published a book, a memoir, and parts of it, she acknowledged were plagiarized. And so it was withdrawn. And the defense were arguing that she was motivated by trying to sell a book and was eager for a guilty verdict. And so there began an ethics investigation and then a criminal investigation and then gradually some improprieties. She was charged and pleaded guilty to some felonies for her conduct in office, not the jury tampering. But around handling money and things of that nature. It became an increasingly big problem for the state to say the same attorney General's office that is investigating Ms. Hill and saying that she had committed these bad acts was also saying, but we have to take her word that she didn't. We trust her, that she didn't tamper with the jury. And it became a really hard, hard baby to split in a lot of regards. The more time.
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A
Well, what's interesting is, you know, in my view, she doesn't get to make that determination if she tampered with the jury. Right. It's up to the jurors to determine whether or not the information that she gave to them or what she said to them affected them. And frankly, they may not even know if it affected them. Because I think that if you're sitting in a courtroom every day, and I. I'm looking at it from a lawyer's perspective, but if I try to put myself in the jury box, and I think, okay, I'm a person that doesn't have a lot of exposure or experience with the criminal justice system, because most jurors do not. Most jurors have not sat on jury duty, and if they have, it's not for a case of this magnitude. And you think, okay, the juror sitting there and the one person they see every day that everyone is trusting in that courtroom, right? The judge is trusting her. The deputies trust her, the lawyers trust her. And so you see this position of authority and power, and I don't know how you don't think to yourself how her opinion wouldn't matter or potentially influence a juror in ways we may not even be able to know. Right. Even the juror themselves may not know that. But I think that if. If I'm a justice on the appellate court, and I'm looking at this, I am thinking my job is to make sure, first and foremost, full stop, that trials are fair, and not only fair for Alec Murdoch. Whether or not we all think or know that he's guilty or believe that he's guilty. The issue is, is not that. The issue is, did he receive a fair trial. And I think that what that issue does is it puts this sort of air of impropriety out into the air. And I think it cracks the foundation of the entire criminal justice system. And I think if they allow it, it's a stain for every defendant over, you know, throughout the course of time, really. I mean, I just think it's something that we can't allow to happen. So my opinion is that although maybe not deserving of a new trial based on facts or evidence, I do think that this one issue is so egregious that he should get a new trial.
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B
You know, it really is a difficult choice for the, for the South Carolina Supreme Court on the one hand, and South Carolina is a small state, there was a hearing that preceded this one where the former Chief justice of South Carolina, a woman named Jean Toll, a living legend, was asked by the court to hold a hearing and interview all the jurors, interview Ms. Hill and come to some decision on whether the jury was tampered with. And the question being, and you know way more about this than I do, but whether, whether it was harmless error or was it structural error, was it something that didn't sway their opinion, or does it get at the integrity of the, of the system and the case in fairness? And in the end, Justice Toll said it was, it was, it was yucky that Hill was after, you know, following the siren call of celebrity, but it was, it was harmless. And since then, that was In January of 24, if memory serves, roughly early 2024, that, that she, she ruled that. And this is what was up for discussion in front of the Supreme Court a couple weeks ago. The composition of the state Supreme Court has changed greatly since the trial. And Judge Newman has retired. His, his close ally has also retired. And so it's somewhat of a new court and they were very concerned about their colleague, Justice Toll, her decisions and how she regarded these errors. But it caught a lot of people by surprise. It certainly caught me by surprise that they found all that is to say, it's a difficult question in South Carolina for the judicial system because Alec Murdoch is a deeply bad person. He, in addition to being convicted of killing his wife and son, robbed from the least of these $10 million from the poorest of the poorest personal injury clients, sat at their bedside, held their hand, went back to the office and robbed them blind. So on the one hand, and his family, he was the head of the trial lawyers association in the state estate. His, his family were, he was, he was a prosecutor, part time prosecutor. It's a stain on the legal system. But if there isn't, if the rules don't apply to everyone, is that also a stain on the legal issue in the legal system? So I think that is when you, when.
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A
Yeah,
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B
and a little bit more time.
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A
And that's where I come down on it. Three years out.
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B
We're three years out from the verdict. A little bit over three years. And so that first Six months. None of my sources in South Carolina are like, no one will overturn this. And now, as more and more information has come out, the tenor of those questions were very serious about the sanctity of that verdict.
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A
Yeah. Because in most ways, I think it's bigger than him.
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B
Right.
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A
Like all those things that you say about him are true. All the facts that came out at trial about him are true. The recording on Paul's phone is true. All of those things are true. None of that takes away from the trial itself, but what it does do is it questions the. I think the veracity and the fairness and the integrity of an entire system. And that's where I think it's bigger than him. And I think that everybody is watching. And not that courts should ever make a decision based on people watching, but I think this definitely shows the rest of the world, the rest of courthouses, all other jurisdictions, that this can't, shouldn't and won't be tolerated. So I think it's going to be really interesting to see how it plays out. I think that's what it's going to come down to. They may make a decision regarding the financial evidence that was brought in as well. Do you think that they're going to rule that that evidence should not have been permitted during the murder. The murder case?
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B
It's hard to know. But I want to address something real quick, and I'll come back to that if you make sure I do and don't forget. But of course, the. It's possible that the justices were just bulletproofing an argument, the Socratic method, you know, really getting the prosecutor to Creighton Waters to defend what the state had done and to bend this verdict. So it's possible that they rule and say this is harmless error that could happen, but what happens then is what happens at the next appellate level. And if. When and if this gets to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, they have already ordered a new trial in a related case involving Russell Lafitte, the banker, who was. Who has been convicted and of. Of laundering money, I guess, you know, giving money to helping Alec hide his money, I guess is the best way to say it. His sentence was overturned because of some of the instructions from the judge to the jury on a couple. It was two nights before Thanksgiving, it was late, about who could go home and that sort of thing. And as I understand it, the standard that's been used at the state level in this case is not the federal standard, which is a much lower bar for what constitutes. So I think if the state doesn't grant a new trial. There is a chance that the federal courts will on the jury, tempering issues alone. And I don't know, to your question about the financials, throughout the hearing, we had, I want to say, 10 days out of six weeks, we had many, many days of financial testimony about Alex, many vast crimes and all the people he robbed. And it was, it came in, it wasn't, you know, and you know this way better than I do again. But you're not supposed to talk about somebody's other bad acts, what a bad person they are. In a murder case, you're supposed to talk about the case itself. But the defense a couple of times opened the door to evidence in the judge's mind, Judge Clifton Newman, by asking, for example, well, you know, asking one of Paul's friends, did Alec love Maggie? Oh, he loved her so much. Did Maggie love Alec? Yes. And so that gives the prosecutor. Well, on cross examination, they open the box to say, and this is what happened. Well, did you know they had money problems? Did she ever say that? And so then the jury can't unhear that. So the financials came in. But in the end, I'm not sure that if the justices rule on the kind of the narrow issue of the tampering, the structural error, if they just hold their other grounds, including the financials, the main one, but there are others. If they hold those aside, I don't know, and I don't know if we're talking weeks or months, but I think it's months, you know.
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A
Yeah, I agree with you. The higher courts never rule fast. And as someone who has appeared and argued in front of them, I also know to your point that sometimes they ask really hard, tough, biting questions and in the end they, that is not an indication in any way, shape or form of the way that they're going to rule. So I, I definitely agree with that. I think my own personal feeling here is just that it would be really bad for the entire system if they didn't point out the fact that this is not acceptable and that it can't happen.
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B
And therefore you're in, you're in Chicago. And South Carolina is a small state, is a small state. And there was one of the justices who was, I mean, it's hard to find a lawyer because for all intents and purposes, for 150 years, South Carolina has had one law school. And if you go off to Harvard and you want to practice law in Charleston, you go to University of South Carolina. And so many of them know Each other. And there was one justice who was up, who was calling Alec Murdoch by his nickname, which everybody who knows him just calls him Alec. Well, I think Alec was wrong to do this. So it is, you know, I certainly take your point, but I think it's so personal in South Carolina when you start talking to people about this case.
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A
Sure. Which is also scary. Right. I mean, and again, taking, taking Alec and what you think about him and the amount of evidence and taking all that and putting it aside, it's still, no matter what, no matter where your case is, no matter what jurisdiction it is, no matter how big or small the city is, you should be entitled to a fair trial, full stop. And so I'm hoping that for the integrity of the system, that's what happens. But as you said, we never know what they're going to do. We never know what their questions mean. And, you know, we'll, we'll see. I know we've talked about Paul, talked about.
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B
I'm sorry, no. But in fairness to the prosecution, they say he did get a fair trial, that these, these, these were one off remarks that were made in the hallway, maybe. And when the jurors got in the box and were quizzed one by one when they read, is this your verdict? Yes, it is. That is what matters in the moment. And there's some indication from some of the jurors that they were upset that Becky Hill published a book and had said all these things and had talked in some regards about them. And so do you start feeling when you walk out of the jury room and have two and a half years of publicity about that, does your memory of how important those remarks matter? Kind of the prosecution's take on this.
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A
Sure. Let's listen to. We talked about Paul, we talked about Maggie. Let's talk about Buster. Buster is Alex other son. And Buster sat down with Fox's Martha Macallum for an interview after his father's verdict. Let's listen to that for a minute and we'll show another side here of, of Alec. There were no witnesses.
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B
A lot of digital evidence.
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A
Yeah. Crappy motive. You think it was a crappy motive?
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B
And yet 12 jurors all agreed that
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A
your dad killed your mom and Paul. That's right.
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B
What do you think about that?
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A
I do not believe it was fair. So we'll see. We will see if the jurors agree with Paul's son and that, you know, opinion that he shared. It will be interesting to see. You know, we haven't seen much of Buster since then. I know that he hasn't. I don't think he appeared in court the other day to listen to the arguments. I know. I read, I think maybe in your article that not a lot of family has gone to see Alec as of late. Do you know anything about the status of where he and his son's relationship stands?
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B
Yeah, and I, you know, I commend that interview to people who are interested in that. In this case, that documentary was, Was. Was very, very illustrative. And that's the, the only interview I'm aware of that Buster has. So it's really where you hear from him. And I would say that, you know, in the course of promoting this book, I think I've done something like 90 appearances, like talks and things. The one question I always get in Q and A is, how is Buster? How is he doing? Because, you know, he lost his mother, his brother, his father, his grandfather died three days later, his chance at a normal life. And I, and I think that there is. I sense a lot of empathy out when I talk to people for him and curiosity. And so I would just add, he has declined to, to talk with me on the record. But he. He was married back in the spring last year, and they had a baby late in the fall, and he. And he married the woman who was with him in court every day during the trial.
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A
Yes, I know by his side.
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B
I know to the degree it's possible. My understanding is he's. He's getting on with his life and. No, he is not. I've talked with the Department of Corrections about this. Neither he nor members of his family have gone to visit in a very long time. And since the verdict was read, I've been in every court appearance and they have not. There's a real sense of loss, from what I understand.
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A
Well, and maybe sometimes you just have to put those things behind you. So maybe for his sake, another trial is something that he doesn't want to have to go through. So we will see what happens. Valerie, thank you again for joining me and for everybody listening, please go back and listen to our Camp Swamp Road podcast episode with Valerie as well. This is fascinating. Whatever you are involved in, we will bring you back and I look forward to future reporting. And we will talk again, I'm sure, after we find out what the appellate court does. Thank you for joining me on another episode of Crime and Justice. Please continue to send us your questions on social media, and we will answer them them right here. And don't forget to subscribe where you find your podcasts. Thank you so much. See you next time.