← Criminally Obsessed
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, everyone. I'm Ann Emerson and this is criminally obsessed Alec Murdoch is now unconvicted. But this time, will the Murder room point to Murdoch's guilt or not? Forensic criminologist Dr. Laura Petler says there are three things we have to consider as we re examine the 2021 double murders of his wife Maggie and youngest son Paul. The location of the crime scene, the timeline, and the Murdoch family dynamic.
- [00:27]
B
Paul was a bleed to the financial situation of Alex Murdaugh. It was possible that because of everything that was happening in Alex's life, this was just one more thing that he, he had to stop this bleed.
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A
Pettler uses a method called the Murder Room to dissect the case's evidence. It's an investigative tool that Petler created. It's been around for a long time and countless investigators use it. And? Well, Peltler says there's a reason why Murdoch didn't hire her and her team to investigate.
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B
Well, if Alf Murdaugh wasn't happy with sled, he wasn't happy with the way that the investigation was going to find the killer or killers of his wife and son. Why would LPA not bend his first phone call?
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A
Sure. Because this is a murder room that you believe is foolproof.
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B
Yeah. And it's, it's got a 98% solve rate when you do it right.
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A
As we gear up for what a lot of us are calling season two of this tragic story, here are the biggest pieces of evidence that Pettler says you need to pay attention to. Don't forget to like, subscribe and turn on your notifications as I will be doing regular updates to the Murdoch coverage. Now let's get into it. Doctor Laura Petler, I am so pleased to have you back. Thank you so much for coming to help us understand where we're going to go with this case.
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B
Now, thank you for having me, Anne. It's always a pleasure to be here with you and I'm really excited about this conversation today.
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A
What is the Murder Room?
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B
The Murder Room is a scientific six stage process. It is victim centered. So we put Maggie and Paul at the very, very core of this whole thing. And we study them and then we use them and what we study about them, what we learn about them and compare everything back to them. So they are the litmus test in this case for everything. So we compare, we analyze the crime scene and we compare it back to the victims. We analyze the autopsies, compare it back to the victims, analyze the statements, compare it back to the victims. Lab reports, digital Evidence, DNA, bloodstain evidence, shooting recon evidence. And in order to understand why they're dead, you have to understand who they were in life because their lives solve their own murders. There have been many cases over the years that use the murder Room, but we really prefer for it to be used as an investigatory methodology for, for investigators to organize and systematically understand information, because that is their biggest challenge in the field. We are not involved in this case. We are not retained in this case. And that's actually been a fairly important question people have asked because they felt that, well, if Alec Murdoch wasn't happy with sled, he wasn't happy with the way that the investigation was going to find the killer or killers of his wife and son, why would LPA not been his first phone call?
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A
Sure. Because this is a murder room that you believe is foolproof. Yeah.
- [04:02]
B
And it's, it's got a 98% solve rate when you do it. Right, Right. So the first thing that we're going to do is review the case file. That's the first thing that we always do. So, like, if we're looking at a cold case, and this case is, according to the Murdoch team, basically cold because they're alleging that Alex Murdaugh did not do this. He's not the person who committed these murders. So that means that they, they're alleging somebody else committed these murders. And from that standpoint, okay, fine, you know, LPA will take it from the cold case standpoint and we'll look at it as where it's open. Open ended. An. It's open ended. We don't know. We don't have a suspect. We don't have a person of interest. We are looking at it like fresh.
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A
Yeah.
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B
We're starting from scratch. Starting from scratch. And that's what they're going to do, that they're going to start over. They learned a lot during the first trial. Both sides did. So we're going to see some, some different strategy in the second trial. So that's where we start. I don't know Alex Murdaugh. I don't know Maggie. I don't know Paul. I have to do victimology in order to understand them. And eventually I'm going to do suspect ology because Alex Murdaugh, as we know, does become a suspect in this case.
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A
Right.
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B
And so then eventually, you know, obviously, for obvious reasons, LPA will do suspect ology on Alex Murdaugh. And then everything that we have compared to out to Maggie and Paul will then be compared to Alex.
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A
Tell me why Maggie and Paul can solve this crime.
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B
And remember, I'm going to take you actually back just to another one. One of the things that I said during one of our Nancy Guthrie conversations, I said, victimology is your map. That's right. I did remember your map.
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A
Nancy is your map.
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B
And, you know, how did she become a victim of violent crime? How did the victim become a victim of violent crime? That's why we're all here, because two people became a victim of violent crime in the Murdoch matter. So that's why it's so important, because if you do not understand Maggie and Paul, you do not understand the scene, you don't understand their lives, you don't understand their deaths.
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A
So can I ask you, like, from the evidence you've gathered, how did Maggie and Paul become shooting victims on their own property?
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B
Well, they're in their own environment. So that's the first thing. Like we. Like I was saying, we go macro to micro, right? So we are in the airplane above Moselle. We're looking down 30,000ft from the airplane. Okay. Moselle is rural. Moselle is not in an urban area. The very first thing when I think of Murdoch that comes to mind, Ann, is my days of fox hunting in the low country. One of the things that's interesting about fox hunting is that low country has a. A couple different hunts down there. And I used to hunt with one of them in particular, and I'm familia with that land. And the first thing that. That always jumped out to me in this case was the fact that people discussed somebody coming in from the back as opposed to coming in from the front of this. Of this property, the Moselle property. And so, literally, the very first thing that I think of is riding those swamps in the. In the low country. I have been up to my horse's chest in. In swamp before down down there in that area. And the very first thing that I thought of when this case happened originally was there is no way somebody came in from behind as far as, like, coming in from the back of the Moselle property. The fact that I had not been on Moselle, but the fact that I have ridden that land down there, you know, and hunted that land and been aware of the wildlife, aware of all those things. That makes a big difference in this case, because it's remote. There's one way in, one way out. You either know it or you don't. And you're not. You're not a person if you are not from there and you don't understand those swamps and all the kind of low country wildlife and stuff, you're not coming through the back of that property. You're coming directly in the front door.
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A
And now tell me, why is that important for this case right now, do you think?
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B
Because I think that originally there was a lot of speculation and there was a lot of conversation during the first trial of could have been somebody that came from the back. He's always said he was innocent of this. You know, he, he says he did not kill his wife and son. Okay, well then somebody did, or some persons did. Where did they come from? When we're looking at it from the very, very over overhead view, the very first thing we got to look at is the 30,000 foot view, the macro view, and the overhead view is what? Where is Moselle? How can you get in and out? And is it reasonable to think you got in and out from the back, from the front? How is it accessible? How are the kennels accessible? You either know where it is or you don't. You don't get lost there. And coming in from the back would be highly unlikely. People in rural areas go out of their way. They have to plan a lot better. They have to drive distances to commit murder. In the city, it's a little different because a lot of the urban street crime occurs within pockets of sub communities, like little tight knit communities where everybody kind of is around each other all the time. But in rural homicide and in wilderness homicides too, very, very different. And in this particular case, the first thing I looked at was, wow, this is extremely rural. So how did they get killed on their own property? Well, how many people, Ann, are going out there? I mean, how many people are visiting Moselle? I mean, on a daily basis? The people that belong there, that's who's coming there.
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A
How do you break apart Maggie from Paul since you had this double murder scene? Right. How are you breaking up these victimologies yet tying them together, like the drama
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B
surrounding the family because of their socioeconomic status is one of the big things. And then the culture of the low country combined also with the, the fact that they were ingrained in the legal system, the fact that they, they were involved in the solicitor's office down there for like 100 years. And just the way that they were a prominent family in that particular area. Murders like Maggie and Paul Murdaugh happen throughout our country all the time, just without. It's the same kind of murder, but it's without the socioeconomic status and without the cultural aspects of, of this particular type of homicide. So when you're looking at Paul and Maggie. How did they end up victims of violent crime? For me, it was a very simple answer. Paul was a bleed to the financial situation of Alex Murdaugh. He, by all accounts, was a. A young man who. Who struggled with following the rules, maybe with authority. He lived a bit of a reckless life at times, and he did things that were dangerous to himself and others and that cost Alex Murdom money. And he is a reflection of Maggie. Paul looks like Maggie. Buster looks like Alec. And to me, when you're looking at the family, it was possible that because of everything that was happening in Alex's life, this was just one more thing that he. He had to stop this bleed. And it might have been, well, if there's no. If there's no Paul, there's no case against Paul in the Mallory beach matter. And then with Maggie, to me, I don't know if Maggie was the type of mom who protected Paul, maybe protected Paul from. From Alex, maybe protected him from all kinds of things because he was struggling in the world and she was protecting her child like any other mother.
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A
Right.
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And so she also knew everything about Alex Murdaugh. And so when you're Alex Murdaugh and you've got problems like he had, the people that know the most or the people that are causing you the financial problem become targets.
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A
And you talk about this, too, as far as in the murder room, within your stages of.
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Of.
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A
Of how this happens. Can you just carry. Carry that through for me? So we understand how you are able to kind of streamline this.
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B
Once we get into stage three, then we start really fleshing out the timeline from the original case file, and then it goes minute by minute and is broken apart by 24 hours. We're going to see them go along the timeline, then we're going to see them get down to the kennel, and we're going to see that. That time where that video was made, that Paul was taking the video of the dog and the dog was like, he was showing that his friend that he hunts with, that this dog was healing or getting better from the injury the dog had. You hear Alex saying, you know, bubba, don't chase the dogs, or, you know, Alex was saying something to the dogs. I can just tell you from working, you know, living on a ranch with many dogs, many, many cats and many, many horses and cows, that I'm always telling somebody not to do something. You know what I mean? Always telling a cat to get down, always telling a dog to stop, always telling. It's Like a herd of toddlers. So like. Yeah, it's not uncommon for that to, you know, a dog to be chasing part of it. Right, right. It's normal. This is all normal stuff and that's crazy critically important that these are all normal things. None of this is out of the ordinary. The only thing that may be out of the ordinary may be that, that Alex is down there or that Maggie's down there or that Paul. I don't think it's unusual for Paul to really be down there because those were do his hunting dogs. So we, we build out that timeline and then all of a sudden you're going to see Paul end where their, their digital evidence ends, like where Maggie's phone locks for the last time, Paul's phone locks for the last time. Then you're going to see this gap. And that gap is the most critical to the, to the prosecution in a case of this nature.
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A
You've got a timeline. We know it's like the cards are on the table like we said. Like we know what the prosecution had to offer up in the first trial. They did it. They did it masterfully at times. The defense also came back swinging on a bunch of stuff. But here we are. And what you have your basis already from trial number one. But we've already been told there's new evidence that could come into this. Are you going to have new. I mean it sounds like you've got new evidence that you're looking for right now. But do you already have new evidence?
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B
Yes.
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A
That needs to be presented?
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B
Yes.
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A
Can you tell me what it is?
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B
No.
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A
When does that come out in discovery?
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B
No, you're not trial.
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A
You're going to wait. Okay.
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B
Yeah. Get some great stuff. Fantastic.
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A
Laura, what is the most interesting evidence to you right now in this case?
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B
Oh my gosh. And I think the shooting. The shooting reconstruction evidence is very interesting to me. The behavioral evidence gives everything context, the emotional evidence gives everything context to this system of conflict that we are dealing in in with this case. And so to me, the shooting recon evidence is extremely important. The blood stains are very important because people get hung up on that. They tend to want absolute proof. They want proof. Our burden of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt, but that is not good enough. People, a lot of times in the general public, they attach themselves to one side or the other in a trial because they identify with that person. So why do people attach or why would they support Alex? Why would they support, you know, Maggie and attached to one side or the other? So all those kinds of Things play a role. And these people tend to want 100% evidence on one side or the other because they just identify with that particular party as opposed to. No, it needs to be a reasonable doubt. You know, what is, what's actual reasonable here? What's reasonable to think that happened or did not happen. When you're talking to the jury about this, you've got to talk like you and I are sitting here talking right now, right? So, so that they can understand because they're not out there doing shooting recons. They're seeing, you know, like as you know, I invented the kaleidoscope system. It has all the glowing dowel rods, you know, in for shooting reconstruction. And you see it in csi, you see it in all the shows that they use it in. And you know, people think about what they see in fictional television that comes out of Hollywood here, you know, so like we have to consider what their opinion and how they perceive evidence.
- [18:52]
A
I wanted to check with you also about the evidence of no murder weapons and whether or not you think the fact that, that there are no murder weapons in this case that have been discovered still, is that gonna change the way, you know, they look at this? Do you think that it's possible that it will still be a hang up for the next jury? Can we still reasonably say one person could carry out two brutal murders in this amount of time on your timeline?
- [19:28]
B
Based on what I know of the first trial, I do believe that it's still, it can be carried out by one person. These are questions the DA asks, you know, is it one shooter? Is it two shooters? Could one shooter have done it? Did two shooters do it? Those are normal questions that DA's ask. It's just not difficult to imagine what happened at that kennel based on what was presented during the first trial, which was Paul was shot first, the first shot was non fatal, the second shot was fatal, and then the firearm or another firearm, you know, however they're going to present it was then turned on a running away. Maggie Murdaugh. And she was hunted down, was shot, then fell down onto the ground, then stood over her body and shot into her body. Very common. I've seen it many, many times throughout my, my 25 years doing this and hundreds of cases. So it's not uncommon at all to have that idea of one shooter, maybe one firearm, maybe two firearms and no murder weapon. But it's very clear what happened.
- [20:46]
A
Drop a comment below. I'm always so curious to see what everyone's thinking on the Alec Murdoch case and be sure to, like, subscribe. Turn on your notifications because I will be regularly updating the Murdoch coverage. Sam.