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Alec pleads not guilty to the murder charges and a trial date is set for January 2023. Now, that trial has been
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covered extensively. It was one of the longest in South Carolina history and according to Alec's lawyer, Dick
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Harpootlian, who we spoke to for this episode, people came from across the country to spectate. So, I'm only going
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to walk everyone through like the highlights. The prosecution puts forward that Alec killed Maggie and Paul on the
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night of June 7th and then left to alibi himself at his mom's house. Their theory is that leading up to the
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murders, Alec feared that his financial crimes were on the verge of being exposed, basically, and that he saw no
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way out. So, he draws up this scheme to protect himself by becoming the victim. Like, they think in his mind, if he
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could be seen in the eyes of the public as a grieving husband and a grieving father, maybe all that sympathy would
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drown out the growing suspicions about his fraud and his theft. Plus, he wouldn't get caught because the murders
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could be attributed to the threats that Paul had been getting at the time since Mallory Beach's boat crash in 2019
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because that was he was getting a lot. You know, with all the financial stuff in the mix, it really strikes me as kind
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of classic family annihilator situation, right? Like, Alec reached a point of desperation, saw no way out, and made
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like this incredibly violent decision in a distressed state. >> And so many times with the family
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annihilator stuff, I see over and over what it comes down to is not even so much like trying to not get caught for
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financial crimes. It's like this um image of themselves they don't want. Right. And like like you just said, like
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not just the image of himself, but like painting himself as sympathetic even versus like distracting from a poor
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image. >> And family annihilator, like that is a phrase that the prosecution throws out
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repeatedly.