00:00:00
This is exactly right. Secret World of Roald Dahl. Now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:00:37
10-10 shots, 5, City Hall building. How could this have happened in City Hall? Somebody tell me that.
00:00:43
A shocking public murder. This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
00:00:51
I screamed, get down, get down, those are shots. A tragedy that's now forgotten.
00:00:57
and a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
00:01:01
Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
00:01:06
or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was.
00:01:15
Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories
00:01:22
I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. he kind of shoved me out of the way and said move
00:01:28
and he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off and that was the last time I saw him
00:01:33
Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
00:01:56
Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstark. That's Karen Kilgariff.
00:02:04
And this is a very special episode. It's a crossover episode with a podcast that we talked about a while ago that you guys know we all love.
00:02:13
We're so thrilled. Our guests today are two investigative journalists who broke one of the biggest true crime stories of our time, arguably of our time.
00:02:24
Through their fearless reporting, they took on the Old Boys Club in South Carolina
00:02:27
and exposed years of legal fraud, exploitation, and shocking multiple murders. Please welcome to the show Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell.
00:02:38
Hi, you guys. Hi. Hi, guys. Hello. This is so awesome. Yeah, this really is. I'm very impressed by how you guys just did that.
00:02:46
I was reading off of this paper. I didn't memorize that. We're very used to scripted. So this is different.
00:02:54
Oh yeah. This is off the cuff. This is, and first of all, we have to ask if everyone warmed up their
00:02:58
vocal fry. Hilarious. Extra vocal fry today. Yeah. Oh yeah. Celebrate it. Yeah. Absolutely. People are horrible. That's what we realized.
00:03:08
You just don't want public feedback kind of ever, but it was, it made me laugh so hard,
00:03:14
whatever, you know, it was very early on when I was listening and that was a thing you started
00:03:20
talking about where I was just like, I guess this is just what every female podcaster is going to
00:03:25
have to field if they have any kind of an audience, because this is the criticism that people love to
00:03:31
throw as if, like, as if it fucking matters, as if, as if you're supposed to have, like,
00:03:38
talk like Walter Cronkite. I'm not sure what they're looking for. Yeah, I was, first of all, I had never heard of Vogel Fry. I had you guys when you got that
00:03:46
feedback. I literally was like, what are you? I mean, I was not a broadcast journalist by any
00:03:51
means. So I didn't even think about like the way that I talked. Obviously, everyone doesn't really
00:03:56
like the sound of their own voice. So I just always thought my voice was annoying and so does
00:04:00
everybody else. But I was shocked. I remember after launching, it was like three hours and I
00:04:08
started to get a flood of emails and the podcast wasn't, I mean, it didn't really get big for a
00:04:14
while, but still a lot of people that had found it and the thought process of them like stopping
00:04:22
what they were doing and emailing me about how I need to fix my voice. And I remember talking to
00:04:31
Liz about it. I remember talking to David and being like, do I address this? What do I do?
00:04:37
This is absurd. And I'm really trying to get people to focus on the fact that there's really
00:04:41
bad people in this story. Right, right. There's a real point to this podcast. It isn't like it's
00:04:47
a comedy podcast or you're bantering. You're talking. You're just speaking about true crime.
00:04:52
Yeah. And they're focusing on your voice. Yeah. If a woman does anything slightly wrong
00:04:57
compared to men doing things that aren't just, even though the voice isn't even wrong. No.
00:05:03
It's just how I sound. It's crazy. And the other thing, I was just like, I'll just address it. Who cares? But what shocked me is the amount of successful women who reached
00:05:16
out to me after that that were like, I got that too, blah, blah, blah. And it felt like it was
00:05:22
a community of support from women who had been through the same thing. And I also got a lot of
00:05:29
feedback from just our regular audience saying, oh, I had no idea you were dealing with all of
00:05:32
that on top of being an investigative reporter in a super stressful case. You're getting yelled at
00:05:37
about your voice all the time. And the other, like, I could go on about how stupid vocal fry is,
00:05:44
but it's, but in the amount of people who are like, you can change it. That right Cause they like compliment you They like oh you guys are doing such a great job Yes They start out with a compliment It like you complimenting me but then you also talking about how terrible I am about something Well and also it a preference thing that they expressing
00:06:06
But I have preferences about male podcasters speaking that I could talk about all day long.
00:06:12
And it's not just one thing. It's like six. And I would never think because it's that idea that I have been trained in life to know that they don't give a shit.
00:06:21
That they don't even care what I think. So why are women raised to, if they hear any feedback that's supposed to be considered negative,
00:06:30
they're going to change that right away? Because God forbid, they're not pleasing some mystery person out in the world.
00:06:36
It's just like, what are you fucking talking about? And also, do you know how many people speak like this?
00:06:41
Like, this is normal talking. Yeah, I got to the point where I was like, well, it's not for you.
00:06:46
Exactly. It's about like, there's lots of podcasts out there. There's lots of really shitty ones from men who talk about things that they have no idea about.
00:06:56
Listen to that. I don't care. This isn't for you. And that's fine that people have podcasts out there that I don't like, but I'm not going to
00:07:03
stop what I'm doing and be like, tailor your podcast to my personal needs because I'm just-
00:07:10
Can you imagine if you've lived your life that way? How exhausting and sad. But a lot of people-
00:07:15
Yeah. And that's something that's really hit me in the last year. It's like, man, if all these people just put their energy to something else, just anything.
00:07:24
Well, that idea too of that you're going to stop what you're doing, where what you're doing is
00:07:30
entirely a public service to expose some of the most insane, like white collar criminals,
00:07:39
and then straight up like murderers. Like this story, the idea that that would be anyone's
00:07:45
reaction when the story you were telling and how that story rolled out was so goddamn insane.
00:07:51
Like, I couldn't believe what I was hearing on that podcast. I actually called Adrian. I was just
00:07:56
like, you have to start listening to this right now because this, I need someone to witness this
00:08:01
with me. Because essentially, Mandy, in the very early days, you were breaking the story. Like,
00:08:08
as you were reporting it, you were then coming to podcasts to break the story on the podcast,
00:08:12
right? Talk us through that for anybody who hasn't heard Murdoch Murders Podcast,
00:08:18
essentially what that was. Okay. So like in summary, and I thought about this, this story is what happens when a powerful family and their circle of friends in a small town America
00:08:31
get away with whatever they want for a hundred years. And that family produces Alex Murdoch.
00:08:40
And we're going to call him Alex today because it's known as Elick Murdoch, and it's confusing.
00:08:46
It's a South Carolina accent. We'll just call him Alex and make it simple. Oh, okay.
00:08:51
It's a South Carolina accent. Yeah, in South Carolina, a lot of times, sometimes they call Alex as Elick.
00:08:58
Am I saying right, Liz? Yeah, it's Elick. And we had to do it because we were just, you know, to have any sort of street cred with the people we were talking to.
00:09:07
And it's actually several pronunciations. It's like, if you are actually in Hampton, you're saying Murdoch.
00:09:13
Like, it's just, it like spits out of your mouth. Like, Murdoch. Yeah. And even at his own firm, it seems like they were spelling it with a C.
00:09:21
Like, they didn't even know that Alex is not pronounced that way. So, I don't know.
00:09:27
It's hard because it's just like, you want to sound like, you know, you know what you're talking about.
00:09:31
But then it's just so exhausting to say it every time. And you know what's weirder is during court, he would sometimes pronounce his own name the right way.
00:09:39
So it's like he was aware, he is aware that his name is not the way most people say it.
00:09:44
Yeah. In court, well, we realized that in court they do the way that it's spelled so the court
00:09:50
reporters get it right. And then so in court, people are like, are you sure you're pronouncing this right?
00:09:54
And it's like, God, this is... You could do a whole side podcast about this. I mean, it really could.
00:10:00
And I get shit for it all the time. Like, why are you pronouncing it? And like, I kind of regret it.
00:10:06
Okay, so this family ultimately produced Alec Murdoch, who is now tied to five deaths since 2015.
00:10:19
And again, not accused of murder in all five of those deaths, but tied to them in different ways.
00:10:25
And the last year, Liz and I were counting today, and he's at 90 charges, I believe, between the murder of his wife and son.
00:10:36
the biggest one. His suicide for hire incident, which was just the craziest. That was the part
00:10:43
of the story that just like sent everything off the rails. So it's like a fake suicide,
00:10:47
but then we believe that the fake suicide story is also fake. Really? Yeah. It's double fake.
00:10:54
I really don't think it was suicide or any sort of, it was just to us, it always looked like
00:11:00
he wanted it to look like his family was being targeted. Right. So this whole thing,
00:11:06
like the world found out about the Murdoch family last June for the most part. It was making
00:11:11
international headlines right after Maggie and Paul Murdoch were found murdered at their hunting
00:11:17
lodge called Moselle in a very small town in the low country of South Carolina, which is just an
00:11:24
area, the coastal area of South Carolina. And when that happened, like Liz and I were like,
00:11:32
our whole world's changed, right? Because we were sitting on this pile of research
00:11:36
and reporting for the past two years at that point. Because when we were at the Island Packet,
00:11:44
two newspaper reporters, I guess we were editors at the time, we both started covering the death of
00:11:52
Mallory Beach and the boat crash Yeah So tell us about that Tell the listeners about that one that kind of kicked it off Yeah Liz do you want to take the boat crash Yeah I think it was a weekend right And we got the call that there was a boat crash
00:12:06
And we found out pretty early on that one of the passengers on the boat was named Paul Murdoch.
00:12:12
And we knew that name vaguely at that point because we had heard about the Stephen Smith case really like within the last year before that.
00:12:21
And we're kind of considering taking it on. but yeah it's this girl um so paul and his friends there were five people that he had taken on a boat
00:12:29
they went to an oyster roast down the road as you say i guess in the on the river and they ended up
00:12:36
crashing really early in the morning and a 19 year old girl from hampton county named mallory
00:12:41
beach went missing she was missing for a week in the water which was horrible and they found her body and it basically from there i mean from the minute it hit go we knew
00:12:53
that we had to look out for corruption because we knew the thing that people said about the Murdochs
00:12:57
was that anything they get into, as Connor Crick later said, who was one of the passengers on the
00:13:02
boat, they can get out of. So we were just looking for like, were law enforcement, were they doing
00:13:08
what they were supposed to? Like what was going on behind the scenes? And it went, how many, it was
00:13:13
two months before we saw charges. And it just actually seemed for a minute like we weren't
00:13:18
going to see charges in it. So it was kind of actually surprising that that ended up happening,
00:13:21
right? And that's because this family is, when you say 100 years of this, it's because they're
00:13:27
a family of lawyers, like a dynasty of lawyers. Is that right? Not just lawyers. Yeah. So in South
00:13:33
Carolina, the district attorney of a circuit is called a solicitor. So it's real old-timey.
00:13:39
And they are three generations of solicitors up until 2006. And then the current solicitor of this
00:13:46
area is somebody that they handpicked to put in that position. So they had him appointed by the
00:13:52
governor and he's been reelected ever since. And so they are not only, you know, like what the
00:13:58
people say is the Murdochs are the law here and it's a five county system. So, you know, we're the
00:14:04
coast where we live. So there's the boating and all that. They have their hunting lodges and the
00:14:08
other counties and the rural areas. It's like their playground basically. So everyone knows them
00:14:15
in law enforcement pretty much. And yeah, they have a reputation of getting their way.
00:14:21
Yeah. One way or another. And they had the law firm too. So they were able to, it's crazy,
00:14:27
but like two sides of the law they were able in this very small town, they had this very powerful civil law firm
00:14:35
known for huge payoffs. But this isn't like one of those fancy law firms. It's not like something with like Glenn Close.
00:14:41
Like it's- Wait, what? No mistake. Well, I want to ask you this. Like, you guys mentioned Stephen Smith and having kind of a little tingle of something's not going to be not right and we should look out for this Murdoch, you know, name.
00:14:56
Can you bring us all the way back to 2015 and tell us that, like, that's kind of the beginning of the story, you know, in a lot of ways for you guys, right?
00:15:03
Yeah. So Liz found out about it in 2018 and she told me about it. But it was very vague.
00:15:10
And like, I kind of remember, and I remember writing a little, a few things down, but I remember at the time being like, well, that's in Hampton County.
00:15:18
And, you know, traditional newspapers, you have like a border that you work around.
00:15:22
And if it's outside the border, then, and it was outside of Beaufort County. So it was like being on the moon.
00:15:28
It was so far away, even though it's only an hour away. Well, so what happened? Basically, when this boat crash happened, we started seeing all of these posts online saying, justice for Stephen and Mallory from Hampton County people.
00:15:42
Justice for Stephen and Mallory. And we were like, what's going on? And Liz started putting it together.
00:15:49
And I started just messaging anybody that I could from Hampton County, just like, what's going on here?
00:15:56
What happened to Stephen? And within a week or two, we went to go see, we found Sandy Smith, Stephen's mom, and went to go see her in Hampton.
00:16:07
And she had literally a kitchen table full of police documents that she had personally FOIA'd and she had, and letters that she had written, autopsy, everything.
00:16:21
She was like, I will give you anything. I just want anybody to look into this. she smelled that something was wrong from that case from the very beginning and so liz and i said
00:16:32
absolutely we'll look into everything and we pulled at those strings for the next two years but there
00:16:38
was no time to with a story like that where you have to go back in time and dig stuff up especially
00:16:44
like the the island pack of the newspaper that we were at was so small at the time we were down like
00:16:51
I remember how many reporters we were down. All of them, I don't remember. We didn't really have a reporter.
00:16:56
Yeah, it was. And we were just constantly like pressured to produce page views and not do like these deep dive investigative reporters,
00:17:04
which is a big problem with journalism today and everything. It's a small paper,
00:17:07
but we were owned by a big corporation. So we were owned by the McClatchy Company.
00:17:12
So you had like the small town part, but then you also have this like pressure from the big guys who want that profit.
00:17:18
Right. And so Stephen Smith, his case got ruled a hit and run. And what about those police reports and all the, you know, the reporting that his mother had uncovered made you think otherwise in this case?
00:17:32
And he had been, it was 10 miles from the Murdoch home was where the hit and run had happened.
00:17:37
Yeah. So like in our free time, Liz and I, we got the investigation and we just started like listening to all the audio interviews.
00:17:44
Well, you got leaked to the investigation. I think that's important because, you know, if we were to FOIA the investigation, it would have been redacted and we wouldn't have seen half as much.
00:17:53
So and it was because technically it was still an open case So Mandy got leaked the entire case file or at least what looks like the entire case file So for both of us I would say it was the photos right Like for me it was
00:18:06
was it the photos for you, Mandy? Well, yeah, the, I mean, the photos, it did not look like a hit and
00:18:10
run. And we asked several law enforcement sources of like, what do you look for? Blah, blah, blah.
00:18:15
Showed them the photos. Yeah. We showed them the photos. Yeah. And said it could this possibly be
00:18:20
a hit run. And I mean, most of the damage was done to his face. So how do you get hit? And their
00:18:25
conclusion was maybe he got hit by a truck mirror, but like, think about that happening. And the
00:18:32
Smiths will say this over and over. They're like, that's insulting to say that about her son. Like
00:18:36
he was a smart kid. He was a nursing student. He wasn't going to let, and he was completely sober
00:18:41
that night. He wasn't going to let a truck mirror because you would have to, like, it was just crazy.
00:18:47
And then he also— None of it made sense. None of it. None of it made sense. And then you look through the case file, and everybody on scene and everybody who was investigating it didn't really believe it was a hit-and-run.
00:19:00
And there's nowhere that anybody says, this is definitely a hit-and-run, and here's why.
00:19:05
Oh. The only person who ruled it was a hit and run was the pathologist, Dr. Erin Presnell.
00:19:11
And she kind of got into a fight with Highway Patrol. And it's weird. Remember us reading that document for the first time, Liz?
00:19:19
We were like, I've never seen this in a case file before. It's like public officials basically talking shit on each other.
00:19:26
Yeah, they don't put that stuff in writing unless they're trying to signal that something is amiss here.
00:19:31
Wow. So you think those cops on the scene knew something was up? Well, we think that they knew that wasn't a hit and run.
00:19:38
I mean, that is pretty clear. But as far as like who was pulling the strings, if strings were being pulled, not necessarily all of them.
00:19:47
I mean, but it definitely, you know, you cannot walk away from that case file without feeling like something really definitely was being covered up here.
00:19:56
and the photos of him like from the crime scene his or I should say the accident scene as they
00:20:01
called it his arms are sort of behind him and his knees are together and like sort of splayed to the
00:20:07
you know I think the left or the right so it almost looks like you had somebody you know from
00:20:12
our uneducated opinion holding him by his arms and somebody else holding him by his legs and
00:20:16
dropping him on the ground and like you know where he would lay in place and when Mandy says
00:20:20
you know he didn't look like he was in a hit and run you know everything about him was pristine I
00:20:26
I mean, like, he had a few scratches on his arm, but when he has damage to his face, it's just one clear impact mark.
00:20:33
And it's on, I believe, the side of his head where had he been walking in the direction of his home, it truly would not have made sense because a car would have to have been oncoming and it would hit him on the other side of his forehead.
00:20:45
So it's just logic tells you, you know, this isn't right. And then how many times did we see Buster Murdoch's name in that report, Mandy?
00:20:53
So, I mean, the Murdoch name was brought up 40 times. Wow. Wow. Just all of these people that they interviewed saying, we've heard the Murdoch kids have something to do with it.
00:21:02
Blah, blah, blah. And, I mean, it just kept going on and on. But what's weird is that it just, the case all of a sudden just ended.
00:21:10
Like, they tried to call Buster Murdoch one time. What? And left a voicemail. And then the case was closed.
00:21:19
Wow. Wow. Not closed, but it went cold. Yeah. And then the other main thing that I keep forgetting to mention is there was no trace of any evidence of a vehicular homicide.
00:21:30
So there was no near pieces on the scene. There was no pieces of the car. Shoes were on, loosely tied.
00:21:37
Shoes were on. There was just no tire marks, which always happens with hit and runs.
00:21:43
Even if a person keeps going, there's usually some sort of tire. Again, it's positioning.
00:21:47
Yeah. Let me ask you guys this, because now you're talking about things that go all the way to the top.
00:21:53
And these are some big, scary people at the top. It could be. Do you guys get worried about reporting on, and I know there was one incident where you felt like you were being followed.
00:22:04
Do you get worried about reporting on these bigwigs? That's why the vocal fry thing is so funny, because it's like, I don't think people realize.
00:22:10
It's like we are, you know, having to protect our lives to a certain degree here in the sense that, you know, yeah, if a delivery person walks up to Mandy's house while, you know, we're here, we both sort of have that moment of like, is this it?
00:22:24
Like, is this happening? Yeah. That happens all the time. We should probably go to therapy for it.
00:22:30
Right? Seriously. You guys have dogs. I think get a bigger dog. Me too. Maybe. Yeah.
00:22:36
And like, I've really stepped up my home security system in the last year. And the other thing that's terrible about it is all of the, and people are being nice, but they freak me out even more.
00:22:48
I mean, since 2019, I've been getting, be careful of the, like, I'm worried for you.
00:22:53
I'm scared for your safety. I hope you're being careful. Our friends in law enforcement say it.
00:22:58
Our friends in law enforcement. We had one of, so the incident that you're referring to happened when we went to go interview a source.
00:23:06
and afterward we went to the scene where Stephen had been killed and this is like a wide open road
00:23:13
you know these are you know like how do people know we were there but our friend who is a cop
00:23:18
begged us not to go and he was just like um you're not like I'm being serious here like we you don't
00:23:24
need to be there and sure enough you know we had him um we did our like location sharing with him
00:23:29
and sure enough it ended up having Mandy ended up having to call him because we're driving away
00:23:34
from the scene and we didn't linger or anything like that. And we're driving away and like in the
00:23:40
distance we could see like a silver SUV kind of coming toward us. And I was like, oh no. And he
00:23:45
stopped. So like, imagine you're on a two lane highway and you're going, you're driving the
00:23:50
speed limit and he's driving towards you. And he, it's almost like he saw and then he stops.
00:23:55
And then he does like a slow U-turn and comes behind me. And it's a state highway,
00:24:00
uh, South Carolina highway patrolman, you know, again, like the highway patrolman here,
00:24:04
they're not, that's not their thing. Like investigating murders, right. They're investigating
00:24:08
hit and runs or like highly trained in that. And so these guys were handed the case for a reason
00:24:14
if somebody was pulling the strings here. So yeah, it was a very sweaty, like scary moment.
00:24:21
So Mandy called up our friend and had him on speaker just in case. And I'll tell you even
00:24:27
recently, I was driving through, this is the stupidest thing I've done. I was driving through
00:24:32
Hampton County to go to the courthouse, to go to the probate court. And I was like,
00:24:35
why are you doing this? You're an idiot. And I had forgotten that I had not put the sticker
00:24:41
on my license plate. Like, you know how you have to like update it with the year.
00:24:45
And so I was like, oh no, like, it looks like I have an expired license plate. So luckily I used to work for the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office for about a year and a half
00:24:54
before joining Mandy. And the sheriff happened to call me. He just had a question about something,
00:25:00
you know, just like randomly. And so he stayed on the phone with me until I left Hampton County
00:25:05
by his own situation. He was like, yeah. So, you know, it just sort of hammers home, like,
00:25:12
how seriously those around us are taking. So, like, obviously we're taking it very seriously,
00:25:17
too. Yeah. Well, and that is what gave it that very David and Goliath kind of feeling at the
00:25:23
beginning of that podcast because it's like you guys essentially stumble upon one story that leads
00:25:30
into another, that leads into potential cover-up, that leads into this, that there's people waiting
00:25:35
to go, I can't talk to anybody about this. Can I talk to you about it? And it's building a case
00:25:41
against one of the most powerful legal families for hundreds of years in the area. So like that,
00:25:49
yeah, that idea that that's, you were just basically like, well, we have to keep going.
00:25:53
I mean, did you ever think I need to quit or I'm going to quit? No, I mean, I, I mean.
00:26:00
Maybe we should. Did I want to? Absolutely. At this point, I'm just very tired of it. I'm like, God,
00:26:09
I'd really like to wrap this up. And no, I'm just kidding. But initially, when we started
00:26:16
talking to those first few sources in Hampton who were so upset. I remember this one woman
00:26:22
called me crying a couple, and Mallory was still missing at that point. And she was just like,
00:26:30
this family has gotten away with everything and they're going to get away with this too.
00:26:34
And this has to end now. Like somebody has to do something. And those words just resonated so much
00:26:41
with both of us in a way that Liz and I were just kind of looked at each other and we're like,
00:26:45
We can be the difference, whereas for 100 years, there was nobody to—I mean, they ruled the paper there.
00:26:52
They ruled everything. Yeah, everything. Everything. And I do understand, too, like, I will admit, I do not feel comfortable in Hampton County.
00:27:02
Yeah. Things are getting a lot better, but I understood the secrecy and the fear that we were experiencing early on.
00:27:10
Yeah. So like, sometimes we joke that this is like a haunted house because you are reading like old stories from the past and you're like, oh my God, we're reading about the same freaking people who have the same names.
00:27:22
You know, I'm not going to say real names, but like Thomas Smith, you know, the first, and then it goes all the way to the sixth.
00:27:28
And so you just feel like it's never ending. So I think the culture, like, I don't feel bad for the people of Hampton County in the sense that they're good people.
00:27:36
It's just that they live in a place where the industry is a law firm that has profited mightily off of its ability to control its juries.
00:27:49
Wow. And how it controls its juries is something that, you know, will be revealed at some point when it's not libelous to say.
00:27:56
But, yeah, it's, so you have that. they were known for their astronomical settlements. So when Mandy found that document for Gloria
00:28:04
Satterfield, that is Ellick's housekeeper, Ellick and Maggie's longtime housekeeper who died as a
00:28:10
result of fall at their Moselle property. When Mandy found that document, I remember thinking
00:28:16
like $500,000 settlement doesn't seem that big a deal, given that it's Hampton County.
00:28:22
And as we found out, it was much bigger than that. Who gets a $4.3 million settlement for
00:28:28
you know, a trip and fall at a house. So that's because of that. That is where the power lies,
00:28:34
right? So you have this firm that has helped all these people get these types of settlements.
00:28:40
So you owe an allegiance to them in some way, or you just want to keep your head down and do your
00:28:45
job and not, you know. So I think that's the hard thing about Hampton County. So they're so scared
00:28:51
and they're not complicit necessarily. Some of them definitely aren't, but- Some of them are.
00:28:56
Yeah, some of them definitely are. But the system is just old. It's like it's set.
00:29:01
It's old and new. It behooves you to stay on their right side. Yes. Yeah. That's perfectly put.
00:29:08
Yeah. That is so perfectly put. 10-10 shots fired in City Hall building. How could this have happened in City Hall?
00:29:16
Somebody tell me that. A shocking public murder. This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
00:29:24
I scream, get down, get down, those are shots A tragedy that's now forgotten And a mystery
00:29:33
That may or may not have been political That may have been about sex Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall
00:29:39
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts Or wherever you get your podcasts You know the famous author Roald Dahl
00:29:48
He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG But did you know he was a spy? Neither did I
00:29:54
You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast The Secret World of Roald Dahl All episodes are out now Was this before he wrote his stories It must have been What
00:30:05
Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
00:30:11
Now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.
00:30:22
The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.
00:30:31
Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain? A nurse named Lucy Letby.
00:30:38
Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.
00:30:45
I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast Doubt the case of Lucy Letby we follow the evidence and hear
00:30:52
from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby
00:30:58
was no voicing of any skepticism or doubt it'll cause so much harm at every single level
00:31:05
of the British establishment of this is wrong listen to Doubt the case of Lucy Letby
00:31:10
you can binge all episodes now on iHeart Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:31:17
Well, how shocked were you guys when you're like, you're knee deep in reporting all of this
00:31:22
and this family and the unexplained and unprosecuted deaths. And then Paul and Maggie Murdoch,
00:31:30
the son and the wife of Alec Murdoch, are shot to death. Like how, and that's while you're reporting on this case.
00:31:39
How shocking was that for you? Mandy was in Puerto Rico and it was the worst night of my life because I was in a train. I was at the sheriff's office
00:31:47
and I got woken up by a source of mine when I was a journalist. And it was about 1.20 in the
00:31:54
morning, 1.30, something like that. And he said, Maggie and Paul have been killed. They've been
00:31:58
shot. And I was like, wait, what? And I just remember being oddly emotional about that,
00:32:03
even though I really viewed those two people as abhorrent to a certain degree at that point,
00:32:09
just because of everything I saw the people around them being put through. And just for people who might not know, sorry, Paul, the one who was shot and killed,
00:32:18
was the one driving that boat? Yes, that is Paul. Yeah. This is the red string connecting.
00:32:25
This is your homeland red string connecting this whole insane conspiracy theory.
00:32:30
Yeah, that's absolutely right. He's charged for, is it manslaughter? BUI, so it's boating under the influence.
00:32:38
Yeah. Three felonies. Causing a death. Yeah. So three felonies and two for the injuries of other people on the boat, for the passengers on the boat, and one for the death of Mallory Beach.
00:32:49
So he was facing 25 years, I believe, in prison. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you had to speculate, do you think that's why his father would have killed him?
00:32:59
Is just the shame or? They don't feel shame. Alec Murdoch has never felt shame in his life.
00:33:06
Oh, right. I forgot. I forgot people don't feel what I feel on a regular basis. Yeah, for real.
00:33:13
It must be nice, right? Yeah. The more that we think about it and the more that we put the pieces together, and again, this is still an active situation, and we have gotten very few actual answers from law enforcement for why the murders took place.
00:33:29
However, we have found that the boat crash was really the first domino to fall that would ultimately be the end of the Murdoch family and their dynasty.
00:33:41
Because it, A, put the spotlight on the Murdochs in a way that they had not had before.
00:33:46
They were powerful, but they weren't in the spotlight. You know, they threw a lot of money to a lot of different political campaigns.
00:33:54
They were doing their lawyer stuff, but they weren't in the media all the time. Like normal people didn't know their names.
00:34:02
Outside of where they're from, their names weren't really well known. Yeah, exactly.
00:34:07
And Hampton is very small. It's a really, really small county. So everyone there, of course, knew their names.
00:34:14
But anybody outside, I mean, kind of, and we'll get to that later, but it put them in the spotlight.
00:34:21
And then right after the boat crash, there was a lawsuit filed. I believe, and Liz believes, really put a lot of pressure on Alex Murdoch in a way that he had not felt before on his finances, which we now realize is just a mess of criminal activity.
00:34:44
I can't even. How could we even have predicted that? Right. Yeah. I had no idea that it was this bad.
00:34:50
It turns out he wasn't really a lawyer. A lot of the time he was just stealing from people,
00:34:56
which is terrible in the most vulnerable people in the most vulnerable situations. And that's
00:35:01
something that we've really wanted to highlight in our podcast is like, look, these are financial
00:35:06
crimes, but he was hurting these people and he really damaged them in a way that it's hard to
00:35:14
explain until you have the victims themselves explain it. And they were very ruthless crimes
00:35:20
just because they're white color or whatever. It's still. They're still victims. Yeah. Yeah,
00:35:25
absolutely. I mean, those people where it's like you're turning to a law firm to fight for your
00:35:31
rights because, you know, the one I'm thinking of is the person who was paralyzed and for a car
00:35:38
accident, they get a settlement and then they keep- Hakeem. Yeah. And then they keep like, what, 80%? I mean, just a gigantic amount.
00:35:47
They kept a, he kept a portion of it. It's so confusing. He was a quadriplegic he was made a quadriplegic by that accident And he was also already deaf And his family obviously before the settlement came through couldn afford to keep him close to the home because it was just not that kind of care So he was about I think it was like an hour and 45 minutes away and sort of just vulnerable to the whole situation So
00:36:08
his settlement came through the timing of it. So weird. And there's questions about whether he died
00:36:13
before the settlement. So whether Alec misrepresented that he was alive, you know,
00:36:18
in order to get that settlement, because had he died, it would have lessened the settlement
00:36:23
altogether. So I don't know if he stole most of it. It was just more that he stole a good bit of it,
00:36:30
but he also pretended that, you know, definitely pretended that Hakeem was alive when Hakeem was
00:36:36
not alive, according to documents that we've found. Which is so terrible. Yeah. Just craven
00:36:41
greed and like just fraud, just complete fraud. Yeah. No care. Yeah. And we've, I mean,
00:36:48
And the amount, he clearly targeted people for their vulnerability. Most of their victims are people of color.
00:36:57
Most of them were in horrible situations. And Alex was also really good at looking people in the eye and saying, I got your back, buddy.
00:37:05
And these people, and it's so horrible when you think about it. Think of the worst time in your life and a person that you thought was helping you.
00:37:15
Like 10 years ago, that's what the pink knees were dealing with. 10 years ago, all this went down and like Alex was their lawyer, their guy, and they thought that
00:37:23
he was doing the right thing for them and fighting for them. And he would say, look,
00:37:29
we're doing everything we can't. I'm so sorry about all that. He said all the right things to
00:37:33
these people. And then now they're just dealing with pure betrayal. Thinking back to the worst
00:37:39
time of their life when they were so vulnerable and thankful for this person who was just robbing
00:37:45
them. It's just so cold. And that's another thing that we've discovered. A lot of people,
00:37:51
when the murders happen and we're all over the place here because this whole case is all over
00:37:54
the place. Yeah. Yeah. It's unbelievable. It's just sprawling. We used to say that there's
00:37:59
monsters around. So in 2019, when we were, we were reporting this, Mandy and I would like,
00:38:04
I mean, we were, we try not to say the word obsessed, but we were obsessed with it in the
00:38:08
sense that we knew it's like, when you get that feeling, you're like, something's not right.
00:38:11
They're trying to pull one over on us. So we were just constantly talking about it,
00:38:16
constantly researching outside of work. And, you know, we would talk about there being monsters around every corner
00:38:21
because with this case, it's not as simple. Even when I was driving here to Mandy's house today,
00:38:28
I got a text from somebody that was like, hey, did you hear that the guy who bought Moselle
00:38:33
from the Murdochs killed himself? And I was like, no, no, I don't want to know that.
00:38:39
Is that true? No, it is not true. Great. Rumor. Because that's a step too far. Yeah.
00:38:45
But I would imagine, yeah, the rumors going around. Absolutely. So the rumors, you're like, the most preposterous rumor comes.
00:38:53
And Mandy and I are like, no, because most times it does turn out to be true. And that is where the monster is, like around the corner,
00:38:59
because it's a whole new thread that we have to look into and deal with. Well, it's crazy how enmeshed.
00:39:06
You guys are just totally enmeshed in this case now. It's almost like you're part of it because the podcast got so huge so quickly and people are turning to you to hear about this story and to hear the truth about everything that's going on.
00:39:19
So that's a big responsibility. And then, yeah, you get these text messages of rumors and you're the ones who have to sort through because you're part of it now.
00:39:27
So I fully believe that Mandy's reporting over the summer of 2021, had she not done that work for the organization she was working for, I don't think we would be where we are in terms of the investigations.
00:39:41
Because she was holding them accountable singularly in some ways and forcing the issue.
00:39:47
So she was forcing them not to be able to look away. And I think that that's what was so brave, especially given like what we knew behind the scenes, because we can only report what we can verify. So there's, you know, there's only a little bit comparatively to what we know. So it, yeah, it was, I mean, without that reporting that she did, I honestly don't think any of this would have gone this way.
00:40:12
Yeah. Was it Alex Murdoch's lawyer when he started talking about Mandy, when he was giving his statements and stuff where you're just like, oh my God, it's like through the looking glass where she's reporting, she's telling the story, trying to be like, you know, all her allegedly's and everything is, everything's in line and you're doing it totally by the book.
00:40:33
and this man is basically like, this one's over here, whatever sexist thing that he said to you,
00:40:39
where it's suddenly you're just like, oh, this is actually working. Like these people don't want her doing this,
00:40:46
which means something really huge is here. Yeah. Was that the feeling you got? Yeah, well, first of all,
00:40:53
that story is so weird because, I mean, last, and circling back to like just how crazy things were,
00:41:00
I would not recommend anybody to start a podcast while, well, actually, I mean, it all worked out, but covering breaking news and
00:41:09
then having to do a podcast at the end. Oh my gosh, it was so hard. And I, there was a point
00:41:14
after Alex was shot and things just really, lawsuits were being filed and every, like every
00:41:22
day was just absolutely insane. And I was not getting any sleep either at that time. And I
00:41:27
really did, I remember the first night that Alex went to jail, I finally like slept okay for the
00:41:34
first time in a really long, like, but the, that whole period of time was just really horrible for
00:41:42
my mental health, my wellbeing, all of that. And it was also dealing with like just all these awful
00:41:48
people telling me that they hated my voice It was so stupid but it was just a really like I look back on that time in my life that it should have been exciting I mean not it was just very dark And my fiance and I drove to the courthouse in Hampton that day to cover that bond hearing
00:42:10
And that was for Alex's suicide or shooting incident thing. And there was just a sea of reporters outside.
00:42:17
And it just looked like a circus. And my stomach just dropped. And I could not. you notice that feeling and they say like listen to your body listen to your instinct i was like i
00:42:27
can't go in i i just need to go home and i remember texting liz that day and she was like you're not
00:42:34
even sounding like yourself are you okay like yeah i was just not okay at that point and then
00:42:40
i go and i'm like okay whatever the bond hearing is going to be covered online i can cover it
00:42:45
it doesn't really matter if i'm there at the end of the day and then as i'm watching and i'm getting
00:42:51
all these text messages like, are you seeing what Dick Harpilian said about you? Oh my God. Oh my
00:42:56
God. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that was a bit, first of all, I was like, that was the first
00:43:01
moment that I was like, okay, wow, the target is on my back. Like they're noticing me. I didn't
00:43:06
know before that point. Ultimately, I think he was saying that he considered me a threat there,
00:43:11
even though he was saying all sorts of sexist bullshit. Ultimately, he didn't care about that
00:43:16
as a reporter is he cared about me being there because I was the only one holding him and his
00:43:21
little circle of buddies accountable. And the second thing was just like, I'm so glad I wasn't
00:43:28
there because I don't know what I would have done. The worst part of that was listening to
00:43:32
all of those reporters laughing at his jokes about me. But I'm so glad I wasn't there because I don't
00:43:38
know what I would have done. And it's just one of those things where it's like, if you have that
00:43:43
feeling, just follow it. Absolutely. And that was a big turning point of like, I need to take care of
00:43:49
my mental health and take a little bit of a step back from these things, you know? But
00:43:54
the unprofessionalism from them this whole time, it was a betrayal. Let's just call it what it was
00:44:01
because it's a betrayal. Like you were making their jobs easier. There was an onslaught of
00:44:07
national media here. All of them wanted to pick Mandy's brain. All of them just wanted a casual
00:44:12
a little coffee. Let me pick a drink. What they wanted was her notes and her sources and her,
00:44:17
so she's like fending those off at the time. But for local media in particular to have laughed,
00:44:22
it sounds so minor probably to people not in it, but it was so indicative of the problem because
00:44:28
it's like, you guys are the ones that were supposed to be covering this. Where were you?
00:44:33
Like there were men in the room. Yeah. These old white men in the room that you're like,
00:44:39
you are chumming it up just so that you can get a, you know, a scoop from this guy later.
00:44:45
And it's just, it just showed you like, you guys were the, you know, the guys in charge for a long
00:44:51
time. And now you have a girl who's come on the scene and she's saying the things that you guys
00:44:58
whitewashed. And at that point, I mean, we can't forget that like the week before it was just pure,
00:45:05
utter chaos after the moment he got shot because the lawyers were pushing out this narrative to
00:45:12
all the media that laughed at me with Dick Harputlian that somebody's after Alex Murdoch
00:45:18
and we're gonna they're gonna have a suspect for us soon. Guy, they had this whole narrative that there was a guy in a truck that was following him
00:45:28
and that he stopped to change his tire and that's how he got shot. And the PR company, by the way, let's not forget.
00:45:34
And a PR company was behind. Yeah. And like, and I was the only one to be like, this is bullshit. And everyone in Hampton County, everyone was like, first of all, that guy never changes his own tires.
00:45:48
Totally. So let's start there. Yeah. The road that they were on, he was saying it was on his way to Charleston, and it wasn't
00:45:56
on the way to Charleston. Like, the story was so bad, and it was just a pure example of how the media was not just
00:46:02
doing their jobs, and they just wanted to have their little quotes and make their little
00:46:07
stories and their big headlines and get lots of clicks, because this story was a click
00:46:11
mine. Yeah. It never mattered either. So the Murdochs, like, are so used to just being able to say what happens.
00:46:19
I can just say that, you know, the sky is green and people are like, I see it too.
00:46:23
And we don't have to look into it more. So for him to say all those things and no one to fact check him, they were not used to being fact checked by law enforcement or clearly the media.
00:46:35
In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.
00:46:49
Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby.
00:46:56
Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.
00:47:04
I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it
00:47:12
to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt.
00:47:21
It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong.
00:47:26
Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby. You can binge all episodes now on iHeart Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:47:35
Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was.
00:47:40
Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
00:47:51
Just then, we felt the plane turn in the air. So much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisles.
00:48:00
Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves.
00:48:11
My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything.
00:48:17
And me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.
00:48:23
And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off and that was the last time I saw him.
00:48:27
Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:48:57
Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Well, they had a BOGO. Well, then you got it.
00:49:02
Listen to Soccer Moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:49:08
I just remember seeing, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was an article in The Guardian.
00:49:13
Was it The Guardian? Yep. Where when it went, so this starts as local news, and slowly you're watching it spread into a national news story of this happened.
00:49:24
Now these, his wife and son are dead. Now he, someone quote unquote, tried to kill him or shoot him, which, you know, is what
00:49:34
you guys are talking about. That's bullshit. And then basically, this is how I found out about it was this article in The Guardian
00:49:42
that was basically like, here's what's going on. And here's the one person actually chasing down what's happening.
00:49:49
I felt like that was such a great, that article really was about how alone you were.
00:49:54
and how you basically were holding up this journalistic ethic to go, we need to figure out what this is because this has gone on.
00:50:02
Like enough people have died. Enough people have been ripped off. Like this has to change.
00:50:08
And suddenly you're getting global. I mean, I wouldn't say you're getting the coverage,
00:50:12
but like the story is being told accurately to how you're seeing it, as opposed to the good old boy journalists
00:50:18
that are laughing along with Dick Harpootlian. I mean, did that feel good? Because I was thrilled.
00:50:24
when I read that. I was like, retweet. Everybody has to read this. Oh my God, what is happening?
00:50:30
Yeah. Drew Lawrence is one of my favorite reporters and he's actually a friend of mine now.
00:50:35
And he was the one who wrote that story and it was just so validating when it came out because
00:50:40
it was just like a, like, thank you. And from the, he, he approached his conversations with me
00:50:45
totally different than like, look, I don't want to, I'm not competing with you in any way. I'm
00:50:50
not trying to retell the story that you've obviously covered for years now, but I want to
00:50:56
tell it about how it's been for you and the journey for you and what's going on with journalism.
00:51:01
And I was like, oh yeah, let's do that. And I also feel like I got very, I was very misunderstood
00:51:08
in those months last fall from people thinking that like, I didn't want other media covering
00:51:15
the story. I don't care about it. They can cover it. Please come investigate this stuff. It's very
00:51:21
hard. Just do it accurately. Just tell the actual story. Tell the actual story. If you didn't
00:51:29
uncover it, give credit to the reporter who did uncover it. It's not that hard. And don't treat
00:51:35
the victims like dirt. I was so sick of getting phone calls last summer from victims being like,
00:51:41
this reporter's in my yard right now and they won't leave. And these people were not used to
00:51:46
anything like that. Like the story just exploded in a way that nobody ever predicted. And all of
00:51:52
these people were left very extremely hurt by it. And the media was making it worse for the most
00:51:58
part. A perfect example of that. And the reason why I really started my podcast, I had wanted to
00:52:04
start a podcast for years and told Liz about it. We were always like had a pipe dream about a boat
00:52:09
crash podcast because we thought like there was plenty with the Stephen Smith case. And it was
00:52:14
one of those things like one of these days we'll do it. And you just don't get to do it. But I
00:52:19
remember listening to a national, some sort of talking head on the news talking about this case
00:52:26
after the murders. And they were saying like, they obviously had just Googled the case and what they
00:52:33
could find was that there was a boat crash and a girl died in the last couple of years. But their
00:52:38
conclusion was like, that means it's probably one of the victims from the boat crash. And like,
00:52:44
have they looked at the boyfriend of Mallory Beach? I bet he wants revenge. And they were just
00:52:48
really re-victimizing all these people who had gone. And these are kids, like they were 19,
00:52:53
20 when this happened. And now they're like 22, 23. And Liz and I were just like, we didn't know
00:53:01
for sure who it was at the time, but we knew it wasn't the kids in the boat crash. And we also
00:53:05
knew the basic fact that like people in Hampton County are utterly terrified of the Murdochs
00:53:12
and they're not going on their property and shooting Maggie and Paul. That is the riskiest
00:53:17
murder in the state of South Carolina. So the narrative was just getting so wrong. And like
00:53:24
Liz said, there was a PR company. We can't forget that, but we don't know what they were doing
00:53:28
behind the scenes to push this narrative. So I was really motivated to just like, here's what's
00:53:35
really going on with this family. And that's why it sucked that you were in Puerto Rico then,
00:53:40
because, you know, you get the call and like, just like with the boat crash, but even to a
00:53:44
greater extent now, you just know like the fix is going to be in. We have a small window of time
00:53:49
right now for somebody to say what actually happening because if there going to be a cover it going to be starting now So I had texted her called her and I you know obviously it was like late at night and I didn expect it but I couldn go
00:54:05
to the scene because I worked for the sheriff's office and that would have been inappropriate.
00:54:08
But I contacted her boss at the time and was just like, you know, here's this information.
00:54:15
He published it. As soon as he published it, I texted it to a former reporter that we worked with
00:54:19
because it didn't matter. I just wanted it out there at that time. But what bothered me is just
00:54:24
like so when mandy got back like finally because it's like if you don't have a guardian of the
00:54:29
truth and keeping people honest like somebody like mandy it's just all going to be the same again and
00:54:34
you know whatever they get into they'll get away with and so if they're if elec did it if he hired
00:54:40
somebody to do it if it was something related to the murdochs like it needed to be done now and
00:54:45
media needed to understand that story from a corruption standpoint not a oh somebody got
00:54:51
murdered or two people got murdered. And it's tragic. Not to basically make Alec the victim,
00:54:57
which arguably, and from my very ignorant point of view, might have been the reason those murders
00:55:03
happened in the first place. Since everything else was avalanching down and everything was
00:55:08
kind of getting exposed, that would be a way to report it that would absolutely benefit him.
00:55:14
So, I mean, I have no idea what really happened or why, but that idea where it's like, yeah,
00:55:20
you have to get somebody in there going, no, no, no, we have to keep everything in context.
00:55:24
And the context is not good for this family. Yeah. And the context isn't good for a lot of law enforcement. I mean,
00:55:32
still at this point, we don't know why it took so long to arrest Alex. And that's another thing
00:55:40
we just go back to. I'm like, what would they have done if we weren't there? Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:45
But the point of it was, the point of that story and that podcast when we put it out was that, look, we're not really sure if law enforcement is going to do anything with this case.
00:55:57
We think that they are, and we do have good sources that are saying we're doing everything that we can, trust me, blah, blah, blah.
00:56:04
But there was evidence that we knew they could have arrested him with a long time ago, and we're just not sure.
00:56:12
there's just so many accusations of corruption that we had to put everything out there to keep
00:56:18
the pressure on. Yeah. And it worked. I mean, like, it really worked. You guys did an unbelievable
00:56:26
job and you did it in the way it's like, not that I know the difference, but like old school
00:56:31
journalism where you're just like, we're going to do the thing. We're just exposing this to the
00:56:35
light, to the truth, to the public. So it's like, you're just reporting what happened. You're not
00:56:41
saying anything. You're not doing clickbait stuff. You're basically like, this has to go on record.
00:56:47
And it has to go on record the official way to say, here's the real story. Don't let anyone tell
00:56:52
you differently. We're on the ground. All the fact-checking and the stuff, as opposed to,
00:56:58
here's an unbelievable story about this weird double murder. What could have happened? Who
00:57:02
really knows? Where you're just like, no, really, this is important to say what did happen. We need
00:57:07
to find out. Someone needs to look into this. That's what was so thrilling to me as a listener.
00:57:14
This is like two women holding up the lantern alone and in the face of Old Boys Club,
00:57:21
like centuries of corruption, the deepest corruption, where the kind that people say,
00:57:28
there's nothing you can do, give up. And you guys didn't. You fought it. It's pretty amazing.
00:57:33
Yeah. And that was something we were talking about earlier. Liz has always said from the beginning, like, a big thing that really took down this dynasty is just technology and social media. And that's something the good old boys are very bad at and don't understand and they can't control it.
00:57:56
Yes. In a way. And so we were like, we don't even know what Grandpa Buster and all of them, what they did because the internet didn't exist.
00:58:07
Who knows? And it was way easier to get away with stuff back then than it is now, even though for powerful people, it's still way too easy in my opinion.
00:58:17
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think a really important question would be who's going to play you guys in the made-for-TV movie about this podcast?
00:58:24
Yes. Dream, dream, dream world, like dream person. Who would it be? I'm not kidding.
00:58:31
Karen, actually. Hey. Yeah. I love it. We're soul sisters. So I'm Irish American too. We got the same sense of humor. I think, yeah.
00:58:43
I'm all about it. Liz, I think I could really do justice. I do. Thank you. Because like, when I listen and you do your little jokes, like you do your reporting,
00:58:52
but you're also like, and can I just say this? You coming into the podcast too, because there were points where I was worried about Mandy, where I was just like, this is a
00:59:02
person alone doing this thing, doing this reporting or whatever. And you coming in was really a lovely,
00:59:09
beautiful, like the partnership, working and supporting each other. You could just kind of
00:59:14
feel how nice that was for you, Mandy, that you had another person to look across and go,
00:59:20
holy fuck to, which makes all the difference, right? Yeah. As you guys know, I mean, having a
00:59:25
partner you absolutely trust and who understands and who you don't have to explain all of the
00:59:31
background and all the other shit that's involved because they've been in this. It's monumental and
00:59:38
so changing and just like a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders when Liz was able to
00:59:44
come on. And then she brought humor and light. And I mean, I'm not going to lie. There's a lot
00:59:51
of weeks where I'm like, I don't know what we're going to talk about next week. I don't know what's
00:59:54
going to happen And Liz is always like we got this And we do have a good thing with our partnership of like one of us is down the other one goes up We kind of like a seesaw Yeah And it works
01:00:06
really well. Otherwise I would have just stayed down. I mean, I definitely would have quit at this
01:00:11
point. Because it's just, it's too hard. And I think people need to realize that like nobody
01:00:16
needs to do this stuff. It's way too hard. And we all just need to support each other and
01:00:23
keep going, you know, and do everything that we can to keep going and take care of ourselves.
01:00:27
Especially if you're fighting the old boys club, those old crusty reporters laughing at you or
01:00:33
wherever, where it's like, that's fine. Now that you know that there's like millions of true crime
01:00:38
fans who were like so behind you and so thrilled about the work that both of you are doing and like
01:00:44
how you powered through, like, this is how you power through awful stages of life. You just keep
01:00:50
going and you figure out who your team is and how you get the support you need and how you can take
01:00:56
care of yourself and like step out so someone else can step in. But I don't know if you realize
01:01:01
how inspirational that looks from the outside. As hard as it is for you, you're modeling such
01:01:08
beautiful behavior, not just as journalists, but like as a team of women. I'm trying not to cry.
01:01:14
Yeah, me too. I want you to cry. Cry, cry, cry. We love it. It's true, though. You get us.
01:01:23
But thank you. That's so sweet. Which is why it's so annoying that people are like, change your voice.
01:01:28
It's like, that's not what it's about. Change your voice is a trick. Change your voice is a distraction so that you stop doing what you are doing.
01:01:35
It's bullshit. Like, we got to be more Gen Z about that shit. Those kids would just be like, what?
01:01:42
Fuck off. Like, who cares? The change your voice people don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
01:01:48
Yeah. It's so weird that you say that because I'm Gen X and Mandy's obviously a millennial.
01:01:53
That's like us. Oh my God, it's us. It definitely is. And we, like when Mandy was going through that and she was like, should I address this?
01:02:00
Like, it's so dumb, right? You're like vocal fry. Why are we talking about this?
01:02:04
But it was like my instinct as somebody older was like, no, just ignore it. Ignore the haters.
01:02:10
But Mandy was like, look, if I'm going to be holding people accountable for their behavior
01:02:14
here in this story, like in the context of the story, I need to hold other people accountable
01:02:19
to you because their behavior matters as well. How you treat people matters. And so she,
01:02:24
by doing that, like at first I was like, oh, maybe you shouldn't mention it. But
01:02:28
then I understood it. And like, it was so brave of her to do that. And it has changed my complete
01:02:33
philosophy on how, how to address people who hate you. I used to have a thing I would do.
01:02:39
Like if I got a hate mail at work, I would send an email back and be like, can't win them all,
01:02:43
Jim. And I always felt like superior for that because I was like, have a nice leg, you know?
01:02:49
But by Mandy saying honestly and like authentically, you are hurting somebody when you say this. And
01:02:56
it's not just like you are needlessly putting something out there that doesn't need to be put
01:03:01
out there and I'm going to call you out on it. And that has been one of the biggest lessons that
01:03:04
I think I've learned in all of this, especially as we've dealt with so many very unsavory characters
01:03:10
and all of this. It's that lesson right there that I think is so important. Yeah.
01:03:14
A lot of people say all the, like, just ignore it, ignore it, ignore it. And it's like,
01:03:19
ignoring it, a lot of times, yes, ignoring it is the answer because nobody wants to waste it.
01:03:24
Is that your guys' philosophy? Not mine. I'm sure you can hate on mine. I'm learning. I'm learning. But it is hard and it does sometimes
01:03:32
feel like I want to have a conversation. I want to respond. I want to stand up for myself.
01:03:37
Yeah. Then there also is the part of it. It's like, well, what if they're right?
01:03:41
And what if, you know, and that's where you can't respond. Yeah. And I'm sure no matter how successful you get, you're always going to get that little
01:03:48
voice in your head saying, well, what if my voice is annoying? Yeah. Am I? What if my show does suck?
01:03:56
It's almost like take it in, do what you want. But it's like, you can't really ignore it classically because ignoring it makes it seem
01:04:04
like you can have it not be in your head at all. Once you read one horrible thing, it stays there. And that's my thing is, I get that it's impossible to ignore. Just don't let it get you off course. Don't actually let it make you change anything or redirect your plan, which you guys didn't.
01:04:22
You got to express the strength of vulnerability by going, yeah, that really sucks.
01:04:27
You can stop now. But it didn't make you stop reporting. It didn't make you stop going out and being the person that you are.
01:04:34
That's the important part is you stayed on track. And it wasn't like, well, now I'm going to go to a vocal coach and I won't be recording
01:04:41
this podcast until I get my voice right. Absolutely not. Because that's how you basically make women shut up is pointing out that they're not doing
01:04:51
it right. Where it's like, we don't need women to shut up these days. We need women to stand up.
01:04:57
And you did. Well, and like women in television, it's like, when podcasting, it's do we have the appropriate
01:05:05
whatever. I don't even know what the opposite of a vocal fry is. But feminine, I don't know.
01:05:12
I mean, do we sound like a guy? Do we sound like a male reporter? I think is essentially what it is.
01:05:16
Or do we sound like a bro? Do we sound like what we're, quote, supposed to sound like?
01:05:20
Which is so stupid because podcasting is so new that there is no what it's supposed to sound like.
01:05:25
But boys can, men can sound like whatever. Like, it's just their voice and their content.
01:05:31
And, but, like, I have a lot of friends who've been TV reporters over the years.
01:05:35
And TV reporters go through so much shit about what they look like. And those girls do not get paid nearly enough.
01:05:44
I mean, and their bosses also, like, criticize them for how they look. in a way that they do not criticize males.
01:05:52
So on TV they have to worry about so many extra things besides the content And it just so much And again people give me a lot of shit online when I say like this is a sexist thing
01:06:05
Let's just call it what it is. Like, I don't have statistics on this, but I know male reporters do not go through what people are.
01:06:12
Absolutely not. You don't need statistics. You just need like living in the world.
01:06:17
We all know. Yeah, it's walking outside. Yeah, entirely. Well, what's next for you guys?
01:06:23
anything non-Murdox related that you're excited about these days? We are trying.
01:06:29
There's like silence. Yeah. You're like, absolutely not. Mandy, you're getting married.
01:06:36
Oh. I'm getting married next month. That's exciting. So this whole time you've been planning a wedding.
01:06:42
That's insane. Yeah. Yeah. I got engaged a week before the double homicide. She was celebrating her engagement when it happened.
01:06:49
Yeah, I was in Puerto Rico and celebrating my birthday. and then my engagement and new beginnings.
01:06:57
And yeah, but we've figured out how to plan a wedding during all of this chaos. Wow, good for you.
01:07:05
And that's been fun. But yeah, I mean, we are now trying to focus on, I think what we've realized
01:07:11
is that our approach to journalism does work. Where Liz and I both spent a very long time
01:07:17
in the newspaper industry, just getting trampled by old white men who are making very bad decisions and for a lot of money than we were making. Of course. And
01:07:29
we want to empower other journalists to be doing the same things that we are doing. Like I am not
01:07:36
convinced. I know that there's not going to be a lot of Murdoch stories to repeat. You know,
01:07:42
I hope not. I don't want to find another monster like this ever again. However, However, the podcasting investigative journalism model really does work.
01:07:54
It finances journalism. Podcasting advertising works. A lot of people don't realize that in a way that, I mean, I was always told since coming
01:08:03
out of journalism school, there's no future in journalism. You're never going to make money in it.
01:08:08
It's just going to suck forever. That's got to sound great and exciting to hear.
01:08:12
Enjoy your student loans. Yeah. And my parents were all the time like, are you sure?
01:08:17
why are you doing this? And every, even like my counselors in journalism school were like,
01:08:23
are you sure it was? Like, it was, it's just been a very, very uncertain, terrible industry to be in. And I mean, if we want to talk about-
01:08:31
Wait, wait, because that's what we were taught, that it's an uncertain industry to be in. But
01:08:35
what's uncertain, and this is what Mandy and I figured out when we were working at McClatchy,
01:08:39
is the profit model for the people at the top. So you get sold, the people that are doing the work
01:08:45
of the content creators or whatever we want to call them, we're the ones that are being told,
01:08:49
like, I don't know about this. You might be laid off next week. And it's like, why? Because you get
01:08:54
a $35,000 a month stipend just for your house rental. On top of your $2 million salary. Remember
01:09:00
that one? Yeah. Right. That was a real thing. Yeah. We were having layoffs in our newsroom
01:09:06
while we found out that our CEO was making over $2 million a year plus a $30,000, $35,000
01:09:13
housing stipend a month. And our reporters were making $35,000 a year who were getting laid off.
01:09:22
But I think people conflate the idea that journalism, there's no future in journalism
01:09:26
with there's no future for that profit model because it's too many people doing too little
01:09:31
for too much money. But journalism itself is a means of communication. It's storytelling.
01:09:37
It's watchdog. It's accountability. Like that has always been necessary and it's always going to be.
01:09:43
necessary. And it takes us, I think that's why, you know, what we're thinking is that we want to
01:09:48
motivate other journalists to do the same thing while also solving that problem in different
01:09:54
communities. Because, you know, there's so many cases that just go unsolved because lack of
01:10:00
motivation, you know, incompetence is obviously always a thing, but corruption is always a part
01:10:05
of it. Almost always, I shouldn't say always, but there is some sort of like, whether it's noble
01:10:09
cause corruption or just straight up corruption. So that's what journalism's for, to stop that.
01:10:15
Yep. And you're right. It's like the evolution of it instead of saying, well, this is a dead thing or whatever. It's like basically this model of journalists having
01:10:25
podcasts and journalists doing like the long form reporting of like, no, there will be an
01:10:30
audience for this because there is a huge audience for true crime, for people. This is the reason
01:10:35
people follow it. It isn't just gore. It's about getting to the truth, exposing people,
01:10:42
exposing these monsters in plain sight. All of that, that's what I think. That's what is behind
01:10:49
the true crime trend. It's just like, we want to witness what these reporters, journalists,
01:10:55
whoever it is, are talking about and saying no more of this. Yeah, no one wants this. This is
01:11:01
crazy. You shouldn't be a lawyer that gets to rip people off and or kill them if it suits you.
01:11:08
That's crazy. Like nothing should be this corrupt. It seems to be the way it's going.
01:11:12
I think what we figured out is if you remove the, I don't want to say like white, I hate to say that,
01:11:17
but like if you move like the old school white men from the equation and journalists are left
01:11:22
to do their jobs, my God, like how far they can go without having to feed that beast, you know?
01:11:28
Yeah. Well, you guys are showing it. And are motivated. I mean, I feel like a lot in journalism,
01:11:35
they make you feel like you took a vow of poverty. And if you make like an extra cent,
01:11:40
but like money motivates everybody to do better. Especially if you're making like $35,000 a year,
01:11:47
like I used to be making, you're worried about all these other things in your life
01:11:52
because you're barely making ends meet and you don't have time or energy to go investigate
01:11:58
and take down a time stamp. because you're just trying to get through your job. And you go to get drinks with friends
01:12:05
and like the waitress is making way more money than you. And you're like, why am I doing this?
01:12:10
This doesn't make any sense. So like journalists need to be paid a lot more. And that's something that we're going to base our model off of,
01:12:19
of like, yeah, they need more money. And because this is as stressful as work as lawyers do.
01:12:25
Yeah. And it's scary, you know, Like, so they need to be paying more. And that's just something that nobody ever talks about.
01:12:34
But I will say that I think that society needs to be better at cheering on people who are
01:12:42
making money for doing the right thing. Yeah, yes. Instead of just shaming people for, oh my God, you've made money off of some sort of
01:12:52
true crime. Like, no, if somebody's doing the right thing and if they're empowering victims and if they're
01:12:58
helping people and if they're taking down systems and they should make money and that's fine. And
01:13:03
we should encourage other people to do the same thing. Yeah. Somehow it's only honest if you're
01:13:08
suffering through it. And that's the trick. Well, what's funny too is like, meanwhile,
01:13:13
the Guardian newspaper, one of the best newspapers in the world is like, check out what this badass
01:13:18
woman is doing. And it just like, I think you guys got the ultimate validation of like,
01:13:23
check this shit out. Look at what is happening. Look at this corruption and look at the one person
01:13:29
fighting it at first, at the beginning, before Liz made her entrance, fighting it alone. To me,
01:13:34
that was so impressive because I was just like, wow, this newspaper is basically pointing out a
01:13:39
reporter that's just kind of like taken up this battle by herself. People love you. People love
01:13:46
you. You need to know it. Aw, you guys are awesome. And I wanted to say thank you so much for,
01:13:50
First of all, retweeting that, that was like, you guys have a lot of fans. It's true.
01:13:57
A lot. My sister sent it to you. So my sister doesn't listen to my podcast as far as I know.
01:14:03
My family never does that. So they are both my sisters Mine doesn listen to mine either My sister obsessed with you She like oh can you get them to say like hi to Aisling And I was like no not on the checklist
01:14:15
Hi, Aisling. Hi, Aisling. Oh, she doesn't listen to our podcast, but she sent that.
01:14:21
And she's like, oh, my God. So it was a huge moment. It really was. It was awesome.
01:14:27
It felt so good. You guys have said such nice, like, these are really meaningful things.
01:14:33
because like we are going to replay these in our heads because it's like stuff that we need to hear
01:14:37
because it's so like we're in our own little smaller world because of this. And so it's hard
01:14:43
for us to know kind of like how it looks from the outside other than the people that, you know,
01:14:48
sort of tap you on the shoulder and they're like, you sound terrible. But so it's really,
01:14:53
you know, thank you. Our pleasure. One great thing that I've learned in all of this is just how
01:14:58
this is going to sound tacky, but like empowering the sisterhood is. And like, I have just been
01:15:04
the amount of super successful women, like you have retweeted us and helped us so much. And
01:15:09
so many people who have reached out and said, ignore the haters. If you need any advice,
01:15:15
blah, blah, blah. I mean, that has been life-changing for me. And like this whole podcast
01:15:22
and the story of the success is really a story of women helping each other. I mean,
01:15:27
the very beginning, our only advertiser was a, there are friends now, but the Bannon Law Group,
01:15:34
who was a female attorney, she is the biggest fan of you guys. Yes, she is. Wow. Meredith, she went to your show in Charleston. Like, she is like the biggest
01:15:46
fan in the universe of you guys. But like, I just think back to her empowering me at the very
01:15:53
beginning and say, no, you need to keep going and we'll keep funding it. I don't care. Like,
01:15:57
you need to keep doing this and exposing these people because, I mean, so many women that have
01:16:01
just kept this thing going and I'm just so thankful for it. And it's just been a huge light
01:16:09
in all this darkness you know Yes Our fan base yeah has given us everything We talk about them all the time It so many amazing women who are all you know when George and I used to go on the road like we meet people in real life and just be like every person that we meeting is cool and like us
01:16:26
It's the weirdest thing. Like there is such a faction of women who have come together under this kind of like,
01:16:33
quote unquote, you know, pastime or interest. But actually what they're discovering is
01:16:38
we all need each other and we all are here for each other. And there's just so much, you know,
01:16:44
it does feel corny to say empowerment, but it's the best word for it. Because that's really what
01:16:49
it is, where it's just like, we need to know that that connection between each other is actually
01:16:55
changing the world. It really is. No, it's true. It's corny. I'm sorry, but it's fucking true.
01:17:02
Like they're doing it. They're all doing it with each other and for each other. And it's just
01:17:07
really cool. And I'm glad you guys get that piece of it because that's kind of the point.
01:17:11
Yeah. That's what's kind of actually the biggest joke in all of this is because when we think about, like, people, when they want to, like, be derogatory, they'll call us bloggers.
01:17:19
And it's, like, funny to think, like, you can think the least about us. It's kind of funny that we're the ones taking down the poetryarchy.
01:17:26
Hell yeah. To the bloggers. That's right. Amazing. Well, we are honored to have you guys here.
01:17:35
Such incredible journalists, professionals, like, wow. On our show. thank you guys so, so much. Yay. We're honored to be here. Oh my gosh. This has been so fun.
01:17:47
Well, you guys can find the Murdoch Murders podcast wherever you get your podcasts. New
01:17:51
episodes are released every Wednesday. Make sure you rate, review, positively review, and subscribe.
01:17:57
Mandy and Liz, we really, really do appreciate you guys being here with us. Thank you so much.
01:18:02
Yeah. You guys have to come to Hilton Head. We will take you shark fishing and it'll be a great
01:18:07
I want to see it. Low country. I've got to check it out. Yeah, you really do. It'd be amazing.
01:18:15
We would like to repay you. I think two wedding invitations are on the way. On the way.
01:18:22
I'll tell David. Congrats Thanks again Bye Bye Elvis do you want a cookie Ah and Facebook at MyFavoriteMurder
01:18:56
and on Twitter at MyFaveMurder. Goodbye! Your husband is not who you think he is.
01:19:10
Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.
01:19:15
I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
01:19:23
He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door
01:19:27
and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets
01:19:32
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl.
01:19:40
This podcast is all about going deeper with the women shaping culture right now.
01:19:44
Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure,
01:19:48
the expectations, and the real work behind it all. As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated.
01:19:54
So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are and your integrity.
01:20:00
You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:20:10
This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world.
01:20:23
The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.
01:20:32
Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.