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COLLETON COUNTY, S.C. (WCBD) – The jury in the Alex Murdaugh murder trial is expected to hear from witnesses connected to Murdaugh’s financial crimes Tuesday.
Murdaugh is accused of killing his wife Margaret and youngest son Paul at their family property in June of 2021.
ALEX MURDAUGH MURDER TRIAL: DAY 11 RECAP
Get caught up on the Alex Murdaugh investigations
Judge Clifton Newman ruled Monday that the evidence could be heard only to further explain the state’s theory of motive, and that the jury should not use it as evidence of bad character or as an indication that Murdaugh is somehow more likely to commit murder based on having committed financial crimes.
Newman was also asked Monday to review the testimony of Murdaugh’s mother’s caregiver, Mushell Smith, who said she saw Murdaugh bringing a blue tarp into his mother’s house days after the murders.
State prosecutors claimed that the tarp could’ve been a blue raincoat, which SLED agents later seized from the property along with the tarp. The state plans to introduce evidence that gunshot residue was found on the raincoat, while Murdaugh’s defense team is arguing the raincoat should not be admitted into evidence at all since it has never been tied to Murdaugh.
Court is expected to resume at 9:30 a.m.
ALEX MURDAUGH MURDER TRIAL LIVE BLOG:
11:37 a.m. – The jury returns after a brief break. Waters recaps the timeline of PMPED discovering Murdaugh’s financial crimes.
They go through specific cases in which Murdaugh stole from clients using the fake Forge account. The checks range from 2015 to 2021.
She says each of the partners put up money to repay the clients from whom Murdaugh stole. They are still in the process of repaying some of the clients.
9:54 a.m. – Jeanne Seckinger is called to the stand. Seckinger is the CFO Parker Law Group, formerly PMPED. She is the one who confronted Murdaugh about missing funds the day of the murders.
Seckinger previously testified without the jury present.
She has known Murdaugh since high school.
Waters asks about the payment structure of PMPED. Seckinger says that partners at PMPED got a base salary of about $125,000 yearly. They then got bonuses at the end of the year based on the percentage of profit brought in by each partner, minus overhead fees. There is also a 7.5% gross fee taken from each person, put together, then divided among everyone. She says this is to help balance out people that may have had a very good year vs the people that may have had a very bad year.
At the end of the year, they try to zero out the books to avoid being double-taxed on balances in the accounts. That means some of the partners have to loan money to the firm at the beginning of every year to cover operating costs until the firm is back in the positive. The partners are paid back throughout the year. Seckinger says Murdaugh never did that.
Waters brings up an instance in which Randy Murdaugh loaned money to the law firm and the reimbursement check for $121,000 made out to R. Murdaugh was mistakenly given to Alex. Alex brought the check to someone at the firm and said it was voided and asked them to write another one. The person did, and Alex ended up cashing both checks. The law firm noticed and confronted Alex and he said he didn’t realize the check was for his brother, claiming he thought he had loaned money that year. Alex paid the money back and the firm let it go.
Seckinger said that the firm was like a family, there was a brotherhood and sense of trust, so they accepted Murdaugh’s explanation.
There is also a client trust account. This is where money recovered in cases goes before being disbursed as fees, outstanding costs such as medical bills or liens, and client settlement money. Money won by partners is supposed to go directly to that account. Seckinger says if money were diverted directly to the partner, it would be stealing.
Seckinger says Murdaugh was not very involved in the management of the firm. He kept different hours than most of the other partners. “Always loud, always busy, always in a rush,” she says. He “had the gift of gab,” and was always on his phone.
As a lawyer, Seckinger says Murdaugh was successful not because of his work ethic, but his ability to make people like him and “manipulate people into settlements.” Seckinger says he did it “through the art of bullshit, basically.”
She says although he frequently got lucrative results, she thinks he manipulated his clients just like he manipulated the firm.
Seckinger says she used to think Murdaugh was just chaotic and had a bad memory, but looking back, she thinks he had to have a very strong memory to keep his lies in order.
Waters asks if Seckinger is familiar with the boat case. Seckinger says yes. Waters asks if Seckinger noticed any changes in Murdaugh’s behavior around the office. Seckinger says no, not until November or December of 2020. She didn’t notice it then but noticed it in hindsight. She says that is when he started getting sloppy with diverting money.
Waters asks about Forge Consulting. Seckinger explains Force Consulting is a company that helps clients set up structured settlements. If clients do not want to receive their settlement funds in one lump sum, Forge Consulting sets up an account to disburse the money to the client over a number of years. Seckinger says it is a legitimate company that PMPED has worked with hundreds of times.
Partners can also elect to put fees that they earn in structured settlements. Seckinger says that if a partner wants to do that, they are supposed to consult with the firm so that the firm can account for that with the end-of-year bonuses, overhead fees, etc.
In May of 2021, Seckinger noticed that Murdaugh had sent fees from a Harshberger settlement to “Forge.” She confronted him and told him that if he wanted to set up a structured settlement, he needed to discuss it with the firm. She also said that the way he set it up was wrong and he would not be saving any money on taxes, so he needed to set it up correctly.
Murdaugh told her he wasn’t worried about saving money on taxes, he wanted to get money in Maggie’s name due to the boat accident. Seckinger said that concerned her because Murdaugh was trying to hide assets. She said that the firm did not want to be part of any wrongdoing.
She knew she had until December to balance the books, so she didn’t press the topic at that point.
In late May of 2021, one of Murdaugh’s paralegals, Annette Griswold, contacted Seckinger about fees they were expecting to receive in a case Murdaugh worked with his longtime friend Chris Wilson, which was handled through Wilson’s firm. PMPED received a check for expenses related to the case, but not the attorney fee check. Chris Wilson’s office said that the money had been paid out, so Griswold and Seckinger became concerned that the fees had been paid directly to Murdaugh.
Seckinger consulted with another partner, Lee Cope, about her concerns and about how to protect Griswold. She sent Griswold an email asking for a detailed accounting of the funds, which Griswold forwarded to Wilson’s office on May 27, 2021. Wilson’s paralegal was out of the office and did not reply until June 2, 2021, saying she would forward the email to Wilson.
Murdaugh confronted Seckinger on June 3 and said the money was in Wilson’s trust.
On June 7, 2021 — the morning of the murders — Seckinger confronted Murdaugh. She said she found him outside his office and he gave her a dirty look and asked “what do you want?” She told him she had reason to believe he received the funds directly and he needed to prove that he did not. He assured her the fees were in Wilson’s account while he figured out what to do with the money and whether he should put it in Maggie’s name.
In the middle of the conversation, Murdaugh received a phone call about his sick father saying he was terminal. The tone changed and Seckinger says she became a concerned friend. She thought Murdaugh was leaving to go see his father. Later, Murdaugh called her and asked for some information about his 401K and his financials, which he needed for a hearing scheduled for June 10 regarding the boat case.
At around 10:30 p.m., Seckinger says she started getting texts from friends listening to scanners that Maggie and Paul had been shot. She started texting some of the attorneys. Around 2:00 a.m., Mark Ball responded and said it was true. She said everyone was shocked and scared. Everyone dropped their work duties and rallied around Murdaugh.
Waters asks if anyone was worried about the missing fees after the murders. Seckinger says no, they were worried about Murdaugh’s mental state. She says he wasn’t working much, they knew he was taking pills, and they weren’t going to harass him about money when his wife and child had just been killed.
To avoid asking Murdaugh, Cope reached out to Wilson himself. Wilson said that he had the fees and they were available whenever they were needed. Everyone was relieved. However, there were still some flags in Murdaugh’s finances that made them suspicious.
In September, Seckinger decided to start looking through Murdaugh’s fees to make sure there were no other issues. Around that same time, Griswold found a check in Murdaugh’s office from Wilson. The check was for the missing fees and it was made out to Murdaugh doing business as Forge, a shell account Murdaugh had disguised to look like the legitimate Forge Consulting.
Seckinger decided to print out all of the money sent to Forge and review it with other partners. They discovered many checks made out to Forge, signed by Murdaugh. Many of the checks were from cases in which they knew money wasn’t sent to Forge Consulting. The checks were also Bank of America checks. They called the head of Forge Consulting, Michael Dunn, who said that he hadn’t structured settlements for any of the cases and that Forge Consulting didn’t have an account at Bank of America.
Seckinger knew the funds were stolen and described feeling sick.
They asked forensic auditors to come in and do a full accounting of the missing funds. PMPED contacted clients who Murdaugh had stolen from and reimbursed them.
Seckinger says Murdaugh stole over $2 million through the fake forge account and they found checks dating back to 2015.
On September 2, they called a meeting with all the partners, minus Alex and Randy Murdaugh. They eventually called Randy in, and Randy “hung his head” and said Murdaugh stole it. Randy and Danny Henderson confronted Murdaugh. He admitted to stealing the money and it was decided he would resign.
9:52 a.m. – The jury is brought in.
9:40 a.m. – Court is in session. Defense attorney Jim Griffin presents a rough copy of the transcript regarding the tarp/rain jacket testimony. According to page 90 of the transcript, Mushell Smith said she had never seen the blue rain jacket before.
State prosecutor Creighton Waters points to earlier testimony at which point Smith was shown a picture of the raincoat and said it looked like the item Murdaugh was carrying.
Newman sides with the state, saying that the witness could not clearly identify the item as either a tarp or a raincoat. However, he notes that Griffin did an effective job raising questions about the testimony of the witness, which the jury will have to take into consideration.
Newman says around 400 items are in evidence as of Tuesday.
Another note before testimony starts: one juror who was worried about the length of the trial said that he will be able to stay. An alternate juror told the court Tuesday morning that he is at the emergency room, so court is proceeding without him.
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