{"id":216,"date":"2026-05-26T11:07:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T11:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=216"},"modified":"2026-05-26T11:07:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T11:07:00","slug":"how-a-small-town-clerks-misdeeds-upturned-the-murdaugh-verdict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=216","title":{"rendered":"How a Small-Town Clerk\u2019s Misdeeds Upturned the Murdaugh Verdict"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On March 2, 2023, the prominent personal-injury lawyer Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering his wife, Maggie, and their son, Paul, at Moselle, their seventeen-hundred-and-seventy-acre hunting estate in South Carolina\u2019s Lowcountry. Initially, the murders were thought to be the work of vigilantes with a grudge against the family, but investigators quickly came to focus on Murdaugh himself, speculating that he\u2019d staged the crime, in which two weapons were used, in order to turn himself into an object of sympathy ahead of the looming exposure of a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scheme he\u2019d been running for years. It seemed to have worked, until police caught him in a lie about his movements on the night of the crime, and his alibi fell apart. The large-living scion of a legal dynasty that had occupied the prosecutor\u2019s office in South Carolina\u2019s Fourteenth Circuit for generations, while also making fortunes as civil litigators, Murdaugh was found guilty of the murders and pled guilty to dozens of financial crimes. He was given two consecutive life sentences for the murders, along with various other federal and state sentences for his other crimes.<\/p>\n

Read more Act of Faith<\/a><\/p>\n

From the start, the case was marked by stunned hyperbole. \u201cThe scope of Murdaugh\u2019s depravity is without precedent in Western jurisprudence,\u201d one of many lawsuits against him declared. An attorney for some of his financial victims told me, \u201cAlex Murdaugh is one of the darkest human beings our state has ever produced.\u201d And, earlier this month, the South Carolina Supreme Court added a superlative of its own, overturning the murder verdict, vacating Murdaugh\u2019s two life sentences, and ordering a new trial, on the ground of jury tampering by Becky Hill, the clerk of the court during the trial: \u201cThe breathtaking and disgraceful effort of Hill to undermine the jury process is unprecedented in South Carolina.\u201d (Murdaugh remains incarcerated at the McCormick Correctional Institution for his financial crimes, which have not been vacated.)<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s ruling was based, mainly, on a flurry of inappropriate remarks Hill made to jurors as the defense began its case. \u201cY\u2019all are going to hear things that will throw you all off,\u201d one juror recalled her saying. \u201cDon\u2019t let this distract you or mislead you.\u201d Other jurors reported warnings by Hill not to be \u201cfooled\u201d by Murdaugh when he took the stand, along with admonitions to \u201cwatch his body language,\u201d \u201clook at his actions,\u201d and \u201clook at his movements.\u201d Juror Z, an anonymized member of the jury who declared Murdaugh guilty, wrote in an affidavit that \u201cI had questions about Mr. Murdaugh\u2019s guilt,\u201d and stated that Hill \u201cmade it seem like he was already guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

These allegations are not new. They first came up at a post-trial hearing two years ago, where Hill denied them. And while Jean H. Toal, the judge presiding over the hearing, found Hill to be \u201cnot completely credible,\u201d she nevertheless ruled that Hill\u2019s interferences hadn\u2019t influenced the verdict, and declined Murdaugh\u2019s motion to grant a retrial\u2014this despite a supplementary affidavit from Juror Z stating, unambiguously, \u201cI felt influenced to find Mr. Murdaugh guilty by reason of Ms. Hill\u2019s remarks, before I entered the jury room.\u201d When prosecutors finally disciplined Hill, they limited their charges to perjury, obstruction of justice, and misconduct, conspicuously avoiding the jury-tampering charge that would have triggered a retrial. Hill was let off with probation and some community service, while Mudaugh\u2019s guilty verdict was preserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The higher court\u2019s unanimous decision to take Hill\u2019s tampering seriously restores some credibility to the state\u2019s legal establishment, which had been badly tarnished by a pattern of regulatory dysfunction that I had observed while reporting on, and eventually writing a book about, the Murdaugh case. Among the more glaring examples was a lack of any serious oversight within Murdaugh\u2019s high-profile law firm, P.M.P.E.D., in whose offices he\u2019d been caught stealing years before the murders, only for a colleague at the firm, in the words of the C.F.O., Jeanne Seckinger, to \u201csweep it under the rug.\u201d There also appears to have been no oversight at the Palmetto State Bank, where Murdaugh\u2019s embezzlement co-conspirator Russell Laffitte shuffled their victims\u2019 money around like a street hustler running a three-card-monte table. And, at the Colleton County Courthouse, Hill (Becky-Boo, to her many admirers) was apparently able to commit her jury tampering in plain sight. Only later did a fellow-clerk recall that she\u2019d talked openly about wanting a guilty verdict because it would sell more copies of the book she was writing about the trial. (The book, \u201cBehind the Doors of Justice,\u201d was published in 2023, but was quickly withdrawn after Hill admitted to plagiarizing the opening pages.) It also came out that she\u2019d had private conversations with jurors, awarded herself thousands of dollars in unauthorized bonuses, and conducted prayer sessions in proximity to the jurors, whom she later identified as \u201cthe most prayerful jury I have ever witnessed.\u201d<\/p>\n

This religious dynamic may account for an episode that became a key exhibit in the eventual tampering complaint against her. It occurred on the penultimate day of the trial, when the jury was taken to visit the crime scene in the Murdaughs\u2019 sprawling Moselle estate. Hill describes it in her book:<\/p>\n

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God gives us all gifts, and the gift of discernment is shared by many. Some of us either from the courthouse, law enforcement, or jury at Moselle had an epiphany and shared our thoughts with our eyes. At that moment, many of us standing there knew. I knew and they knew that Alex was guilty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Will Folks, a local South Carolina reporter whose media outlet, FitsNews,<\/em> broke much of the Murdaugh story, told me recently that the jury was known to be ten to two in favor of conviction before the trip to Moselle, where Hill described the collective \u201cepiphany,\u201d and eleven to one after it. Eric Bland, a lawyer for one of Murdaugh\u2019s financial victims, posted a tweet a few hours before the visit that seemed to corroborate this, writing, \u201cright now at least 10 jurors minds are made up, and there may be two on the fence.\u201d If Folks and Bland are right, we can deduce that the convert was probably the pliable Juror Z, but in any case there was still one known holdout (and it only takes one to hang a jury). This was Juror No. 785, whose name is Myra Crosby, and in the last hours of the six-week trial she became the target of a concerted and successful attempt to remove her from the final jury panel. At her dismissal, she asked for some eggs she\u2019d left in the jury room to be returned to her, and became known as the egg juror. Her experience would serve as a major aspect of the complaint against Hill.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In keeping with the Murdaugh saga\u2019s swampy setting, the intrigue surrounding Crosby\u2019s removal from the jury emerged murkily, and, even now, it is still partially veiled by sealed records. The state Supreme Court\u2019s ruling, overturning Murdaugh\u2019s murder charges, reveals some details about Hill\u2019s interactions with Crosby, accusing her of \u201cmeddling in events around Juror 785\u2019s dismissal,\u201d but it puts more weight on Hill\u2019s inappropriate comments to the rest of the jurors who remained on the panel than on her role in the removal of the one who didn\u2019t. Hill\u2019s behavior in both cases was egregious, but, whatever the technical reasons for the court\u2019s emphases, her interactions with Crosby almost certainly had the greater impact on the verdict, given that Crosby had strong doubts about Murdaugh\u2019s guilt.<\/p>\n

Affidavits cited in the state Supreme Court\u2019s ruling show that the groundwork for Myra Crosby\u2019s removal had already been prepared two days before the Moselle visit. That morning, Monday, February 27th, Hill informed the judge overseeing the case, Clifton Newman, that she\u2019d seen a Facebook post made by Crosby\u2019s ex-husband, Tim Stone, claiming that Crosby had talked about the case while they were out drinking together. That same day, the judge received an e-mail requesting anonymity, also claiming that Crosby had been discussing the case, in this instance with a tenant of Crosby\u2019s while Crosby was delivering a fridge.<\/p>\n

Judge Newman asked to see the Facebook post, but Hill was unable to produce it. In its place, Hill produced an \u201capology\u201d post in which someone named Timothy Stone, who lived in a different state than Crosby\u2019s ex-husband, wrote that he\u2019d deleted an earlier \u201cugly\u201d post because he\u2019d been drunk when he wrote it and, in his words, \u201cI let Satan control me.\u201d In addition to the incorrect name and state, the apology poster\u2019s profile photo bore no resemblance to Crosby\u2019s actual ex-husband. In her book, Hill claimed that \u201cone of our techies in the clerks\u2019 office\u201d showed her the apology post. (She specifically named an employee in the clerk\u2019s office, though at the time, Hill’s own son, Jeffrey, was the county\u2019s technology director. Later that year, he was charged with wiretapping, and although authorities did not offer more details, local journalists have reported that the alleged wiretapping was meant to monitor the investigation of his mother. The case is still pending, and Jeffrey Hill has maintained his innocence throughout.)<\/p>\n

According to the affidavits, the next morning Hill pulled Crosby aside and repeated her claim that she had seen a post by Crosby\u2019s ex-husband alleging that Crosby had expressed views about the case. Again, Hill was unable to produce the post. Crosby informed her that she and her ex-husband had been estranged for ten years and that, far from being drinking companions, she had multiple restraining orders out against him. According to Crosby, Hill then asked her point-blank whether she was inclined to vote guilty or not guilty. \u201cI told her I had not made up my mind,\u201d Crosby said.<\/p>\n

Read more Why Any Plausible Iran Deal Is a Humiliation for Trump<\/a><\/p>\n

Later that day, Judge Newman questioned Crosby in his chambers about the Facebook posts and the anonymous e-mail. Crosby denied discussing the case with anybody. The judge then asked her if she had made up her mind about the case. \u201cI haven\u2019t,\u201d Crosby replied. \u201cI was trying to wait on closing arguments because those are usually pretty good.\u201d It was the proper answer to give, but it may have spurred on those seeking her removal. As soon as she left the room, the lead prosecutor, Creighton Waters, brought up the anonymous e-mail, informing the judge that he now had a name for one of the tenants mentioned in it. With Becky Hill\u2019s Facebook strategy falling apart, it appears that the e-mail had become, effectively, a Plan B.<\/p>\n

Crosby\u2019s tenants, Deborah Webb and Clifford Dandridge, were woken that night by agents from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division of the state police (SLED<\/em>), and were questioned separately before being instructed to appear at the courthouse the next morning. The records of their court appearance remain under seal, but according to Myra Crosby they were held for nine hours, after which they were presented with affidavits prepared by lawyers from the prosecution, which stated that Crosby had talked to them about the case while bringing a refrigerator to their apartment eleven days earlier. Crosby has said that both Webb and Dandridge vehemently denied ever making such allegations, and signed the affidavits without reading them because they were told that they were just transcripts of the information they\u2019d given the SLED<\/em> officers the night before. These affidavits and police interviews remain under seal, but Crosby herself maintains that she and her tenants discussed nothing more controversial than a recent delivery of pizzas to the courthouse. If this is true, the anonymous e-mailer, who worked at Domino\u2019s with Webb, had inflated a report of some harmless chitchat between Crosby and her tenants into an actionable violation of jurors\u2019 instructions not to discuss the case. (Webb and Dandridge couldn\u2019t be reached for comment.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The anonymous e-mailer later outed herself in a comment on the Discord of Mandy Matney\u2019s Lunashark Media company. (Matney was one of the first reporters to look into the Murdaugh family.) Her name is Christine Avery, and she ended her message with a mention of someone named Mark Tinsley for \u201cguiding me.\u201d Tinsley is a personal-injury lawyer in Allendale, South Carolina, who was closely involved with the case from the start. (He has said that he thinks Murdaugh deserves the death penalty). Two years before the murders, Tinsley was hired by Renee and Phillip Beach, after their daughter Mallory was killed in a boat crash caused by the drunken antics of Murdaugh\u2019s son, Paul. Tinsley was also a key witness for the prosecution at Alex Murdaugh\u2019s murder trial, in which he also acted as an informal adviser to their team. \u201cI\u2019m certainly inside the fold in many respects, as far as the prosecution\u2019s concerned,\u201d he told me earlier this month, after the conviction was overturned.<\/p>\n

When I asked Tinsley about Hill, he acknowledged talking and texting with her about logistical matters during the trial, but said he didn\u2019t encounter Christine Avery until long after, when she hired him following a visit from Dick Harpootlian, one of the lead attorneys on the Murdaugh defense team, in which she felt harassed. \u201cMy involvement with Christine Avery was limited to writing Dick Harpootlian and saying, \u2018Stop harassing this lady,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Tinsley said. Harpootlian told me he remembers it a little differently. According to him, Avery had been in touch with Tinsley before this visit. Harpootlian also claimed that he had \u201ccredible information\u201d that Hill and Avery had been in communication shortly before Avery sent her anonymous e-mail. (Avery denies this and told The New Yorker<\/em> that she had only met Hill once, when Hill came into Domino\u2019s, long before the trial started. Harpootlian wouldn\u2019t share the \u201ccredible information,\u201d citing a need for secrecy regarding future litigation.)<\/p>\n

On March 2nd, the last morning of the trial, Hill asked Myra Crosby again if she was leaning one way or the other. \u201cI told her that Creighton Waters\u2019 closing was good,\u201d Crosby recalled in the affidavit, \u201cbut I still had questions.\u201d Then, according to Crosby, Hill told her, \u201cEveryone needs to be on the same page.\u201d Crosby continued on into the jury room, expecting business as usual, but ten minutes later she was brought before the judge in the courtroom.<\/p>\n

In the footage of the court proceedings that followed, Judge Newman seems troubled. He\u2019d already told lawyers that he was unhappy about Hill interrogating Crosby instead of bringing her straight to him, and now the judge acknowledged that the witnesses who\u2019d spoken to him about Crosby had \u201cwaffled\u201d under questioning. He made a point of not scolding Crosby. \u201cI\u2019m not suggesting you intentionally did anything wrong,\u201d Newman said. Nevertheless, he removed her from the jury. That evening, after a notably short deliberation, jurors returned their verdict: guilty on all counts.<\/p>\n

What drove Hill to apparently go to such lengths to tip the scale? The ruling vacating Murdaugh\u2019s murder charges supports the general view that she was driven by a desire to sell books. (\u201cShe needed a lake house,\u201d a clerk of a neighboring court said.) That may be true. It may also be true that she saw herself as a player in some Biblical battle between good and evil: \u201cI think God had been preparing me all along for the \u2018Trial of the Century\u2019\u00a0\u201d, she wrote in her book. But, whatever her motive, Hill had good reason to be worried about the prosecution securing a guilty verdict.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I\u2019ve spent more than four years reporting on the Murdaugh case, and the fact is, there were gaps in the prosecution\u2019s case: unexplained tire tracks at the murder scene; evidence deep in the weeds of the phone metadata that arguably tilted more in Murdaugh\u2019s favor than against him; the deeply unusual nature of his seeming filicide, even among so-called family annihilators. (Most kill or attempt to kill themselves directly after killing their families, and almost all target children who are young and defenseless, unlike Paul, who was twenty-two, very tough, and seldom out of reach of a loaded gun.)<\/p>\n

It seems that Hill wasn\u2019t the only one worried. After six weeks of laying out the murders as the long-gestated plan of a cunning manipulator who\u2019d begun plotting weeks before the fateful night, the prosecution offered a different scenario in its final rebuttal statement, in which the prosecutor John Meadors presented the murders as a spur-of-the-moment eruption: \u201cMaybe he just got angry. Maybe he got angry at Paul,\u201d Meadors said. \u201cThen maybe he just lost it. Maybe he just lost it!\u201d This month, Tinsley told me he\u2019d discussed this rebuttal statement with Meadors before Meadors gave it, and that, in fact, he\u2019d been instrumental in its conception. \u201cThe point that John was making\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0is a point that I made to him in the bathroom. We talked about it right before he made the statement.\u201d He disagreed that the rebuttal represented a change of tack from the elaborate theory of motive that the state had spent the past six weeks presenting. (Meadors couldn\u2019t be reached in time for comment.)<\/p>\n

Last week, Murdaugh\u2019s defense team announced they were suing Hill for violating Murdaugh\u2019s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial. They vowed to find out whether Hill had acted alone, and, if given the power, they will likely subpoena phone and other records from many other people involved in the case. It\u2019s a little sickening to think their client could benefit from a civil-rights suit\u2014Alex Murdaugh is a detestable human being by any measure. He stole mercilessly from vulnerable people who trusted him. He almost certainly murdered his wife and son. But, of course, a great deal hangs on \u201calmost,\u201d and no one is served by a trial in which the uncertainty is disposed of by cheating.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more A Vindication of the Rights of L.L.M.s<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Lasdun writes that Becky Hill, a court employee possibly trying to maximize sales of her book, pressured jurors to convict the Murdaugh for the murders of his wife and son.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-lede"],"yoast_head":"\nHow a Small-Town Clerk\u2019s Misdeeds Upturned the Murdaugh Verdict - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=216\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How a Small-Town Clerk\u2019s Misdeeds Upturned the Murdaugh Verdict - 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