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[narrator] This week onCrimefeed, the Alex Murdaugh saga.

The convicted killer pleads guilty to more crimes.

New clues in a cold case.

And could a new arrest lead to a new trial?

And the murder case of Harvard-trained lawyer Dan Markel.

The mom of his convicted killer arrested

with a one-way ticket to Asia.

And questions remain about what his wife knew.

This week onCrimefeed with Nancy Grace,

private investigator Derrick Levasseur,

and investigative journalist Mara S. Campo.

Good evening. I'm Nancy Grace.

This is Crimefeed, and I want to thank you for being with us.

Those stories coming up, but first, two breaking stories tonight.

World-renowned Olympic runner,

convicted killer Oscar Pistorius,

known as the Blade Runner, gets hard jail time

for gunning down his gorgeous model girlfriend,

Reva Steenkamp, Valentine's Day.

But tonight, he walks free.

And victims cheer when high-profile,

wealthy, and famous men hit with sex assault claims

just as the New York statute giving victims

a one-year window to sue expires.

3,000 named defendants, including some you'll know,

Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses, New York ex-governor Cuomo,

P. Diddy Combs, Jamie Foxx, Russell Brand,

heavyweight champ Mike Tyson, former mayor Rudy Giuliani,

and of course, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby,

and so many more.

Okay, first of all, guys,

I can't believe Oscar Pistorius is walking free.

You do know he chased Reva Steenkamp through their home.

She barricaded herself in the bathroom,

nothing in there but a commode.

He shoots multiple times through the door,

hitting her multiple times.

Yeah, and, you know, her mother spoke at

the hearing announcing his imminent release.

And she has concerns about what he's going to do

when he gets out.

She says that, quote, "He has huge anger issues

and she is concerned for the safety of any woman

who is going to come into contact with him."

But he has served the required time.

He's being released on parole.

Yeah, but he wasn't a model prisoner.

I know they say for the most part he was good in there,

but he had some, he had some altercations inside.

-You're right. -And yet you're going to let him back out.

Listen, he was convicted of murder.

He should serve his entire time.

And you know, when you say he did his time, Mara,

I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder

because he got 13.5 years.

-Yep, -He's only done about six years on that sentence.

-Yeah. -And I don't know why he's getting out this early.

And the mother is very upset.

She said her husband, Reeva's dad, who, by the way,

was a law grad, not just a beautiful face,

she said her husband...

fought and fought until he died to make Pistorius

tell the truth, and Pistorius would never tell the truth.

Yeah, and they were actually trying to let him out even earlier,

but they realized that he wasn't quite yet eligible,

-so great question as to what the rush was to get him out. -Yeah.

So, you know, bottom line,

gunned down a defenseless woman hiding in the bathroom.

And because he's a famous Paralympian, he walks free.

That ain't justice. That's rich man's justice right there.

And I don't believe in a two-tier justice system.

I don't.

-But there's so many cases... -[Derrick] Yes.

...I've got to go to the new cases.

New developments.

Listen to this.

A mother-in-law busted

trying to flee the country over a murder-for-hire plot

of her own daughter's husband after a bitter custody battle.

This is just one week after her dentist son

is found guilty of hiring the hitman who did the deed.

Mother-in-law Donna Adelson reportedly hated

son-in-law Dan Markel after he splits from her daughter

and blocked her grandma from seeing the grandsons.

She's nabbed with a one-way ticket to Vietnam, which,

by the way, guys, has no extradition treaty

with the U.S.

Wow, talk about a mother-in-law not liking the son-in-law.

-[whistles] -And a whole family affair.

You know, Dan Markel was a successful law professor

with degrees from Harvard and Cambridge who worked at

the Florida State University College of Law.

In 2013, he and his wife, Wendi Adelson,

got a divorce, leading to a bitter dispute

over where their two young sons,

ages four and five, would live.

Soon after that, things took a deadly turn.

Let's take a look.

[Nancy] After Dan Markel's murder from a shot to the head

in his garage in July 2014, the police search kicked off

with a tip from a neighbor who had seen a green hybrid

backing out of the driveway.

A scan of surveillance footage in the area turned up such

a vehicle, which had been rented by Sigfredo Garcia

and Luis Rivera.

Garcia and Rivera were convicted of killing Dan Markel.

Dan's ex-wife's brother, Charlie Adelson,

and his girlfriend, Katherine Magbanua,

were also charged with murder after paying

the killers for the job.

Just last month, Donna Adelson,

Markel's ex-mother-in-law, was arrested at

Miami International Airport, attempting to flee to Vietnam,

where there is no extradition treaty with the U.S.

She is now facing first-degree murder charges as well.

Now, the prevailing thought on this murder for hire plot

is that members of Wendi's family had Dan killed

because she wanted to move the children to South Florida

to be closer to her parents and her brother.

And Dan, the ex-husband, wanted them to stay in Tallahassee.

But the question on everyone's mind remains,

was Wendi really unaware that her family plotted

this entire murder for hire?

Guys, did you read the PC affidavit?

I mean, the thing is really long.

Probable cause to make arrest.

The son, who, by the way, he's a periodontist,

but apparently thought he's more like James Bond,

refers to himself as "The Maestro."

Okay, right there I got a problem with him.

But the son was dating the woman

they believe orchestrated the whole thing.

That woman, McDonough, got $56,000 cash

put in her account.

Ouch.

And their phone records, the whole shebang points to them.

[Derrick] Yeah, so what they did here,

the FBI did a really great job.

-They did what's called a bump, and we can actually... -[Nancy] Ooh, they did.

...pull that up right now. I want to show this video.

Basically, the FBI wanted to see if they could kick over

a rock and see what they found.

And they had suspicions about Donna and Katie and Charles,

but they didn't have enough yet.

-So they actually set up an FBI agent to go... -Now, wait a minute.

-Donna is the mother-in-law who wants her grandchildren... -Donna is the mother, Adelson.

-...to be with her in South Florida. -Yeah. That's right.

Markel, the dead professor, refuses to let them move down there.

-That's right. -So she's angry.

She's the mother-in-law, Katie, as you call her

-is the girlfriend. -[Derrick] Yeah. Yeah, Katherine.

Then you've got her common law husband and his friend.

She had... where Katherine had worked at the dentistry.

All this stuff. So they go up to Donna.

They think, "Hey, if we're going to get somewhere,

that's the way to go. So they go up to pretending to be one of

the hitman's brother trying to extort her for money

to see what she does after the fact.

Let's play that clip and then we can talk about it.

Now, what's interesting is immediately after this...

-[chuckles] Yeah. -...Donna calls Charles and says,

"Listen, I just had something."

-"We gotta get together." -I just had something hand delivered to me.

And he says, was it for me? Was it for you?

She said, I think it was for both of us.

She whispered it, "Probably for both of us."

-Yeah. -And he goes, "What?"

And she goes, "Probably for both of us."

-Mm-hmm. -And then listen to this, Mara. You're right.

So he goes, "I don't want to talk on the phone."

Now, since when do either of you say,

"Hey, I can't talk about it on the phone"?

They get together and they go to the pool,

the Icon condominium pool, the public pool,

and they go, the mother-in-law and her son Charles,

the periodontist, go hide in the corner at the pool.

After this, I mean, if somebody comes up to me,

some thug on the street and demands money,

-I'm going to call the cops. -Right.

And what's interesting here is the chain of phone calls.

-[Derrick] Oh, yeah. -So the guy comes up to her in the street.

He says, you know, "I know something."

She calls her son, Charles.

He immediately calls Katie, says, "What's going on here?

Is this guy for real?"

She then gets in touch with one of the hit men,

who is her common-law husband, who she shares two children with.

Says, "Hey, do you know this guy? You have to call him."

He says, "I'm not calling him."

They get into a big fight.

But the chain of calls is always the same.

It's the mother to Charles, Charles to the mother,

and Charles also to Katie, and Katie always to the hitman.

So the theory that investigators had in the beginning

was that Katie and Charlie were the intermediaries.

And they have been able to prove that out.

We're talking about five people involved at this point.

-The two hit men. -[Nancy] Charlie's dating Katie too.

-I know she's got this common law husband -Yeah.

who arranged the hit, but she's also

romantically linked to the brother-in-law,

-the periodontist, "Maestro," Charles Adelson. -[Derrick] Yep.

So there's the two hit men who are childhood friends.

-Yeah. -Who the one has a relationship with Katie.

Katie is dating Charlie, and Charlie

and his mother allegedly hatched this plot

because the mother, Donna, is so furious.

And before this plot was hatched,

she tried to convince Wendi to offer her ex-husband

a million dollars to give full custody of the children.

Wendi said, "No, I'm not going to do that."

She also said we should threaten to baptize them

-as Christians... -[Nancy] As Catholic.

...as Catholics, not because it was their faith,

but just out of spite because they knew how important

it was to Dan to raise his children in the Jewish faith.

-Mmm. -And then she moves forward with this plan.

I have a question for you as a prosecutor

because we talked about a lot of people there,

but one person we didn't mention in that chain of calls.

-Wendi. -Wendi, so what do you think about that as a prosecutor?

Because some would say public opinion,

there's no way she didn't know about this.

-There's no way she didn't bless this. -[Nancy] Well,

as a matter of fact, when I was reading the probable cause affidavit,

at first, Wendi Adelson was cooperative.

And she... very, very close to the Adelson family,

her family.

You should have seen the accounts of their wedding

when she married Dan Markel.

It was in The New York Times.

Huge Boca Raton wedding, 200 people, the whole shebang.

Long story short, she says at the beginning,

right after her husband, soon to be ex-husband,

is murdered, she said, "well, maybe somebody thought

they were 'helping me' and had him killed."

Many argue that goes to guilty conscience,

but she has not been charged.

I don't think she's involved at all.

I don't think she knew this was happening.

I think her family was trying to insulate her from this

and protect her from this.

And the reason I think that is because she's never in

any of these calls. She's not in the chain at all.

Or even the phone chain

with the rest of the Adelsons, not at all.

So it would appear that she was excluded from this,

and I thought the fact that she made that mention

in the very beginning actually proves that

she wasn't involved either, because if she was,

why would she even introduce that thought that

someone perhaps could have had him killed?

That's a good thought.

Guys, coming up, the victim,

Florida law professor Dan Markel,

was gunned down in the garage of his own home.

All the attention has been on his wife's family.

But what, if anything, did she know?

And believe it or not, more bombshells in

the Alex Murdaugh double murder case.

Murdaugh convicted in the close range shooting deaths

of wife Maggie and son Paul.

But now it's Alex Murdaugh inching toward a new trial

in his bid for freedom.

The breaking news in the murder of Dan Markel,

his ex-wife's mother, Donna Adelson,

the matriarch of a Florida family,

has just been busted at the Miami-Dade Airport,

headed for Vietnam, just days after her dentist son

convicted of hiring a hitman to murder

his own brother-in-law, Dan Markel.

Joining us now, Tim Jansen, Tallahassee criminal defense lawyer,

former federal prosecutor and legal analyst

for the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper.

Whoa!

I mean, this is amazing.

What do you believe was the strongest evidence

against the brother-in-law?

Well, the brother-in-law, after the bump,

the recordings were very powerful.

The ex-girlfriend testified that the money was stapled,

so they couldn't get around that.

And then the relationship with Donna Adelson,

who was being paid by the Adelson Clinic for not working.

$56,000 plus.

What do you mean the money was stapled?

He had a way he would staple money.

He loved money so much he would staple it.

So the state brought in a girlfriend who said, yeah,

he would staple money.

Luis Rivera said, "Yeah, I got paid with this stapled money.

What is this?"

Clearly tied right to him.

[Nancy] Nobody else staples that kind of money together.

And he's known as the Maestro...

-Right. -...driving around town in his Ferrari.

This guy, so arrogant.

I'm talking about Wendi's brother.

Charlie Adelson, and he has just been convicted of murder.

But tell me about the mother-in-law

getting busted,

one-way ticket to Vietnam via what, Abu Dhabi?

-Dubai. -Yes.

Well, the mother apparently, and Charlie,

if you saw at the end of his verdict,

he put his head down.

He actually thought he was gonna win this case.

He couldn't believe it.

The mother must have thought he was gonna win because

she didn't book her ticket till like a couple days later,

and then she called the neighbor

who she doesn't really know, and the Adelson's,

the guy says it was weird.

I haven't talked to her in, like, 20 years, five minutes,

wanna know about restaurants and hotels in the Philippines.

So he called the state attorney.

The state attorney also got phone calls from the jail.

And at the jail, they're talking about one-way ticket,

suicide, and trust funds for their kids.

FBI immediately put 24-hour surveillance on them.

[Nancy] And in fact, that's in the arrest affidavit.

So I have a pull quote from that where,

quote, "Donna discusses plans for a suicide,

but also discusses plans to flee to a non-extradition country."

Why do you think she waited so long to try

and flee the country and now that she's been arrested,

what do you think the strongest evidence against her is?

Well, it's puzzling.

She bought a one-way ticket. That's a red flag for anybody.

Um, she bought it after he was convicted.

The state attorney was waiting to see how strong

their case was against Charlie.

If they'd have lost Charlie,

they would have never charged Donna.

And it was so strong, and they played tapes

that clearly implicate Donna and Charlie.

So when he was convicted, she realized the gig is up,

I've got to get out of here, and she made mistakes.

[Derrick] Well, and there's two things we didn't mention.

So we talked about Dubai, right?

But where they were really trying to end up, the final destination

was Vietnam, because there's no extradition treaty there.

-Right. -So if they can get there, they might be okay.

Someone we haven't mentioned that I wanted to get

your opinion on, we talked a lot about Donna,

but there was also another person with her, Harvey, right?

-Harvey Adelson. -Right, Harvey.

I know it's not what you know, it's what you can prove, but...

How do we sit up here and say there's no way that this guy

had no idea what was going on

or why he was going to Vietnam?

I mean, nobody's really talking about it.

[Nancy] It's a one-way ticket.

[Derrick] It's a one-way ticket with his wife,

but he has no clue why.

All the recordings don't implicate Harvey.

In fact, they exculpate him because they say

we can't talk in front of Harvey.

[Derrick] Okay.

There was no warrant for her arrest at the moment

they were fleeing.

So we can't get him for helping a fugitive flee.

I think they kept Harvey out of it because

I don't think he could talk in code.

He wouldn't be able to keep the secret.

They only had one recording.

Wait, you mean where they called the police, "pot belly pigs"?

That's some code there.

Well, that's true.

Most families don't talk in code.

I didn't hear anything about go get milk.

Or they don't say things like "We can't talk on the phone,

I'll meet you at the pool."

No.

Yeah, it was clear.

If my husband said "I can't talk about it on the phone,"

I'd say, "Since when?

When can you not talk on the phone?"

But the 35-plus hours, Charlie Adelson

talks to his mother from jail.

Hello, don't they know those calls are recorded?

Are they that arrogant?

There's a big sign that says your calls are being recorded.

-You've talked to people in jail. -Yep.

About every 45 seconds, "It says you are taking a call

from a correctional facility." I mean...

Did they not know that?

Well... They didn't know

they were being recorded a lot.

There's another clip with Charles and Katherine.

I think it's the day after the bump where he goes to

an establishment and he's having a conversation

with her as far as whether he thinks that

they're on to him or not.

-Can we pull up that clip and then we can discuss it? -[Nancy] Yeah.

It's a great clip.

-That's La Dolce Vita restaurant. -[Derrick] Yep.

-Yeah. -So what you don't see is there's an FBI

dressed with really long hair sitting there

with a bag facing them.

And this is a clip that they enhanced

that they decided to charge Charlie with.

So do you think that it's plausible that

Wendi really knew nothing about this?

The question is most people want her arrested.

And I tell people all the time.

Georgia would arrest her tomorrow.

Jack would arrest her tomorrow if they had the evidence.

They've also given her derivative use immunity three times.

-And they have exculpatory. -[Nancy] Can you explain that?

[Timothy] Well, you get subpoenaed.

You're never allowed to be forced to testify.

But when you're subpoenaed, you get immunity.

And we're basically forcing you to testify.

So we're doing that.

We shouldn't be able to use it against you.

So you can't use what she said and you can't make

-derivative use. -Hey, can we boil that down?

You're a lawyer, right?

-Right. -They're screwed.

That's what that means.

They've given her limited use immunity

so she can't get on the stand and say, "I take the fifth."

-She has to testify. -That's right.

And now to use that against her,

that would go straight up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It's a problem, but it doesn't protect her from perjury.

And perjury in a capital case is a 15-year prison sentence.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, even during the interrogation video,

there's a point where she's first talking about Charles

and she's saying, yeah, he just bought me a TV

for her birthday.

He said to her, you know, I looked into getting a hit man,

but this was cheaper.

So the things like that where you think you would know.

Oh, it was also the ex-boyfriend.

An ex-boyfriend of Wendi's stated

that all the way back to the summer previous,

she said her husband was looking for a hitman.

I mean, her brother was looking for a hitman

and wanted to spend $15,000.

-But what a lot of-- -So how could they claim she knows nothing?

Well, it was a really key piece.

You know what hearsay means.

So Wendi tells the new boyfriend,

who looks just like Dan, weird, my brother looked into

hiring a hitman. That's a hearsay statement.

It's not admissible.

-Right. -However, they called Wendi to the stand.

She denied it.

Now you can introduce the hearsay

-for impeachment purposes, and it was able to-- -[Nancy] That's right.

That's one of the reasons they called Wendi to the stand.

A lot of people have pointed to the video of the moment

that she was informed that Dan had been shot

and that he wasn't going to survive.

And they say that there seemed to be

some real genuine grief there.

At least that's what appeared to be taking place.

We do have that video.

-Yeah. -Let's take a look.

Because that's what a lot of people think proved

that she had nothing to do with this.

You know, another thing, this mother, Donna,

the mother-in-law, spent her whole life

raising the three children.

Her whole life going to camp, including acting.

Um, the best schools, the best weddings,

the this, the that.

And this is a devastation to her.

They're now actually claiming she's too old to be in jail. Isn't she 73?

That's not too old.

No.

She was on a hunger strike as soon as she got arrested.

Uh, that, they don't-- We're not sure she's going to make it through a trial,

health reasons.

Well, a hunger strike's not going to help anything.

Tim Jansen, as always, thank you.

Guys, coming up, the heir to a legal dynasty

that goes back nearly 100 years,

Alex Murdaugh, guilty in the murders

of wife Maggie and son Paul, now also guilty of

stealing millions of his clients' money.

But in the last weeks, a teen's body exhumed

to determine COD, cause of death.

Is that death linked in any way to the Murdaughs?

While at the same time, trouble brewing.

Murdaugh claims jury tampering in his murder case.

Is Alex Murdaugh getting a new trial?

Welcome back to Crimefeed, South Carolina millionaire

and lawyer Alex Murdaugh back in the headlines.

Murdaugh lost power, privilege, multiple homes

and a boatload of money when he was convicted

of double murder.

Tonight, will Murdaugh get a new trial in his bid

for freedom after he claims the court clerk

tampered with the jury.

Making matters worse, authorities just arrest

the court clerk's son on wiretapping.

The 55-year-old patriarch of the once powerful

legal dynasty serving two life sentences

for the cold-blooded murders of wife Maggie and son Paul.

But now he wants a brand new trial.

His defense team accusing the court clerk of jury tampering.

Mara, what else is happening?

A lot of new developments here.

Alex recently pleaded guilty to nearly two dozen

financial crimes, including embezzlement,

tax evasion, and money laundering.

He now has to serve nearly 23 years of a 27-year sentence.

So new trial or not, he will likely spend

the rest of his life behind bars, given his age.

In one of his schemes, Alex plotted to stage

his own death so that his surviving son,

Buster, could benefit from a $10 million life insurance policy.

He cheated a childhood friend out of $150,000

owed to him after a car crash.

Now let's take a listen to Jordan Jinks giving

his victim's impact statement at Alex's recent sentencing.

Judge, I need you to know I'm not crying

'cause of what he stole from me.

I'm crying for what he did to everybody in this suit.

These kids, these people dying.

I didn't want to come up here and bash you,

but I got to ask you, what kind of animal are you?

Murdaugh also admitted to defrauding the estate

of longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield,

who mysteriously died on their property in 2018.

He instructed the family to file a wrongful death claim

with his insurance company and then had over $3 million

of the settlement money deposited into his bank accounts.

Let's listen to Gloria's son, Tony, address Alex in court.

I'm sorry that you feel like you had to betray us,

steal from us, cheat us, and lie to us.

Um...

I'm sorry that your family has to now...

go through what they're going to have to go through the rest of their life

because of your actions, of what you did.

Um... I want you to know that I forgive you.

Wow.

You've got so many dead bodies connected

to the Murdaugh family.

You've got the housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield,

that fell down the stairs and died.

You've got Mallory Beach, a teen girl

that died after being thrown off the Murdaugh boat

when one son was boating drunk.

Now you've got Stephen Smith.

They're trying to make connections to the Murdaugh family.

Don't know if that's going to work.

And it goes on and on and on.

I sat in that courtroom and I thought,

when I heard that guilty verdict, that that was it.

Murdaugh will be gone away forever.

I even walked to the jail to make sure

they transported him there. And they did.

And now he's got a bid for freedom. I can't believe it.

And this case, you know, the cases against him

could be mounting. So you mentioned this teen that

was found dead several years ago.

And at the time, it was classified as a hit and run.

But Stephen Smith's mother said then and has been saying

for years this was no accident.

And in fact, now they've opened up

a homicide investigation.

And here's some of the evidence that

they have found that suggests this was no accident.

They say that this was supposed to be a hit and run,

but now they have since found they exhumed the body,

conducted a brand new autopsy, found that Stephen Smith

actually died from blunt force trauma to the head.

There was no vehicle debris, no skid marks,

no injuries consistent with being hit by a vehicle,

and only minor road rash.

So there have been rumors for a while that Buster,

the surviving son, was somehow connected to this.

He only just recently provided an alibi

for the night Stephen Smith died after Alec Murdaugh's conviction

and said, "Oh, I was with my mother and my brother that night."

His mother and his brother who are now dead

and could not possibly corroborate that alibi.

I will say this, not a huge fan

of the Murdaugh family personally,

but there is another wrinkle to that hit and run

looking into that, and it's Shawn Connelly, right?

He's someone who told his friend Patrick Wilson

that that night in question, he hit something.

He didn't know what it was. He was drunk.

He hit something, went back the next day.

And when he did, law enforcement was already there.

And, you know, they did exhume his body and they found that

single blunt force trauma to the head.

But also you had Dr. Kenny Kinsey,

who's a crime scene investigator.

He went out there, conducted a complete analysis of the scene.

And he does say that it does appear that

it could be a situation

where Stephen was on the side of the road and was struck by

something that was attached to a vehicle, possibly a mirror,

which is what Sean Conley originally said

happened that night.

You know, I talked in depth to Dr. Kinsey

and to Dr. Dupre, Michelle Dupre.

She oversaw the exhumation of Stephen's body.

And can you believe it?

Stephen's mother had to raise money on a GoFundMe

to get her own son exhumed to find out

the true cause of death.

I mean, it's taken her years to do that.

Long story short, Dr. Dupre says she believes that

Stephen died of a horrible blow to the head,

a seven and a half inch skull fracture

that he got when he hit the road that is consistent

with being hit by one of those wide side mirrors

that people attach to their trucks

or some type of a trailer hitch that knocked him down

with such force that it killed him.

But this is what raises questions in my mind.

When you look back at Paul and how he was treated

after the boating accident where his blood alcohol

was not taken on the scene, he wasn't interrogated,

he wasn't taken to jail, he wasn't handcuffed,

where clearly he was being protected from the beginning.

You have to wonder how many of the investigative details

we can trust if in fact Buster was involved.

And that's not all.

There are new leads in another death.

It may be linked to the Murdaughs.

Victim's lawyer, Eric Bland, leads the charge

for the exhumation of Stephen Smith.

And he is with us next.

I did terrible things.

Each of you placed your trust in me.

It is so important to me that you know how bothered

that I am by the things that I did.

That was convicted killer and fraudster

Alex Murdaugh crying and whining

at sentencing for stealing millions from his own clients.

And that's on top of being convicted for murdering

his own wife and son,

which he still maintains his innocence about

and is demanding a new trial.

It never ends with this guy.

With us right now, Attorney Eric Bland.

Eric represents multiple victims and alleged victims' families,

including the Murdaugh housekeeper,

Gloria Satterfield, teen girl Mallory Beach's family,

Stephen Smith's family. I could go on.

Eric Bland, veteran trial lawyer.

Eric, what is happening with the claim of jury tampering?

Like, I'm going to believe a juror

that was thrown off the jury

versus Becky Hill, the court clerk?

I also represent four jurors who sat on

the Murdaugh murder case and without revealing

attorney client privilege, I'm confident depending on

what procedures the judge puts in place

and how they give their testimony,

whether it's in camera, which means outside the presence

of the public or in public on the witness stand

or in a deposition, I'm confident that these jurors

are going to deny the allegations of Murdaugh,

team Murdaugh, that there was jury tampering

that had any effect on the verdict,

or that Ms. Becky Hill did anything inappropriate.

Now, one of the things you raised was,

is Alex Murdaugh going to sniff freedom?

Are these double murder convictions going to be reversed

and there's going to be a new trial?

You know, as a former prosecutor,

that murder convictions are very difficult to reverse.

However, in this case, if there is...

If there is evidence that shows jury tampering

to the point that it altered

the jurors free agency of their decisions,

there could be a new trial.

Now that new trial won't be before Judge Newman,

Clifton Newman, because he has recused himself.

So I think the evidence is overwhelming on murder,

even if the trial has to be retried.

The evidence of the kennels, the evidence of the Snapchat video,

his lack of blood on his body when he supposedly hugged...

-[Nancy] Yeah. -...his wife and son

-after 10 o'clock, all the lies that he told. -[Nancy] Eric...

I got to tell you something.

I sat through his testimony.

The only thing I think that will change in the second trial,

if there is one, and I met Becky Hill,

and I find it very hard to believe that

she would tamper with a jury

if she said something unwittingly or in jest, maybe.

But I just don't see it.

That said, I bet Alex Murdaugh won't take the stand again.

He was terrible. He was obviously lying.

He tried in the sentencing last week

where I argued on behalf of the victims.

He gave a one-hour infomercial that I've never seen

in plea of mitigation, trying to change

his public image.

You know, it went way beyond the financial crimes.

He blamed the media and the podcasters like me,

-and said-- -Oh, I hope he blamed me.

He blamed media and, you know, everybody for sensationalizing it

and focusing on the financial crimes.

So I just want to lay one thing at rest.

He's going to do 23 years. He's 55 years old.

There's no chance of parole.

There's a federal court sentence that comes in

two months in front of Judge Richard Gergel

because he pled guilty to 22 federal financial crimes

-on September 20th. -[whistles]

They're going to load him up for that.

There's still the roadside shooting charges, Nancy.

-So there's not going to be a breath of-- -[Nancy] You mean when

he had himself shot in the head, so his family could get

millions of dollars of insurance?

There's not going to be a breath of fresh air for him.

But the question will be if he can live to be 77

and he walks out of state prison,

he's going to go to federal prison,

assuming that the two murder charges don't stick.

Yeah. Well, but in terms of potential new trials,

you know, we've talked about other bodies that are tied

to the Murdaugh family.

Eric, I'm wondering if you think there's any possibility

that we would see charges at some point

in an eventual future related to Stephen Smith's death

and or Gloria Satterfield.

Um, I'm not sure on Gloria Satterfield.

The state originally asked me whether we would give permission

for her body to be exhumed, and we did.

We wouldn't fight it because they would ultimately get the permission.

I don't think they're going to go there.

We've recovered over $7.5 million in connection

with Gloria's death and the fraud that took place.

However, with Stephen Smith, we did have

an impaneled grand jury that is no longer

sitting throughout the summer.

I spoke with our chief of the state law enforcement division,

Chief Keel, who told me that the active, the investigation

is very much active and there's a lot of issues

that they're going to address with five or six people.

I do believe that ultimately there will be some charges

in connection with Stephen's death,

whether it's an intentional killing because

they targeted him in connection with his lifestyle.

He was a gay young man or leaving the scene

of an accident.

There will be some charges.

Sandy Smith isn't looking to pin this on anybody.

She just wants answers. However, the Murdaughs

are all over the investigative file of the 105 pages

of investigative file that was released in 2021

by the Highway Department who was originally investigating it

as a traffic accident.

The Murdaugh name appears over 40 times.

There's allegations that Randy, Alex's brother,

was at the accident scene with Alex.

The day after Stephen was found killed in the middle

of the road, Sandy Smith says she saw both of them.

Randy says I was only there with an investigator

at the request of Sandy's ex-husband, Joel,

and Alex wasn't there.

That's gonna have to be figured out the one question.

that Buster has never answered is,

"Do I have any knowledge about what happened to Steven"?

He says, "I wasn't there, I was with two people

that are no longer with us, Maggie and Paul."

He said he didn't have a relationship with Steven,

but what the question that has never been asked

of him is, "Do you have any information

in connection with Steven's death,"

and we believe that he does.

Wow.

Eric Bland, all over this case.

Thank you for being with us, Eric.

Guys, coming up, a loving dad takes his family

on a vacation and he ends up face down in a canal

near the fancy Airbnb he rents.

But why is his own family under a microscope tonight?

A beach vacation turns deadly.

Dad, husband, David Rainey takes his family on a vacation

that hot July night after he steps outside,

he's never seen alive again.

His family calls 911 to report him missing.

Soon after, police find him floating in

a nearby canal, dead.

At first, it's believed he drowned in the night

after stumbling in.

But upon closer inspection of the body at the morgue,

it's discovered David Rainey was stabbed dead.

And then a twist.

Seemingly loving wife Cindy and the apples of David Rainey's eye,

his two sons Bailey and Jack,

all three charged with tampering with evidence.

What evidence?

The dead body.

Mara, Derrick.

They're tampering with the dead body,

according to police.

So if they're tampering with the dead body,

-why no murder charges? -Right, see,

I don't even think that's the only evidence, though.

And obviously that's strong.

But I think the bigger question here

or the bigger incriminating evidence towards Cindy

and the sons is the fact that Cindy calls police

and says, "hey, listen, David left.

We got an argument. He left and went on his way."

How... and when we know eventually he's found with

these stab wounds to the chest.

But when they go into the house,

the housekeeper finds a bunch of blood inside the house.

Then investigators go in there and find evidence

that they cleaned up blood inside the house,

which suggests that David was stabbed inside the home.

So there's no way there's those three.

There's Jack, Bailey and Cindy.

There's also the girlfriend, Eleanor,

and then also Jeffrey.

There's no way if that happened

inside the house, they didn't have

some involvement with the disposal of David's body.

which is, I think, where they're getting

the tampering with evidence, and I think they're going

to try to flip over some rocks and see who's willing

-to say something. -I think they're going to flip,

all right, but not rocks.

I think they're going to get the girlfriend...

-Oh, yeah, and Jeffrey. -...or someone else to turn state's evidence...

-Yes. -...or else they can go down with the ship.

Well, as we've noted, you know,

-nobody's been charged with murder yet. -Right.

They've been charged with this tampering of evidence of the body.

Investigators found the body in a canal.

They found these stab wounds.

They found no water in his lungs,

-which means he did not drown. -That's right.

So he died from the stabbing and they don't believe that

he was killed at the canal.

They believe he was killed somewhere else

and then transported to the canal.

You pair that with the charges of tampering

with evidence of the body, it suggests they had something

to do with moving the body.

So it does raise a lot more questions and provide answers

at this point, meaning was it just the mom?

Were the sons helping her to protect her?

Was it all three of them?

If they know who did it and it wasn't them,

why haven't they spoken out?

The blood pattern is going to be critical.

Because if there is throwback, in other words,

there were multiple stab wounds,

and I spoke to a medical examiner that said that at first,

of course, they believed it had been drowning.

But as you correctly pointed out, no water in the lungs.

If there is blood, for instance,

on the wall or on the ceiling,

which is very common with multiple stabs,

you stab, and when you pull the knife out...

Blood goes up on the ceiling or the wall.

That will indicate the murder happened there,

not just dragging the body.

But I mean, common sense, two and two is four.

If those three are dragging around the dead body

of their husband slash father, why didn't they report him dead?

Why didn't they call 911?

They're going to argue because they did it.

And I don't want people to get confused that

David was transported to another location.

According to the affidavit right here,

it says that investigators were walking along

-the back wall of that residence. -Yeah.

And during that time, while they're on that seawall,

they look over and see David's body face down.

So it wasn't a far trek.

So whatever happened, more than likely happened

inside the home, altercation, whatever it was,

they realize what's transpired and they bring David out back

and hope that he's going to get washed away.

But also, stabbing is such an intimate,

violent way to kill someone.

You have to get really close to them to stab them.

It's not like shooting someone where there's a little more distance,

a little bit more detached.

So if the wife and the sons were involved in this death,

you really have to ask what happened that preceded

the stabbing and then them dumping his body.

Well, I don't think the wife could have done it

on her own, because he's stabbed in the chest.

He, David Rainey, is big enough to overpower his wife.

Therefore, her stabbing him that many times in the chest

and not in the back, that doesn't make sense to me.

That would suggest one of the sons is involved.

[Derrick] Yeah, and I mean, here's the thing. You guys just said it, right?

There's a stabbing. It's intimate.

It maybe wasn't one person, but not all five of them

stabbed him.

So there's people in this scenario here that

have more to lose and had less involvement.

So those are the people that investigators are trying to get to.

And we can't forget, there's also a civil suit right now.

All five individuals are being sued.

-That's how it all came to light. -Exactly.

Because the dead guy, David Rainey's mother,

sued the whole kit and caboodle,

-the wife and the two sons. -And the girlfriend.

And the girlfriend for wrongful death,

arguing that she should get insurance money,

as maybe she should if they had anything to do with it.

But if it hadn't been for his mother filing a lawsuit,

this would have possibly laid dormant.

So, Nancy, a question for you.

What charges could the others in the house

potentially face if they had nothing to do with

what took place, but they were aware of it?

If they're all in the house when a guy is stabbed

and blood is everywhere, they had to see either

the stabbing or the cleanup,

heard screams, heard an argument,

and they did nothing, they're all in the house together,

they're going to be charged with murder.

Now, if they want to turn state's evidence

-for a lesser charge, have at it. -Yeah.

I think that's probably what we're going to see.

That's how they're going to get a lot more information.

Eleanor and Jeffrey, they're going to be talking.

Yep, singing.

Guys, every week, Crimefeedbrings you

crime stories from across our great nation.

Some ripped from the headlines.

Some you may never have heard of.

For Mara, Derrick, and myself, we'll see you next week.

And good night, friend.

[inaudible conversation]