Whipped Cream Difficulties

Another one of those stories of purely local interest, as a friend of the blog likes to say:

Alex Murdaugh — the disgraced South Carolina legal scion who was found guilty of killing his wife and son — had his murder convictions sensationally overturned Wednesday by the state Supreme Court after it found that the local county clerk had “placed her fingers on the scales of justice.”

…

Despite having his conviction tossed and a new trial ordered, Murdaugh will not be allowed to walk free. He is also serving concurrent 40-year federal and 27-year state sentences for financial crimes for stealing from his clients.

1. The Alex Murdaugh murder trial starts today.

I probably will not be covering it in detail, but I will try to keep half an eye on it, and will link anything I find interesting and not offensive.

(I specify “not offensive” because: there was a story in the media last week which summarized the autopsy reports on Maggie Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh. It went into enough detail that I decided not to link it, because I felt it was just too much detail for my readers.)

2. Back in 2021, a 15-year old boy hit a mother and child in Venice, California.

The video shows a stolen vehicle speeding the wrong way down a one-way backstreet. It plowed into a woman walking her infant son in a stroller. Then he hit the gas, accelerating away from the scene, where a good Samaritan in a pickup truck rammed the suspect vehicle head on.
Los Angeles police responded and found drugs in the driver’s system and marijuana in the car, according to an incident report obtained by Fox News.

This case was in the news last year:

…Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’s office sought a five- to seven-month sentence in juvenile probation camp, a punishment for young offenders described as less severe than military school but harsher than summer camp.

…

The teen was already on felony probation for poisoning a high school girl’s drink at the time of the hit-and-run – which surveillance cameras captured on Aug. 6, 2021.

Last week, someone shot the (now 17-year old) boy.

Sources close to the investigation told FOX News that he had been at a fast food restaurant earlier trying to “get with a girl.”
“As he walked home alone, a car pulled up next to him and an argument broke out. Someone in the vehicle opened fire, then sped off,” FOX News reported.

The police don’t currently think there is any relationship between the hit-and-run and the shooting. It seems more like a violation of the Rule of Stupids.

3. Former Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Melanie Andress-Tobiasson died by suicide last Friday. She resigned in 2021.

Her problems began when her daughter Sarah, then 16, started working at a clothing store that Andress-Tobiasson claimed was a front for criminal activities and tried to stop it, first by reporting the issue to the police, the Daily Mail reported. She said the store, Top Knotch, was involved with prostitution and trying to recruit her daughter.
She called out Las Vegas cops for ignoring information about the alleged sex trafficking at the store. She claimed that the store was an unlicensed, underage nightclub and added that she was “terrified” of Shane Valentine, who ran the store at the time.

…

Andress-Tobiasson said she had to go to the FBI with the information after being ignored by local police — which resulted in officers investigating her for allegedly breaching judicial rules by making an allegation to federal agents.
A complaint filed against Andress-Tobiasson alleged that she failed to comply with and uphold the law, and allowed family interests and relations to influence her conduct, the Daily Mail reported.

I’m not clear on why “judicial rules” would preclude making a complaint to federal agents if you believe there’s wrongdoing or corruption, and can’t get any results at the local level. I understand the “family interests and relations” part, but I wonder how much truth there is to that.

And before you say I’m giving the innocent Mr. Valentine a hard time…

Valentine was later linked to a shooting where a couple was found dead.
They did not officially link him to the killings of Sydney Land, 21, and Nehemiah “Neo” Kauffman, 20, until months later, according to the Daily Mail.

Here’s the Daily Mail article, which includes a photo of Mr. Valentine. Neither article, however, is specific about what “linked to a shooting” means: there’s no mention of Mr. Valentine actually facing any charges.

But Andress-Tobiasson contacted Land’s mother and “began to personally investigate the case” because she thought that Valentine was responsible, the complaint stated.
It added that she used “burner phones” to contact Land’s mother and sent texts to another woman she thought was involved in the murder.
The commission alleged that Andress-Tobiasson stated publicly that she reached out to Valentine’s lawyer at the time and “told him to tell Valentine that if he called her daughter again, she would ‘take care of it herself,’” and that one time she “went to Shane Valentine’s house and kicked in the door.”

Yay, burner phones! Been a while since I’ve seen a case with those.

Detectives learned of Andress-Tobiasson’s activity, according to the charges, and launched an investigation into the judge, going as far as tracking her phone records.
They also alleged that she had links to a man called “Anthony Danna” who was a “known and documented organized crime figure.”

“known and documented organized crime figure”. Again, what does that mean? (As best as I can tell, he’s not in the Black Book.)

Russell Laffitte has been charged with wire fraud, bank fraud, and the ever popular “conspiracy”.

Mr. Laffitte used to be the CEO of Palmetto State Bank: he got canned back in January.

The whole thing centers around two sisters who got a settlement back in 2005. Mr. Laffitte was their conservator, Alex Murdaugh was their lawyer, and…

Laffitte allegedly schemed with the disgraced lawyer to pillage the girls’ accounts and steal $355,000 for himself and $990,000 for Murdaugh, court documents said.
He also misused bank funds to give Murdaugh an unauthorized $750,000 loan for “beach house renovations and expenses” and sent $680,000 of the bank’s money to pay back a debt Murdaugh had illegally transferred to him, according to the grand jury.
In addition, Laffitte earned nearly $400,000 for supposedly safeguarding the Plyler sister’s money, according to the document. He had allegedly been in cahoots with Murdaugh to steal from the girls since 2011 and faces 30 years in prison if convicted.

(Sorry about using the NYPost for this, but I actually could not find coverage of this story in the South Carolina newspapers.)

Alex Murdaugh has been officially disbarred.

There are also reports circulating that he’s going to be charged with killing his wife and son, but so far those are just “reports”. I’ll try to update if and when an actual indictment is returned.

Update 7/14: The indictment is official.

Murdaugh faces two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.

21 new charges against Alex Murdaugh.

…and then when I got out, they arrested me for swindling the sons of my dead housekeeper out of the settlement they got when she fell and died on my front steps.

Okay, that was not one of the more successful Amy Winehouse songs. The scansion could probably use a little work.

The NYT has a good summary of the Murdaugh case(s), for those like me who have had trouble keeping up.

The Murdaugh story just gets stranger.

Alex Murdaugh, the prominent South Carolina lawyer whose wife and son were shot to death months ago in an unsolved murder mystery that has captivated the state and confounded the police, was pushed out of his powerful law firm over claims that he had misused funds the day before he called 911 from a rural road to say that he had been shot in the head, the firm disclosed on Monday.
Leaders of the Hampton, S.C., firm said they had discovered that Mr. Murdaugh had misappropriated money from the law office and that he had resigned on Friday. The next day, Mr. Murdaugh told the police he had been changing a tire at the side of a road in Hampton County — where members of his family have established a powerful legal dynasty over three generations — when someone in a truck pulled up and shot him in the head.

…

Mr. Murdaugh, 53, was a partner at the law firm P.M.P.E.D. — known by the initials of its partners — which was founded by Mr. Murdaugh’s great-grandfather more than a century ago and is well-known in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. In a statement to The New York Times, the firm said that it had hired a forensic accounting firm to investigate the suspected misappropriation of funds and that it had also notified the police and the South Carolina Bar.
The law firm said it had told Mr. Murdaugh of the accusations on Friday, and that he and the firm agreed that he should resign. Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyer said his client had expressed his “regret and sorrow.”
The law office did not say how much money was missing, but a member of the firm, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose company information, said the amount was in the millions.

I’ve been reading the NYPost more recently, which is where I picked up on these two cases. However, I’m trying to use local sources when I can.

I don’t want to seem like I’m posting these to be exploitative. But both of these two crimes happened recently, and both have interesting elements to them.

1. The Murdaugh family in South Carolina is prominent in local legal circles.

…several members held the elected position of solicitor for the 14th Judicial Circuit, which serves Beaufort, Hampton, Jasper, Allendale and Colleton counties, from 1920 until 2006. Multiple members of the Murdaughs still work at the Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick law firm in Hampton.

In 2019, Paul Murdaugh, who was 20 years old, was charged with three felony counts of boating while intoxicated. He was involved in a boat crash that killed a 19 year old woman.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges in May 2019 and had not spent time in jail. There hadn’t been any movement on the criminal case since July 2019, when his bond was modified to allow him to travel.

Last Monday, Paul Murdaugh and his mother, Maggie, were found shot to death on their property.

According to reports, both were shot with different weapons: Paul was apparently killed with a shotgun, while an “assault rifle” (I know, I know) was used to kill his mother.

There’s pretty extensive coverage on “The State” website. I do want to highlight this editorial, “Another Murdaugh tragedy. Another reason to lose faith in the criminal justice system“, which pretty clearly implies that the state was doing a lousy job of prosecuting Paul Murdaugh.

2. Ashley Henley was a Mississippi state representative from 2016 to 2020.

On December 26th last year, Ms. Henley’s sister-in-law, Kristina Michelle Jones, was found dead in her trailer home after a fire.

Henley was frustrated with her sister-in-law’s case, she posted on social media recently, according to the publication.

On Sunday night, Ms. Henley was found dead outside her sister-in-law’s trailer.

…she had been shot, but did not disclose many details because “we are in the earliest stages of an investigation” and that the gunshot was “non-accidental.”

It isn’t clear to me, from what I’ve read, if the fire was ruled accidental or purposeful, or if there even was a ruling. (Law enforcement now says they are re-investigating it.)

I feel like I should have something more here, but the only thing I can come up with is irresponsible speculation. There’s an obvious theory of the crime in the Murdaugh case (and the Post is reporting the family received threats prior to the shooting) but the obvious isn’t always true.

As for the Henley case, there’s an obvious theory for that, too, if you’ve ever watched any legal show on television. But life isn’t like “Perry Mason”: people generally don’t get murdered because they “got too close to the truth”. I don’t think it is even clear that there was a crime involved before the murder, let alone that Ms. Henley was killed for that reason.

But, as is frequently the case, somebody’s going to get a true crime book out of one or both of these cases.