'The Devil at His Elbow' chronicles how Alex Murdaugh's conviction toppled a dynasty

John: A new chapter is unfolding in a story of power, privilege, and violence can last year, Alec Murdoch was convicted of murdering his wife and son in South Carolina. The case gripped many across the country and now the state supreme court is agreeing to hear his appeal. A new book chronicles not just the story of the murders and trial, but a family that for a century has used violence to gain power. Lisa Desjardins has more, beginning with a reminder of Murdaugh's tangled history. >> Did you kill your wife and son? Lisa: In a small courthouse with millions of people watching, last month, a jury convicted Alec Murdoch of the unthinkable, shooting and killing his wife and younger son, Paul. Prosecutors say it was a desperate attempt by him to distract as years of stealing millions from his clients was coming to light. The prosecutor. >> It doesn't matter who your family is. It doesn't matter how much money you have or you think you have. It doesn't matter what you think, how prominent you are. If you do wrong, if you break the law, if you murder, then justice will be done in south Carolina. Lisa: The trial raised the specter of other debts around him and his immediate family. The fatal head injury is committed to a fall of their housekeeper five years earlier, the death of 19-year-old Mallory beach after witnesses say Paul Murdoch drunkenly crashed his boat, and the death of a teenage classmate of Murdoch's older son , ruled a hit and run but which police later investigated as a homicide. They publicly deny response ability for any of that. On the stand in his wife and son's murder case, he had to admit he like to police after cellphone video proved he was at the scene of the crime minutes before the deaths. In a separate case, Murdoch admitted guilt to financial crimes, stealing life-changing legal settlement money from impoverished clients. He blamed drug addiction pair the isolated estate has been sold but what happened there is still making headlines. A new book chronicles this saga and goes further, looking back at not just Alec Murdoch but 100 years of eye-popping privilege and violence connected with his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. The book is the devil at his elbow, Alec Murdoch and the fall of the southern dynasty, by Valerie who joins me now. Congratulations. You are an instant bestseller. There are a lot of true crime stories these days. What about this one made you want to write a book? Valerie: I was captivated by the same thing the country was captivated via, right? This story had everything. It had all seven of the deadly sins. I went and looked them up. I was like, yup, it does. It had mystery, who killed Maggie and Paul? Once we found out that Alec was charged, why? How could a man killed his wife and son? I grew up in the south. I have covered the south my entire career. It is the only place in the country that just evokes an image in your mind and once I started union on the history, I was like, you can tell the story of the ruble self -- rural south in addition to everything it shows about American life and American tragedy. Lisa: I want to have you read a passage about Alec Murdoch in chapter four. Valerie: He was a kind of guy who could in the course of the day score some pills, cheat on his long-suffering wife, fix three different court cases in three different counties, head to the little league field to catch one of his son's teams and then host the after party for players families. Lisa: He spent years committing massive fraud and he lied to the police on the night of his wife and son's murders yet he took the defense stand. In the end, how did you come to understand this man and is he someone who understands the truth himself? Valerie: Hevalerie: Gave us two days of who he was when he took the stand in his homicide case but he also talked an additional five minutes on interrupted back in November. He was finally sentenced for stealing millions of dollars. You know, I watched him. I can remember putting my pencil down and leaning forward and being like, he doesn't know himself. He is a walking mirage and nobody really knew him. Lisa: Do you think he is someone who believes he is above the lock? Valerie: There is no question in --above the law? Valerie: There is no question in my mind. The story of the book is really the story of five generations. They realized that to be above the law, you had to become the law and they were the law. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather all held the office of solicitor which is district attorney but it is so much more than that in a rural area. They were the lead law man for five-county area for a century and in a place where there would be may a a sheriff, and a tailor. That was it. They were the finder of fact, the detectives, the law. Lisa: That is incredible power appeared his great-grandfather, through your incredible research over years, great-grandfather committed suicide in an insurance fraud scheme that led to the family's wealth. His grandfather ran a bootlegging operation and got away with it it looks like with jury tampering while he was a prosecutor, by the way. His own father, there is evidence he covered up a violent boat crash. I want to ask you of this book, what did you learn about this family, of power, and deceit, how they tell lies and get away with it? Valerie: What I learned about the family is that they perfected the art of making a lie look like to shoot in for a long time, that was easy enough to do when you are the law. There is no electronic records, there were not cameras following us at all times and if you say that never happened or in the case of his grandfather, who was accused of running the largest banking ring in the south by the doj, the department of justice, he was like, I never took a cash bribe out in the hallway of the cap courthouse. -- Of the courthouse. They just had mastered the art of making problems go away and they could because of generational privilege. Lisa: And generational wealth that they passed on. Valerie: It was a dynasty forged in fraud. The evidence completely supports that. Lisa: What do you think this tells us about this particular place in the south? Valerie: It really is so isolated and so poor. The median family income is half the national average. There is no net migration. Nobody moves in, nobody moves out. It's been 20,000 people for 100 years so it really has been immune to change partly because of the iron fist of this family. One of the perverse legacies of them was they were the solicitor's but they also ran this very powerful civil law for men because they knew everybody, guess what? The jury awards in civil cases were enormous and that had the perverse impact of scaring businesses away. All that is to say the economy is not vibrant at all. There are many people I have come to really care about in Hampton and they have been left with a hard situation as a result. Lisa: This story is something a lot of people paid attention to for the details. You spent time talking with their victims. Some of the poorest of the poor who he stole from. What is the takeaway for them? Valerie: Thank you for saying that. I really did try to let you know a lot more about the poorest and most vulnerable people he stole from. Motherless girls, a quadriplegic deaf teenager. He stole their future, their money, he stole their chance at a life and what I wanted to show is there is a kind of moral and emotional violence that type of crime and I think over the course of years, that violence injured him -- -- it was not as far a leap to kill his wife and son to cover up, as the evidence shows, to cover up as many years. >> It comes back to that circle of power and deceit. He is trying to appeal still. Do you think this case will ever end? Valerie: We have a first ending. And jury of his peers in the place where he grew up found him guilty of killing his wife and son and then later, he pled guilty in state court to all the thefts so essentially, he pled guilty to the motive, he pled guilty to the predicate crimes that the state said drove him to kill them. No matter what happens in the future, we have an ending and we also know that he will spend the rest of his life in prison. Lisa: No one knows this case better than Valerie. Thank you. Valerie: Thank you so much for having me. ♪♪ ♪♪