MURDAUGH TRIAL DEJA VU
Already serving 2 life terms, the killer may get his wish: a court do-over
COLLETON County court clerk Rebecca Hill, once viewed as sweet, homespun “Miss Becky,” will be the focus of a three-day hearing, beginning Jan. 29 in South Carolina, to see if convicted double murderer Alex Murdaugh deserves a new trial.
Lawyers for Murdaugh — now serving consecutive life sentences for murdering his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul — allege that Hill tampered with the jury, steering them toward a belief that Murdaugh was guilty during the six-week trial that ended on March 3, 2023.
“Becky Hill is a narcissist who was in over her head and was pushing to get a hot book [about the case] out while, at the same time, seemed to be crossing a lot of boundaries with the jurors,” a longtime Hampton County native who knows most of the players on both sides of the Murdaugh trial told The Post. “Right now it looks as if some local yokels really monkeyed up the trial; if impropriety is shown at the hearing, the jurisprudence of South Carolina will want that corrected. It all looks very tainted right now and my guess is that he [Murdaugh] will get a do-over.”
Hill did not return a call for comment.
Hill of a mess
According to a pretrial brief filed by Murdaugh’s attorneys Wednesday, they don’t even need to prove that Hill influenced them.
“Mr. Murdaugh does not need to show actual bias on the part of any juror to obtain a new trial,” his attorneys wrote in the brief.
“If Mr. Murdaugh proves his allegation that Ms. Hill communicated with the jury about the evidence presented by the defense during his murder trial, South Carolina and federal law require that Mr. Murdaugh receive a new trial, irrespective of whether the court believes the outcome of the trial would have been the same had Ms. Hill’s jury tampering not occurred.” State prosecutors filed a rebuttal What also could come during the evidentiary hearing is whether the one juror who was widely believed to be the lone holdout against voting to convict Murdaugh was improperly removed from the jury just hours before they began deliberations. The controversial dismissal of the so-called “Egg Lady Juror” (given that nickname because she asked if she could retrieve a carton of eggs when the judge told her she was dismissed) involves Hill because of an incriminating Facebook post by the juror that Hill claims to have seen — but which she hasn’t been able to prove ever existed. The case against Hill has apparently grown even stronger in the last few weeks as a result of an incriminating data drop of 2,100 of her work emails via a Freedom of Information Act request. The emails show that Hill seemingly played fa
vorites with reporters, offering some special access, and that she worked and promoted her book on the government’s dime.
Hill had already been battling two ethics complaints about her, including one involving the work she did on her book while at work.
In addition, her son Jeffrey Hill, 34, who had been the head of IT for Colleton County, was arrested in November for allegedly illegally wiretapping conversations on the job.
The clerk also sent emails directly to prosecutors and law enforcement witnesses for the state during the trial about “merits of testimony from defense witnesses,” Murdaugh’s attorneys Dick Harpootlian, Jim Griffin, Phillip Barber and Margaret Fox wrote in the brief.
Some emails were withheld from the media but are expected to come out at a pre-trial public status hearing Jan. 16, before the three-day session starts Jan. 29.
Things got even worse for Hill two weeks ago when, as a result of the emails, it was discovered that she also plagiarized parts of “Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders,” her memoir about the trial.
She admitted to the plagiarism and the book was pulled from publication.
But South Carolina’s highly respected 80-year-old former Chief Justice Jean H. Toal, who will be overseeing the hearing at the Richland County courthouse, may also get an earful about the often highly charged media and legal circus around the case, which some say has long influenced the narrative surrounding Alex Murdaugh.
A cottage industry of lawyers, bloggers, journalists and podcasters sprang up in the aftermath of the sensational and brutal slayings of Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and her son Paul, 22, at their country estate in Islandton, SC, in June 2021, with many monetizing the scandal via books, TV appearances and even merchandise.
Spotlight seekers
One is Eric Bland, 61, a Columbia, SC, attorney specializing in legal and medical malpractice who represents four Murdaugh trial jurors, the sons of Gloria Satterfield — the Murdaugh housekeeper who died under mysterious circumstances at their home — and even Sandy Smith. The latter is the mother of Stephen Smith, the young gay man found dead on a rural road not far from the Murdaughs’ home in 2015.
Bland was called out in the brief filed Wednesday for being a “publicity-seeking” lawyer in part because he wants to be included in this month’s Murdaugh hearings since he represents four jurors.
Bland fired back with the kind of answer that has become the norm, especially between the armies of Murdaugh murder aficionados online who feud with each other on a regular basis.
“My only response is that my partner and I continue to live rent-free in [Murdaugh attorney Dick] Harpootlian’s head,” Bland told The Post. “But I find it rich that Dick Harpootlian is talking about publicity-seeking lawyers when there isn’t a microphone or a television camera he won’t pander to. He really is a grasping attorney at this point. Sad. Just reinforces the notion that lawyers should expire like yogurt.”
There’s even merch
Bland, who calls himself “EB” online, also co-hosts two podcasts, “True Sunlight” and “Cup of Justice,” with Mandy Matney and her colleague Liz Farrell under the umbrella of Lunashark Media — which charges its roughly 3,000 premium members a $14.95 monthly fee. He began appearing on TV regularly once he got the Satterfields as clients.
Bland’s media profile has grown to the point where he hosts an occasional Twitter series called “Get to Know EB + Renee” with his wife and sells merchandise such as an “EB” bobblehead doll, T-shirts with phrases like “Lawyer Up!” and mugs reading “The world has too many Dicks. Need more EBs.”
His representation of Sandy Smith that began last March means he’s had some oversight of a GoFundMe established in March to pay for the costs of exhuming Stephen’s body and for a second, independent autopsy. The GoFundMe raised more than $130,000 in just days before it was shut down and a scholarship fund was established in its place. It is a donor-advised fund, which means it is sponsored by a larger organization and therefore impossible to find how much money has been donated.
Smith told The Post this week that people are still donating to the scholarship fund. She said she has not been notified of the results of the second autopsy, despite organizing and funding it, adding that she and Bland were told to turn over the report to SLED (South Carolina Law Enforcement.)
Murdaugh’s longtime lawyer Harpootlian said the online circus has been an ongoing issue before, during and after Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial.
“The new element here is social media and podcasts, I’ve never seen anything like it,” he told The Post. “They take on a life on their own where everyone becomes an expert whether they have qualifications or not.”