Valerie Bauerlein > Quotes

“If he didn’t do it,” McDowell said, “how did he know what time to lie about not being there?”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“They say you’ve got two kinds of family, the family you were born with and the family you chose,” said one of the lawyers following the case. “Alex stole from both.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“He cried so hard, so often, that one juror offered a box of tissues. When Alex dabbed his eyes, the jurors seated closest to him, only a few feet away, looked at the crumpled tissues in his hand. The tissues were dry.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Chief Alexander had no jurisdiction on this property, so it wasn’t clear why he was there. As a police officer, Alexander would have understood that a crowd would make it more difficult to protect evidence. Another complication was that so many of the officers were friends or acquaintances of the Murdaughs. These relationships were already affecting the processing of the scene. It wasn’t just Greg Alexander. It was the fire battalion chief who had covered the bodies, and the coroner who had been reluctant to use the rectal thermometer, and the sheriff who was briefing his friend, one of Alex’s law partners.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“A lieutenant even went to the sheriff’s office and offered to go through the file line by line to prove his case, but the deputy would not even touch the file. It wasn’t just the absence of shattered glass on the road, or the shoes that stayed on the victim’s feet, or that his body had been found more than a mile from his yellow Aveo. It was that the troopers had found no skid marks and not a single bit of plastic from a broken fender or side mirror. It was that the wallet was in the car, and not in the pocket of a young man supposedly headed for a gas station. “I can tell you this much,” the trooper said. “He didn’t get hit by no car.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“The Murdaughs perpetuated the illusion that they were Hampton’s benefactors, fighting for neighbors who had nothing. But their legal chokehold chased away businesses, deprived people of jobs, kept doctors from opening a practice, and made it more expensive to raise families. Because the county’s tax base was so depleted, property tax rates rose far higher than in wealthier jurisdictions. Car insurance rates rose as well. The Murdaughs were thriving as the town around them sank.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Maggie felt it—the boredom beneath the surface, the sadness seeping into every minute of every day.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“In the early weeks of the trial, Alex kept up appearances, covering his shackles with a folded blazer, freshening his breath with Tic Tacs, trading fist bumps with the bailiffs, arranging for his family to bring him a John Grisham novel so he’d have something to read in his holding cell. Even on trial for his life, he treated the courtroom as his duchy. He whispered to his lawyers and smiled at the jurors and stared down the prosecutors as though he could will them into silence.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Some who knew Alex, or believed they did, insisted that his addiction stories were exaggerated, a cover he used to distract attention from his real transgressions. They argue that the downfall began when Alex developed a habit of inventing legal expenses so he could make his clients pay for his family’s groceries, vacations, and private school tuition.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“It was disorienting, listening to that disembodied voice as Alex rocked in his chair. It was like two versions of the same man, both coming apart. On the tape, he was the hysterical father and husband, begging for help for his wife and son, surrounded by blood. In the chair, he was the weeping defendant, refuting the prosecution’s insistence that he was the one who had spilled all that blood in the first place.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“By the time the trial was over, Alex Murdaugh had revealed himself as a hollow man, capable not just of annihilating his wife and son but of trying to pin the murders on others, defrauding his most vulnerable clients, betraying his law partners and his closest friends, deceiving even his family about almost every aspect of his life. The question that confounded so many was exactly how such a prosperous and respected citizen had come to lay ruin to the lives of everyone around him.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Alex Murdaugh, the prosecutor said, was a person of singular prominence who had never been questioned about anything his entire life. When he stumbled into a series of bad land deals and was pinched for cash to fund his extravagant lifestyle, Waters argued, it had been easy enough to start stealing. Alex was addicted, yes, but his addiction was to money, and he stole millions of dollars over the course of a decade to maintain the illusion of his own image.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“The visit to Moselle brought out visceral responses that were not available in the cold courtroom, the same way a song can spark a sense of longing and a smell can summon the past. No amount of words, no stack of crime scene pictures, could convey the feeling of the place. Asked later, almost to a person, everyone repeated the same word. It was the same one David Owen had used a year earlier. They felt a sense of heaviness, though they varied whether they said it was in the air or in the ground itself.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“This is a work of nonfiction, based on interviews conducted over several years with more than two hundred sources. Most sources spoke on the record, though some agreed to share information only on background. This held especially true for sources closest to the Murdaughs, given the sensitive nature of the case and the enduring influence of the family.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“That morning, the Beaches had gone to church and prayed for closure. When Renee arrived at the bridge, she saw a man wearing a jacket labeled Coroner and began to cry. Her daughter had been returned from the wilderness. The case could move forward. Renee was glad her lawyer was ready to fight. But she knew it was foolish to hope for justice. The Beaches were nobody. The Murdaughs were the law.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Waters told the jury he was aware that the story he was telling was hard for most people to wrap their heads around, but that was because most people don’t think like Alex Murdaugh. The prosecutor asked the jury to remember his ticking through dozens of victims’ names, with Alex unable to recall a single time he sat down with any of them individually and lied to their face. “He couldn’t name one conversation, and didn’t want to talk about any of those individuals who trusted him as he looked you in the eye and asked you to do the same.” Waters walked the jury through the elements of the state’s case: motive, means, opportunity, and evidence of consciousness of guilt.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Buster had proved that Murdaughs could fix juries, corrupt sheriffs and judges, cheat on their taxes, steal from clients, play both sides of the law, and define justice however they chose. By his own admission, he had also proved that a Murdaugh could arrange a murder and face no consequences.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Alex’s team was requesting a new trial on the grounds of alleged jury tampering by Becky Hill, Colleton County’s clerk of court. The defense alleged that Hill had coached jurors, many of whom she knew, to disregard Alex’s testimony. The primary witness against her was the Monkey Farm lady, who claimed that Hill had engineered her last-minute removal from the jury. Hill had denied the allegations, but her credibility was in question. She was the subject of a state ethics investigation related to a memoir she’d written about the trial. Her son, the county’s technology director, had been arrested two days before Thanksgiving on charges he’d tapped an administrator’s phone to suss out the case against his mother.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Randolph Sr. could no longer claim the moral high ground. It was understood that the solicitor had been part of the illicit arrangement. Even if he was unaware of the payoffs to the jurors, he could have hardly failed to notice their new houses. The exalted promise of his first campaign—to serve justice with faultless impartiality—was long abandoned.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Throughout the South, the Murdaugh firm was the go-to place for filing lawsuits after these accidents. One of the partners had become a nationally recognized expert on tire safety and was commonly called into cases around the country because of his ability to explain complex engineering concepts in simple terms.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Randolph worked closely with every officer in the circuit. He was the lone prosecutor but effectively the chief detective, too, showing up at murder scenes and interviewing rape victims. Evidence gathering was rudimentary. Fingerprinting did not exist, leaving the solicitor to assess credibility and vet alibis.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“The week Maggie and Paul had been killed, the investigator had asked the firm repeatedly whether there was anything in Alex’s life, professionally or personally, that might make somebody want to harm his family. SLED had later interviewed Randy and John Marvin and asked if their brother was harboring any secrets, if he had any issues at work, any problems with drinking or drugs, any trouble at home. All of them—the law partners, Randy, and John Marvin—had assured the investigators that other than the tensions from the boat crash case, they knew of nothing out of the ordinary in Alex’s life.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Unaware that Alex had been defrauding her family, Pamela Pinckney hired him again to sue the nursing home. Mr. Alex said he’d do anything he could to help her and settled the wrongful death lawsuit out of court. It would be a decade before Pamela learned that Hakeem had died because his ventilator had come unplugged and stayed that way for thirty minutes, leaving him to suffocate. Her lawyer either didn’t know what had happened or hadn’t bothered to tell her. Pamela wasn’t sure which was worse.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Paul was treated like a wild animal,” he said. “If you let them be feral, they will be.” To Tinsley, it was clear that Paul’s recklessness had led directly to the death of Mallory Beach. But his parents’ indulgence had made the two of them even more culpable. He had collected photos and videos from social media that showed Paul swigging alcohol his parents had provided for him. In one video, Alex and Maggie watched as Paul stumbled through a game of beer pong. Another showed Alex sitting shirtless on the side of a boat while Morgan Doughty poured liquor down Paul’s throat. After the boat crash, Maggie had taken down many of the most shocking posts. But by then it was too late. Tinsley had already harvested the most damning photos and videos as evidence. If the case went to trial, he wanted the jury to see the ways Alex and Maggie had nurtured their son’s worst instincts, leading him to drunkenly crash one truck after another before finally driving the family’s boat into the bridge at Archers Creek.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“By the time the jury returned from Moselle, the sun had come back out. Bright light was streaming through the courtroom’s windows, but as the jurors filed back toward their seats, their expressions were subdued. Judge Newman called on Creighton Waters, and the prosecutor walked over to the jury rail. “It’s been a long trial, hasn’t it,” he said. They’d been in the courtroom together for six weeks, through seventy-five witnesses and more than eight hundred exhibits, from mundane bank records to gruesome autopsy photos. “Yes, it has,” one juror said.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Cleaning the master bedroom one day, Gloria found a Ziploc bag of oxy taped beneath Alex’s side of the bed. She was too scared to show it to Maggie, fearing that her boss would suspect her of snooping and maybe fire her. She showed the bag to Paul, who called his grandfather. Maybe he would know what to do. Gloria tended to tread lightly in a family with such fraught dynamics. She understood that Alex and Maggie were unlikely to help her if she tried to rein in the boys.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“All human beings are flawed and fragile, yes. But the longer Alex testified, the more the jurors wondered if they were in the presence of someone who existed outside expectation and restraint, beyond all boundaries. A man so practiced in pretending that he had become unknowable.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“Even on an off day, Harpootlian was better than most lawyers on their best. He had prosecuted or defended more than fifty murder cases, honing a reputation as lovably gruff and mercurially brilliant. He was an attack dog in Democratic presidential primaries and in the state senate and loved nothing more than the gamesmanship afforded the man in the center of the ring, part of the reason why he’d stuck with the Murdaugh case even when his client ran short of money to pay him. He’d made no secret that in whatever movie was made from this case, he wanted to be played by Billy Bob Thornton.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“On the first day of their investigation, the troopers interviewed Stephen’s family. They learned that their victim had been leading an increasingly complicated life, taking nursing classes at a community college and frequently driving to Hilton Head to meet men he’d met on Craigslist. Sandy Smith didn’t flinch from the subject.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty

“The real South, the old South, was rural and poor. The real South was Hampton County.”
― Valerie Bauerlein, The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty