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Released from jail and back in rehab after botching his own murder in a depraved insurance fraud scheme, Alex Murdaugh is under new fire for his role in the wake of another crime: the accident in 2019 fatal boat involving her late son Paul.
The disgraced lawyer on Monday night was named in a new trial, this time for allegedly trying to “shift responsibility” for the 2019 fiasco from Paul, who was charged in the incident ahead of his own murder this spring, to another teenager on board at the time.
According to the lawsuit, filed on behalf of Connor Cook, one of six people aboard the Murdaugh family boat during the February 2019 incident, the 53-year-old South Carolina lawyer deliberately took steps to judge Paul of the legal repercussions of that. night.
This included Murdaugh – whose family has almost continuously held the power to prosecute in the South Carolina Lowcountry for a century – attempting to pin the incident on Cook, according to the lawsuit.
“Murdaugh .., negligently or intentionally attempted to deny responsibility for the boat accident, causing the intentional and / or reckless imposition of severe emotional distress,” the lawsuit said.
“The actions of the [Murdaugh] in attempting to divert the criminal investigation from Paul Murdaugh to the plaintiff Cook and the methods used, this caused serious emotional distress to the plaintiff Cook, especially given the Murdaugh family’s important ties to prosecutors, the forces of the l ‘order and the judges,’ he adds.
Of course, about a year after the boating accident, Paul and his mother and Alex Murdaugh’s wife, Margaret, 53, were found fatally shot “execution type” outside their 1,700 acre home in Islandton. . The brazen double murder has shone the national spotlight on Alex Murdaugh, who has been almost constantly embroiled in his own controversies ever since, ranging from alleged embezzlement at his former law firm to savage suicide insurance scheme.
But even as Alex Murdaugh was indicted in this latest episode – allegedly for attempting to fake his own murder to provide insurance money for his surviving son Buster – Joe McCulloch, the attorney representing Conner, said that he was determined to have the boating accident fully investigated.
“This case, and what I’ve heard on the Murdaugh news, is the craziest thing I’ve dealt with in my career,” McCulloch told The Daily Beast. “This lawsuit is about ensuring that my client gets justice.”
The lawsuit, which seeks actual and punitive damages, also accuses Richard Alexander “Buster” Murdaugh Jr. of negligence and negligence, after allegedly providing his younger brother with his driver’s license the night of the accident. Parker’s, a Georgia-based chain, and one of his employees, who allegedly sold Paul alcohol at night, are also named in the lawsuit.
Murdaugh family attorney Jim Griffin told the Daily Beast his team could not comment “until we have a chance to review the trial with Alex Murdaugh”, who is currently in rehab for drug addiction.
“Right now our focus is to support his recovery,” added Griffin. Parker’s did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
Prior to Paul Murdaugh’s death, prosecutors alleged that on February 24, 2019, he crashed while intoxicated his father’s 17-foot boat holding five other passengers on a deck after an oyster roast, throwing at least three people in the water. Among those who went to sea was Mallory Beach, 19, whose body was found a week later by two fishermen about five miles from where the boat crashed.
The lawsuit says after the crash, Murdaugh told Cook, who was 19 at the time, to “keep his mouth shut” and tell authorities he did not know who was operating the boat at the time of the accident. the accident, even though he knew it was Paul. As per Murdaugh’s request, Cook “gave a vague explanation of the crash” to law enforcement before undergoing surgery for the injuries he sustained in the crash.
Subsequently, according to the lawsuit, Murdaugh “encouraged and asked” Cook and his family to retain Cory Fleming, whom he claimed was the “best” lawyer for the teenager. As the Daily Beast previously reported, Fleming is said to be Murdaugh’s roommate and best friend in college.
The lawsuit says Cook met Fleming and revealed that it was Paul who piloted the boat, but that he was never informed that there was “a potential conflict of interest”. Additionally, according to the lawsuit, Cook was told to refuse to be interviewed by police and to direct all law enforcement investigations to Fleming.
Fleming did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
“Such advice was to the benefit of Paul and the defendant Murdaugh and against the interests of Fleming’s new client, Plaintiff Cook, increasing the risk that Plaintiff Cook would continue to be a suspect and face charges. criminals as the operator of the boat, ”the trial said. alleged. “Fleming’s instructions served to convert the involuntary plaintiff into a protection officer for Paul Murdaugh, exposing the plaintiff Cook to the potential of being charged as a boat operator and therefore responsible for the accident.”
The lawsuit says Cook and his family began to realize that Murdaugh and others “were campaigning for Connor Cook to be held criminally and civilly responsible for the boat accident.” In addition to encouraging Cook not to speak to authorities, Murdaugh and others are also said to have launched a “whisper campaign” in the community of Hampton County.
The influence of the Murdaugh family was so strong, according to the lawsuit, that Connor even mentioned it in his January 2020 deposition in connection with the boating accident. In his testimony, according to the lawsuit, Cook said he was afraid of the Murdaughs because “they are what they are.”
“Everything they come in, they go out. I’ve always been told that, ”he said.
The lawsuit comes after a petition filed in July on behalf of Cook, who suffered a broken jaw in the crash, which alleges agents from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) and the Sheriff’s Office of the Beaufort County have attempted to shift attention away from the beach. survey away from Paul Murdaugh and toward Cook. Neither agency immediately responded to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
In an effort to lay the blame, the petition reads, at least five officers made a deliberate attempt to “dissolve the investigative problems and disseminate false information in the community with the intent to deceive the forces of the order and prosecution indicting the parties, and the public, wrongly and wrongly. believing that Connor Cook should be arrested and charged as the driver of the boat.
As previously reported by The Daily Beast, audio and video from the aftermath of the crash showed that it didn’t take long after this disaster for at least some of those who knew about it to start pointing finger – and worry that justice is not being served.
“That motherfucker must be rotting in a fucking jail,” an officer was heard from inside a patrol car, apparently of Murdaugh, as police stormed the scene outside , according to dashcam images obtained for the first time by Suitable News. “He’s not going to be a fucking problem.”
But several law enforcement officers have been accused of trying to downplay the young man’s role in the accident, including one with the SCDNR who filed a report suggesting the nautical operator was unknown.
In one of the videos, an SCDNR officer is heard asking Anthony Cook, Beach’s boyfriend and Connor’s cousin, who he saw driving the boat while he was on board that night. When “I grabbed my girlfriend and got down to the bottom of the boat, Paul was driving,” Anthony replies, prompting the officer to ask again if “Paul was driving.”
“Yes, sir,” Anthony replied, noting later that his cousin was sitting next to Murdaugh in the center console, but Paul had his hands on the wheel.
But as FitsNews noted, the SCDNR officer wrote that Anthony Cook “didn’t know” who was operating the boat and that the officers at the scene “thought it was Connor Cook or Paul Murdaugh”.
The new trial says that despite Anthony Cook pointing the finger directly at Paul Murdaugh, authorities did not ask for a blood sample on the night of the incident, nor did they ask him to perform a field field sobriety test. Further, the lawsuit notes, Alex Murdaugh was the owner of the boat used that night, but suffered no legal repercussions for the fatal incident.
“The investigation, hampered by possible obstruction and silence, would drag on for about two months. During this period, Connor Cook and his family lived in fear and anticipation that Connor would be wrongly accused of being the boatmaster, ”the lawsuit says.
Meanwhile, a medical examiner would determine that Beach died from drowning and blunt trauma. His family, who could not be reached for comment, ultimately filed a wrongful death complaint against the Murdaughs.
“The intentional or negligent conduct of the defendant in the wrong direction of law enforcement and the orchestration of a ploy to silence the plaintiff Cook, knowing that Paul Murdaugh was the operator of the boat and knowing that” if successful, Plaintiff Cook would be arrested for the death of Mallory Beach, was such extreme and outrageous conduct as to exceed all possible bounds of decency and must be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community ”, declares the lawsuit.
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