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DENVER – A South Carolina attorney who testified in the criminal case against convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh says the former attorney and local power broker is no different from serial killer Ted Bundy.
Mark Tinsley represented the family of Mallory Beach, who died in an alcohol-fueled boat crash at the hands of Murdaugh’s son and eventual victim, Paul Murdaugh, in 2019. He later secured a $15 million settlement for the Beach family from a convenience store chain that was accused of selling booze to the underage Paul in the hours leading up to the crash.
Part of that civil suit compelled Alex Murdaugh to reveal his desperate financial situation, exposing a vast breadth of financial crimes he committed to help maintain his image as a powerful and wealthy community leader. He later pleaded guilty to those crimes.
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The murders occurred just days before the financial disclosures were expected to be made. Tinsley testified in the criminal trial against Murdaugh, and said the mounting pressure of those disclosures contributed to Murdaugh’s motive to kill. The former community titan and attorney wanted to delay the disclosure and garner sympathy from the community.
Tinsley also knew Murdaugh, as did many in Hampton County, South Carolina, home to about 25,000 people.
He described the cold-blooded killer as “untouchable,” painting a picture of a man who, benefiting from his family’s 100-year reputation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, had undue influence over public affairs and garnered local acolytes, some of whom were loyal to him for fear of retribution if they ever crossed him.
“If I have the power to go and have some indictment for your brother dismissed, you’re beholden to me forever,” Tinsley told Fox News Digital at CrimeCon in Denver on Saturday, referencing Murdaugh’s authority in the community.
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“And if you are afraid… that I could do something to you, you are equally afraid because there’s not lots of opportunities in this place,” he said. “And so he would use his friendships, but it was always what he could get out of it for him, and I think people realize that now. A lot of people. I mean, he probably genuinely had some friends, but I mean, Alex cared about one person. Alex. Always.”
He described Hampton County as a place where most residents have known one another for generations and have become intimately familiar with each other’s lives.
“Imagine your high school class, if you go to a relatively small high school, a couple of hundred people,” he said. “You know whose sister dated whom, and you know what their parents do. You know when he broke his arm playing football in the ninth grade, you know everything about everybody.”
Tinsley described Murdaugh as an insincere man who manipulated members of his own community, and that his nice-guy facade wasn’t realized by most until after his criminal implosion.
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“And so, in your whole life you’ve grown up with these people,” he said. “You see them in the grocery store, and you run into Alec while you’re in the grocery store after the boat crash. I mean, can you imagine turning the aisle? And there’s Alex like, ‘hey good buddy, how you doing?’ ‘I’m praying for you.'”
Murdaugh’s manipulation turned to indignance when the community’s admiration for him turned to disdain.
Tinsley compared Murdaugh’s attitude to that of serial killer Ted Bundy’s, who was notoriously incensed that people whom he viewed as his inferiors were allowed to judge him.
“Tell the jury they were wrong!” Bundy infamously exclaimed upon his third death sentencing in 1980 for the murder of a 12-year-old girl.
“If you find that video, Ted Bundy, in that moment where he challenges the world, ‘how dare you criticize me, because I’m above all of you.’ That’s Alex.”
“It’s not a nickel’s worth of difference between Ted Bundy and that person in my mind. I mean, it’s just a monster.”
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