The only mental health expert who said his delusions were factual and true deemed him to be sane.
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The jury said he was insane.
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That is a really crummy thing to say. You just insulted the people who run into burning buildings, keep planes from crashing, run to the sound of the guns, fight for you, make sure your sanitary sewers are working, your storm water drains are clear, your drinking water is safe, your home is built to code so it wonât fall down, legal filings are submitted correctly, etc. Plus, you insulted @Knights_Mom, veterans commenting, other government retirees, elected officials, garbage men, the health department people, etc.
Edited to add the USPS.
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The police arenât nannies. They canât act without a court order or a crime in progress or after a crime is committed.
They could have collected evidence - really any forensic evidence at all would have been grand. They could have collected the recording devices and examined the recordings that day before any cloud-stored data was wiped. They could have done a lot more than they did. If this had been a case of a cold-blooded, pre-meditated murder attempt, the perp would have walked b/c of - not even the bad job - the complete lack of any kind of investigation or evidence collection in this case.
Colour me not impressed with the job they did. Again, I will say, if I were the victim and I saw how they hung my case out to dry with nothing to back up my version of events (if true) - no fingerprints, GSR analysis, DNA, etc. - Iâd sue. And not for a big payout or whatever; so that they got their butts in gear and collected evidence for the next poor sod who is the victim of crime in that township.
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A-frigging-men! Incompetence squared!!
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I thought they did well. There wasnât any doubt as to who shot LK, the question was sanity. The verdict seems fair and the best outcome. Crimes get solved sometimes with no forensics whatsoever. Witnesses arenât perfect. Sometimes the verdict is correct and sometimes later it turns out to be wrong. This one seems fair.
Iâm not in the US, so I defer to your knowledge here. Are you saying it is relatively normal/unremarkable for the police to have obtained zero forensic evidence in a gunshot case? I thought fingerprints and GSR on all participants would be standard. Iâd have also expected some DNA analysis on the firearm. Is that not correct - is US crime scene investigation at this level (Iâm thinking, not a major metropolitan area, no VIP (like a politician) involved, etc.) usuall just get the stories and go with that, no need to gather more evidence?
Honest question. Someone suggested a podcast about a case in SC and it seems that very little investigation was done in that case, as well, which is why I ask.
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I donât know. My friend was killed by a serial killer. Her body was in a field for 6 weeks before she was found so there were no forensics left. They were able to determine a connection because he waited on her at a home improvement store. He had dated the woman whose body was found near my friendâs. No forensics there either.
My family member that was stalked was lucky that the guy never got in her home while she was home. The first night he broke a window, waited for her to turn on lights, look around, not see the window, go back to bed, then he raised the window, setting off the alarm. Then he cut a window out but she was out of town. Then he was in the back yard and she saw his white T-shirt as she looked out the window. She testified at his rape trial of another woman a few streets over during sentencing as then the jury could hear about his other dastardly deeds. He wore gloves when he broke in. No forensics. One neighbor chased him to his truck one night and saw his license plates. My family member did wig out one night, ignore my advice to wait in the house where he had to walk up the hallway to get to her and shoot until he was dead. Instead she ran out in the backyard and fired 3 rounds out of the pump shotgun (I bought her and then we swapped shopping and lunch for shooting range time) at him as he hightailed it over the fence. Then it got really weird because then homicide was involved since she shot at the guy and they were checking the hospitals. There was one homicide sergeant who did make it clear that itâs a no no to shoot at someone in your back yard no matter how many times he has been at your house. At least he learned what it was like to be hunted instead of the hunter. The sheriffâs department burglary and vice deputies chatted at the smoke area and realized that it was the same guy they were both looking for. They had the name from the plates as the neighboring LE could run them and he had just been thrown in jail on a drug charge. They had a rape kit from another woman then witness ID from my family member. Odd moment. My family member apologized to the court for missing him. The blood drained from the jury memberâs faces. His mother cried out omg she tried to kill him. There is my family member crying and saying âIâm sorry. I missed. Iâm not a very good shot.â It was bizarre. The woman he had raped was shattered. It was wrenching to see her after she testified. Almost all of the law enforcement involved were caring and professional.
The lovely sweet hardworking enlisted woman I was sent to the hospital to pickup after she was beaten and sexually assaulted never had a rape kit processed in violation of procedures because the person in charge of that shift didnât want to make the army look bad. He was supposed to contact a nurse who was trained to process roe victims. Her roommates bagged her clothes. CID had semen so had DNA from her underwear. She identified him at the hospital when she went back for a follow up for possible facial fractures. She and one of her roommates chased him down with the help of every mobile person including the Military Police. CID took pictures of her face and neck (he beat her right side of her face and choked her down leaving a badly bruised right side of her face and hand prints around her neck then told JAG that he thought she liked if because she was breathing so hard) at my insistence not because I was so squared away but because they saw I was trying to take care of the enlisted person in my care. It was the first sexual assault of a soldier by another soldier to go to courts martial at that installation and he was convicted. The powers that be would not let me near the next rape case. They assigned a guy who talked that enlisted woman out of reporting it. He later made brigadier general.
So, I think that is most of my experience with serious crime. I donât think crime scenes are easy to process. I donât think forensics are so neat and tidy and available as they are on television or in procedural murder mysteries.
The serial killer that killed my friend had a long and violent history. Juries believed him because he cleaned up well. The two women who escaped, I guess because there were two instead of one, were deemed hussies by the jury. He should die in jail now I think. I hope so anyway. At least he canât kill anymore women.
Youâve got to be kidding.
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Oh dear. I must have strayed too far from whatever theory you are allowing posters today.
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Cute. I donât demand others follow a specific narrative as others do.
There is not one shred of evidence to prove what occurred that day at the back door of that house. Zero forensics, impeached witnesses, shoddy crime scene security leaves the real truth an unknown and will always be open to speculation. If only (fill in the blank). Obviously the jury felt the same. Imagine how cut and dried this case would have been if even one cop had done an adequate job from the beginning to the end. IMO the police department needs complete retraining from top to bottom. Luckily I donât live in NJ and am confident in the training policies and procedures of police departments in NC based on state requirements.
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No.
Itâs your opinion that they did well. I disagree with that, and many others do too. If thatâs the kind of work youâll settle for, then so be it. If thatâs the kind of work youâre comfortable paying for, then so be it. If this was your loved one on trial and you would be ok with the work done, then ok. Many of us would not be, and I think thatâs a quite normal. Itâs not a âtheoryâ that someone is allowing. Eggbutt is not the gatekeeper of CoTH. Itâs legit how people feel and view the situation.
If you truly believe that they did well and processed the crime seen well, then ok. Sometimes it does come down to forensic evidence and witnesses can be sketchy/unreliable/not believed by the jury. If you were accused of something that you didnât do (Iâm speaking generally here, not about MB and what he did or didnât do), and forensic evidence could prove your innocence but the crimescebe wasnât processed well, wouldnât you be mad? Or would you say âthey did wellâ I personally believe that they didnât do well. They did something, yes, but I do feel as though they couldâve crossed their tâs and dotted their iâs a bit better. I know theyâre only human, but maybe theyâll learn a bit from this case. I canât imagine it was do comfortable answering ânoâ on the stand when asked if you collected/tested/processed this or that, when it would appear to be a part of your job.
Sure cases do move forward without forensic evidence, but IMO, in this day and age, thereâs no reason not to gather as much as possible. It can really ensure that the right person is behind bars.
Sometimes cases are solved without forensic evidence, but again, if itâs there, collect it.
I would feel this way no matter the names involved.
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The so-called victims in this case should have been furious proper police protocol was not followed in this case. I suspect this issue will be thoroughly examined in the civil trials as well.
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This sums it up for me. Thatâs why Iâm surprised @hut-ho78 asserts that the police âdid wellâ here. âdid wellâ to me indicates that they did a good job. If this had been me or a member of my family as defendant, I would not think they did well at all with zero evidence gathered. If this had been me as the victim, Iâd be VERY upset that they did not collect evidence that would have corroborated my witness testimony.
If both sides have reasonable grounds to be unhappy with the job the police did, I think thatâs good evidence that they did not do well.
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I am sure @Knights_Mom is used to it by now since the LK fan club has been doing it for years now. I am not sure why Clanter doing adds a gasp.
I know real life police work is not like the CSI show, but these cops did a horrible job. Just horrible. If I was a true victim in this situation I would be mad at the police.
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This aligns with my general impression: if investigation was NOT done, itâs for a bad reason ranging from gross negligence/incompetence to ulterior motives, as you note above.
Remember, in this case, itâs not that there was a thorough, professional investigation but there was simply no evidence to gather (as you note above re: gloves). Itâs that none was ever sought. Big difference.
Thatâs whatâs puzzling for me here: why was no evidence sought? Why were other vehicles not searched? Why is there nada but the testimony of two people involved in the incident who are intimately connected to each other and who have an interest in the story playing out one way?
The only hypothetical person I can imagine being truly satisfied with the police handling of this situation would be a guilty defendant/lying victim. An innocent defendant wants the evidence to support his innocence/refute the claims made against him. A truthful victim wants the evidence to support her/his claim and make an air-tight case against the guilty defendant.
Only a guilty/lying person would be happy that there was no evidence to seal the deal and thus jurors were able to find reasonable doubt.
Thus, I find it very strange that anyone is strongly supportive of the LE efforts here, even saying they did well. Both this defendant and this victim have substantial and substantive reasons to be dissatisfied in the extreme with the police handling of the crime scene and evidence.
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When the police arrived on scene there should have been plenty of doubt about who the shooter was. All they had to go on was RGâs statement that MB was the shooter. They failed to secure the crime scene, take the recording devices, collect GSR evidence, or even locate all the shell casings. Doesnât sound like good police work to me.
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And reportedly the place was crawling with cops from three different law enforcement ⊠Town, sheriff and�??
But no one did what most of us consider the basics?
If I was LK or RG or their families, Iâd be furious.
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Oh no - there was investigative work done but it was squashed for as long as possible. There is high velocity blood splatter on the clothes worn by Alex Murdaugh the night his wife and younger son were shot. Doesnât mean he shot them, does mean he was on the scene (despite stating otherwise).
Heâs now accused of misappropriating/stealing up to 9 million dollars and there is little doubt that it will go much, much higher.
Sorry. Carry on. But I am going to put in a plug for Mandy Matneyâs podcast, âThe Murdaugh Murdersâ. It is ongoing investigative work. She and FITS News has done a marvelous job.
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