Alex Murdaugh's defense attorney shares the story of SC serial killer in new book

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Two years after Alex Murdaugh's murder conviction, defense attorney Dick Harpootlian still believes the shameful attorney is innocent in the murder of his wife and youngest son.

Murdaugh, 56, is serving Life imprisonment for fatal shooting His wife Maggie and youngest son Paul were on a hunting estate for his family in Colleton County, South Carolina in June 2021.

"I believe he did it? No," Harpootlian told Fox News Digital. “I was hired when Paul was charged with the ship case a year before the murder.

Prosecutors argued that their murder was an attempt to disperse Murdo's growing financial crimes that began to be revealed at that time, and Harpotterly safely believed Alex was guilty. In November 2023, a South Carolina lawyer who was sentenced to 27 years in a state case for his financial crimes.

Alex Murdaugh's surviving son Buster Murdaugh

Dick Harpootlian represents Alex Murdaugh in the 2023 double murder case. (Tracy Glantz/State/Forum News Service)

"Remember, the state said he concocted the plan to distract the money he stole. Alex would...if he thought it would protect Paul and Maggie, it would admit it." "Whoever shot Paul, which is public testimony, put a shotgun on his head, literally blowing up his brain. His brain hit the ceiling. The head exploded. I don't think Alex could do it."

"Did I believe he did it? No."

- Dick Harpootlian

Harpootlian said there are still many lingering questions in this case: "Who killed them?"

Watch "The Depravity of the House of Murdo" online

"I think … we've learned something since the trial and maybe it will help us lead - we don't have to prove who killed them," he said. "We just need a reasonable doubt about the jury (Murdaugh's) killing (Maggie and Paul), and a lot of it. I mean, I mean, I mean, no matter who kills Paul will cover up anyone from head to toe before you get any testimony. Being killed."

Alex Murdaugh sat in Colleton County Court with his legal team, including Dick Harpootlian, Middle and Right Jim Griffin as his attorney discussed the motion before Judge Clifton Newman during a December 2022 hearing. (Tracy Glantz/State/Forum News Service)

He said Harpootlian is optimistic that they will conduct a new trial based on "misconduct by court clerks." He said he still talks with Murdo once a week.

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"He really strides forward when you think about where he is and how far he fell," Harpotterian said of Murdo. "I mean, most people curl in their cells with their fetus and refuse to come out. That's not Alex."

Although Harpootlian is known for defending Murdaugh in double murders, his professional experience in court dates back to the 1980s. Harpootlian, who graduated from Clemson University in 1975, said he was a "a little hairy hippie" who opposed the death penalty and the Vietnam War.

Dick Harpootlian began his career as a prosecutor in the Fifth Circuit Lawyer's Office in the 1980s. (Handout)

His perception of the death penalty began to shift when he worked as a prosecutor at the Fifth Circuit Lawyer's Office. He has since sued hundreds of murders and 12 death penalty cases, including prosecuting Donald "Pit" Gaskins, South Carolina's most notorious serial killer.

Murdaugh's first responder reveals new crime scene details after guilty sentence

Harpootlian discusses the death penalty in his new book Dig Me Dig Me Dig Me Dign Grave: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Tempting the South, and co-written with Shaun Assael.

Gaskins - nicknamed piss because of his short stature and 5-foot-2 inches tall for 13 murders, trying to receive life sentences rather than the death penalty in the 1980s. He disposed of the victim's bodies in the marshlands along the coast of South Carolina.

Harpootlian discusses the case of Pee Weskins and his shifting perspective on the death penalty in his new book, Digging Me A Grave: The Inside Story of the Grave that lured the South, and his shifting perspective on the death penalty, co-authored with Shaun Assael. (Handout)

However, he was eventually employed to kill a man in prison and was sentenced to death. In 1982, a man named Murrells Inlet hired Gaskins to kill Rudolph Tyner, who was on death row for murdering CIMO’s adoptive parents. However, the South Carolina Supreme Court reversed the decision to sentence Teener to death, announcing"Prosecutors were using the "unconstitutional" statutory structure of the death penalty," Harpootlian said.

“When (Gaskins) said he liked killing, he did.”

- Dick Harpootlian

"The Department of Corrections knew that (Gaskins) had the skills of electricians, plumbers, and they made him the head of the cell in the safest cell in our Central Correctional Institution, and the death row was one floor in that cell," he explained. "Cimo was upset that Tyner was not executed, and it was nearly a decade since. So he contacted Gaskins via phone via an intermediary and arranged for Gaskins to poison him."

Alex Murdaugh: The once powerful South Carolina lawyer’s spectacular decline timeline

Dick Harpootlian sentences Pee Wee Gaskins to death. (Handout)

The poisoning didn't work, so Gaskins arranged for explosives to smuggle him on the phone to the prison where he lived. On the phone, Harpootlian played a phone call for Fox News Digital, Gaskins can be heard asking "a electric cap", "a piece of damn explosive you can get" and "a damn radio" in a heavy southern accent.

"AB --- H's son will be extinguished, there will be no more damn," Gaskins can be heard in the recording.

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"These videos were obviously abominable, and the jury sentenced him to death, and he was executed in 1991," Haputlian said. "By then, I was a DA or a lawyer, and he had a plot to have his son kidnap my 4-year-old daughter, which was discovered two weeks before the execution. When he said he liked killing, he did do it and this week was discovered, and my family and my family lived with me for a few weeks until he only executed it in the electric chair."

Dick Harpootlian arrived at the Beaufort County General Conference Court in South Carolina on Thursday, September 14, 2023. (Fox News Digital's image direct)

After Gaskins successfully executed Teener, prosecutors once again sought death penalty against serial killers.

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Harpootlian recalls the moment he shared with Gaskins when the serial killer told him: "You like to kill."

"What does it mean when I say you like to kill people?" It's clear to me, especially after he was executed, I participated in the responsibility for killing him. Then, the question is, do I like what he said? Is he right? Or am I just…I just…I’m just doing my job, society, community…hiring me to do it? ”

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Harpootlian discusses what he calls a "moral dilemma" in his new book, which he says is written in "catholicity". The book was released on December 16 but is available for pre-order.