Murdaugh Trial: Why Buster Murdaugh Flipped the Bird At Star Witness

Inside The Courtroom Connections You Can't see on TV

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Shocking moment Buster Murdaugh appears to flip the bird at a witness in father's murder trial

trib.alShocking moment Buster Murdaugh appears to flip the bird at a witnessBuster’s alleged obscene gesture may have even been caught on camera, with the legal heir seen biting on his middle finger while the attorney for Mallory Beach’s family was giving evidence.

So, Buster Murdaugh family and his aunt, Lynn Murdaugh Goattee, have been reprimanded and been sent to the back of the court during the trial of South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh, who is charged with killing his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.

Thursday Buster Murdaugh, Alex’s only surviving son flipped the bird at Mark Tinsley, the lawyer representing the family of Mallory Beach, the beautiful teenager who died in a boat crash in February 2019, while Tinsley was testifying about the civil suits he brought on their behalf against Murdaugh and others. Prosecutors argue that it was that pressure to disclose financials for the civil suits around the crash led a desperate Alex Murdaugh to shoot his wife and son, in the hopes of causing a distraction.

Tinsley testified that Alex Murdaugh had tried to intimidate him when he learned Tinsley was suing him personally. “I thought we were friends,” Murdaugh supposedly said to Tinsley.

So, yes, Tinsley said, they had been friends.

So, what happened?

Tinsley has said in court that he had no honest professional option but to sue Murdaugh. It was Murdaugh’s boat. His son had been drunk-driving it. Etcetera. But Alex Murdaugh has told people he believes a chill set in between the two men when Murdaugh, not Tinsley, represented Arthur Badger, whose wife Donna was killed when a UPS truck collided with a Ford Expedition in 2011. The accident happened in Allendale which is where Tinsley’s law firm Gooding & Gooding is based. Murdaugh is based in the neighboring county, Hampton. There was a lucrative payout. In a twist, in 2022, while Murdaugh was in jail, Tinsley filed suit against Murdaugh on behalf of Badger, charging that the lawyer had taken funds owed to Badger as part of the settlement for himself. The SC Attorney General has also criminally charged Murdaugh with stealing over $1 million from the money that was owed to Badger.

This is just one example of the convoluted relationships in that courtroom that you won’t necessarily deduce from watching Court TV.