Ronnie Crosby — Direct/Cross/Redirect (Recall 1)

COURT CLERK: State your name again for the record as you take the witness stand. Spell your last name, please.

RONNIE CROSBY: Ronnie Crosby, C-r-o-s-b-y.

RONNIE CROSBY: I'm doing okay.

RONNIE CROSBY: I'm an attorney.

RONNIE CROSBY: I do. I work for -- currently for Parker Law Group.

RONNIE CROSBY: It did. It was Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Elzroth, and Detrick. I've heard it referred to as PMPED earlier today, so --

RONNIE CROSBY: I do.

RONNIE CROSBY: I do.

RONNIE CROSBY: He is seated at defense table between Mr. Harpootlian and Mr. Griffin, and I believe he has a blue blazer on.

RONNIE CROSBY: He was.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, yes. As a result of the actions that you heard about earlier today, we did change not only the name of the law firm but to a separate legal entity.

RONNIE CROSBY: I started in the summer of '94, so almost thirty years now.

RONNIE CROSBY: Some time in the late 90's. I probably met him before then when I was working as a clerk for a judge, Judge Smoak whose picture is here in the courtroom, and -- probably met him in court but met him -- really think I started getting to know him at the time of his grandfather -- his great -- his grandfather's death, which would have been in the late 90's.

RONNIE CROSBY: Randolph Murdaugh, Jr., or the second, and he went by the name of -- a nickname of Buster.

RONNIE CROSBY: He was there when I started. He would come, hold off -- come into office. Yeah, he was there. I don't think he was a principal or any kind of equity partner, but he was there, yes.

RONNIE CROSBY: I did.

RONNIE CROSBY: I would say somewhere around '99 to 2000.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. He came to work some time in the late 90's, early 2000's, and would become a partner probably somewhere around 2004 or 2005.

RONNIE CROSBY: That's correct.

RONNIE CROSBY: All fees belong to the law firm.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, as Ms. Seckinger laid out earlier, we receive a salary, and then at the end of the year we divide net profits, which would generally be the -- a larger portion of your income, although not always. Sometimes, depending on how someone's year went, you may not get any -- much of anything as a bonus at the end of the year if you -- if your work did not generate sufficient fees to overcome the amount of overhead expenses that were -- was assigned to the individual attorney.

RONNIE CROSBY: That's fair to say.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, not just Alex, but it was for all of us.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, he did. He had up and down years like all people who do plaintiff's work, but, yeah, he was -- had a lot of good clientele.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, he could.

RONNIE CROSBY: Mr. Waters, I'm fooling with this microphone and I may have missed a nuance in your question. Could you ask that again? I apologize. Trying to quit leaning but apparently I can't stretch it out any further.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, I do that. Probably 70 percent of my practice is with other law firms.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. If there's a recovery up front before when the trial -- the case begins and the work begins, there's an agreement on how a fee is going to be split with the other law firm. Sometimes there may be three -- you know, multiple law firms in a given case.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, that happens quite often.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, it would be against our policy, but it would be stealing of fees from the firm if they went -- did not come to the firm because they belonged to the law firm.

RONNIE CROSBY: He was somebody who used his cell phone a lot, I mean, more -- much more than I do. He was always on his cell phone.

RONNIE CROSBY: Alex was a very good lawyer. He was good with people, very good at reading people, very good at understanding people, and very good at making people believe that he cared about them and building a rapport and trust with them. And he was very good with strategizing against insurance companies and opposing lawyers that ultimately got often times results that the lawyers in the firm would be really amazed at what a good job he was able to do.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. I mean, that goes hand in hand with what I just said. It was very much a strength that he had.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, I'm not going to judge his in intelligence because I think he's very intelligent. As far as being a real student of the law, probably wasn't and never developed a, like, a technical expertise like some lawyers will. Some lawyers specialize in one thing, like medical malpractice, and that's all they do, but he didn't. He was more of a general practitioner.

RONNIE CROSBY: I did.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, for a number of years Barrett and one of his non-lawyer business -- Alex and one of his non-lawyer business partners, a guy named Barrett Boulware, they did a lot of real estate transactions, you know, just buying land and speculating on it. And I think leading up to that they had purchased some property that -- speculating that they could sell it, maybe some developmental property and, of course, we all know what happened in 2008/2009, that market went bad, and I think it -- I think both Barrett as well as maybe some of the other partners did not have the financial ability to deal with those loans that they had financed it, and so I think Alex was having to carry a lot of that and it put a strain on him financially.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. There was a string of rather large cases, some of them I actually worked on with him, that resulted in very large settlements that would have been, my understanding, would have certainly have been sufficient to rectify that, as well as, I believe, ultimately some of that property that was causing the strain was -- they were able to sell it. So, the long answer is yes.

RONNIE CROSBY: A case referred to as Plyler. And these are internally the way we referred to them. Pickney, which also had a companion case Thomas. I think the Plyler case was actually four cases, but we referred to it as one. And then he had a case called Badger, and -- those cases would have been large cases.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. The law firm earned and subsequently Mr. Murdaugh would have earned good income off those cases.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. Ms. Beach actually worked for my wife.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yeah. I knew her as well as the other girls and knew Paul.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. There was a lawsuit brought against Alex and others.

RONNIE CROSBY: You know, that conversation had come up around the office with not only him but other lawyers over, over the years. To my knowledge, I was the only lawyer to ever do that. But he did some time in the spring of 2021, he had a conversation with me about that.

RONNIE CROSBY: I think it was just generally asking me, you know, how it was, you know, done, whether I thought it was a good idea, what the process was, that type of thing. I don't recall the very specifics, but I do recall telling him that given the low interest rates that it wouldn't be very fruitful. If you had high interest rates and you can buy into, lock on an annuity, that it would make sense, but, you know, there were pretty much zero interest rates during that time.

RONNIE CROSBY: Other than he was thinking about doing that.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, and I think that that's a fact, not just that I recall.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, yeah, I did.

RONNIE CROSBY: No. And to clarify, and I think Ms. Seckinger touched on it, was the traditional way of doing it to avoid taxes until you're older is -- you never take what's called constructive possession of the money. So, whoever -- if it's an insurance company, or whoever is paying the money, would pay to the annuity company, and they would buy an annuity and you would have a contract, and then whatever the terms is when you would start receiving that money, and then you would start paying taxes on it. You can take a structure without -- there has since then become other ones but they don't have the tax advantages, they don't really make much sense, where you can take the money and then buy -- you're basically just buying an annuity.

RONNIE CROSBY: I knew Gloria. I knew her for a lot of years.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, she did, and when my children were first born, she helped my wife out a little bit with some laundry and stuff.

RONNIE CROSBY: My understanding was that she was tripped by some of Alex and Maggie's dogs and hit her head, and approximately three weeks later she died. I don't think she ever came out of the hospital.

RONNIE CROSBY: I recall having a brief conversation. It really wasn't a conversation. It was more him saying that the dogs knocked it down and that the -- he was -- the kids were going to sue him for Gloria's death.

RONNIE CROSBY: Gloria's, Gloria's two boys, I believe she has.

RONNIE CROSBY: Oh, I understood exactly that it was going to be a friendly insurance claim, so to speak, so that, hey, this happened, in hopes that the insurance company would probably pay them some amount of money to -- I took it to help them out.

RONNIE CROSBY: Never had another conversation -- well, no. I've never had a another conversation with him about it.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, I'm very familiar with it.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. Early on I had some involvement. I was asked to get involved because it dealt with products -- a product failure, which is going back to your reference. It's sort of been my specialty over the years. It was where a drive shaft had fallen out of a Mack truck and caused a motorist to have an accident, and when -- we looked into it and it turns out there was a recall on it, and so pretty much made it where it wasn't going to be much of a fight about Mack's responsibility, and so I knew it then. And then when -- I didn't do anything else in it until it was coming up to trial, and I spent a lot of time talking with Alex about evidentiary issues, witnesses, how they were trying the case and the posture of it, that type of thing. So, yeah, I was familiar with it.

RONNIE CROSBY: No, I did not help him try it.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, as I referenced earlier, sometimes there's more than just two law firms. There was a lawyer friend of ours in Columbia that got -- named Mr. Ridgeway, got Mr. Chris Wilson involved, and then in turn Chris Wilson asked Alex to get involved, which Alex and Chris had worked together a good bit over the years. So, there's three law firms.

RONNIE CROSBY: They did.

RONNIE CROSBY: They did.

RONNIE CROSBY: I mean, the verdict was several million dollars. I believe that would have been in February of 2021. I believe the share that was supposed to go to PMPED was 792,000 as our portion of the fees.

RONNIE CROSBY: That's correct.

RONNIE CROSBY: I did.

RONNIE CROSBY: It was some time in close relation to Alex asking me about structuring attorney's fees. I walked in Lee Cope's office. Lee and Jenny were having a conversation about that issue and her efforts to get all of the paperwork on the Faris matter, and she was frustrated. She thought she was getting a run around both from Chris Wilson and Alex. And then she mentioned something to me about that he had suggested to her that he was trying to hide fees from the boating case.

RONNIE CROSBY: Do you want me to say what I said?

RONNIE CROSBY: I said oh fuck no. We are not.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, because to do that under any circumstance was illegal, unethical, and he would be putting us at risk, and we absolutely were not going to participate in anything that -- that was illegal, unethical, or subjected us to liability or, you know, created issues with the South Carolina Bar.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, it was Lee, I, and Jeannie, and we put it in her hands because if -- she told us that she was being told it was in trust at Chris Wilson's office and, you know, I had no reason to doubt that. I thought he was just trying to take it out in some other way so it didn't go through our system or something, which would have also been tax fraud on our part not to have that accounted for because we would have gotten a 1099 at some point in time. And it was a myriad of reasons why that wasn't going to ever happen. But I thought if they're saying it was there, Jeannie, just take care of it. Get the money. And I didn't think any more about it, to be honest with you. I didn't think it was any stealing going on or anything. I thought that, okay, he's got pressure on him from this boating case and maybe thinks if he did an annuity out of Chris's trust account, that it wouldn't be accounted for. But it ultimately had to be accounted for, and I knew that. I do it -- involved a lot of our overseeing, you know, a lot of the accounting and understand it, and there's just no damn way we were going to do that.

RONNIE CROSBY: No. That never came up during that period, and we're talking late May of 2021.

RONNIE CROSBY: I have.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, I did.

RONNIE CROSBY: I knew Maggie.

RONNIE CROSBY: I felt like I did, yes. She was a very nice person.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes.

RONNIE CROSBY: I apologize. I knew Paul since he was born. Both he and Buster had always referred to me as Uncle Ronnie. We lived just across the way from each other, so I got to know him. I don't know, he used to -- when he got into hunting, he hunted a lot on my property, he and Buster. I have a farm right here in Colleton County where I grew up, and so I got to know him, you know, that way. And then Paul was -- I didn't think this would be that hard.

RONNIE CROSBY: Paul was really good with kids, and he took a liking to my son, who's younger, but he spent a lot of time with him. He would take him hunting, fishing. They would do a lot of hog hunting together. Paul had some hog dogs and, you know, just was around him a lot. He had a great personality. Just really, you know, somebody -- a kid I really loved, you know.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, and then, you know, as -- and then sometimes as my son got older, he would go over to Moselle and hunt with Parker -- or hunt with Paul.

RONNIE CROSBY: I do.

RONNIE CROSBY: Can you ask that again? I'm sorry.

RONNIE CROSBY: You know, I don't recall whether I saw him at the office. I was -- I had been in a trial in Columbia that settled. It was a couple of week trial and it settled on Friday afternoon. And I probably -- I know I came to the office to dig out some stuff, but it was fishing season and I promised my son as soon as I got out of trial we would go offshore fishing. So, I would have left work early that day to go get the boat prepared to go fishing. So, I don't remember seeing Alex that morning or the office. I could have, but it would have been -- I had saw him later that night, yes, sometime around 11:00 p.m.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yeah, I was at home. We had just got finished getting the boat ready. You know, as a matter of fact and by way of example, we had invited Paul to go fishing with us the next day, and he had to work and couldn't go. My son had called him about it, you know. It was -- I think we had just eaten supper and, you know, sitting there looking at the weather and looking at all of the things you do before you go offshore kind of.

RONNIE CROSBY: My wife got a phone call, I believe, from Randy's wife wanting my partner Mark Ball's wife, Lisa's, phone number. She's a registered nurse. And it was sort of a quick phone call. She gave it to her. I don't know if Christy just couldn't get it at the time. And at some point after that, I called Randy and asked him, you know, what was going on, and I don't remember his exact words but he -- it was something about Maggie and Paul being shot.

RONNIE CROSBY: I guess the best to describe it is shock, alarm. I immediately told my wife I had to go, and I got in my vehicle and started -- headed to Moselle.

RONNIE CROSBY: I did get there, and I arrived at -- I'm going to say somewhere on one side or the other of 11:00.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, when I got there I could see the lights. I didn't know where to go, but when I got there, I could see the lights at the kennels. And I was familiar with Moselle, having been there many times, and so I went to the lights. You could see there was law enforcement lights, maybe a -- it could have been Colleton Fire and Rescue, but it was obvious that's where you needed to go. So, I came in the main gate and turned right on what used to be a runway and went straight to the kennels.

RONNIE CROSBY: I did.

RONNIE CROSBY: I'm confident that my partner Mark Ball was already there, Alex was there, and I know I spoke with both of them.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yeah, Maggie and Paul were there.

RONNIE CROSBY: I did.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, we stayed outside, and then at some point -- I'm going to say we stayed -- I stayed until about 3:30. But -- it just seems that we were standing around back in the house, and the -- it just was like we didn't know what to do or what to say, and I knew that Alex was going to have a long few days -- several days coming up, and I was, like, guys, we're not doing any good here. Let's -- we need to all go get some sleep and -- you know, so we can deal with tomorrow. And I think I was the first one to leave, and I almost feel like everybody else pretty much left in the period of time after that. But I -- you know, but I know I was the first to leave and I think it was around 3:30.

RONNIE CROSBY: I did.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. I gained an understanding of the events of that night over multiple conversations and sometimes perhaps just questions because, I mean, without being a lawyer, you would want to figure that out. And being a lawyer and just having something so horrific, we wanted to contribute anything we could to help figure out who did this, who did it.

RONNIE CROSBY: He told me -- and when I say me, there may have been multiple people in these conversations. I mean, we were all back at the house at Moselle providing support for, you know, our friend who had just lost his family, and that he worked and somewhere, 5:30 to 6:00 had left work. That he went to Moselle. That Paul had come home from work and that they rode around, and then at some point they went back to the house and had dinner, and Maggie was there, my understanding. And then after dinner, that Maggie and Paul went to -- went outside and -- to the dog kennels, and that he sat on the couch and fell asleep, and that would have been around 8:00 that he sat on the couch and ultimately fell asleep.

RONNIE CROSBY: He said -- I took it that he laid down on the couch maybe watching TV and fell asleep, and then around 9:00 he woke up, and then somewhere around 9:00 he went to -- back to Varnville to Almeda to check on his mother.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, he said he laid on the bed with her. He didn't give a time but that he laid there. I took it it was just sort of laying there to comfort her because I understood her condition. And then he said that he came back to Moselle, and that he went to the house, and that when he got to the house he discovered that Maggie and Paul were not there, and that he then got back in his car, or his Suburban, which was an office-issued vehicle, and he drove down to the kennels. And there's more than just kennels there. I think y'all have seen maybe the sheds there, and he discovered Maggie and Paul's bodies.

RONNIE CROSBY: That came up in one of the conversations, and he specifically said that he did not.

RONNIE CROSBY: He did not.

RONNIE CROSBY: The three voices on that video are the voices of Paul Murdaugh, Maggie Murdaugh, and Alex Murdaugh.

RONNIE CROSBY: I'm 100 percent sure that's whose voices are on the audio there.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yeah, we're a very close knit group of lawyers. I think we have a very family-like environment with our staff, as well as the lawyers are all very close. A lot of us do, and still do, you know, a lot of activities together. Our families grew up together, you know, and a great experience working with these guys.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, yes, it did. Just beyond the horror and disbelief, we -- we didn't have an understanding. I mean, the staff had a general sense of insecurity and fear. We had to take a lot of security measures because we did not have an understanding of what the possibilities out there could be. And then this horrific loss of, you know -- I think Paul had, you know -- the kids, Maggie would come up to the law firm regularly, you know, maybe needed to use the computer or just to see Alex or whatever. So -- and it as much of a shock as you could imagine.

RONNIE CROSBY: We did. We were there every day for the rest of the week, and as y'all already know, Mr. Randolph passed away in the wake of this. So, it was a really bad week where the Murdaugh family in particular -- but all of us -- needed to be together to support each other.

RONNIE CROSBY: The only discussion that I recall was Alex told you they were in trust. Let's don't -- there's no way we're going to talk about money in this -- in -- and we had no reason to not believe that. I wasn't aware of some of Jeannie's conversations, you know. I was aware that Alex told her they were in trust. I trusted him and I said let's just leave it be. You know, I don't know -- I would -- it's just not something that you would talk about is money in the wake of such tragedy that had gone on the week of June 7th, including the loss of Mr. Randolph.

RONNIE CROSBY: That was reported to me. I did not look at the email, but it was reported, and that was even further confirmation that we didn't have an issue because we had worked on many cases with Mr. Wilson's law firm. And if he said it -- another lawyer who is a friend and colleague said I've got the money, then, you know, it wasn't something to be concerned about.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes.

RONNIE CROSBY: I did.

RONNIE CROSBY: We did.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, you've got to understand that even like when we go to legal conventions, a lot of time we take our kids with us. I was just around Paul a lot. It wasn't just hunting and fishing, but he pretty much had free reign of my property, but he would always tell me. Paul was a very polite young man and he wouldn't just go, even though he could. He would always let me know. And, you know, he killed a lot of his first deer on our property, and, you know, just got to see him grow up.

RONNIE CROSBY: I would see Paul with a, like, a 12 gauge Benelli Super Black Eagle. Yeah, I've seen him with that a number of times.

RONNIE CROSBY: There was a period of time where he was obsessed with it. He had dogs and then those 300 Blackout with a thermal scope, and, you know, he would do it. And I loved for him to come to my property to do it because anybody who has ever seen what hogs do to property, they're a nuisance, and so I was happy for him to come and shoot them.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, you know, in the early years he used a 300 a lot, and then they got where they were catching them and killing them with knives and stuff like that, so they -- you know, hog hunters do it in different ways. But the 300 Blackout, I think, was -- usually accompanied him.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, the day after -- I saw the casings that night and thought that they were 223s and I -- when I found out the next day from somebody with Colleton County, one of the guys I knew who was there, that they were actually 300 Blackouts, you know, we started inquiring of where Paul's and Buster's 300 Blackouts were located. And I remember asking Alex about it, and he said that one of them was in the room and that he didn't know where the other one was.

RONNIE CROSBY: At some point he did. There was a --

RONNIE CROSBY: He said that one of them had gotten stolen or misplaced, which if it was misplaced, that would not seem odd to me because Paul was pretty good about -- he would sometimes leave his guns at my place, just -- and that he had bought a replacement at some point in time. I don't recall the dates on any of that.

RONNIE CROSBY: No. I assumed that the replacement was -- that they still had the replacement. I never heard anything about anything with a replacement, just that they had a total of three. And I remembered that Mr. Bedingfield had built those rifles.

RONNIE CROSBY: That's correct.

RONNIE CROSBY: At the end of August, early September, I was getting ready for a products liability trial over in Dorchester County that was going to last several weeks.

RONNIE CROSBY: We were doing pretrial motions, things that you do before a trial starts. There's a lot that gets done by the Court, and so we were taking care of a lot of things that would keep the jury from waiting around during the trial beforehand, and September the 2nd we were over arguing motions and taking care of pretrial matters. And so I -- when I got out of court, I saw that I had missed communications from one of my partners, Mark Ball, and I called him, and he said we have a problem. And I was, like, what? And he said you have to come now. And I said I'm just walking out of court, I need to go home and eat supper and it's not on my way. And he wouldn't -- he didn't ever tell me what it was, but he said you have to come now, and I could tell an urgency. And so he told me where to meet them, and that would have been in Cummings, South Carolina, at my partner, Danny Henderson's, place and -- which was not on my way home, but he was so insistent that I went there and met -- when I got there, Danny and Mark were there waiting on me.

RONNIE CROSBY: I was given a folder that had paperwork in it, and that paperwork consisted of checks, both front and back, and I was asked to review them.

RONNIE CROSBY: I believe the fake Forge checks, it was not all of them that Ms. Seckinger went over, but I believe there was -- I could probably call the names of most of them that were there. I know it was Anderson, Bush, Moore, there was probably about five or six of them, and I believe they had a copy of the Faris check there, too.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, and I had sat for a minute and reviewed it. I think Danny said you're going to need a drink, and so --

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, ultimately more than one.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, they didn't tell me what was in it. They let me review it on my own, and I immediately said this is bad. And my words then were that we have to terminate Alex. He cannot -- no longer practice with us. And that was within I don't know how many minutes, but it was not a long period of time because the way Jeannie had it laid it out, it was clear what had happened and that this money had been stolen.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. There was a meeting the following morning at Lee's house. I did not attend. I did not need to attend. I was still getting ready for trial. I had already decided where this was going. And they met and then we -- Danny and Randy, Alex's brother, went and met with Alex.

RONNIE CROSBY: That he admitted and, and said that he was -- knew he was going to get caught at some point in time, and admitted to them that he did it.

RONNIE CROSBY: We did. We initially turned over what we had to State Law Enforcement and then decided to -- well, we immediately decided to hire an outside auditor, a forensic auditor to come in and look at our books to see if there was anything else, but parallel with that we were doing our own internal investigation into his files.

RONNIE CROSBY: She was a point person of doing that with whatever support staff she needed under the -- my supervision and Mark and Lee's supervision.

RONNIE CROSBY: I'm very familiar with all of it.

RONNIE CROSBY: The documents that were entered into evidence earlier today through Ms. Seckinger are accurate.

RONNIE CROSBY: If I had become aware of it, he would have been asked to resign, or I would have forced a vote and he would have been terminated under our contract.

RONNIE CROSBY: I would have done the same thing we did. Would have turned it over to law enforcement and would have reported to the South Carolina Bar because of -- it affected our business and our trust account.

RONNIE CROSBY: He would have been asked to resign, or a vote would have been called and he would have been terminated.

RONNIE CROSBY: Because that conduct would have been illegal, it would have been reported to law enforcement, as well as the South Carolina Bar.

RONNIE CROSBY: I would have asked for his immediate resignation and/or forced a vote, and he would have been terminated. His activities would have been reported to law enforcement, as well as any activities of anyone at the bank who was complicit in this, what I would call a money laundering scheme.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, absolutely. And I can only wish that one of those clients early on had brought that -- something to our attention so we could have dealt with it years ago.

RONNIE CROSBY: Good afternoon, Mr. Griffin.

RONNIE CROSBY: That's what I recall.

RONNIE CROSBY: He did, and I did.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes to both of those questions.

RONNIE CROSBY: That's my memory, and obviously they had numerous guns, but I had seen Paul with those on multiple occasions.

RONNIE CROSBY: I don't know at this juncture. I may. I believe it was camouflaged.

RONNIE CROSBY: And, I mean, all camouflage Super Eagles, I mean --

RONNIE CROSBY: I'll say it looked like it. Will I say it was? I can't say that.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. There's a brick facade and then I think the metal iron gates, but they were open.

RONNIE CROSBY: That's correct. It's not far when you turn right, you know. It's a few -- a couple hundreds yards maybe.

RONNIE CROSBY: The one out -- I don't think I saw every one that was there. I remember seeing one it seems like in the driveway closer to the road from Paul and Maggie's bodies.

RONNIE CROSBY: I don't know if there was crime scene tape up at that point in time.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes.

RONNIE CROSBY: Right, and I didn't walk from where I was parked there. I walked completely around the hangar and went over to talk to people I knew that were there, the fire and rescue people, just to get what their assessment was, and I could see from where they were positioned. I could see -- I wasn't like -- I didn't get over it, but I could see from a distance, and I'm very familiar with firearms --

RONNIE CROSBY: -- and I saw what I thought was a 223 casing.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, and I can't for the life of me tell you there was -- at that point in time there was some law enforcement out in the hangar and around, and I just asked a question. They corrected me.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, Jim, I didn't that night. I was trying, you know, trying to get -- and we were starting to -- I don't know. It was shock, man, you know? But in the days following we had a lot of conversation amongst my partners and I about who could have done this, and obviously we were theorizing on stuff, you know, with very little information obviously. But we were trying to find out things, whether Paul had been in an argument with anyone or, you know, if anybody had -- I don't know. It's just what you would naturally do is ask questions.

RONNIE CROSBY: I did.

RONNIE CROSBY: Jimmy Butler is a business in Varnville that does mechanic work. He sells trailers, he sells portable buildings, used to sell cars, but I had learned that Paul had taken his truck there the Friday before the murders.

RONNIE CROSBY: It was a F150.

RONNIE CROSBY: A white F150.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, and I specifically was going to see if Paul's guns were in his truck.

RONNIE CROSBY: I did. I looked inside of it, and I also got -- I had learned that the -- a Mr. Rowe was working for Alex at the time and had taken him over to pick him up for when he took his truck to drop off for repairs, and I asked Mr. Butler to pull surveillance tape so I could see if Paul got his guns out of his truck while he was getting out of one vehicle into a another.

RONNIE CROSBY: Right, and I believe actually when I looked in there, there was still a pistol and some shotgun shells, that type of stuff in there, but I didn't see any long guns. I didn't get inside of his truck and rummage around. I just looked.

RONNIE CROSBY: I did not.

RONNIE CROSBY: That's correct, in other one of -- another pickup that Alex had on the farm.

RONNIE CROSBY: That was not evident on the video that I saw.

RONNIE CROSBY: And I could see him getting out of one vehicle into the other.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. I was asked to go there by Randy's brother Alex.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. There were what appeared to me to be -- you know, we could pretty much tell what they were, yeah, from looking at them, and I believe they would have been a TSS type load.

RONNIE CROSBY: Did I?

RONNIE CROSBY: Jim -- I mean, Mr. Griffin, I apologize. We know each other, so I apologize.

RONNIE CROSBY: It's -- that area in that room -- well, we could see them. It was so bad, we thought we were going to at some point clean it up, but it overwhelmed both my partner Mark and I. Well, we could see that, and we could see everything, all of the other aftermath. We -- you -- I mean, we were getting biological material on -- I mean, we just couldn't be there, it was bad, you know, and it was overwhelming us. So, no, I did not try to collect evidence.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes.

RONNIE CROSBY: Maybe a few minutes. We had already talked about, you know, that.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, it was my understanding that the crime scene had been released, so that --

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, we were there. I saw people working through the crime scene. And -- and you're kind are asking me for an opinion that I don't feel qualified to give because I assumed that whatever was going on was being done, you know, whatever procedures, but there were people in that -- you know, in the crime scene doing various things.

RONNIE CROSBY: I don't specifically recall.

RONNIE CROSBY: We were, and for the life of me I can't tell you who told us to go. I can tell you it was at the time that they -- the -- whoever is the photographer for the crime scene, they were getting ready to start, you know, taking photographs, and it was stated that we're going to photograph the scene. Y'all go to the house. We don't -- you know, you don't need to be in these photographs.

RONNIE CROSBY: I'm going to -- I know I did. I know Mark did. Austin Crosby, who's one of my partners, did. Danny Henderson did. Randy Murdaugh did. John Marvin did. Alex at some point did, and he may have been -- I believe he was accompanied by some officers when he came. I think maybe Chris Wilson may have. The others I'm positive of, but there could have been a couple of other people, you know.

RONNIE CROSBY: I don't know that I would know what it would look like if it had been searched. It was my perception that it had not been searched yet.

RONNIE CROSBY: Mr. Griffin, my memory is that Alex came in at or about the same time two agents came, and I remember them collecting his clothes is what stands out to me. One stood in the doorway or the foyer to the house. We were kind of in the living room and maybe the kitchen area. And then another agent -- and I'm assuming it was SLED but, you know, it's kind of blurry, and it happened pretty quickly -- went maybe to the door of the bedroom while with Alex was changing clothes, and then he brought his clothes out and gave them to the agent who stood in the edge of the living room or foyer, whatever you want to call it.

RONNIE CROSBY: I do not know what the composition of the bag was. It was a bag, and it seemed to me the agent was holding the bag out, like open, and that Alex kind of had his clothes in his fingers and just dropped them in is what my memory was, and what that was. I only recall there being one bag and he dropped them in, and it was, like, a pretty quick transaction.

RONNIE CROSBY: No. Alex had them in his hands when he came out of the bedroom. He was in there long enough to take those off, and I think he put back on another pair of shorts or something and shirt.

RONNIE CROSBY: It's okay. I've been right where you are, and that happens.

RONNIE CROSBY: He would.

RONNIE CROSBY: I've witnessed that.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes. He would do it in depositions, he would do it in the middle of a conversation, and, and, and not them but definitely with them. And even in partner meetings and stuff he would take a call and walk out of the room.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, let's make sure definitionally we're talking about the same thing. My concern was not that he was stealing, because I trusted him. I had no reason to believe that he was stealing. It was the latter, that what she conveyed to me was he was wanting to hide some fees or hide money somehow. I don't remember it being said that it was like I heard earlier, in Maggie's name. It was just that he was going to take the fees from Chris Wilson's account so there wouldn't be any record, is the way I understood it, in our trust account.

RONNIE CROSBY: Those were my words.

RONNIE CROSBY: It was sporadic, but, you know, I knew that he was having a lot of trouble sleeping. And, you know, he'd just lost his family and his father, and him and his father were very close. We were aware that -- or had an understanding that he was taking, like, medicine to try to help him sleep and maybe for anxiety, and just, you know, the normal things that you would expect there. So even when he came, I would walk in his office and he would be falling asleep in his chair. He would be sitting in there, you know, which was evident to me that he wasn't sleeping well. And so I know Ms. Seckinger mentioned pills earlier that he was taking. That's what we knew he was taking because he couldn't sleep at night. He would be up at all hours of the night.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yes, he was losing weight. I don't think he was eating very well by all reports.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, his demeanor is that he was upset, I could tell that, and he, you know --

RONNIE CROSBY: Yeah, we cried together. I mean, he kept telling me, especially to me, he kept telling me how much Paul loved me, and, you know, every time he would say that we would -- it would be emotional. And he told me that several times over the next few days. It was just -- almost be how he would start a conversation with me when he would talk about Paul.

RONNIE CROSBY: I knew -- can you give me the timeframe?

RONNIE CROSBY: Okay. So, yeah, I know he and Maggie's parents had a good relationship. I recall because in some of this, I remember seeing some texts between he and I that he was down there. I don't remember -- well, they're dated. I'm sure you have them, and he told me he was down with Maggie's parents. It was one of the days in that time immediately following the murders.

RONNIE CROSBY: I can't say that it was on the 4th of July, but I remember his brother Randy and his wife, I had invited them to my house, you know, for the 4th, you know, for spending -- and they had -- something that -- those of us in the law firm do a lot to spend time on the weekends together, and they were there, and I had asked Alex to come over, and he and Buster came by boat from Edisto.

RONNIE CROSBY: Yeah. Yes. He had a gun in a -- what I want to call a shopping bag, like a cloth type, you know, shopping bag, not one of those plastic ones.

RONNIE CROSBY: No.

RONNIE CROSBY: I do remember that, and who all was involved in the funding of it I don't know. But there was a reward, I believe, it was a -- I know a reward was put out.

RONNIE CROSBY: We did.

RONNIE CROSBY: No.

RONNIE CROSBY: Well, I guess a total of twenty-five years or so.

COURT BAILIFF: The jury is present, sir.